The Witches of Worm

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The only other possibility was Mrs. Fortune, but Jessica didn’t really consider telling her. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but the very idea made her feel uneasy, almost frightened. “It would just be a waste of time,” Jessica told herself. “She’s too old and crazy to understand—and besides, she knows too much all ready.”

  Of course there was Worm himself. He had said that he was a witch’s cat, and someday he might say more. Someday he might say who the witch was, and why he had been sent to Jessica. During the long afternoons when they were home alone together, Jessica began to watch him constantly, almost as constantly as Worm watched her. As he paced or sat, a silent gray shadow, Jessica turned to face him again and again. Sometimes, staring into the blank bronze eyes, she would breathe a question.

  “Who are you?” she would ask, or, “Who sent you?” or, “Why were you sent to me?”; but there was no answer except for an occasional flicker in the cold golden eyes.

  Jessica only dared to question Worm by daylight. When night came, she did not try. Of course, on the nights when Joy was at home, there was no opportunity, because Worm, as always, hid himself away. But on the other nights, the nights when Joy went out and Jessica was left alone in the apartment with the empty darkness pressing in from all around, she did not try to talk to Worm. She did not try because she was sure, terribly frighteningly sure, that he would answer.

  The moment Joy went out the door, Jessica hurried into her bedroom and turned the key in the lock. She came out briefly, of course, when Mrs. Post made her inevitable appearance, but that was all. The rest of the evening she spent lying on her bed, reading or only waiting until she heard Joy’s key in the front door. Sometimes lying there on her bed, she would see a silent shadow flicker in the crack below her door and her shoulders would twitch in a wrenching shudder.

  “Go away, witch’s cat,” she would whisper. “Go away.”

  Chapter Eight

  JESSICA KNEW THAT JOY HAD NOT DONE WHAT SHE had said she would do about Mrs. Post. Of course, Jessica had never really believed that Joy would tell Mrs. Post to stop sticking her nose into their business. But then, she had never expected Joy to do what she actually did do, either. Jessica really hadn’t expected Joy to do almost exactly the opposite of what she had promised.

  The worst part of it was that Joy had obviously been planning it for weeks without mentioning it to Jessica. It all came out on a Friday morning, just a week before Christmas vacation. Of course Joy tried to pretend that she was only asking Jessica if it would be all right, but it was obvious that it was already arranged—definitely and carefully arranged.

  It was not quite time for Joy to leave for work that morning when she came into the living room where Jessica was reading the morning paper.

  “By the way, Baby,” Joy began, as if what she was about to say were hardly important enough to mention. “I’m thinking of going away on a little trip this weekend—that is, if it’s all right with you.” She perched on the arm of Jessica’s chair and smiled down at her with phony cheerfulness. Jessica sat very still, gripping the arms of the chair and pushing herself back, forcing herself to wait until she’d heard the rest and knew just how much there was to be angry about.

  Joy chattered on about how Alan had asked her to spend the weekend at his parents’ home in the northern part of the state. But, since Alan’s parents were very old-fashioned people who did not approve of divorce, both Alan and Joy thought it would be best if they were given a chance to know Joy a little before they found out that she had been married and had a great-big, almost grown-up daughter. Once they got to know Joy and like her, it wouldn’t matter anymore. Then Jessica could go with them to visit, and Jessica would love that because Alan’s parents lived on a big ranch where there were all kinds of wonderful things to do. But this time, just this one time, Jessica was to stay home and spend Saturday and Sunday nights in the Posts’ apartment. Joy had already talked to Mrs. Post, and it was all arranged. When Joy finally finished talking, Jessica just went on sitting stiffly, pushing back hard against the chair.

  “And I’ll be back in time for dinner on Monday,” Joy said, “with a nice big present for Jessie.” She leaned forward, trying to catch Jessica’s eyes. “You do understand, don’t you, Baby?” she asked.

  “Sure, I understand,” Jessica said. “But what if it takes them a long time to get to like you well enough—like five years, or something? Do I get sent to the Posts’ for five years?” She jumped out of the chair, almost pushing Joy onto the floor, and ran into her room, locking the door behind her. Joy knocked on the door and called coaxingly, but when Jessica wouldn’t answer, she got mad and yelled through the door about what a nuisance Jessica was.

  A while later, Joy came back and shouted that she was going to work and they would talk about it some more later, a lot later because she was going to have to work late to make up for missing work on Monday. “So fix yourself a TV dinner, and I’ll be home around ten,” Joy yelled.

  Just before she left, Joy came back once more and rattled the door. Talking in a sweet coaxing voice, she asked Jessica to do the washing when she came home from school that afternoon.

  “I’ll need some clean things to take along, and I won’t have a minute. Old Post will have the laundry room locked by the time I get home. If you’ll just put a couple of loads through for me, I’ll add a whole dollar to your allowance next week. All right? Jessie Baby, will you do that for me?”

  Jessica waited until Joy had asked several times before she yelled, “All right, I’ll do it.” Then she waited again until the front door of the apartment closed before she came out of her room to stand at the front window and watch Joy walk down the street.

  • • •

  All day long at school, Jessica thought about the coming weekend. She hadn’t done that in over a year. Back when she and Brandon were still friends, she had always been thinking ahead to the next weekend. The kind of things they’d liked to do always needed lots of planning and preparation. Jessica had had to make lists—lists of supplies to be gathered, procedures to be followed, and secrets to be protected. Usually, too, there was a lot of reading to be done.

  Nearly all the games that Jessica and Brandon had played together were based on books or stories. Plays, Brandon had called them, but they were really just crazy make-believe games. Still she had gone along with all of Brandon’s ideas, no matter how crazy, except when they’d had a fight about something and she was really mad.

  There had been quite a few fights, of course, but most of them hadn’t been her fault. Jessica could remember most of them very well. Like the time during the Treasure Island “play” when they had fought over who got to be Long John Silver. It had always been Jessica’s part, and it had the best costume. Then one day Brandon decided, for no reason, that he wanted a turn. He had hit Jessica in the eye just because she had kicked him very slightly with her make-believe wooden leg. That time, Jessica had almost had a black eye. Another time, Brandon had very nearly broken her jaw.

  That had been during the play about the Black Forest. It had come from a story they had read in one of Mrs. Fortune’s old books. Some children had been kidnapped by gypsies and taken into the Black Forest. The children had escaped, but on the way out of the forest, they were chased by a wolf pack. Jessica couldn’t remember how many weekends had been spent in the park acting out escapes, wolf attacks, blizzards, and gypsy pursuers. The park gardeners and policemen played the part of the gypsies—without knowing it, of course—but if even one of them saw Jessica or Brandon as they crept across the park, they were captured and had to go back and start over.

  The Black Forest play had been one of the best-except, of course, for the day of the fight. That had happened near the tennis courts where they had discovered a bad-tempered German shepherd tied to a bench. Just by accident, Jessica had discovered that the dog could be induced to play the role of a ferocious wolf by simply shaking a big stick over its head. She was acting out the part of the story where
the children held the wolves at bay with flaming brands, and it was going very well. So when Brandon yelled at her to stop, she just ignored him. She was jumping in and out and yelling, “Take that! And that,” when suddenly Brandon grabbed her by the arm, whirled her around, and socked her hard on the chin.

  Afterward Brandon had said he did it because she was hurting the dog, but Jessica had known better than that. She knew he’d done it because she’d thought of such a great way to do the scene, and he was jealous. “You’re jealous. You’re just a stinking jealous bully! And you broke my jaw. It’s broken!”

  But Brandon had only grinned maddeningly. “It’s not broken.” He said. “You couldn’t yell that much with a broken jaw.”

  Jessica had gone home mad, but the next weekend the game had gone on as if nothing had happened.

  But those weekends were over now, and the coming one gave Jessica some very different things to think about. There were the long evenings she would have to spend in the Posts’ apartment, listening to the constant drone of Mrs. Post’s voice and Mr. Post’s sports programs on TV. And even worse, there were the days—days that she would have to spend at home alone—except for Worm.

  Alone—except for Worm. For three whole days. The thought returned again and again, and with it came a strange calmness. It was as if whatever was going to happen had already happened and there was no longer anything that could be done about it. Her hot frantic anger was gone, too, even when she remembered how sneaky and phony Joy had been. But now and then, beneath the outer numbness, something stirred, like a living pain waiting for the anesthetic to wear away.

  When Jessica got home that afternoon, Worm was nowhere in sight. She did not actually look for him, at first, but as she put away her things and gathered up the laundry, she found herself moving cautiously and watchfully, as if the apartment contained an escaped rattlesnake. It wasn’t until she had taken the first load of clothing down to the laundry room and returned for the second that she decided she’d better find him. It would be better to find him on purpose than to have him appear suddenly when she wasn’t expecting it.

  “Besides,” she told herself, “if he’s asleep somewhere, he’s probably in a closet or cupboard where I can shut him in. And then I won’t have to worry about him for a while.”

  It wasn’t until she had looked in all his usual hiding places that she noticed that the door to Joy’s room was not entirely closed. And that was where she found him—curled up at the foot of the bed, on top of a new red dress.

  The dress, still in its fancy striped box, lay on Joy’s bed near her partly packed suitcase. The lid was pushed to one side, and Worm had curled up to sleep inside the box, in a nest of tissue paper and soft red material.

  “Get off there,” Jessica said, grabbing Worm and throwing him toward the head of the bed. She pushed back the tissue paper and lifted out the dress. It was a beautiful dress, made of a soft wool and trimmed at the hem and around the wide cuffs with bands of real fur.

  At first—just for a moment—the dress made her feel good, thinking how great Joy would look in it. She’d really knock them out—those stuffy parents of Alan’s and all their dumb friends. But then, as Jessica turned to the mirror, holding the dress up in front of her, her mood began to change.

  The red dress reminded her of a picture she’d seen somewhere of a Christmas scene: lots of elegant gorgeous people in a beautiful firelit room, with open snowy countryside showing beyond the frosty windows. That was the kind of place the dress belonged, a place that she, Jessica, would probably never see. A place where no one was even supposed to know that she existed. Wadding up the soft red wool, she threw it on the bed and pounded it with her fists.

  Worm was watching—sitting, cool and collected, on a pillow at the head of the bed. As Jessica stopped pounding and started staring at him through hot flooded eyes, his whiskers twitched mockingly. Then, very deliberately and with studied unconcern, he began to wash a front paw. Snatching up the wadded dress, Jessica threw it at him with all her might.

  Worm spat and leaped aside, and as Jessica darted after the dress, her face came close to his. Close to—his devil’s face, horned and evil, with burning brassy eyes.

  There was no time. Not even time enough to try to stop it. The fierce excitement flared, and Jessica collapsed and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging the trembling that had begun deep inside. “What should I do?” she asked soundlessly, and then she waited—quiet, except for the shaking and the thunder of her heart.

  The voice came in a low and distant moan. “The labels,” it said. “Look at the labels.”

  Jessica picked up the red dress and read all the labels. The one on the sleeve said, “Size 9” and “$79.95,” but at the neck there was another larger label that said, “Rondel Original” and “Dry Clean Only”. She turned the dress over, looking for more labels. On the front, near the fur collar, there was a patch of gray cat hairs. She had begun to brush at the hairs with her hand, when the voice came again.

  “There are hairs on the dress,” it howled. “The dress is dirty.”

  “Yes,” Jessica said, “it’s dirty. Maybe it should be——”

  “Wash it,” the voice yowled. “Wash the dress.”

  Jessica nodded. She looked again at the label at the neck of the dress. Then she stood up slowly and went into the bathroom to gather up the second load of washing. Wrapping the red dress carefully into the middle of the bundle, she went down again to the laundry room.

  When the red dress came out of the drier, it was a shrunken matted rag, trimmed with shriveled strips of stringy fur. Jessica dumped it on Joy’s bed with the rest of the wash and went back to her own room. Closing the door firmly behind her, she lay down across the bed.

  Lying stiff and straight, staring up at the ceiling, Jessica concentrated on trying to bring back the excitement, the wild and burning joy, but it was gone. Even the anger, like the red dress itself, had shrunk and faded almost beyond recognition. Nothing was left but a strange numbing cold and a feeling of desolation and ruin—a feeling like the ruins of a burnt-out house after a cold wintry rain.

  Time passed slowly. Dinner time came and went, and Jessica went on lying across the bed, until at last the numbness deepened and she drifted into restless sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  DARKNESS AND A DIM UNEASY DREAM DISAPPEARED IN a blaze of light and sound. Jessica awoke to a blinding light and a loud angry voice. Joy was standing over her, shaking the remains of the red dress and shouting.

  Half awake and startled, Jessica put her hands up in front of her eyes—and instantly remembered the ruse that had worked before. She sat up slowly and stared at Joy, letting her eyes go blank and unfocused, and her tongue slur and stumble.

  “What is it?” she said. “What happened? I can’t remember what happened.”

  But Joy was not as easily impressed as Mrs. Post had been. “My dress,” she stormed. “You ruined my new dress.”

  “Dress?” Jessica mumbled. “What dress?”

  “This dress,” Joy yelled. “My new dress. Eighty dollars. Eighty dollars thrown away. The only decent thing I had for the trip.”

  “Trip? What trip?” Jessica crumpled her face into a tearless lament and began to sob. “My head hurts. I can’t remember.”

  “What do you mean—you can’t remember?” Joy had finally begun to notice. She stopped screeching and looked at Jessica with concern. Jessica held her head between her hands and rocked herself back and forth, moaning softly. She had seen a similar part acted in just that way on television. She did it well, and it had the right effect. Joy sat down on the bed and took Jessica’s hands and held them in hers.

  “Jessica,” she said. “What do you mean you can’t remember? Tell me about it—and try to make some sense.” Joy’s voice was still harsh and angry, but her eyes were changing; the burning glare was clouding over with worry and confusion. “Jessie,” she said, “what’s wrong with you? What is it?”

  • • •

/>   When Jessica awoke the next morning, Joy was talking on the hall telephone. At first only an occasional word was audible, but her voice got louder suddenly, as if she were arguing.

  “Yes, I know,” she was saying. “I know, Alan, and I’m terribly sorry. You’ll just have to tell them that there was an illness in my family. I simply can’t go away and leave her like this. I don’t know. I’m sure it’s nothing serious. But I agree that she should have some professional attention.”

  There was a long pause, and then Joy went on, “Yes, I know there must be, but I can’t imagine what it could be. She has been spending more time at home lately, but she seemed happy—I mean, she has her cat and her books. I really think it must be some school problem. No, she hasn’t said much about it, but her grades have been worse lately, and she doesn’t talk much about her classes. You know how bad city schools are nowadays. If I’d only been able to send her to a good private school, I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Joy’s voice dropped then, but she went on talking for a long time; even when Jessica listened from right behind the door, she could only make out occasional words and phrases. She heard once “terribly expensive,” and then something about “special schools for children with that kind of problem.” The only other phrase that Jessica caught was an almost whispered, “only as a last resort.” By then she was leaning against the door with her ear to the crack, until the door moved suddenly with a creaking noise. Joy stopped talking, and Jessica raced on tiptoe back to bed. A moment later, Joy looked in at her and asked how she was feeling, and when she went back out, she closed the door tightly.