Witch Tales

But then Herb stopped in his track. It was impossible. She couldn't have been here one minute and just gone the next. It didn't make any sense.

Looking at the bloody water in the basin (turning pink on the faded white porcelain), he said "No sense," and repeated it over and over, like a mantra. Then he said, "Hell with this."

He went to the garage and pulled an old shirt and some pants out of the laundry so that he didn't have to go to the closet and risk waking his wife. Then he started the car and drove the twelve blocks to the Brookwood place at double the speed limit.

No spooky dame was making a fool out of him, no sir. He was getting to the bottom of this.

The house looked worse at night. The gate swung open easily this time, and the faded lawn crunched under his shoes as he went up to the tumbledown porch. He wondered if he should knock or just barge right in and see how she liked it.

But the door was open when he got there. Not all the way open; just a crack. Through that crack he saw a dark hallway and a glimpse of movement. He realized someone was watching him from that crack in the door, but it wasn't the Brookwood woman. He blinked and rubbed his eyes when he recognized the face.

"Willie?"

Herb's son turned and ran. Without thinking, Herb followed, hand already reaching out to grab the kid's retreating shirt collar. But by the time he stepped over the threshold Willie was gone. There was nothing in his place but the long black shadows of an empty house.

"Willie!" Herb yelled. "What in the hell are you doing? Get your butt out here!"

He heard a laugh. Then: "Come find me."

Herb seethed. He was going to wear his belt out on that kid. "I don't have time for this, god damn it. Get home right now."

Willie's voice again: "Come find me, Daddy. Come find me."

Stumbling in the dark, Herb felt his way along the walls. Aging wallpaper flecked off on his fingertips. The only illumination came from a bend behind the central stairs and he crept toward it as carefully as he could, stubbing his toes and swearing every color of the rainbow along the way. Murder him, that's what Herb was going to do when he caught up to Willie. Him and the dame both.

The orange light was coming from the kitchen. There, Herb found Willie sitting at the table, the round back of his head silhouetted against the red and white checked tablecloth. Rushing in all at once, Herb seized the entire chair and hauled it around for his son to face him.

"Now listen here—" he said, but that was as far as he got. There was nothing in the chair but a fat black cat with round yellow eyes. It peered up at him, as if expecting something. Then it showed its teeth and hopped down onto the linoleum floor.

"Come, Trullibub," said a voice. The cat scampered over to the stove. Nancy Brookwood sat in a rocking chair, watching the flames. "Hello, Herb," she said.

"Nan—Miss Brookwood? Where's Willie?"

"Home, I should think. It's a school night after all. Did you really leave your house where your son's fast asleep to come find him somewhere else?"

Her back was turned, and she seemed to be wearing that thing with the hood again, which meant all he could really see of her was the hand petting the cat. Herb swallowed.

"I came to see you. I came...look, were you in my house?"

"I never leave my own house. You know that."

"It's just that I..."

"I did tell you a story, though, about me and you. I don't think you liked how it ended."

Suddenly Herb didn't know what to say. "We fucked like polecats half an hour ago and then you cut me up like a rib eye and I don't appreciate it," didn't sound quite right. He wasn't sure anymore what he was even doing here, but retreat at this point seemed unacceptable, so he persisted.

"Willie's not here," Nancy continued. "I miss him so. I need the children."

Backing up, Herb said, "I don't know what you're up to, but Willie's never coming here again. You're nuts, lady. You need help. You—will you turn around so I can stop talking to the back of your head?"

"I'm baking something. I can't let it burn."

"I don't give a good god damn. I want to know you're listening when I give you a piece of my mind."

"All right. If you insist."

The chair turned slowly, so that the fire's glow illuminated her face a little bit at a time. When she'd finished, Herb backed away again. In fact, he almost fell.

"Is that better?" she said.

"I—I—"

Rising, she walked toward him. At her feet, the cat hissed. "Well?" she said. Her voice sounded like a croaking toad. "Didn't you want to give me a piece of your mind? Or should I just take a piece myself?"

One of her eyes was enormous, like a softball, and the other was round, milky, blind. Her face was a spider web of wrinkles that writhed when she talked. Her bony fingers reached out for him as she came closer. Herb backed up until he hit the wall, and the back of his skull stung.

"Mistake," he said. There was probably supposed to be more to that statement, but that was all he ended up with. By that time she'd grabbed him, both of her hand closing on his forearms like shackles. Her arms looked scrawny, like chicken meat hanging off the bone, but her fingers cinched so tight he imagined his wrists snapping.

"G-get away from me!" he said.

"I need the children," the witch said again. "I need them to be scared, and they like being scared, so just butt out of it Herb. Or else!"

Despite his struggles she dragged him across the kitchen floor. The oven door snapped open and the flames roared inside of it, like the open mouth of a dragon. Sweat broke out on his face. "What are you doing?" he said.

"Baking cookies. Get in there."

"What? No!"

He tried to pull away again but the old hag dragged him to the oven door and then shoved him to his knees. The heat scorched his eyebrows. She gnarled her old fingers in his hair and tried to force him headfirst into the flames. "Don't struggle," she said. "It's embarrassing for both of us."

"Leggo, leggo!"

The oven yawned wider, like the opening to Hell. The flames seemed to reach out. The witch stuck her horrible old face right next to his.

"Are you scared?" she said.

"Yes!"

"That's good. I need for people to get scared. It helps me keep my ghoulish figure. Now, are you going to keep telling Willie and the other kids to stay away from my house?"

"No!"

"What about that cold fish wife of yours, and her doctor friend? You're not going to let them spoil my fun either?"

"I swear, I swear!" The hairs on his face were starting to smolder.

"You'd better swear. Because the next time you're in my kitchen it's the oven for you, and I'll be baking cookies out of your bones until New Year's"

"I hear you, I hear you! Anything you want, just get me out of here!"

The witch snapped her bony fingers and the flames dwindled. The sudden drop in temperature almost made Herb pass out. She let him go and he half stumbled, half crawled away, until he ended up sprawled on his back like a helpless turtle in the hallway. The black cat rubbed against him and purred.

In the kitchen, Nancy bent over in front of the oven. When she turned around she looked like her usual self again. She was even wearing a housedress and a yellow apron. Although she held a steaming baking sheet straight from the oven fire, she didn't bother wearing oven mitts.

"Look at that!" she said. "They came out just perfect. Try one?"

She winked. Herb ran. He thought he could still hear her laughing all the way home.

***

Willie Beaser ran up the steps of the Brookwood house two of the time and pounded on the door. Miss Brookwood answered in less than a second. "Hi, Miss Brookwood!" he said. "My dad said I could come back!"

"Did he? What lovely news. Come right in."

The library was full of kids. Willie shucked off his backpack and added it to a pile by the door. "Are the cookies still hot?"

"You know they are," Miss Brookwood said. She fed him one by hand, breaking it into bites with her fingers. The buttery goodness was bliss in his mouth. "Your father helped me make these, you know."

"He did?" said Willie, perplexed. But Miss Brookwood did not explain.

He jostled for room to sit with the others. It looked like the whole neighborhood was here, even kids whose parents had said before they had to stay away.

"Yes, almost everyone's Mum and Dad told them they could come and see me again," said Miss Brookwood, as if reading Willie's mind. "Isn't that nice? It's so good having a house full of children again. So...scrumptious."

She sighed and smiled in kind of a dreamy way. Then, seeming to come to, she said, "Who wants a ghost story?"

Every kid in the room hushed. Prematurely, Willie's hair began to stand on end. Miss Brookwood sat on her three-legged stool and opened a big black book.

"This one's called: 'The Thing From The Grave,'" she said.

His every hair prickling, Willie closed his eyes and listened to the story, picturing every horrible detail in his mind. His feeling of fear was the most delicious thing in the world.