by Lois Duncan
“Could you tell?” I asked excitedly. “If I brought it to you, could you tell?”
“Not definitely.”
“But you would know if it was possible, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’ve seen figures like that before?”
“Yes, I have seen such figures. I would certainly have an opinion as to its authenticity, though an opinion is not proof.”
“Then wait here,” I told him. “I know exactly where it is—it’ll only take me a minute to get it!”
Without giving him a chance to reply I turned and began to run back along the sidewalk, past the Gallaghers’ house and into my own yard. I bolted up the porch steps, through the front door, and up the stairs and down the hall to my room.
It was ridiculous. It was insane. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to find that figure and take it back to Professor Jarvis. Wildly I jerked open the top drawer of the dresser and began to rummage inside. I felt along both sides and under the piles of clothing. Then I removed the whole drawer and set it on Julia’s bed and threw everything out of it.
The wax dog, if that was indeed what the figure had been, was gone, but I did find something else, so flat and thin against the base of the drawer that I would never have located it by touch alone. It was a photograph of me, one of the discards from the set of snowboarding pictures Mom had printed the month before. The face and body were covered with what appeared to be splotches of bright red paint.
I didn’t go back to see Professor Jarvis that afternoon. Instead I called him and told him I’d come over to talk to him the next morning. I took the picture and glanced around for a hiding place, settling at last for sliding it under the mattress of my bed.
Then I went to the library.
To my surprise there was an entire shelf of books on the practice of witchcraft. I selected two with recent publication dates and carried them with me to one of the large, round reading tables.
The first book was a sort of history, tracing witchcraft back to its early beginning as a form of worship of pagan gods and following it through the period of the Inquisition all the way to the present. During the time of the witch hunts over four thousand men, women and children were executed in Scotland alone, and in one year’s time in Würzburg, Germany, nine hundred supposed witches were burned alive. In our own country twenty people were killed in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, mostly by hanging, because they’d been accused of being witches.
“At this point,” the book reported, “witchcraft appeared to vanish. In truth, it simply moved underground. In many backwoods and mountain areas it was still practiced and its secrets were handed down from one generation to another. The conjure words and doctrines could be passed only between blood relatives, and every woman who received this information did not automatically become a witch. Many were simply ‘carriers,’ keeping the knowledge alive until it eventually reached a person who had both the ambition and necessary psychic powers to put it to use.”
It was the last part of this book that interested me most, for it dealt with the twentieth century, a time when laws against witchcraft were largely rescinded and it began to emerge in the public light in strange and unexpected places. I was startled to read that there was a coven of witches in Dover, England, during the Second World War who claimed to have used their spells and incantations to prevent Hitler from invading Britain. In the late 1960s, two hundred fifty California mayors had met and been led in chants by a woman named Louise Huebner, the “official witch” of Los Angeles County, to cast a spell to help clean up the trash and litter on California beaches. In the 1980s Wicca was recognized by the government as a religion, and the number of its practitioners had been growing ever since.
The second book was less factual. It was a collection of superstitions and beliefs concerning witches, collected by a man who had made the subject a kind of hobby. It told of such things as a woman who was said to have thrown a spell on a neighbor’s tomato patch by drawing a circle in the dust, marking a cross in its center and spitting on it, and of another who disposed of her enemies by planting “hair balls” in their clothing. These balls were described as “bunches of hair mixed with beeswax and rolled into hard pellets.” Another way in which a witch could cause death, according to this book, was to walk three times clockwise around a sick man. This was described as difficult to do because of the fact that most beds have at least one side against a wall.
An entire chapter of this second book was devoted to a witch’s relationship with animals. The author seemed to think this extremely important.
“A witch can supposedly communicate with animals,” he wrote, “and aligns herself with certain of these, particularly cats and wolves. The one animal which has a marked animosity to the witch is the dog. Superstition has it that a dog can recognize a practicing witch and will often react by attacking her. Because of this, witches seldom allow dogs on their premises and will go to almost any length to avoid them.”
Can this be true? I asked myself. My mind flew back to the day of Julia’s arrival and the startled expression on her face when she first saw Trickle. “Keep him away from me!” she had cried, her voice going unnaturally shrill. “I mean it, Rachel!”
It could’ve been a coincidence. There were perfectly normal people who didn’t like dogs. But what about Trickle’s reaction to her, the sudden growl rising in his throat, and later the attack? According to Carolyn there had been nothing to provoke it. Trickle had leapt at Julia and bitten her as she had started up the porch steps. Had Trickle, with his animal instincts, sensed something that the rest of us couldn’t? Was his attack on Julia a valiant attempt to protect the people he loved by keeping her from entering our home?
There was no way to know except to face Julia with the question. In order to do this, however, I would have to present my suspicions in such a way that they couldn’t be easily laughed away.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the library reading both of the books from cover to cover. Then I checked them out and carried them home with me. I placed them on the table between our beds and waited for Julia to discover and comment on them, but she didn’t do so. After dinner, instead of going upstairs, she went to a movie with Mike.
Peter’s band had a gig that night, and I spent the evening in the den playing dominoes with Bobby. Our parents were in the room with us, Dad reading in the recliner and Mom curled on the sofa, spotting prints and watching a talent competition on television.
With Julia gone from the house everything seemed so miraculously easy and comfortable that I could almost believe we were back again, relaxed and happy, in the era before she came. I looked across at my parents, noticing the little things about them I usually took for granted. The rugged, handsome features of my father’s face could have belonged to a man years younger, but the hair above his ears was beginning to streak with gray. His hands were clean and strong, and the gold of his wedding band caught the light in odd little flashes as he turned the pages of his book. Mom sat in her own special position with her legs curled under her like a teenager. Her hair in the lamplight was the color of a pumpkin shell, and her tongue flickered out every now and then as she licked the spotting brush and inked out the dust spots on her black-and-white pictures.
They were my parents, so much together and yet so individual, at times so infuriating, yet basically so amazing. Now, watching their faces, I felt a surge of love for them so strong that it was almost physical in its intensity. It was the first really positive feeling I’d had for a long time.
Mom must have felt it touch her, for she glanced across at me and smiled.
“Who’s winning?” she asked.
“I am,” Bobby said. “I only have two dominoes left. Rae has five, and she has to draw again.”
“I don’t have to draw,” I told him. “I have a double six right here.”
I placed the little wooden rectangle in its proper place in the domino formation, and Bobby bent his blond head, whistling through his teeth and studying his chances for ch
eating. I glanced again at Mom, who had turned her attention to her photographs.
Does she feel it too? I wondered. Is she aware of the difference when Julia isn’t here, the way the whole room seems to fill with love as though we’re a real family again? The change in atmosphere was so dramatic it seemed impossible that someone as perceptive as Mom would fail to recognize it.
“Mom,” I said tentatively, “have you ever read anything about witchcraft?”
“Witchcraft?” She sounded surprised. “No, not recently. It seems to me my last experience with that subject was when I read Bobby the first Harry Potter book.”
“I mean real witchcraft,” I said. “The kind that’s being practiced in the United States right now.”
“Honestly, honey,” Mom said with a little laugh, “I have better things to do with my time than to read about things like that. However, my high school friend Marcello Truzzi had an interest in the subject. He went on to become an internationally renowned skeptic. But an open-minded one.”
“How can a skeptic be ‘open-minded’?” Dad asked her.
“Marcello thought a skeptic’s role was to challenge and investigate,” Mom said. “He thought we should keep the door open to all phenomena. He told me, ‘There’s bunk out there that needs to be debunked, but we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ ”
“He sounds fascinating,” Dad said, sounding slightly jealous. “How come you didn’t marry him?”
“He didn’t find me as fascinating as I found him,” Mom told him. “Besides, I had a psychic premonition that I was destined to meet you!”
Dad said something else, and Mom responded, and they were off and running, sparring back and forth, half kidding, half serious, their affection for each other flashing between them as brightly as their wedding rings. This was something they had done ever since I could remember, and it had always made them seem to Peter and me so different from other people’s parents. How long has it been since I heard them do this? I wondered. Weeks? Months?
“Not since last spring,” I said aloud. “Do you realize that you haven’t joked together since last spring?”
“Rae, really,” Mom said lightly. “Who keeps track of things like that?”
“It hasn’t been since Julia came,” I said.
“Rachel!” The laughter left Mom’s voice as quickly as it had come. “I simply will not listen to you say such a thing! It’s not only ridiculous, it’s downright malicious.”
“But it’s true,” I insisted. “Think about it, Mom. You too, Dad; try to remember. Didn’t things begin to change between us all when Julia arrived?”
“You seem to forget,” Dad said, “that Julia’s arrival was preceded by a tragedy that affected your mother and me deeply. Your mother lost her only sister, whom she loved very much. If we haven’t been in the mood for ‘joking together,’ as you put it, there has surely been a reason. Julia’s arrival as a member of our family had nothing to do with it.”
“Then why—” I began.
Mom interrupted. “This antagonistic attitude of yours toward Julia upsets us very much, Rae. Your father and I are at a loss as to how to handle it. I suppose it’s natural for an only daughter to feel some resentment about sharing her place in the family with another girl, but you’ve never been a jealous sort of person. Knowing what poor Julia has been through, I should think you would feel enough sympathy to be willing to make a few sacrifices and do your best to make her happy in our home.”
“Pete says that Rae’s mad because Mike likes Julia better than her,” Bobby contributed brightly.
“That’s a lie!” I cried, and then, because it was not a lie and everyone knew it, I made matters worse by adding, “Mike Gallagher is nothing but an asshole!”
“If you’ve been using language like that, it’s no wonder he prefers Julia,” Dad said. “I’ve never heard Julia raise her voice to anyone.”
“You haven’t?” I countered. “Well, then, you’re lucky. You weren’t around the day she screamed at Trickle. ‘You vicious, rat-fanged varmint!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll thrash you good!’ You could have heard her all over the neighborhood!”
“That’s absurd,” Mom said. “Julia doesn’t speak that way. That’s the kind of language you might expect from someone who’s lived her whole life in the back hills. The little bit of Ozark color Julia’s speech picked up from the summers she spent with her parents was lost almost immediately when she got here to Albuquerque.”
“You can ask Carolyn,” I cried. “She was there! She heard her! No, on second thought, don’t ask Carolyn anything. She’s on Julia’s side just like you are. Julia’s enchanted you all! She’s got you wrapped around her little finger! I don’t know what sort of spells she’s cast, but with a witch like her—”
“That is enough!” I rarely saw my father get really angry. Now I found myself cringing before the absolute fury in his voice. “If there is anyone in this house who is behaving like a witch, it is Rachel Bryant! Go up to your room and stay there! We have all had just about all we can take of your viciousness toward your cousin!”
“I’ll go,” I told him. “I’ll be glad to go! I just wish it really was my room, all mine, the way it used to be!”
I threw the last words back over my shoulder as I rushed from the den.
Once upstairs, I threw myself across my bed and wept into the pillow in a rage of anger and frustration. I couldn’t really hate my parents. They believed the things they were saying. The Julia they knew was the one described in Aunt Marge’s Christmas letter, “our angel Julie” who “filled the house with singing.” How had Julia managed to conceal her true personality from her own mother? Or had she? Had Aunt Marge perhaps realized that her daughter was different from other people, that she practiced witchcraft and could work terrible enchantments? Or was one of these very enchantments the fact that she could keep those who were closest to her from seeing her as she was?
They were disturbing questions. As my storm of tears subsided, I tried to consider them in a calmer manner. How, I asked myself, had Julia been able to learn the practice of witchcraft in the first place? According to what I’d read that afternoon, the doctrine could be passed only between blood relatives. Did this imply that Aunt Marge must also have been a witch and had received this information from my grandmother? If this were the case, it would mean that my own mother may have received it also. The picture of Mom melting wax figures and spitting into people’s tomato patches was so incongruous that I couldn’t consider it in any serious way. Besides, if she’d been aware that the talent for witchcraft ran in our family, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did when I brought up the subject that evening.
I couldn’t come up with any answers that satisfied me. The pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit together, and yet I was becoming more and more convinced that my suspicions were justified. The only way I would ever learn anything definite was to confront Julia herself.
I got up from the bed and went into the bathroom and washed the tear streaks from my cheeks. Looking at myself in the mirror, I recalled the way my face had appeared only weeks ago, splotched and bloated. Now it looked thin and pale and very determined.
“She’s going to answer me,” I told myself. “She’s going to have to. I’ll make her answer.” How I was going to get her to talk was another story, but I did have one thing I could depend on—the red-spotted photograph that lay safely concealed beneath my mattress.
It was a quarter past eleven when I heard Mike’s car pull to a stop in front of the house. It was almost midnight when Julia finally came inside. In the late-night stillness I could hear the sound of the front door as it opened and closed and even the faint click as the latch was pushed into place. I heard Julia’s footsteps on the stairs and then in the upstairs hall.
When she opened the bedroom door, I was standing, fully dressed, in the middle of the room, waiting.
“Oh, Rae,” she said in surprise. “What are you doing still up?”
“Waiting for you,” I told her.
“Why? If your mother doesn’t think it’s necessary to check up on me, there’s no reason that you need to.”
“My mother is very trusting,” I said.
Julia’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” I told her, “that Mom doesn’t realize you’re a witch. I do, and I can prove it.”
The words came out as I’d rehearsed them, strong and certain. My voice was steady. I watched Julia’s face as I spoke and saw with satisfaction the unmistakable look of shock. She covered it quickly, but not quickly enough.
There was a moment of silence. Then Julia said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” I said. “I’m talking about witchcraft, the kind that’s practiced by a few very special people. With this sort of witchcraft a person can cast spells with herbs and potions. She can maim and kill by making wax figures to represent her enemies, and she can cause a case of hives by spattering red paint on another person’s photograph.”
“You must be crazy,” Julia said. “You’ve never seen me do any of those things.”
“No, I haven’t seen you actually do them, but I’ve seen things that prove you’ve done them.” I marshaled my facts. “I saw the wax figure you made of Trickle and the matches you used to melt it. I found the picture of me that you used to bring on the hives. Those library books over there on the table have filled me in on a lot of things. I know, for example, why Trickle attacked you and why you felt you had to kill him, poor little thing. He recognized you for what you were and tried to protect us. I know how you must’ve won Peter and Mike. You added something called ‘milfoil’ to whatever it was they were drinking when they were with you.”
“Well, you’ve been studying hard,” Julia said lightly, but the amusement in her voice was not reflected in her eyes. They seemed to grow deeper and darker with each passing second. “What do you think you’re going to do with all this newfound knowledge?”