HEX

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

  A pool of rainwater slowly began to form around the pâté on the plate at the witch’s feet. Griselda didn’t see it. She continued: “Oh, dear, don’t get me wrong; they were disrespectful to you. But it wasn’t his idea, he says. Jaydon is so easily influenced by his friends. It was probably that Muslim boy he hangs out with, that Buran. I bet it was him—it’s just the kind of thing his kind would do, right? And Jaydon? Oh, Jaydon can be a handful, but he never means no harm. If you could just see how he helps around the shop … deep inside, he’s really just a fragile child.”

  But then she heard his voice come roaring through her mind, so loud and sudden that it startled her and made her look around: Fuck off, you sick bitch!

  While everybody in Black Spring seemed to know what had happened, Griselda hadn’t heard about it until that morning, when the first loose-lipped customers came into the butcher shop. It seemed like half the town came out to catch a glimpse of the dumbfounded expression on the butcher’s wife’s face, and as word spread that she hadn’t known, even more showed up to see for themselves. That Schaeffer woman, who married that rich surgeon for you-know-what, even came back twice, with the excuse that she had forgotten to pick up a slice of Holst pâté. Mrs. Schaeffer had never bought any Holst pâté.

  Some showed signs of indignation, but most appeared to find it all rather amusing. Griselda was shocked. She had just made up her mind to contact Colton Mathers, Head of the Council—on which she, as a leading and upright citizen, also held a seat—when Mathers himself called her on the phone, right in the middle of the noon rush. Griselda slipped into the back, leaving her customers in the lunchroom and at the counter wild with curiosity.

  The old councilman was livid. He repudiated Grim for coming to a compromise with the boys and sidelining the Council. To avoid a general revolt, their only option had been to give the boys an official warning, although the good man stressed in no uncertain terms that taking a more heavy-handed approach in the name of parental authority would serve Jaydon well. Griselda twitched when Colton Mathers said, “Believe it or not, the town actually seems to approve of these scamps and their little trick.”

  After that, she got frightened. The fear tightened itself around her stomach over the course of the afternoon, as if a great, inevitable calamity were approaching like an express train. She wasn’t afraid of what was in store for Jaydon, nor did she fear for the image of the shop. Like all the townsfolk, Griselda lived in constant fear of Katherine van Wyler’s evil eye and the day it would turn upon her. But while everyone knew that the curse had been fatal to Griselda’s ill-tempered husband, no one knew that since the day she got free of him, Griselda had in fact been grateful to Katherine, and that her fear had been converted into a bitter determination to free herself of the witch’s evil as well. And so it was that for seven long years, in all secrecy and under penalty of something far worse than Doodletown, Griselda had been offering Katherine gifts and trifles and sweeping the sidewalk where Katherine would be walking the very next day. She’d entrusted her with all the secrets and stories she had picked up from town, the juiciest bits of gossip she happened to overhear in the butcher shop, and pointed the finger at the guilty in the hope of getting into Katherine’s good graces so that she and Jaydon would be spared should the worst ever happen. She straightened Katherine’s headscarf if the wind blew it askew (with a long stick, of course) and rearranged her iron chains if they seemed to cause her discomfort. She reshaped the witch into a goddess she worshipped, believing less and less in the old legends that clung to her and more and more in the witch herself. Griselda would do anything for her, anything except the one thing she could not do … anything but open her eyes.

  “But,” she once told the witch confidentially, “I know that one day someone will come along who will perform that service, Ms. van Wyler,”—that was before they were on a first-name basis—“and I hope on that day you’ll remember that I’ve always been good to you.”

  Except now all that she had so painstakingly built up over seven years may have been undone by Jaydon with a single stroke.

  That’s why she had to clearly show whose side she was on. She had waited for Jaydon in the kitchen, and even before he had fully entered, she had slapped him in the face with the back of her hand. Jaydon screamed and recoiled against the counter. The slap reverberated like a gunshot and filled the kitchen with an explosive tension. Never had she struck her own flesh and blood before; Jim’s fists had done that enough for the both of them. But now she had no choice: There was no going back.

  “What were you thinking?” she said in a voice cold with rage. “What the hell were you thinking? What have you got, shit for brains?”

  “What the fuck, Mom!”

  Griselda’s hand shot up once more and this time her palm struck Jaydon’s face. He flailed his arms and tried to back away, but again he bumped up against the counter. Griselda felt heat rising in her face, the same heat she had felt when Jim came at her with that glazed look in his eyes and his fists raised. But as soon as she saw this strapping young man flinch, she knew she had him exactly where she wanted him: ambushed.

  “How can you endanger us like that? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? The whole town knows. How can you be so stupid?”

  “What is this?”

  “Shut your big mouth, you!”

  Jaydon was genuinely taken aback. “Jesus, relax, everything’s been taken care of. Grim has us picking up trash in the park, which is seriously moronic because they pay the park attendants to do it all over again. But okay, whatever.”

  “I don’t care what Grim is making you do. You’re dealing with me now.”

  “Like you matter.” Jaydon had wavered, but he was pulling himself together, and his face assumed the defiant expression she hated so much. “The Council said…”

  “This isn’t about the Council!” she spat out. “This is about you and me, don’t you get it?” She glanced around nervously and lowered her voice. “What if someday her eyes open; have you ever thought about that? Do you think she’ll spare you if you mock her? Do you have any idea what you’re getting us into?”

  To her great dismay, Jaydon began to laugh, not from pleasure but from a condescending kind of pity. “Seriously, Mom. You got issues.”

  He was about to stalk off, but Griselda grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt—she had to reach up to do it—and threw him back against the counter. “You’re not going anywhere, mister.”

  “Don’t you touch me,” Jaydon snapped, tearing free from her grip by throwing up his arms.

  “You know what happened to your father! Do you want to end up like that?” That hit home; Griselda saw his face freeze. Despite the fact that the man had repeatedly beaten his son black and blue, Jaydon would have gone to hell and back for him—damned if Griselda knew where the man had earned that respect. Even though Jaydon was now nineteen and his father had been dead seven years, the feeling hadn’t diminished. “That’s what I mean,” she said. “I’m trying so hard for both of us. You think you’re helping by making a fool of her?”

  Jaydon’s eyes radiated disgust, contempt, and hatred. She tried not to register the hatred, but it was there, like oil in a puddle of still water. “If she opens her eyes,” he said, “we’re all gonna die.”

  He turned around and Griselda clutched at him, begging now: “That doesn’t have to happen, don’t you see? I’ll make sure we don’t die; not you and me, Jaydon. Listen…”

  He turned on his heel. “Fuck off, you sick bitch!”

  SMACK!

  Before she knew it, her hand had struck out again, harder than ever this time. A second later, white pain exploded in her head and she was knocked backward onto the kitchen linoleum. Her lower lip was throbbing and she could taste the metallic tang of blood. It took a while before she realized what had happened.

  Jaydon was towering over her in the doorway and looking down, his fist in his left hand and his mouth half open. “I told you not to touch me,” he said so
ftly. He pushed the palm of his hand against his jaw and put pressure on it. “You’re no fucking better than him.”

  Then he left, and what had hurt the most were not his words, not his fist, but the look she had seen in his eyes. Through her pain she saw a playground swing: the swing that in another life, in another place, she might have pushed him on. They would have laughed, the two of them.

  Still, somehow she had pulled herself together, as she had done her whole life, and now she was here, in the woods. She felt queasy, weak. Reflected in the rainwater that was gathering in the streambed she saw a face she didn’t recognize: slack cheeks of waxen skin, bags under her eyes, swollen, chapped lips.

  The woman with the sewn-up eyes didn’t move.

  The offering sat at her feet, untouched.

  “Tell me what to do, Katherine. Tell me; give me a sign so I can make amends. I ask so little of you, and you know I’ve always been good to you. So spare us, please, when your day comes. Let us be healthy. Let us be free of sickness, free of sin, free from your eye. It can’t be as evil as they’re all saying, right?”

  Absentmindedly, she tilted the paper plate and let the rainwater run off. Then she stuck her finger into the pâté, took a big curl, and thoughtlessly put it in her mouth.

  “Haven’t I been punished enough? Just look at my face. I look ten years older than I am. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but it’s the situation that gets to you. My arthritis is getting worse, not to mention the scars on my body.”

  Her goddess towered over her, motionless. Griselda took another fingerful of pâté and slowly licked it off.

  “You took my husband, and good riddance. You know I’m grateful that you took him from me, even though it hurt. It’s not the fact that he’s gone that’s painful, but the memory of when he was still there. But life goes on, as you well know. You get back up on your feet. There are times when it’s tolerable, but it never really goes away. It’s a mark I carry with me. I carry it for you, just like the burden they put upon you. I know how you feel, Katherine. I know what it’s like. And that’s why I’m asking you this one thing: Don’t take my boy, and don’t take me. Please don’t ask that of me.”

  And as Griselda continued to offer up her supplication, she ate the entire rain-drenched slice of pâté. It wasn’t the taste of the meat that she liked so much as the structure of the liver, which stuck to the words on the roof of her mouth and weighed them down so they could tumble from her lips.

  She was so lost in her prayer that she didn’t notice the witch turning her head toward her.

  “I should go now,” Griselda said. “It’ll be dark soon. Not that I wouldn’t like to stay with you a little longer, but people will notice if I walk down the streets after dark.” In fact, being alone with the witch after nightfall was the last thing Griselda wanted, and night fell quickly in the woods. “Arthur Roth in Crystal Meth is still the same. I stopped by to see him just before I got here. Colton Mathers wants me to put him on half rations, so now I only bring him food every other day. His bones are starting to show. I think they want to get rid of him, but it seems so inhumane to do it this way. That’s not how civilized people behave, is it? I’m sure he’s on the agenda for the next Council meeting, but I’d be surprised if they make any real decision this time.”

  Arthur Roth had been a thorn in the side of the Black Spring Council for years: a former hardware store owner and a depressed alcoholic who had lost his house in September 2007 and his mind two months later. Since then, he had threatened to blow the town’s cover by talking openly about what was going on in Black Spring. The four times they’d sentenced him to Doodletown had only made his insanity more persistent. Nevertheless, the Council hadn’t dared to have him committed to an asylum outside of Black Spring for fear of the suspicion he might arouse before he’d killed himself. As for pulling the thorn out themselves … no one had ever actually uttered the words. After all, they were civilized people, here in Black Spring.

  Griselda pressed her index finger into the last bits of pâté and licked it off. “Couldn’t you maybe pay him a visit sometime?” she asked. “I’m sorry to bother you with this, and I know you don’t like church and all, but maybe you could make this one exception? He’s down below, in the cell block. Really, it would make it so much easier…” She turned her head shyly, and gave the witch a quick glance for the first time that night. “Maybe you could whisper something in his ear.”

  In a flash, Katherine was bending over her. Griselda’s body jolted from the sudden chill and she fell over backward with a scream, landing in the muddy streambed in almost exactly the same way she had smacked down onto the kitchen linoleum earlier in the day. Fear washed over her in gray waves and mixed with the rain as she was forced to look into that mutilated face, the stitches set into the dead skin like a black zipper over blind eyes, and she scrambled backward, clawing the mud with her hands in the face of her own death …

  And lay still.

  The woman with the sewn-up eyes hadn’t moved at all.

  Griselda raised herself on her elbows and listened to her heart pounding erratically in her temples. She began to feel woozy, as if she were floating. Katherine van Wyler was still standing farther up in the streambed, a dark, dripping idol padlocked in chains in the last gloomy light of day. For a moment, Griselda feared she was going to faint, but the thought of waking up in the dark, in the domain of her goddess, gave her enough strength to turn over, scramble to her feet, and take to her heels, without so much as a word of good-bye.

  The offering, in the form of a cleanly licked and rain-soaked paper plate, was left lying in the streambed. Much later that evening, when the Black Rock Witch moved, she accidentally stepped on it.

  NINE

  IN THE THREE weeks following the lamppost test, the boys from Open Your Eyes: Preachings from the Witch’s Nest made solid progress in their mission to gather so much scientific evidence that they could make Black Spring go not only mainstream but immediately viral as well. During those three weeks, the wedge between Tyler Grant and Jaydon Holst also became painfully evident. It had always been there, of course—Jaydon had been unpredictable since childhood, and dangerous—but it had lain dormant, like an underground fossil now finally exposed by the inevitable quirks of fate.

  What started it was the October 15 message on the OYE website:

  Next step: the #double-dare whisper test

  Posted 01:29 P.M. by Tyler Grant

  The whisper test wasn’t the first experiment after the collision Tyler had had with his dad over Laurie. That had been their fiercest quarrel in ages—in fact, he couldn’t remember them ever having had a more violent clash. Tyler and Steve hardly ever got into fights, just as Matt and Jocelyn rarely did. It had rattled them both so deeply that it had affected the other family members as well. The next afternoon, Tyler had come to help his dad and Matt in the stable, and as he passed Steve a bale of hay they exchanged a glance that signaled the end of the rift between them. This particular hatchet had been buried, but the pressure in Tyler’s chest had remained. He hadn’t been able to tell his dad all his plans, of course, but it stung him that Steve hadn’t approved of the things he had told him.

  In the days that followed, he had mostly avoided his parents. Once his community service work was finished, he stayed away from home longer after school, eating at Laurie’s or with friends in Newburgh. He spent his afternoons roaming aimlessly through the city or logging onto the free Wi-Fi at Starbucks to work on OYE. Until now, he had always done this from the comfort of his bedroom with the Wi-Fi disconnected while his parents slept, then put it online away from the watchful eye of HEX at school the next day, but now he felt he needed to be even more careful. Maybe he was being paranoid, but it was out of his control. Laurie had asked what was going on and Tyler had inadvertently pushed her away, creating tension between them. He found he didn’t feel much enthusiasm for getting it on with her, either, something they usually did well and at length. It didn’t feel right;
the lie rose like a wall between them.

  And at the end of the day, racing back home up the road that wound between the large homes of Cornwall on his Diamondback Joker, Tyler thought about what awaited him at the end of the tunnel of trees. He was becoming increasingly aware that he’d be going down this road in the dark for the rest of his life. Maybe the people behind those windows were watching him go by and seeing a healthy American boy on his way home after a long day. A boy in a free country, almost done with school, who would spread his wings and chase his dreams. And no one, no one knew what was going on just a few miles down the road. No one knew that this boy would remain in the dark forever.

  More than anything, it proved that something had to change. Tyler didn’t want to be that boy.

  The results of the Ray-Ban experiment raised new questions, as all scientific problems do. Tyler had uploaded the raw footage onto the OYE website in order to avoid future accusations of a hoax, but as an introduction he also edited a short video in the style of TylerFlow95. Here we go:

  * * *

  WE SEE A group of boys surrounding the Black Rock Witch at a safe distance in the alley behind the Market & Deli. Tyler has put “Brooklyn’s Finest” by Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. under the video and overlaid the images with a black-and-white grunge layer, so the whole thing looks more like a hip-hop video clip. Using one of Grim’s grabber sticks from community service, they push Burak’s Ray-Bans underneath the witch’s headscarf. The glasses balance on the bridge of her nose, slightly askew, but one more push, and for the first time in three hundred fifty years Katherine van Wyler is wearing a trendy, expensive accessory to go with her iron chains. “Who’s my bitch now?” Burak raps, and the boys break and pop as Jay-Z and B.I.G. assure us: “Take that witcha, hit ya, back split ya…”