"Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"
Jason Grakopolous pressed the stop button on the VCR's remote control, then the rewind button. He wanted to watch his favorite part again: the Munchkins. He ran the tape back, guessing when it was far enough and pressed stop again. He was about to push the play button when a flash of light outside the window caught his eye.
There was a bright light outside, descending from the sky and landing in the yard. Jason got up and dropped the remote on the floor where the play button was depressed. As he went to the window, the movie came back on at the part where Dorothy first opens the door on the land of Oz.
He looked out, but could see nothing there now. He was about to go back to the TV when he heard giggling from outside. He looked again, peering into the shadows of the yard, and listened carefully. There! Very faint and musical, like a burst of song from a bird, he heard the giggling again. It was coming from the backyard. He pushed his face against the glass, trying to see around the corner of the house, and noticed that the glowing light he had seen before was out there.
Jason left the window and ran into the kitchen. He threw open the back door and rushed out into the cold air. The backyard was empty. He turned round in a complete circle, searching for the light he had seen, and heard the giggling again coming from the bushes along the back fence. Proceeding on tiptoes, Jason crept to the bushes. Though the moonlight was bright, and the bushes weren't thick enough or tall enough to hide anything very large, he could see nothing.
A feeling like someone was standing behind him made him turn suddenly. His eyes widened. Floating over the house was a small orange orb. It descended into the yard coming closer and growing larger as it did. It began to spin and glow brighter. When it was larger than Jason and only a few feet away, the bubble popped, and there stood Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.
The giggling from the bushes became louder. Jason turned and broke into a broad smile at what he saw. It was the Lollipop Kids and the Munchkin Mayor, emerging from the bushes, eyeing him shyly. Jason laughed wildly at them, having the last time of his life.
Glinda came toward him, her feet barely touching the ground. She smiled benevolently on him; he stared at her with anticipation. The Munchkins drew round, keeping to a respectable distance. Jason waited.
"Aren't you going to ask me?" Jason cried after a few moments. The Munchkins around him giggled, jostling each other.
"Ask me?" the Mayor said in his little toy voice.
"Ask me?" the first Lollipop Kid croaked in bass.
"Ask him?" the second one rasped in a baritone.
"Ask him what?" the third Kid squeaked in a tenor, the three voices achieving 78 RPM harmony.
"Yes," Glinda said. "What is it you want me to ask you?"
"The question you're supposed to ask Dorothy," Jason snapped, his spoiled temper flaring.
"But I don't see any Dorothy," Glinda said, her voice like large drops of water splashing into a pool. "There's only you here"
"Then ask me!" Jason demanded, ready to throw a tantrum if not obeyed.
"Ask you what?" Glinda quipped.
"Ask me if I'm a good witch or a had witch!" Jason cried and stamped his foot.
"Why don't you ask me? " Glinda answered, her bubbly voice tainted with a hint of coyness.
"No! That's not the way it's supposed to go!" Jason bellowed. "You're Glinda, the Good Witch of the North"
"Am I?" Glinda cooed and laughed. It was no longer a pretty, musical sound. It was dry and cracked; a husky gravelly sound. A spot appeared on the front of her gown. It began to swell, spreading over the front of her dress like time-lapse photography of mold sliding over something dead, turning it black and wrinkled. The mold didn't stop with her dress. It crept up her neck, leaving it wrinkled and brown. More spots of mold suddenly sprouted on her face, erupting and spreading until the mold was everywhere.
Her skin was changing right before Jason's eyes. It went from milky youth to polluted old age, brown and wrinkled. It took on a greenish tint that grew stronger. Her eyes bulged, her blonde hair and eyebrows dissolved into inky black. Her nose grew long and hooked. Her chin narrow and sharp. On top of her head appeared a tall, black, wide-brimmed, conical hat.
Jason Grakopolous stared at the Wicked Witch of the West and felt all warmth evacuate his body. She towered over him, her robes flowing out behind her as if she alone was caught in a perpetual windstorm. Jason cowered before her.
A grunt to his left made him turn to see that the Munchkins were changing, too. Even faster than the witch's transformation, the Munchkins turned into the Flying Monkeys-the witch's private demons. Jason began to back away, but they surrounded him, pinching, and clawing him, and nipping his legs with their teeth. He tried to scream and a hairy paw was shoved in his mouth. It tasted like how a wet dog smells. They lifted him off his feet and carried him to the witch's open arms.
Jason Grakopolous's last thought before unconsciousness took him was a wish ... for a bucket of water.
Eleanor realized she had trouble the minute she pulled into the yard. The children in the crematorium, except for Davy Torrez, were awake. She could hear their thoughts. The drugs had worn off and the Machine hadn't compensated in her absence. The children were awake and aware of the trouble they were in. They weren't talking, but they were thinking, and they were afraid nearly to the point of shock.
The drugs, with occasional help from the Machine, had been keeping them in constant somnambulistic oblivion where they'd be the least amount of trouble. Now, with the shock of the knowledge of their predicament, if she gave them drugs she could lose one of them to a coma or worse, but she had to risk it. There was too much to do, she couldn't afford to have them trying to escape or screaming for help while she performed the rituals. If she lost a few of them to comas, she'd still be all right as long as they lived for a few more days. There was nothing in The Demonolatria that said sacrifices had to be conscious during rituals. Eleanor just liked them that way. But she wouldn't get them any way if she let them screw things up.
As fast as her battered body would allow, she got out of the car, opened the back, and pulled out the large black sack that was sitting on the casket tray. It fell to the ground with a thud, but the boy inside never made a sound. Eleanor rubbed at the nagging numbness in her left arm and bent to pick the sack up. Grunting, her left arm hanging useless by her side, she slid it up to her right shoulder and swung it on to her back. She pitched backwards a few steps, momentarily staggered by the weight and the sharp ricocheting pain it brought with it, then plodded up the stairs, into the house, and down to the crematorium without stopping to use the gurney or the elevator. She was afraid to stop. If she stopped, she knew she might never get started again.
The boys in the cage heard the front door open upstairs and the heavy footsteps crossing above. They listened with a mixture of dread and curiosity. The twins wondered if Tweedledum and Tweedle-dee were returning. Timmy Walsh feared the evil Pied Piper and his rats. The brothers, Jimmy and Jeff, and their two friends trembled at the thought of any of the three bears returning. But all of them also hoped it was someone to rescue them.
The footsteps came down the stairs slowly and heavily. With each one the boys' emotions went up a notch. The footsteps stopped and the door slowly opened. By the dim light of the few burning candles, the boys saw a black blob float through the door. It was followed by a hunched figure. It carried the black blob to the metal table and dropped it. The blob hit the tabletop and rolled off, striking the stone floor with a thud. The black blob moaned. The hunched figure looked up.
In a collective response, each of the boys recognized the old woman before them as the last thing they remembered seeing before blacking out; and each of the boys felt their inside go hollow at the sight of her. She staggered to the large metal sink in the far left corner and filled a pitcher with water. As she turned back her eyes came into the light.
Suddenly, every boy in the cage was thirsty. Even Davy To
rrez, deep in the caverns of oblivion, felt an insatiable need to drink. As the old woman brought the pitcher of water, they eagerly grabbed for one of the many dirty glasses or cups strewn around the cage from their previous meals and shoved them through the bars for her to fill. None of them showed fear of the old lady. All their attention was focused on getting water. They didn't even notice, or didn't care about, the milky color of the water, or the undissolved clumps of powder swimming in it and floating on top. They drank greedily.
When every cup and glass had been filled twice, and the boys had drunk everything, they began to drop, until the last one slumped against two others, joining them in sleep. Exhausted, wincing from the pain that each movement brought like a sledgehammer, Eleanor climbed onto the embalming table, and followed them.
CHAPTER 27
There was a crooked man ...
Thursday morning at 9:30, Steve Nailer, taking a sick day from school, sat in the lobby of Hasty Hall, on the campus of Emily Dickinson College waiting with the four other finalists in the Dickinson Poetry Competition. Each was waiting for his fifteen-minute interview with the judges, when he would present and explain the work submitted for the competition. They had drawn numbers to determine the order of the interviews; Steve was fourth.
He was surprised at how calm and confident he felt. He was absolutely sure, positive that his piece would win. He could honestly say it was the most unique thing he had ever written, or read for that matter. He chuckled to himself. A month ago, hell, a week ago, he would never have felt this confident. He would have thought he was being too cocky to think that his poetry could be considered great. He'd always thought he had a fighting chance, but to think of himself as a shoo-in would have been out of the question. Ever since his meeting with Eleanor yesterday, all that had changed. All the insecurity and wimpiness had disappeared. He was a man in charge of his own destiny.
As he sat in the plushly appointed room, waiting his turn, he thought over his presentation and reread the poem.
ODE TO MODERN MAN
As Steve was finishing a final few notes on his presentation, an elderly woman called his name and ushered him through a large, cherry-paneled door and into the Woodley Library to face the panel of judges. He strode purposefully through the door, taking in the room as he did.
The windows, three on the head wall, four each on the side walls, were high-arched, many-paned frosted glass, with no drapes. The walls were a rich cherry paneling above and around the tall cherrywood bookcases lining the room. The furniture was all dark wood, upholstered in dark brown, brass-studded leather. Several oriental rugs in dark blues and reds, and of varying sizes, covered the floor. At the right end of the room, directly in front of the windows, a long, gleamingly polished table had been set up. Behind the table sat three men and two women, the poetry judges, in high-backed, thickly cushioned, leather-upholstered chairs.
Steve carried his briefcase to the small round table and chair in the middle of the room in front of the long judge's table. He placed his case on the table next to a glass and pitcher of water and faced the panel.
"Good morning, Mr. Nailer," the college's president, Dr. William Harriman, greeted Steve. He was the chief judge on the panel, whose members were an assemblage of the top poetry professors from five Ivy League colleges in the Amherst area. "We've read your request to change your submission, Mr. Nailer," Dr. Harriman went on, "and frankly, we're puzzled. You were chosen as a finalist based on your proposal to write four sonnets on the seasons of New England, not to write Japanese haiku. If you had proposed this in the first place, you never would have been considered as a finalist. The competition is for poets working in traditionally accepted Western forms of poetry. Unless you have the sonnets you originally proposed, I'm afraid we'll have to disqualify ' YOU.
"But sir," Steve stammered, unprepared for this reaction, "you don't understand. This piece is an inspiration of genius that has not seen its equal since T. S. Eliot penned The Wasteland. Those sonnets were an unoriginal idea; anyone can write a sonnet. What I've done is marry Eastern structure with Western realism, redefining the face of modern poetry."
Dr. Harriman stared at Steve for several moments, then gave a little smirk. The other judges were looking at Steve and each other as if he had just been crude enough to fart loudly and blame one of them for it.
"I am truly awed to be in the presence of someone who ranks alongside T. S. Eliot," Dr. Harriman said sarcastically, "but you have violated the rules of the competition. Because you have not submitted the work you originally proposed, you must be disqualified."
Steve couldn't believe it. This couldn't be happening. "What? You can't do that!" Steve demanded.
"Oh, but we can, Mr. Nailer. If you had read the rules booklet we gave you, you would have seen rule number 31 a, procedure 7, which defines the forms of poetry that are acceptable. Haiku, in any way, shape, or form, is not one of them. It doesn't matter how brilliant you might think this is; we cannot accept it."
Steve didn't know what to say. In an instant, his thick skin of confidence had been shorn, leaving his old vulnerable self raw and exposed again. He saw everything he had worked for going down the drain. All hope for a college position was gone and Conally was going to get him fired from the Academy. All optimism suddenly disappeared. Once again his entire life was one wretched failure.
He tried to speak, to plead with the judges, but the words stuck in his throat. Hot tears swelled in his eyes and drizzled down his cheeks. He choked out a few strangled words that sounded like sobs, grabbed his case off the table, and rushed out of the library, leaving Dr. Harriman and the judges bewildered and feeling sorry for him, when just moments before they had despised his egotistical arrogance.
Steve stumbled out to the car, his face wet with angry, self-pitying tears, and collapsed over the wheel. He was finished. Just like his father had warned. His only hope now was to hang on to the academy job, and the only way he was going to do that was if Eleanor could convince Conally to drop his grievance.
The thought of Eleanor made him feel better. If she could keep the academy job for him, he'd be home free. Even teaching there wouldn't be so bad if he was with her all the time. It would mean giving up his son, but he didn't care; having Eleanor had become the most important thing to him.
But what could Eleanor really accomplish with the hardheaded Conally? In answer, he thought of the effect she had had on him with her wonderful gift of getting inside his head and making him feel great. Could she do that with anyone? If she could, even Conally wouldn't be able to resist. But even if she couldn't, her beauty and sensuality might be enough to change Conally's mind. Steve suspected he was a lecher who would do anything for a beautiful woman in the hopes of some action. Would Eleanor go that far? Would he want her to? He didn't know. He'd just have to get Conally to her and trust her.
Steve stood in Conally's office that afternoon, staring at a photograph on the wall. It was of an old gravestone, etched on it was the epitaph:
Pause a moment, ye passerbye As ye are now, so once was I As I've becum, so ye shall be and remane throughout eternitee.
The walls of Conally's office were covered with similar photos of graveyards and old headstones, plus over twenty headstone rubbings on rice paper. Headstone rubbings were Conally's hobby and the lure that Steve would use to get him to Eleanor.
When Conally came in, after the dismissal bell had rung, he frowned at Steve. "What are you doing here? I thought you called in sick today?"
Steve smiled apologetically. "Actually, I had an appointment." He didn't elaborate and Conally didn't ask about it.
"What do you want in here?" Conally asked gruffly.
"I was just looking at this photo. I saw a headstone just like this one yesterday."
Conally immediately became interested. He walked over to the photo and pointed at it. "You saw one exactly like this, spelling and all?"
"Yes," Steve said, smiling. "I thought I had seen it somewhere before, then remembe
red it was in this photo on your wall. The caption says the headstone is rare."
"Rare? " Conally cried incredulously. "There are only three that are known of. They date back to the 1600s. Where did you see it?"
"In the woods off Route 47," Steve explained. "There's a dirt road called Dorsey Lane Extension. I was hiking along that road when I came across an old graveyard behind an abandoned funeral home. Is it worth anything?" Steve asked innocently. He had once overheard Conally telling a visiting coach from the university that a series of numbered rubbings from that stone, if it was in good shape, could be worth five to ten-thousand dollars to a collector.
"Not really," Conally lied. He wasn't about to share this with anyone, especially Nailer. "It's worth a mention in a collector's magazine, nothing more"
"Damn," Steve said, feigning disappointment. "When I read this about it being rare, I thought I might get some money out of it. Oh well. " He shrugged and left Conally's office.
Perfect! he thought as he walked through the locker room. Conally's eyes had lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning. He had taken the bait, now it was up to Eleanor.
Steve hurried out to the parking lot, where he had parked close enough to Conally's car without danger of being seen by him, and waited for the athletic director to come out. He didn't have to wait long. Within minutes, Conally came out of the school, carrying a large black artist's valise and a small toolbox, and loaded them in the rear of his Jeep Cherokee. Steve guessed Conally kept rice paper in the artist's case, chalk and crayons in the toolbox.
When Conally drove out of the parking lot, heading toward Route 47, Steve waited until he was out of sight before following. There was no need to keep Conally in view, Steve knew where he was going.
Steve drove casually down Route 47, turning off at the narrow entrance of Dorsey Lane Extension. The dry road puffed up dust around his car as he maneuvered it through the brightly colored woods. The leaves on the trees were in full autumn flame now, but Steve barely noticed them. He was too anxious to get to Eleanor's house. As he reached the open lot in front of Grimm Memorials, he saw Conally's jeep parked at the side of the house.
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