Summer Of Fear (10 page)

“Witch!” I whispered. “Witch!”

My birthday is at the beginning of July.

I have always loved birthdays. I have a chain of birthday memories that run ail the way back to the year I was three, although Dad insists that no one can remember that far. I got a doll for that birthday; she had real hair, not the painted kind, and was dressed in a ballet skirt, and when I took her out of the box I thought she was alive.

So, you see, I do remember.

Later there was a circus birthday when I saw my first elephant and ate my first cotton candy. And there was the bicycle birthday, and the tennis racket birthday, and when I was twelve there was the birthday that brought Trickle.

But this particular birthday, the one on which I turned sixteen, there was no air of festivity. This was my own fault, for my parents wanted to give me a party.

“Sixteen is such a special age,” Mother kept saying. “Don’t you want to invite some people to celebrate? Or if you’d prefer to have it just family, we could go out for dinner someplace nice and then maybe to a play.”

“No,” I told her. “I really don’t feel like doing anything. I’ve outgrown that sort of thing.”

The truth, of course, was that I would not share my birthday with Julia.

Julia, Just the sound of her name was enough to make me feel slightly sick. When I heard my Mother speak it, her voice filled with warmth—”Julia, dear, you really must do some posing for me. It’s a waste to have a beautiful niece and not to use her for a model”—my stomach churned.

“Julie,” my father called her. Every time he saw her his face brightened, as though she were the second daughter he had always longed for.

I held myself apart from them all and watched, and it was a strange feeling, as though I were a visitor from another planet observing something of which I was no part. I watched Julia smiling at my father and calling him “Tom.” I watched her helping Mother in the kitchen, moving deftly about with a pan or a dish towel, taking over chores that formerly were mine. I watched Bobby tease her into a game of dominos and saw Peter’s eyes follow her about with a kind of hopeless adoration.

But worst of all was watching her with Mike. For the first time in my life I wished that he did not live next door to us, for it made it much too easy for him to wander over after work, for no special reason, to sit on the porch steps and chat. He was as nice to me as he always was—nicer, really—for lie no longer tossed me playful insults or called me silly nicknames. He was politely formal and very kind.

“You look really nice today,” he would say. “I like your hair like that,” although my hair was no different from what it had always been, “Is that a new outfit?” when I was wearing the same tired pair of denim shorts and faded plaid shirt that I had worn all summer the year before.

But he was not kind enough to try to hide his reason for coming.

“Is Julia around?” he would ask, avoiding my eyes. And Julia always was.

“You’re not mad, are you, Rae?” she asked me. “It wasn’t as though I could help it. These things do sometimes happen.”

“You made it happen,” I said bitterly. “You knew Mike was mine.”

“He wasn’t yours,” Julia said in a reasonable way. People don’t own other people. You told me yourself the first day I was here that you weren’t going steady. I didn’t break anything up. Mike says you were just good friends, that you’ve always been like a little sister to him.”

“That’s not true.” I tried to speak with dignity. “He may say that now, but he wouldn’t have said it a month ago.”

“Things change,” Julia said with a shrug.

This could not be denied. Things did change, and the thing that seemed to have changed the most was Julia herself. When I think back now, it is hard for me to decide exactly whom to picture when I say the name “Julia.” There were three Julias—all different. There was the Julia who arrived with my parents that first day, hesitant and frightened, the haunted, tight-faced girl who stood uncertainly in the doorway in the shadow of my father, and held out her hand to me and said, “Hello.” Then there was the later Julia, relaxed and self-confident, the quaint touch of the hills gone from her speech. This was the Julia who plucked her eyebrows so that they no longer hung like bushes over her huge eyes and used my lip gloss to widen her mouth and make her thin lips fuller and warmer. This Julia laughed and chattered and used Albuquerque slang and went with Carolyn to the hair dressers’ and had her thick mane cut and styled into a long shag.

“She’s copied Carolyn,” I remarked to Peter, who immediately bristled as though he had been personally insulted.

“You’re jealous,” he said. “You’ve turned into a real cat since Mike threw you over.”

“Threw me over!” True though they were, the words cut me to the core. I could not believe that my brother had said them. “What about you? Do you feel thrown over?”

“I never went with Julia.”

“But you would have if you could,” I said cruelly. “You fell for her like a ton of bricks, and you know it. And you’re not over it either.”

“So?” Peter said. “That’s why I understand how Mike feels about her. No guy in his right mind could help falling for a girl like Julia, and she’s got a right to choose anybody she wants. It burns me up to hear you run her down just because she has something that you haven’t.”

“What is it she has?” I asked, really wanting to know. “What are the qualities that have you and Mike so enchanted?”

“I can’t explain it,” Peter said. “It’s just—something, A kind of feeling. A sort of—magic.” And he blushed, embarrassed at having used a word that sounded so romantic. “She’s just—special somehow.”

This was the second Julia. There was a third Julia too. I would meet her later.

So, by my own request, there was no birthday celebration for me. I looked at myself in the mirror that morning as I was brushing my teeth and told myself, “You’re sixteen now—sweet sixteen—the age when lovely things begin to happen.” But nothing lifted and sang within me. At the breakfast table there were some packages waiting for me containing a blouse and some earrings and two record albums. I opened them and said my thank you’s, but it was al rather flat and forced. I did not even feel like trying on the blouse, and instead of playing the albums I put them away.

In the middle of the morning Carolyn came by on her way out to the pool to ask if Julia and I would like to go with her.

“We can have lunch there,” she said. “It’s my treat because of your birthday.”

“I don’t feel like it,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

Carolyn gave me a funny look and said, “Well, that’s up to you. Are you coming, Julia?”

“Yes,” Julia said, “as soon as I get my suit.” She went upstairs and while she was gone Carolyn gave me my gift. It was a friendship ring with a tiny turquoise set in the silver band.

“I got it at Old Town a couple of months ago,” she said. “I was so happy about finding it. I thought it was just the right present. Now—well, I don’t know. Maybe you’d rather have something else.”

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s lovely. Why would you think I wouldn’t want it?”

“I don’t know,” Carolyn said again. “We just don’t seem the same as we used to be. We used to talk about everything, but lately you seem to have sort of walled yourself off. You never want to go any place or do anything. I spend more time with Julia these days than I do with you.”

“Then maybe you’d like to give the ring to Julia,” I said shortly. As soon as I heard the words I wished I could call them back, they sounded so cold and bitter. I saw Carolyn flinch as though I had hit her. Carolyn and I had never in our lives said unpleasant things to each other. It was one of the proofs of our friendship that even when we argued we never got angry.

“I bought the ring for you,” she said now in a tight voice. “You can keep it or exchange it or throw it away, it’s all one with me. Here comes Julia now—you’re dumb not to come to the pool. It’s a beautiful day for swimming.”

They left, and I went out into the yard and watered the roses. Then for lack of anything better to do, I strolled down the sidewalk and paused to say hello to Professor Jarvis who was sitting in a lawn chair in his front yard, writing in a “note book.

“How did your talk go?” I asked him by way of greeting. “My father read in the paper that you were scheduled to give a lecture on witchcraft to some women’s club.”

“The University Women,” he said, looking pleased that I had known about it. “It went very well indeed, thank you, my dear. It’s one of the benefits of retirement to have the time to do such things.”

“It’s funny the University Women would be interested in such a fairytale subject,” I said.

“A fairytale subject?” His pale blue eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Now there’s where you’re wrong, Rachel. The subject of my lecture had nothing what-so-ever to do with fairy tales. What I spoke about was modem day witchcraft of the sort that’s practiced right here in this country all the time.”

“You’re kidding, of course!” I regarded him with amazement. “Nobody in this day believes in something like that!”

“No?” He laid his book down on his lap. “Then why is it, pray tell, that there are over four hundred witch covens in existence in the United States at this very moment?”

“You mean people who practice real magic?” I exclaimed.

“That depends upon your definition of ‘magic,’” Professor Jarvis told me. “If you mean the fairytale stuff, then probably not. But if you accept as the definition of ‘magic’ the one originated by Aleister Crowley the question is debatable. Mr. Crowley is one of the best known of modern day witches, and he calls magic ‘the science and art of causing changes to occur in conformity with will.’ In other words, he describes magic as the utilization of the mind force to make things happen as they are desired.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” I asked doubtfully.

The professor nodded. “If I did not I would certainly not be giving lectures on the subject. We know that the mind has powers that often go undeveloped. Scientific tests conducted in laboratories have proved that certain people have more control over their mind forces than others. There are people who can predict the turn of a card or tune their minds in on events that are occurring at other places. Why then is it unreasonable to believe that there might be other people who can channel this mind force outward and create happenings instead of just know about them?”

“And such people are witches?”

“Some of them call themselves that.”

“Have you ever really known one?” It was crazy, of course, but I was fascinated despite myself.

“I’m not sure, but I think so,” Dr. Jarvis said seriously. “Back when I was first teaching at the University I had a student who came from a particularly secluded area of the Ozarks. Her name was Ruth, and she had been raised in an atmosphere of witchcraft, for her mother and aunts all claimed to be practicing witches. Whether this girl was one or not, she had been taught a number of charms which she used quite freely. She used to talk with me about it, knowing my interest in the subject.

“I remember one time in particular—” He smiled at the memory. “Ruth was in love with a young man who was a member of the basketball team. He was an extremely good looking boy and very popular. He dated one of the cheerleaders and as soon as they graduated they planned to be married. Well, Ruth decided to do something to offset that plan. She attended an after-game party in the cheerleader’s dorm room, and while she was there she went into the bathroom and got a couple of hairs out of her rival’s brush. She took these back to her room and made a little statue out of beeswax and stuck the hairs in it. Then she lit a match and began melting the wax figure. She let a couple of drops of wax fall, and then she blew out the match and went back to the party.

“Well, it just so happened that while Ruth was in her room performing this little ceremony, the cheerleader had become suddenly ill with stomach pains. The party broke up, and the basketball playing boyfriend was leaving just as Ruth reached the door. They stood in the hall and chatted a few minutes, and then Ruth suggested in a friendly way that they go back to her own room where she had a hot plate and could make some coffee. So they did, and she brewed the coffee and put something in it—I think she referred to the ingredient as ‘milfoil,’ but I believe it was actually a part of a plant called Achillea millefolium. From that night on, as far as I know, Ruth and the basketball player were a steady twosome, and he never looked at the poor little cheerleader again.’”

“What a story!” I exclaimed. “You don’t really believe it, do you?”

“Well, I received it secondhand,” Professor Jarvis said. “So I cannot be absolutely certain. What I do know is that Ruth herself believed it. As far as she was concerned it had a happy ending. She and her ballplayer married and moved to California where he played professionally for many years and finally retired to open his own sporting goods store. I still receive a Christmas card from them every year. They seem to be very happy.”

“A wax doll,” I said slowly. “She melted a wax doll.”

“That’s correct.”

“Professor Jarvis—” I hesitated, hardly knowing how to ask the next question. “Was there anything about Ruth—about her looks—that made her different from other people? Was she especially beautiful?”

“No,” the professor said. “In fact, she was quite ordinary looking. Very nondescript features, a short dumpy little figure. Nothing anyone would ever notice, except for her eyes.”

“Her eyes?”

“She had strange eyes,” Professor Jarvis said. “Sometimes they seemed opaque, closed over. Other times you would look into them and it would seem they were so deep they had no bottom. I think that if Ruth did indeed have powers of the kind she attributed to herself, her eyes were a focal point for them.

“And another odd thing—though she most certainly was not beautiful in any accepted sense of the word, there were those who swore that she was. The people who were closest to her, the ones on whom she concentrated her attention, seemed to see her with different eyes from the rest of us. They found her very beautiful indeed.”