Summer Of Fear (11 page)

“Professor Jarvis,” I said shakily, “do you know why I asked that question—about her looks—her eyes?”

There was a moment’s silence.

Then the old man said, “I think I do.”

“You met Julia,” I said. “Could she—”

“My dear, I don’t know. I did meet her, but only briefly. I must admit the eyes did startle me. They very much resembled Ruth’s. However, there are many people in the world with vivid and interesting eyes. My own beloved wife had fantastic eyes, and the last thing she ever could have been was a witch. You simply cannot go around thrusting labels upon people because of physical characteristics which may mean absolutely nothing.”

“But there are other things too,” I said. “There is the wax figure! I found it one day in the back of her bureau drawer. I thought at the time that it was just an odd shaped ball, but there was a shape to it. It was elongated with a sort of knob at one end which might have been a head. There were four lumps sticking out at the corners like the legs of an animal—like the legs of a dog!”

“Rachel, my dear, you are jumping to conclusions,” the professor said. “My story has disconcerted you. A lump of wax—”

“There were hairs in it!” I cried. “Hairs the color of Trickle’s!”

“Rachel—” He raised a hand as though to hold back my words, but his eyes had taken on a certain sharpness that I had never seen in them before.

“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 such figures 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 right where it is—it will 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 could not help myself. I had to find that figure and take it back to Professor Jarvis. Wildly I jerked open the top drawer of the bureau 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 snow pictures that Mother had printed the month before. The face and body were covered with what appeared to be splotches of bright red paint.

I did not go back to Professor Jarvis that afternoon. Instead I phoned him and told him that I would be over to talk to him the following morning. I took the picture and glanced about for a hiding place for it and settled 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 of these 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 Wurzburg, Germany, nine hundred supposed witches were burned alive. In our own country eighteen people were hanged in the town of Salem because they had 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 to 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. More recently 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.

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 the 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 upon 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.”

Could that be true, I asked myself? Could it really be true? My mind flew back to the day of Julia’s arrival and the startled expression on her face when she first saw Trickle. “Please, keep him away from me!” she had cried, her voice going unnaturally shrill. “I mean it, Rachel!”

It could have been a coincidence. There were perfectly normal people who did not like dogs. But what of the reaction of Trickle himself, the sudden growl rising in his throat, and later the attack? According to Carolyn there had been nothing to provoke it. Trickle had leapt upon 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 could not? Was his attack upon Julia a valiant attempt to protect the people lie 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 could not 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 did not do so. After dinner, instead of going upstairs, she went to a drive-in with Mike.

Peter’s band had an engagement that night, and I spent the evening in the den playing dominos with Bobby. Our parents were in the room with us, Dad reading in the recliner and Mother curled on the sofa, spotting prints and watching Lawrence Welk on television.

With Julia gone from the house everything seemed so miraculously easy and comfortable that I could almost believe that 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 that I usually took so 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. Mother 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 flicked out every now and then as she licked the spotting brush and inked out the dust spots on her pictures.

They were my parents, so much together and yet so individual, at times so infuriating, yet basically so wonderful. 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 had had for a long time.

Mother 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 dominos 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 cheating. I glanced again at Mother, who had tamed 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 that it seemed impossible that someone as perceptive as Mother would fail to recognize it.

“Mother,” 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 Bobby was little and I used to read him to sleep at night with The Wizard of Oz.”

“I mean real witchcraft,” I said. “The kind that’s being practiced in the United States right now.”

“Honestly, honey,” Mother said with a little laugh, “I have better things to do with my time than to read about silly things like that. I must admit though that I have enjoyed watching ‘Bewitched’ on television. Tom, did I ever tell you that I double-dated with Elizabeth Montgomery once when I was a teenager?”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” My father looked impressed. “How did that happen?”

“Well, my grandmother took me with her to a resort in New England one summer, and Liz Montgomery was there with her mother. We were the only young girls there, and we used to slip out in the evenings and party with the bellboys. She was so pretty—”

“As pretty as you?” my father asked teasingly. “Impossible!”

“Oh, Tom, you idiot!”

Mother giggled, and Dad said something else, and soon they were sparring back and forth, half kidding, half serious, their affection for each other flashing between them as brightly as Dad’s wedding ring. 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 had it been since I had 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,” Mother said lightly. “Who keeps track of things like that?”

“It hasn’t been since Julia came,” I said.

“Rachel!” The laughter left Mother’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, Mother. 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 legitimate reason. Julia’s arrival as a member of our family had nothing to do with it.”

“Then why—” I began.

Mother 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 He and everyone knew it, I made matters worse by adding, “Mike Gallagher is nothing but a dumb slob!”

“If you have been using language like that, it’s no wonder he prefers Julia,” Dad said. “Any man, whatever his age, is turned off by vulgarity. 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 vigrous, rat-fanged varmant!’ she yelled, ‘I’ll warp you good!’ You could have heard her all over the neighborhood!”

“That’s absurd,” Mother said. “Julia doesn’t speak that way. Why, that’s the kind of language you might expect from someone who has 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 in 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 had seldom seen my father 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!”