The Witch (21 page)

Standing next to her he asked, “The box is under the tarp?”

She nodded, and they both climbed the stairs.

“Not good,” said the old woman
.

“What do you mean?” asked the dwarf. “She’ll become suspicious.” “So what! We can handle her.” “We’re not strong enough to make ourselves known. We still exist under the mother’s thumb.”

“Not for long,” whispered the dog with the man’s head. The tiny old woman’s eyes scanned the basement. Her nose scented the air and her ears listened patiently. Seeing, hearing, smelling no presence of death she turned to the dog with the man’s head
.

“You are too cocky, Master Dog. You speak before you know it to be safe. What if she had heard you?”

“She is controlled by death now. She comes only when death wills her back into this world, and for that she must fight.”

“Yes, but if she regains a physical presence in this world we will be in great danger of being sent back into limbo.”

“I for one would never allow that to happen,” stated the dwarf
.

“How would you prevent it?” the old woman asked, her chin protruding grandly into the darkness of the basement
.

“I have my ax.”

“Violence. Ah, you think we are controlled by only physical forces. What of the powers that your ax can’t chop into pieces?”

“She is right, dwarf.” The snake inched its way closer to the small group. “We weren’t only brought to life by blood and flesh. An invisible desire reached out and plucked us from our sleeps. It is her hunger and spiritual strength that keeps us as we are.”

“She will rob her son’s life and be stronger than before,” predicted the old woman
.

“Nonsense. The boy—”

“The boy is hers,” interrupted the old woman. “She has him firmly gripped inside her fists. He belongs to her more than we do. Look at his eyes. They are hers. Look at his features. They are hers. Soon his soul will be hers too.”

“You live in fear, old woman. Why?” The dwarf approached the old woman and grabbed hold of her staff. “You limp around not as a great spirit of the dark world but as a timid hag who has lost all her powers. Is that true? Have you lost your strength? Were you plucked too soon from your sleep?”

The old woman smelled the dwarf’s foul breath and waited for him to rip the staff from her hand
.

“You’re a coward, Master Dwarf, to pick on an ancient lady. Is robbing canes from the elderly another talent that you displayed in your former life?” the snake taunted from a distance
.

“I know you, serpent, from somewhere although I can not immediately place the time or land.”

“Perhaps he didn’t look like a snake in another life. I certainly wasn’t a pig. At least not a barn animal pig. As a seaman I rarely bathed although my girth equaled that of a well fed pig.” The pig snorted in delight reminiscing about his pirate days
.

“He always was a snake, I’m sure of that.” The dwarf let go of the staff to rub his beard. “I never met you on the battle field. No.”

“Does it matter, Master Dwarf?” the old woman asked
.

“Yes, it does. For I am sure I owe him something and it wouldn’t be a pat on the back. More like a dagger between his ribs.”

“Not between my ribs, Master Dwarf.”

“My ax can cut you into tiny pieces and I can force each slice into your mouth.” The dwarf moved closer to the snake
.

“You have met me before, Master dwarf. At that time you caused me great pain, not to my body but to my heart and mind. I had a wife, children. Many children. Each a prize for a man growing old too quickly.”

“Our former lives mean nothing here,” interrupted the gargoyle. “Stop this conversation now.”

“An old man.” The dwarf reviewed all his ancient battles and the ravaging he had done of villages and castles. Too many to place an old man with a family. “Did I know you, Master Serpent?”

“Of me, yes.”

“Daylight is drawing near. Stop this talk. We have the box back. A place to hide while the sun is up.” The gargoyle interposed his body between the dwarf and the snake
.

“An old man that I had heard of but didn’t meet in person. A counselor for a king, no doubt. A bag of bones slinking about a castle, whispering perversions into the ear of some king.” The dwarf walked around the gargoyle. “A woman stolen from me.”

“Hardly stolen. Whatever would she have wanted with a dwarf?” The snake’s voice dripped with derision. It inched its way closer to the dwarf. “Remember Rebecca? The pretty daughter of the-”

“The jester’s daughter! The trollop!” The dwarf laughed so hard he bent over holding his stomach
.

“You wanted her. Watched her night after night.” “Yes, counting the number of men she seduced.” “Liar.”

The old woman came forward. “This is tiresome. The woman and her children are dead. You no longer have a wife, Master Serpent. A jester’s daughter. Certainly you wouldn’t hold a grudge this long for a jester’s daughter, Master Dwarf.”

“I remember the woman. Her soft flesh, her sweet breath, the long fingers plucking the harp, driving men mad with the music of her voice. Yes, Master Serpent, I recall Rebecca. There’s something else though that causes me more fury. At the end the king who you advised had me disemboweled before lowly villagers at your behest.”

“A fitting punishment for the death of my family.” The snake lifted its head high
.

“We are here now, in the present. We have work to do,” the gargoyle said. “That work takes precedence over grudges. When we are freed from this woman’s control then the two of you can decide this whatever way you please.”

“Hatred is impossible to control.” The dwarf spoke slowly, articulating each syllable clearly. “We have been drawn back into the world at the same time for a reason. It is to meet and settle our dispute.”

“What will the two of you settle?” asked the pig. “You’ve both been destroyed before and will be again. Then you will be called back for another round of making these human lives miserable. You really gain nothing by sending each other back to hell. How can you enjoy the turmoil we cause in this world when you’re busily worrying about getting the spirit next to you? Master Dwarf, I think both you and the serpent managed in a previous life to bring hell down to earth in each others lives. I call it a draw.”

“The first sensible thing to come out of that pig’s mouth,” said the two-headed bird. One head addressed the other but the words were overheard by the entire collection of demons
.

“The pig is right,” said the gargoyle. “You both will live on for eternity. Does that mean you will seek each other out in every life you snatch from the world?”

“Rebecca pleaded for her life. The servants heard her cries for our children.” The snake drifted closer to the dwarf
.

“A human’s reaction.” The dwarf gloated, reminiscing over the pain he had inflicted over the generations
.

“That pain will never end.” The serpent’s flesh became a paler shade of black. Its tongue flicked the air reaching for dark memories he knew should be forgotten. “Human she was, Master Dwarf, and knew not the evil we shared and brought upon her people. But I think we both will always love her. That is why you had to destroy her.”

The dwarf opened his mouth to deny such a feeling but could not pronounce the word that would reject the woman Rebecca
.

Daylight struck the basement like thunder. A frosty wind lifted the demons and distributed them about the rectangular box. The snake and dwarf were separated. The dwarf settled upon the lid of the box, his arm letting the ax droop to his feet. The snake coiled into a ball on one side of the box and didn’t lift its head until night
.

“Why were you so mean to my mommy?” asked Robin.

“Mean? She doesn’t understand what could have happened to her. To you, even, if she had kept the box in the room where you sleep.”

“What could have happened?”

“Bad things.”

“Like what happened to your mommy and daddy?”

Stephen hung his head in a sulk.

“Tell me,” Robin said. “Tell me so that I can understand.”

Stephen upended the chessboard, scattering all the pieces onto the floor.

“Why are you so mean?” she asked.

“I’m not.” He heard his own voice ring loudly in his ears.

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m trying to protect everyone.” He looked at a blurred image of Robin.

“Don’t cry, Stephen. I don’t want to make you cry. I want to help.”

“I think my momma is doing bad things.” Stephen muttered the words, and Robin had to ask him to repeat.

He looked at her wondering whether she would believe or laugh at him. She had never made fun of him before, and maybe she could understand. At least she might not have the same doubts as the adults.

“My momma is back.”

“Back? From the dead?”

Stephen nodded.

“Why would she come back? Does she want to protect you?”

“She says she loves me, but her hugs and kisses are different. I used to feel warm in her arms, but no more. When she hugs me I feel colder. It’s like someone threw open the door in the middle of winter during a big snowstorm.”

“Maybe that’s because she’s dead.”

He looked at Robin and didn’t see her laugh. She intently listened.

“Yeah, maybe. But she’s not as nice as before. She’s angry.”

“At you?”

“No. At Daddy and Molly. And Molly died and Daddy is in the hospital and I don’t know when he’ll be coming home.”

“What if he doesn’t come home?” asked Robin.

“He can come home because I can take care of him. I can do everything the hospital is doing.”

He saw Robin make a face.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s just that I heard Mom say he isn’t in good shape. He doesn’t look the same, Stephen.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, but Mom has, and so has Grandma.”

“They won’t take me to see him.”

“Hospitals don’t allow little boys.”

“I’m not little anymore. I can do things that adults can’t.”

“You mean the somersaults you do?” Robin smiled.

“Not dumb stuff like that.” Robin started to irritate him. He stood to leave the table where they both had been sitting.

“Don’t go, Stephen. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” She shrugged. “I like it when you do somersaults, and I’ve never seen anyone who can do as many as you at one time.”

“I’ve increased the number. Dad counted them for me, and I can do at least six more than before.”

“Would you show me?” she asked shyly.

Stephen scratched his nose thinking about whether he should or not. He always made her laugh when he did the somersaults, and he liked it when she laughed. Her laughter was catching, like the flu, Dad used to say.

Stephen started to go into his tumbles when a scream sounded from the basement. Instantly Stephen jumped to his feet and beat his aunt down the stairs.

Grandma stood next to the table covered with a rainbow of wax. She held her hand to her heart and took deep breaths.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Rosemary pushed Stephen out of the way to reach her mother.

At first Grandma didn’t speak; she kept huffing for air. Finally she uttered one word. “Mice.”

“Oh, Mom, all that noise over a mouse.”

“There was more than one.”

“I don’t see any now.”

“They scurried behind the furnace. We have to get traps.”

“Not traps,” Stephen said. “The traps could hurt them.”

“We’ll get little mouse hotels and let them go outside the house,” Rosemary suggested.

“Hotels?” Mabel said, shocked at the idea.

“It traps them without killing them, Mom.”

“Who cares … ?” Mabel stopped when she looked into Stephen’s face. “Yes, we’ll get nice hotels for them. They’ll be very happy there, I’m sure.”

“You shouldn’t be down here. Why is everybody coming down here? This place belongs to Momma.”

“It did belong to your mother, Stephen, but now we have to clean up a bit. This table could be donated to charity once we clean it up. You could help me, Stephen.” Mabel attempted to draw him into the activity.

“Everything down here is Momma’s.” Stephen felt anger building inside him. If everyone left Momma’s things alone nothing bad would happen.

Rosemary squatted down in front of Stephen.

“Do you think your mother caused the bad accident that happened to your father?”

“We just want to be alone together,” he said, a hint of a quiver in his voice.

Rosemary hugged him and whispered in his ear.

“What did your mother do down here?”

Stephen broke free from her embrace.

“I don’t care about any of you. If you want to die, go ahead. Die, and Momma will still take care of me.” He ran up the stairs.

“Oh, my God, Rosemary, what did Cathy expose him to?”

“Jacob thinks Cathy caused his accident.”

“You think he’s influenced the boy?” Mabel moved closer to her daughter, leaning lightly on Rosemary’s shoulder.

“Mom, you know Cathy practiced witchcraft.”

“Don’t tell me you think Cathy is a ghost willing awful things to happen. Next you’re going to tell me we should bring in an exorcist.”

“No, Mom, but Jacob thinks that somehow Cathy also caused Molly’s death, and no one has figured out what happened to her.”

“A stray animal. Maybe she took some rabid dog or something into her car. She may have felt sorry for the animal, but it turned on her.”

Rosemary took her mother’s arm and suggested they go upstairs.

“We have to clean this place up, Rosemary. Once all this stuff is gone Stephen will start healing. He comes down here, and all he sees is his mother’s paraphernalia. What the hell is a pentagram doing in a Christian house?” Mabel reached over to the table and picked up an oval inscribed with a pentacle. “This is a sin to have, Rosemary.”