Time of the Witch Read online

  The Time of the Witch

  Mary Downing Hahn

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  MARY DOWNING HAHN's fascination with the mysterious beauty of the West Virginia hills, and her own experiences as a divorced mother, led her to write The Time of the Witch. Previously a junior high school art teacher and English teacher at the University of Maryland, Ms. Hahn now works as a children's librarian. She lives with her husband in Columbia, Maryland, which she says is "a town too new and well-polished to harbor a witch as obvious as Maude."

  * * *

  AN AVON CAMELOT BOOK

  * * *

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that

  this book is stolen property It was reported as "unsold and destroyed"

  to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received

  any payment for this "stripped book "

  * * *

  To my family

  * * *

  AVON BOOKS

  A division of

  The Hearst Corporation

  1350 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, New York 10019

  Copyright © 1982 by Mary Downing Hahn

  Published by arrangement with Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Company

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 82-1195

  ISBN 0-380-71116-8

  RL 5 5

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions

  thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U S Copyright Law For

  information address Houghton Mifflin Company, 2 Park Street, Boston, Massachusetts

  02108

  First Avon Camelot Printing September 1991

  CAMELOT TRADEMARK REG U S PAT OFF AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA

  REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U S A

  Printed in the U S A

  OPM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Chapter 1

  "Are we almost there?" Jason asked for at least the millionth time.

  Mom nodded. "You'll see the house as soon as we get to the top of this hill."

  Angrily I slumped down in the seat, staring at the back of Mom's head. Why should I care what the house looked like? All I wanted to see was our own house in Stoneleigh, now hundreds of miles away, not my Aunt Grace's dumb old house in the middle of West Virginia. "Get your thumb out of your mouth," I hissed at Jason, giving him a nudge intended to jar his thumb loose.

  "Laura," Mom said, giving me a warning look in the rear view mirror, "get over on your side of the seat and leave Jason alone!"

  She shifted to a lower gear and kept the car going uphill, despite the rain and mud. Glancing out my window, I saw the ground drop straight away from the edge of the road, down, down, down, into a valley I couldn't see the bottom of. Shuddering, I slid back across the seat toward Jason and looked out his window at the steep side of a mountain rising up into the cloudy sky. What an awful place. Dirt roads, no houses for miles, a total wilderness. How could my aunt enjoy living in a place like this? And how was I going to stand a whole summer of it?

  Remembering the tree-lined streets of Stoneleigh, the well-kept brick houses, the wide green lawns, I felt so homesick I wanted to cry. But not here, not with my five-year-old brother Jason sitting next to me sucking his thumb, not with Mom peering through the windshield, using all her skill not to send us hurtling off the road and into that valley. I wanted to cry in private.

  "There it is!" Mom pointed and without much enthusiasm I looked across a valley at the house.

  It was a big stone house, dark gray in the rain, sitting high on the crest of a hill. The lawn around it was a deep green and behind it rose the Blue Ridge Mountains, veiled with clouds. It was a beautiful place for someone who likes scenery and nature and peace and quiet, but I could tell at a glance that there wasn't going to be a thing for me to do all summer.

  We dipped down the hill and turned into the driveway, climbing steeply up toward the house. I was sure Mom would stall the car, but somehow she managed to get us to the top. Skidding to a stop, she cried, "Grace!" and leaped out of the car to meet her sister.

  I looked out the window at a red-haired woman dressed in faded jeans hopping barefoot through the puddles, a big grin on her face. The two of them threw their arms around each other, laughing like people in a TV commercial while Jason and I sat in the car like two forgotten suitcases.

  "Laura! Jason!" Mom turned to us smiling, "Come on out and meet your aunt!"

  "It's raining," Jason whined.

  "Well, you won't melt, silly. We'll run right into the kitchen and dry off." Mom opened the car door, still smiling, her hair dark with rain and sticking in little ringlets to her face.

  "Go on." I shoved Jason. "I can't get out till you get out." With her usual skill, Mom had pulled up right next to a big wet bush, and I knew I'd get soaked if I opened my door.

  "Don't push me, Laurie!" Jason turned toward me, his face angry.

  "Why not?" I gave him another shove, a little harder this time, and he slapped my arm.

  Before the fight could really get going, Mom grabbed Jason's arm and pulled him out of the car. "Please don't fight," she said softly. "What will Grace think of you?"

  "She pushed me," Jason said, his voice shrill.

  "Laura, leave him alone. I mean it," Mom said, blaming me as usual for everything.

  By this time, Aunt Grace had opened the trunk and grabbed a couple of suitcases. "Laura, can you get the other two?" she asked as I got out of the car.

  Without a word, I took the suitcases and followed her up the back steps and into a big, old-fashioned kitchen.

  "Just leave the suitcases in the hall for now. I've got water boiling for tea." Aunt Grace busied herself at the stove and the rest of us sat down at a big oak table.

  While we drank tea, Mom and Aunt Grace did most of the talking, remembering every now and then to ask Jason and me a question, usually something boring about school or what we liked to do. Because there wasn't anything better to do, I listened to them talk about the summers they'd spent here when they were children, when their grandmother (my great-grandmother) was alive.

  "She was a wonderful old lady, wasn't she?" Mom smiled at Aunt Grace. "I wish she'd lived long enough for you to know her, Laura."

  "Poor Laura, she never even knew her own grandmother, let alone her great-grandmother," Aunt Grace said.

  She and Mom looked at each other and I knew they were feeling a little sad. Their mother had died when Mom was two and Aunt Grace was seven, so Mom remembered her grandmother better than she remembered her own mother.

  "Do you really like living here, Grace?" Mom asked, forgetting about me again.

  Aunt Grace nodded. "It's wonderful. I don't miss New York a bit. These past five years have been the best of my life."

  "But don't you get lonely?" Mom glanced at the big bay window that looked out toward the mountains. "There's no one around for miles and you're all alone."

  I could tell by Mom's tone of voice that she would find it scary living here without any neighbors and I looked at Aunt Grace, waiting for her answer.

  She smiled and shrugged. "You get used to it, Andrea. And I'm painting better than ever up here. Want to see my latest?"

  Mom followed Aunt Grace to a corner of the kitchen set up like an artist's studio. In front of the bay window stood a large drawing table and against the wall was a set of shelves that held a variety of paints and brushes, pens and ink, and stacks of paper. A fat ginger cat looked up from the window seat and twitched his tail warningly at Jason while Mom leaned over the table to admire an unfinished painting of a crow perched on a dead tree. It was very well done, right down to the gleam in the crow's eye, but it was sort of eerie. The crow h
ad a sinister look and the stormy sky behind him was ominous.

  While Mom oohed and aahed, Aunt Grace showed her a stack of paintings of birds and animals and ferns and rocks and trees. They reminded me of Andrew Wyeth's paintings, very realistic but somehow weird and mysterious at the same time, as if there were things going on under the leaves or in the shadows that you wouldn't want to know about.

  "These are wonderful, Grace," Mom said. "I wish I had a tenth of your talent."

  Aunt Grace smiled and pushed her hair out of her face. "Well, I enjoy painting them, so I'm glad to find people who enjoy looking at them. Luckily there seem to be enough of those to help me earn my living."

  Mom turned back to the crow and frowned. "This one is the only one I don't particularly care for. I never have liked crows." She paused and then added, "I guess it reminds me of someone I'd rather forget."

  Aunt Grace nodded. "I know. I think I had her in mind when I painted it." She cocked her head to one side, a little like a crow herself, and stared at the picture. "It makes me a little uneasy myself." She chuckled as if she weren't quite serious.

  "Is she still around?" Mom asked.

  "I see her once in a while, but..." Aunt Grace shrugged her shoulders and busied herself with the strings on her portfolio.

  "Who?" I asked. Immediately I realized I should have kept quiet. They exchanged looks that clearly said they'd forgotten a twelve-year-old was standing there listening.

  "Oh, nobody," Mom said in this evasive tone of voice she uses when she doesn't want to discuss something.

  "Just an old woman we used to know," Aunt Grace added, straightening up the paints and brushes on her art table.

  Although I was sure they were deliberately keeping something from me, I didn't feel like pursuing it. After all, I wasn't particularly interested in old women or crows.

  I walked over to the window, ignoring Jason and the cat. It was still raining and I was sure I'd never seen a drearier view. Aunt Grace's yard stretched away, green and wet, bordered with flower beds and hedges, and beyond it was an empty field, then a woods, and then the mountains. Not another house in sight. Total desolation under a gray sky rapidly turning dark. How was I going to stand a whole summer here?

  Chapter 2

  The first week at Aunt Grace's wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Of course, that was because Mom was still there, and she and Aunt Grace kept us so busy sightseeing and swimming at Lake Charles and going on picnics that we didn't have time to be homesick. It seemed like a vacation, and I guess I kept hoping that Mom would change her mind and take Jason and me home with her when she went back to Stoneleigh.

  As usual I was wrong. The day before she was supposed to leave, Mom made it clear that she was going and we were staying. As a result, I spent most of my time sulking in corners and refusing to talk to her. Jason, on the other hand, sat on her lap, sucking his thumb and whining. But neither one of us had any luck convincing her that we were indispensable; more than likely, we had the opposite effect.

  After she-finally got Jason to bed, Mom came into my room and sat down on my bed, but I didn't look up from my Agatha Christie book. All day I'd been having fantasies about developing incurable cancer or drowning in Lake Charles and imagining how horrible she'd feel when she drove up to West Virginia to get my body, knowing it was all her fault.

  "You will look after Jason, won't you, Laura?" she asked softly. "I know you're angry at me for leaving you here, honey, but you'll have a great time. Grace is a wonderful person and this is such a beautiful place. I used to love spending my summers here."

  Forgetting my plan to ignore her, I frowned at her over the top of my book. "Well, I'm not you," I said. "I'd rather be home in Stoneleigh, breathing polluted air at the swimming pool with my friends."

  Mom sighed. "I can't take you back, Laura, you know I can't. I've signed up for three courses in both sessions of summer school, which means I'll be on campus every day and studying every night. Please try and cooperate. You know I need a good job."

  "You wouldn't have to go to work if Daddy came back. You could go on just the way you always have, staying home and taking care of Jason and me. I don't want you getting a job and being gone all the time. I want you at home where you're supposed to be!" I threw my book down and glared at her. "I want you to stay married!"

  "Laura, accept the facts. Daddy isn't coming back and I'm getting a job." Mom sighed and reached out to stroke my hair, but I pulled away angrily. Her hand dropped down on the quilt and one finger traced the swirls of stitches. "I know you're not happy about the divorce, but there's nothing anyone can do to change it." Her voice pleaded with me to understand, but I slid deeper under the covers, still glaring at her. When she reached out to touch me again, I rolled over on my stomach.

  "I want to go to sleep now," I said with my face in my pillow.

  "Oh, Laura, please try to understand."

  I didn't answer her, and after a while she got up. "Good night," she said softly. "I love you, Laura."

  "Mmmmh," I mumbled, pretending to be asleep.

  Finally I heard her cross the floor and leave the room. I fell asleep listening to her and Aunt Grace talking in the kitchen. Their voices drifted up to me, muffled by the ceiling, but I caught a few works like "twelve is a difficult age," "she has to adjust," "doesn't understand," "she's insecure," and "unhappy." Enough to know they were talking about me. And that gave me a certain melancholy satisfaction.

  Mom left early the next morning, and Jason cried all day. It was just horrible. Rain outside, tears inside, no television to watch, nothing on the radio but country music and static. By the time I went to bed, I'd never felt so depressed in my whole life. If the whole summer was going to be like this, I was sure I wouldn't survive till the end of August.

  I couldn't have been asleep very long when something woke me up. Startled, I opened my eyes and saw Jason huddled at the foot of my bed.

  "What are you doing in here?" I frowned at him, angry at being yanked out of a nice dream about the swimming pool.

  "I had a bad dream, Laurie," he whimpered. "There was this big crow and it was chasing me and I was scared but I couldn't run and I couldn't scream and I was all alone in a big dark woods." As he talked, he crept closer to me, dragging his old teddy bear with him.

  He looked so pathetic, I forgot about being angry. "It was just a dream, Jason. It wasn't real." I tried to sound comforting as he curled up next to me. "I won't let any old crow bother you."

  He didn't say anything, but he looked up at me as if he were sizing up my ability to combat crows. "If Mommy was here, I wouldn't be scared," he said.

  I shrugged, letting him know it didn't bother me to be a poor second to Mom. Then I remembered what I'd been thinking about before I fell asleep. Turning to Jason, I said, "Just suppose you had all the power in the world. Suppose you could do anything you wanted and everybody had to obey you. What would you do?"

  "I could do anything?" Jason's eyes widened at the possibilities.

  I nodded. "Anything. Like Aladdin when he rubbed the lamp and the genie came out, all huge and powerful."

  Jason took a deep breath. "I'd have all the ice cream I could eat and a dirt bike and my very own color TV and lots of money and..." He gazed up at the ceiling, frowning slightly as he tried to think of more things. "What would you do, Laurie?" he asked.

  "Make Mom and Dad love each other. Stop the divorce. Go back home to Stoneleigh and be a real family again."

  "I didn't think of that." Jason smiled at me. "I'd make that happen too, Laurie. That would be the best thing in the world."

  I leaned back against the tall oak headboard. Like everything else in Aunt Grace's house, the bed was an antique, and even though I'd been sleeping in it for a week, I was still worried that the headboard might come toppling down on me in the night and squash me like a bug under someone's shoe. Cringing away from it as it squeaked slightly, I smiled at Jason, forgiving him for his trivial wishes. After all, he was only five
. "It would be wonderful, wouldn't it?"

  Jason nodded. "Maybe when we go home. Daddy will be living with Mommy again and there won't be a divorce anymore."

  Twirling a strand of hair around my finger, I shook my head. "I wouldn't count on it. The only reason Daddy ever came to our house was to see us, Jason. If we have to stay in West Virginia all summer, when will he and Mom see each other?"

  Jason shrugged and snuggled closer to me. "Can I sleep in here tonight? I'm afraid that crow will come back, Laurie."

  "I guess so. But just tonight," I added as Jason burrowed under the quilt, poking me with his cold feet.

  "I know, just tonight, just this one night." He yawned and pressed his head against my shoulder. "Your bones are sharp," he said sleepily.

  "So is your chin." I pushed him away and readjusted the covers, trying to keep out the cold air that crept in whenever one of us moved.

  Before long, Jason was fast asleep, but I just couldn't relax. I lay there, tense as a stretched-out rubber band, watching the shadows of branches and leaves sway gently on the wall, willing myself to go to sleep. All around me, the house talked in its sleep. The stairs creaked as if ghosts glided up and down them, and the floorboards squeaked in response. In the hall downstairs, the grandfather's clock struck twelve long times and something thumped in the kitchen. I opened my eyes, tenser than before, trying to think of a logical explanation for the noise. It must have been the cat, I decided, jumping down from the table or knocking the trash can over looking for a little snack.

  My eyes moved to the window. A crescent moon curved like a witch's smile against the dark sky and a mockingbird sang in a tree near the house, its voice sweet in the darkness. Hoping to see the bird, I slid quietly out of bed and stole to the window.

  Shivering in the cold night air, I looked out, but I didn't see the bird. The narrow road below Aunt Grace's house lay empty in the moonlight. Beyond it, the ground dropped away into a valley and then rose again in hills toward the mountains curving against the starry sky. There was no light anywhere, and it scared me to look out into so much empty darkness.