Fire Solves All Problems Perfectly pt 44

That place is bad, Tim hisses, a witch lives in there.

She kills kids all the time, you tell him, because that’s what you’ve always been told.

No way, Jason says, shading his eyes up at the second-story windows that peek through the branches, the curtains never once opened that you can remember; everybody knows about the witch’s house and the overgrown gravel strip they call Spook Alley that separates her yard from the vacant lot behind it; there is a remnant of the Wicker Woods still there in a crescent behind her house, and though your mother told you that she was not a witch and that Mrs. Landers is just misunderstood, when Dan reminded her that they did find a dead girl in the alley she had to concede that part. At Halloween the kids dare each other to touch her door. You remember the clammy feel of the wood.

You can see the goosebumps on Jason’s arms. I dare you to touch her door, you say.

Jason rolls backward a foot. No way, he says.

You’re chicken, you tell him.

If you don’t, Tim says, you’re not jake.

Jason’s expression falls into fury so fast that Tim is taken aback; but he knows what you know and what Tim knows, that once invoked there is no choice, one is either jake or not and it’s put up or shut up time, as Dan Bell would say. Swearing under his breath Jason drops his bike and walks on the bubbling blacktop that pops under his feet, kicking through the brambles and nettles, plunging into the tall, dead shrubs of the witch’s yard, hands in front of his face to ward off spider webs, and then he is gone from view, the day returning to silence save for a crow somewhere that complains.

You wait; you hear nothing. Tim dances from foot to foot. She killed him, he moans.

No she didn’t, you say, wiping sweat from your brow. He’s just messing with us.

Help! You freeze. She’s got me! The words are muffled, as if said through a hand.

Tim’s eyes widen. Arrgh! The cry is cut off suddenly, and Tim shrieks and whips his bike around, pedaling away like the devil is chasing him and not coming back no matter how much you shout after him. You angrily kick your bike; Tim is the only kid you know who isn’t allowed to trick or treat because it gives him bad dreams, and he doesn’t watch horror movies at all except when he spends the night at your house and then you have to hear about it from his mom the next day when she calls to complain.

You call for Jason but there is no answer. He’s just messing with me, you think, and she’s not really a witch, she’s Mrs. Landers and she’s misunderstood.

You start across the road, hands balled up at your side, sweating, the gloomy overcast made by the thicket around the dirty black house looking like the end of the world; you hold your breath, pushing into the dead overgrowth until you are at the side of the house wading through ferns and a layer of paint chips, dust kicking up that catches the sunlight and makes spears of it, stepping carefully, dead sticks cracking like bones and catching on your shoelaces. You approach the closest window, the only one not covered by a shade, wide open and with motion inside; you don’t want to look but you know you have to and if Jason is in there being killed you will scream as loud as you can and run as fast as you can, and I am jake, you whisper, I am jake, I am jake, I am jake.

You grip the edge of the windowsill and look, and for a moment you see exactly what you expect, the boiling cauldron and the witch perched over it – but aside from uncombed white hair she is not a witch but an old woman in a stained orange blouse seated at a small table and smoking in a room where the wallpaper is curled at the edges, and she glances up and startles when she sees you, her hand flying to her chest. Hands clap down on your shoulders and you yell, turning to face your doom but finding Jason there laughing – and yet he suddenly cries out as well because now the witch is at the window looking down on you, her eyes wide and white, and you flee together, branches lashing at you until you crash back out of the overgrowth, back into the sun with cobweb pieces trailing from your hair. Your bikes never seem to work when you need them most so you both pick them up and run, the pedals smacking into your bare shins and drawing blood but you don’t feel it. You don’t stop until the witch is well behind you, and you collapse at an empty intersection where lots have been declared by orange surveyor’s flags that flap lazily in the breeze.

Did you see her? Jason asks when he can breathe. His hair is smeared into black streaks stuck to his cheeks with sweat.

You nod, panting.

She was a real witch, he says after a time. A really real witch.