The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring

by John Bellairs

Mrs. Zimmermann looked hard at the woman. She was trying to figure out if Gert was kidding. "Are you having a little joke, Gertie? Look at those numbers there."

  "It's no joke, dearie. Pay up, or you walk to the farm." She added, in a sneering voice, "It's my special price for friends."

  Mrs. Zimmermann paused a minute, wondering what to do. Rose Rita was hoping she would wave her hand and turn Gert Bigger into a toad or something. Finally Mrs. Zimmermann heaved a deep sigh and opened her pocketbook. "There! Much good may it do you. Now come on, Rose Rita, let's get back to the car."

  "Okay."

  Mrs. Zimmermann picked up the gas can, and they started back down the road. After they had rounded the first bend, Rose Rita said, "What's the matter with that old lady, anyway? How come she's mad at you?"

  "She's mad at everybody, Rosie. Mad at the world. I knew her when I was younger, back when I used to come up here and spend summers at the old farm. In fact one summer, when I was eighteen, she and I fought over the same boy friend, a guy named Mordecai Hunks. I won the fight, but he and I didn't go together very long. We broke up at the end of the summer. I don't know who he married."

  "Was Gertie mad at you for taking away her boy friend?"

  Mrs. Zimmermann chuckled and shook her head. "You bet she was! And you know what? She's still mad! That woman is an expert grudge carrier. She remembers things people said years and years ago, and she's always planning to get even with somebody. I must say, though, that I've never seen her act quite the way she did tonight. I wonder what got into her?" Mrs. Zimmermann stopped in the middle of the road and turned. She looked back in the direction of Gert Bigger's store, and she rubbed her chin. She seemed to be thinking. Then, with a shrug, she turned and walked on toward the car.

  It was dark now. Crickets chirped in the roadside weeds, and once a rabbit darted across their path and disappeared into the bushes on the other side. When Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita finally got back to the car, it was sitting there in the moonlight, patiently waiting for them. Rose Rita had gotten to thinking of the car as a real person. For one thing, it had a face. The eyes were starey, like the eyes of cows, but the mouth was fishlike—mournful and heavy-lipped. The expression was sad, but dignified.

  "The Plymouth is a nice car, isn't it?" said Rose Rita.

  "Yes, I guess I'll have to admit that it is," said Mrs. Zimmermann, scratching her chin thoughtfully. "For a green car, it's not half bad."

  "Can we give it a name?" said Rose Rita suddenly.

  Mrs. Zimmermann looked startled. "Name? Well, yes, I suppose so. What kind of name would you like to give it?"

  "Bessie." Rose Rita had once known a cow named Bessie. She thought Bessie would be a good name for this patient starey-eyed car.

  Mrs. Zimmermann emptied the five-gallon can of gasoline into Bessie. When she turned the key in the ignition, the car started immediately. Rose Rita cheered. They were on their way again.

  When they got to Mrs. Bigger's store, Mrs. Zimmermann stopped just long enough to stand the empty gas can next to the pumps. As the car chugged along toward the farm, Rose Rita noticed that the forest that ran behind Gert Bigger's store continued on down the road.

  "That's a pretty big woods, isn't it, Mrs. Zimmermann?" she said, pointing off to the right.

  "Uh-huh. It's a state forest, and as you say, a pretty big one. It runs all the way out to Oley's farm and then up north for quite a ways. It's a nice place, but I'd hate to get lost in it. You could wander around for days, and nobody'd find you."

  They drove on. Rose Rita began to wonder what Oley's farm would be like. She had been daydreaming about the farm on the ride up, and she already had in her mind a very clear idea of what the place ought to look like. Would it really be that way? She'd see in a minute. Up a few hills, down a few hills, around a few curves, then down a long narrow rutty road overhung with trees. And then, suddenly, there was old Oley's farm.

  It didn't look like Rose Rita's daydream, but it was nice. The barn was long and painted white. Like Bessie, it had a face: two windows for the eyes, and a tall door for a mouth. Near the barn stood the house. It was plain and square, with a square little cupola on top. The place looked totally deserted. Tall grass grew in the front yard, and the mailbox was beginning to get rusty. One of the windows in the barn was broken. As Rose Rita watched, a bird flew in through the hole. Off in the distance the forest could be seen.

  Mrs. Zimmermann drove right up to the barn door and stopped. She got out and then, with Rose Rita's help, she rolled back the heavy door. A faint smell of manure and hay drifted out into the chilly air. There were two long rows of cattle stalls (both of them empty) and overhead Rose Rita could see hay. Some old license plates were nailed to the beams that supported the hay mow. When Rose Rita looked at them, she saw that they had dates like 1917 and 1923. Up among the rafters the shadowy form of a bird flew back and forth. Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann stood there silent under the high roof. It was almost like being in church.

  It was Mrs. Zimmermann who finally broke the spell. "Well, come on," she said. "Let's get the picnic hamper and the cooler and unlock the house. I'm starved."

  "So am I," said Rose Rita. But when Mrs. Zimmermann opened the front door of the farmhouse and turned on the lights, she got a shock. The house looked as if a whirlwind had passed through it. Things were scattered everywhere. Drawers had been pulled out of dressers and cabinets, and the contents had been dumped out on the floor. Pictures had been taken down off the walls, and every book had been pulled out of a small narrow bookcase that stood in the front hall.

  "Good Lord!" said Mrs. Zimmermann. "What on earth do you suppose..." She turned and looked at Rose Rita. They were both thinking the same thing.

  Rose Rita followed Mrs. Zimmermann to the room that Oley Gunderson had used as his study. Against one wall of the room stood a massive roll-top desk. The top was rolled up, and all the cubbyholes at the back of the desk were empty. There were finger marks in the dust on the surface of the desk, and the pencils had been dumped out of the pencil jar. All the drawers of the desk had been pulled out and lay scattered around on the floor. The wood around the place where the bottom left-hand drawer had been was scarred and splintered—apparently it was the only drawer that had been locked. Near the desk lay a drawer with a badly chipped front, and in the drawer lay a Benrus watchcase covered with black leather.

  Mrs. Zimmermann knelt down and picked up the watchcase. When she opened it, she found inside a small square ring box covered with blue velvet. Without a word, Mrs. Zimmermann opened the little blue box and looked inside. Rose Rita leaned over her shoulder to see.

  The bottom half of the box held a black plush cushion with a slit in it. The slit appeared to have been widened, as if something too big for it had been crammed into the box. But whatever the something was, it was gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mrs. Zimmermann knelt there on the littered floor, staring at the empty ring box. Suddenly she laughed.

  "Ha! That's a good joke on whoever our burglar was!"

  Rose Rita was dumbfounded. "I don't get what you mean, Mrs. Zimmermann."

  Mrs. Zimmermann got up and brushed dust off her dress. She pitched the ring box contemptuously into the empty drawer. "It's all very simple, my dear. Don't you see? Oley must have blabbed around that ridiculous story about a magic ring. Someone must have believed him and figured that there was something valuable hidden here in the house. After all, you wouldn't have to think a ring was magic to want to steal it. Rings are usually made of precious metals, like gold and silver, and some of them are set with diamonds and rubies and suchlike. After Oley died, someone must have broken in. I can imagine what he found! Probably an old faucet washer. Well, it could be worse. They might have set fire to the place. The house is a mess though, and you and I will have to do some tidying up. Now then..."

  Mrs. Zimmermann went on chattering as she straightened up Oley's desk, putting the pencils in the pencil jar and erasers into cubbyholes. Who the heck doe
s she think she's fooling? Rose Rita thought. She could tell from the way Mrs. Zimmermann was acting that this was all just a cover-up. She had seen Mrs. Zimmermann's hand tremble as she opened the little box. She had seen how pale she looked. So there really is a magic ring, Rose Rita said to herself. I wonder what it looks like. She also wondered who had taken it, and what they were going to do with it. She had walked into a real live mystery, and she was so excited about the whole business that she really wasn't scared at all.

  It was nearly midnight when Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann finally sat down to have their picnic supper. They laid out their meal on the kitchen table and fetched some dusty plates and tarnished silverware from the cupboard over the sink. After that it was time to turn in. There were two adjoining bedrooms at the top of the stairs, each with its own small dark oak bedstead. Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann rummaged in a linen closet at the end of the hall, and they found some sheets. The sheets smelled musty, but they were clean. They made up their beds and said good night to each other.

  Rose Rita had trouble getting to sleep. It was a hot still night, and not a breath of air was stirring. The curtains on the open window hung still. She tossed and turned, but it was no use. Finally Rose Rita sat up and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. She dug into her valise for the copy of Treasure Island that she had brought along to read, and she propped her pillow up against the head of the bed. Now then, where had she left off? Oh, sure. Here it was. Long John Silver had captured Jim, and they and the pirates were searching for Captain Flint's treasure. It was an exciting part of the book. Jim had a rope around his middle and was being dragged along over the sand by Silver, who swung along jauntily on his crutch...

  Tap, tap, tap. As she read, Rose Rita began to be aware of a sound. At first she thought it was in her head. She often imagined sights and sounds and smells when she was reading, and now maybe she was imagining the sound of Long John Silver's crutch. Tap, tap, tap, tap... it didn't sound like that, though... more like a coin being rapped on a desk top... and anyway, a crutch wouldn't make any noise on the sand. It would just...

  Rose Rita's head drooped forward. The book fell from her hand. When she realized what was happening, she shook herself violently. What a dope I am for falling asleep, she thought at first, but then she remembered that she was trying to read herself to sleep. I guess it worked, Rose Rita thought, with a grin. Tap, tap, tap. There was that sound again. Where was it coming from? It certainly wasn't in her head. It was coming from Mrs. Zimmermann's room. And then Rose Rita knew what the sound was. It was Mrs. Zimmermann rapping her ring on something.

  Mrs. Zimmermann had a ring with a large stone set in it. The stone was purple, because Mrs. Zimmermann loved purple things. It wasn't a magic ring, it was just a trinket that Mrs. Zimmermann liked. She had gotten it at Coney Island. She wore it all the time, and whenever she was thinking about something, thinking really hard, she rapped the ring on whatever happened to be around, chairs or tabletops or bookshelves. The door was closed between the two rooms, but Rose Rita could see, in her mind's eye, a clear picture of Mrs. Zimmermann lying awake, staring at the ceiling and rapping her ring against the sideboard of the bed. What was she thinking about? The ring, probably—the other ring, the stolen one. Rose Rita really wanted to go in and talk the whole matter over with Mrs. Zimmermann, but she knew that was not the thing to do. Mrs. Zimmermann would shut up like a clam if Rose Rita tried to talk to her about Oley Gunderson's magic ring.

  Rose Rita shrugged her shoulders and sighed. There was nothing she could do, and anyway she was nearly asleep. She fluffed her pillow up, turned out the light, and stretched out. In no time at all, she was snoring peacefully.

  The next morning, bright and early, Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann got their things together, locked up the house, and drove off toward Petoskey. They had breakfast in a cafe there and went to see Oley's lawyer. Then they drove on toward the Straits. That afternoon they crossed the Straits of Mackinac in a car ferry called The City of Escanaba. The sky was gray, and it was raining. The ferryboat heaved ponderously in the choppy waters of the Straits. Off on their right Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita could just barely see Mackinac Island, a gray blurry smudge. The sun was coming out when The City of Escanaba reached St. Ignace. They were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan now, and they were going to have two whole weeks to explore it.

  The trip started off well. They saw Tahquamenon Falls and drove along the shore of Lake Superior. They saw the Pictured Rocks and snapped photos of each other. They drove through rolling oceans of pine trees and stopped to look at streams that ran red because there was so much iron in the water. They visited towns with strange names, like Ishpeming and Germfask and Ontonagon. At night they stayed in tourist homes. Mrs. Zimmermann hated the new motels that were springing up all over the place, but she loved tourist homes. Old white houses on shady back streets, houses with screened porches and green shutters and sagging trellises with morning glories or hollyhocks on them. Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita would settle down for the night in a tourist home and sit out on the porch playing chess or cards and drinking iced tea while the crickets chirped outside. Sometimes there was a radio in Rose Rita's room. If there was, she would listen to the Detroit Tigers' night games until she got sleepy. And then in the morning breakfast in a diner or cafe, and then back on the road again.

  On the fourth day of their trip something odd happened.

  It was evening. Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann were walking down the main street of a little town. The sun was setting at the end of the street, and a hot orange light lay on everything. They had had their dinner and were just stretching their legs after a long day of driving. Rose Rita was ready to go back to the tourist home, but Mrs. Zimmermann had stopped to look in the window of a junk shop. She loved to browse in junk shops. She could spend hours sifting through all sorts of trash, and sometimes she had to be dragged away by force.

  As she stood by the window, Mrs. Zimmermann noticed that the store was open. It was nine o'clock at night, but the owners of junk shops often keep odd hours. She went in, and Rose Rita followed her. There were old chairs with ratty velvet upholstery, and bookcases with a few books in them, and old dining room tables with an incredible assortment of junk laid out on them. Mrs. Zimmermann stopped in front of one of these tables. She picked up a salt and pepper set shaped like a fielder's mitt and a ball. The ball was the salt.

  "How'd you like this for your room, Rose Rita?" she said, chuckling.

  Rose Rita said she would love it. She liked anything that had to do with baseball. "Gee, could I have it for my desk, Mrs. Zimmermann? I think it's kind of cute."

  "Okay," said Mrs. Zimmermann, still laughing. She paid the owner twenty-five cents for the set and went on browsing. Next to a dusty bowl full of mother-of-pearl buttons was a stack of old photographs. They were all printed on heavy cardboard, and, from the clothes that people in the pictures were wearing, they must have been pretty old. Humming, Mrs. Zimmermann shuffled through the stack. Suddenly she gasped.

  Rose Rita, who had been standing nearby, turned and looked at Mrs. Zimmermann. Her face was pale, and the hand that held the photograph was trembling.

  "What's wrong, Mrs. Zimmermann?"

  "Come... come over here, Rose Rita, and look at this."

  Rose Rita went to Mrs. Zimmermann's side and looked at the picture she was holding. It showed a woman in an old-fashioned floor-length dress. She was standing by the bank of a river, and she had a canoe paddle in her hand. Behind her a canoe was pulled up on the bank. A man in a striped jacket was sitting cross-legged next to the canoe. He had a handlebar mustache, and he was playing a banjo. The man looked handsome, but it was impossible to tell what the lady looked like. Someone had scraped the face of the lady away with a knife or a razor blade.

  Rose Rita still didn't see what was bothering Mrs. Zimmermann. But as she stood there wondering, Mrs. Zimmermann turned the picture over. On the back these words were written: Florence and Mordecai. Summer,
1905.

  "My gosh!" exclaimed Rose Rita. "Is that a picture of you?"

  Mrs. Zimmermann nodded. "It is. Or rather, was, until someone... did that to it." She swallowed hard.

  "How the heck did a picture of you get way up here, Mrs. Zimmermann? Did you used to live up here?"

  "No, I did not. I've never seen this town in my life before. It's all... well, it's all very strange."

  Mrs. Zimmermann's voice shook as she spoke. Rose Rita could see very clearly that she was upset. Mrs. Zimmermann was the sort of person who usually gave you the feeling that she had everything under control. She was a calm sensible sort. So when she got upset, you knew there was a reason.

  Mrs. Zimmermann bought the photograph from the old man in the shop and took it back to the tourist home with her. On the way she explained to Rose Rita that witches and warlocks hacked up pictures that way when they wanted to get rid of somebody. Sometimes they let water drip on the photo until the face was worn away; or they might scrape the face off with a knife. Either way, it was like making a wax doll of somebody and sticking pins in it. It was a way of murdering somebody by magic.

  Rose Rita's eyes opened wide. "You mean somebody's trying to do something to you?"

  Mrs. Zimmermann laughed nervously. "No, no. I don't mean that at all. This whole thing, finding the picture of myself up here and finding it... damaged, well it's all just a funny coincidence. But when you fool around with magic the way I do, well, you get some strange ideas into your head. I mean, sometimes you have to be careful."

  Rose Rita blinked. "I don't get what you mean."

  "I mean I'm going to burn the picture," Mrs. Zimmermann snapped. "Now, I'd rather not talk about it any more, if you don't mind."

  Late that night Rose Rita lay in bed, trying to sleep. Mrs. Zimmermann was downstairs in the guest parlor, reading—at least that's what she was supposed to be doing. On a hunch Rose Rita got up and went to the window. She remembered that she had seen an incinerator in the back yard. Sure enough, there was Mrs. Zimmermann, standing over the wire incinerator. Something was burning with a soft red glow at the bottom of the cage. Mrs. Zimmermann stood hunched over, watching it. The reddish light flickered over her face. Rose Rita felt afraid. She went back to bed and tried to sleep, but the picture of Mrs. Zimmermann standing there over her fire, like a witch in an old story, kept coming back to her. What was going on?