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“Horror stories show that the control we believe we have is merely an illusion.”-Clive Barker***Herb looked at the house and whistled as he got out of the car. “Are you sure this woman’s not a real witch?” he said. “Who else would live here?”Herb’s wife shushed him. The old iron gate around the property’s dying lawn creaked when he pushed on it, and a winding path of broken stones led up to the tall, dark house with Gothic turrets and staring windows. You’d basically have to be a witch to move into a place like this like this, he thought. The realtor was probably even running some kind of witch special: “Extra large broom closets, new cauldron included with down payment.” Herb’s wife tsked as they approached the front door. “This looks so unhealthy,” she said. “You don’t think Willie caught anything while he was here? From flea bites or something?”Herb thought it was more likely that fleas would get sick from biting their son than the other way around, but said nothing.When he pushed the doorbell he expected it to make a scream, like on an old TV show, but all he got was a perfectly normal ring. And when the door opened, he was surprised again: A pretty young woman with a figure and a big smile stood on the threshold, and she smelled like cinnamon. Herb took off his hat. “Pardon me, Miss, we’re looking for your…mother?” The woman’s bangs bobbed when she shook her head. “No, you’re looking for me. I’m Nancy Brookwood. And you must be Mr. and Mrs. Beaser. Come right in!”The house was all angles and wood paneling and as dark as pitch on the inside, but it wasn’t dirty or rundown. In fact, it seemed warm and pleasant; cinnamon and other baking scents were everywhere, as well as smells like burning candles and incense. It was immediately one of the most comfortable places Herb had ever been in. No wonder Willie is always trying to sneak over here, he thought.Herb’s wife furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry, are we expected? We shouldn’t be. Oh, that sounds rude, doesn’t it?”The Brookwood woman shook her head again. “Not at all. The only reason I knew you were coming is you’re the third parents to stop by today. I’ll probably get the whole neighborhood before the weekend is over.”She brought Herb and his wife to a library of sorts, with big windows and thick carpet and a monstrous fireplace. Herb recognized it from Willie’s description of the house. A plate of cookies sat on the table, apparently baked just for their arrival. The Brookwood woman was small, the antique chair she sat in bigger than she was. Sitting showed off her dynamite legs; Herb couldn’t take his eyes off them. “Have as much as you want,” she said. Herb blinked. Then he realized she was talking about the cookies. Luckily, his wife hadn’t noticed him staring. “Let me understand,” said Herb’s wife. “You’re the only Nancy Brookwood who lives here? I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re just—”“Not what you expected?” “You’re not an old broad with a hump and a glass eye who smells like dead cats, so no, not what we expected,” said Herb. His wife shot him a glare that could peel paint, but the Brookwood woman laughed—a high, completely unselfconscious sound. “Not yet,” she said. “There is another Ms. Brookwood, but she’s not around at the moment. Mostly it’s just me here. I know the assumptions people make; it comes of being a shut-in. But we’re here to talk about Willie, aren’t we? He’s a very smart boy. And such a little cutie. He looks just like you, Mr. Beaser.” She smiled at Herb. He almost grinned, but caught Ankara escort himself. The Brookwood woman’s smile thinned out to a knowing expression when she turned to Herb’s wife. “But you don’t want Willie coming here after school anymore. That‘s why you came, isn‘t it?” Herb slouched. His wife sat up straighter. She said, “It’s nothing personal, Miss Brookwood—” “Nancy.”“It’s just that I don’t entirely understand what you’re doing here with the children. I want to be sure that it’s not anything…unwholesome.”A stuffed owl decorated a nearby table, and the Brookwood woman touched its tail feathers in an absent way. Herb expected it to move and turn out to have been real all along, but it didn’t. He did spot movement underneath her chair, though, and realized that a cat was staring up at them. His wife hated cats, but she didn’t seem to have noticed it.“It’s nothing sinister,” said the Brookwood woman. “The neighborhood kids just come in after school and I bake them cookies, and they look around the house. It’s an old place with lots of interesting rooms and old junk.” She paused. “And I tell them stories.”“What kind of stories?” Herb said. This was the part that had gotten him out of bed early on a Saturday morning (his only day off from selling mattresses the rest of the week) to come over here. Willie had mentioned stories when Herb got after him for being late coming home so often. It seemed they made quite an impression on the kid. But when Herb asked what kind of stories they were, Willie clammed up. The Brookwood woman shrugged. “You know: ghost stories. The kind children like. Mostly ones my grandmother told me, when this was her home. I could tell you one, if you like? So you‘ll see that they‘re not so bad.”Herb almost agreed, but when opened his mouth all the spit dried up. Nice as she seemed, he had a feeling that Nancy Brookwood had a talent for ghost stories that he might be better off not sampling. To cover himself, he reached for a cookie. “But why are you doing all of this?” Herb’s wife said. “I live alone, Mrs. Beaser. I have a condition that makes it so that I can hardly bear to leave the house, and I get lonely. When the kids started showing up, I found I rather liked having them around.”“Willie says you’re a witch.” Herb had not really meant to speak up. Words were just flying out of his mouth today, and even his wife’s Medusa glare couldn’t shut him up. The Brookwood woman nodded, almost enthusiastically.“Oh, I know. Isn’t it funny? That’s why they came in the first place. You know, daring each other to knock on my door. The first time I answered I think I about scared poor Willie to death. Scared the life right OUT of him.” She laughed again, a much higher, more uncomfortable sound this time. “But I’m not so bad. Kids like being scared.”“Dr. Wertham says your stories aren’t good for Willie,” Herb’s wife added. “He’s a very respected child psychologist who spoke at the soroptomists last week. He says stories like yours lead to juvenile delinquency and all sorts of problems.”“Why Mrs. Beaser. How do you know what my stories are like if you’ve never heard one?”Herb’s wife frowned. That shut her up, Herb thought. “Won’t you have a cookie?” said the Brookwood woman. “They’re snickderdoodles. Willie’s favorite.” She pushed the plate forward again, but Herb’s wife looked at it like it was a plate full of dead mice. “We’re sorry to bother you, ma‘am,” Herb said, standing up with hat in hand. “Please call me Nancy,” she said Ankara escort bayan again, walking them to the door. “I understand why you’re so protective of Willie. He’s a darling boy. You’re both welcome to come over anytime when the children are here, so that you can see that nothing strange is going on.”“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Herb’s wife. “I can tell you have cats in here. I’m deathly allergic.”“That’s just Trullibub. She’s harmless.” The cat peered at them with round yellow eyes from the library, eventually joining the Brookwood woman to stare from the front door as they made their way back down the walk. Herb’s wife slammed the car door when she got in. “That woman IS a witch,” she said.“I think what you really want to call her is a word that rhymes. Anyways, she seems harmless enough to me.” “You would say that. Don’t think I didn’t catch you peeping at her legs. Willie won’t be associating with that woman anymore, mark my words. Her stories are giving him nightmares.”That part was true. Or at least, it was true that the kid was having trouble sleeping the last three weeks. But he never talked about it; whenever they brought it up, Willie froze, like an animal in a spotlight. Herb wasn‘t really sure if it was the Brookwood woman‘s stories to blame…but what else could it be? Herb looked back at the house as he started the engine. From the outside, it was a looming heap. You’d never guess how nice it really was.“Are you going to hang onto that old thing the entire way home?” Herb’s wife said. He realized he still had one of the snickerdoodles in his hand. The icing was a bunch of lines in a six-pointed shape. A hex mark, they were called. For some reason, he nearly threw it out the window, but after a second of reconsideration he ate the whole thing in two bites. The taste of butter filled his mouth, and he felt gratified when he swallowed it, a feeling that lasted all the way home.***For the next week, Herb couldn’t sleep. It was ruining him on the job. He’d stay up for hours looking at nothing, and when he couldn’t get a wink he’d go downstairs and try to read. But this didn’t work, because he hadn’t read anything except a newspaper since he was ten years old. He wasn’t even sure where the books in the living room came from; had they come with the house?Tonight, like most nights, he couldn’t get concentrate on the page. He kept reading the same sentence over and over: “’A witch is born out of the true hungers of her time,’ she said. ‘I was born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me.’”What in the hell did that even mean? He sighed and put the book down. His wife was upstairs, snoring away. It seemed like the worse he slept, the heavier she did. He swore she did it on purpose. He glanced toward Willie’s door; the kid was sleeping again, at least, ever since they made him swear off seeing the Brookwood woman.Willie was sullen about it, mind you, but Herb figured he’d get over it. At first he and his wife had fought, but eventually he decided she was right. (Not that he’d be caught dead saying so.) It wasn’t good for a kid to spend so much time around some spooky woman with nuts in her head. And she WAS a spooky woman. A peach, but spooky all the same. The clock struck three. The witching hour, he told himself, and laughed. He went to the fridge. The same three cans of Coors had been in there since Labor Day, when his wife had insisted he quit drinking. She didn’t think he had a problem, she Escort Ankara just didn’t like buying it at the store. “It makes me look like a bum” was the only explanation she gave.He cracked the can and drank almost the entire thing while standing in his underwear in the yellow fridge light. Life was so much better with a good beer in your hand. The word “brew” stood out on the label. That made him think of witches again, but now it seemed funny. Strange how Willie always insisted that Brookwood woman was a witch, but he never seemed afraid. He even seemed to like it. Weird damn kid. The wife was starting to make a fuss about those comic books he reads, and maybe she was right about those too. Maybe he’d pitch them all out in the morning. Had to do something to make the kid act normal for a change.Herb finished off the beer, grabbed another, and closed the fridge. The kitchen went pitch black, and it was a second before he realized why this was surprising: He’d left a light on in the living room, and now it was out. Maybe the bulb had gone bad. This almost cheered him up. Changing it would give him something to do for a minute.Then he heard a voice: “Herb…”He froze, but nothing else happened. It hadn’t been his wife’s voice. Had he imagined it? Herb’s bare feet sank an inch into the shag carpet as he made his way back to his chair. He gave the lamp a rattle and turned the switch, and it flickered back on right away. Nobody in the room. No one hiding in the corner or behind the coat rack. His imagination, then. He chuckled, but it was a worn out sound. Damn, he was tired.“Herb…” A hand touched his shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin. No less a surprise when he saw who it was: Nancy Brookwood had snuck up behind him. Now she was looking at him like the cat that ate every canary in the store. “Hello, Herb,” she said. He actually grabbed his chest, like a guy having a heart attack on TV. No heart attack actually came, and he was almost disappointed. “Holy cripes, woman!” he said. “Are you trying to kill me?”“I’m sorry. Should I kiss it and make it better?”Herb stammered. “I’m not—what the hell are you doing here?” He looked her up and down. “And what in the name of Mike are you wearing?” She had on something that looked like a ladies’ sleeping gown, maybe one of those Japanese numbers, but it didn’t tie up in the front, and it had a hood that covered her face down to the eyes. Underneath it she was naked as a jaybird. “I came to see you. I was hoping you’d stop by again, but since I haven’t seen you or Willie I decided to visit.”Holy Pete, thought Herb, this broad really is nuts. He squirmed on his feet. “Miss Brookwood—”“Nancy.”“Nancy, I don’t know if you’re, you know, healthy. Upstairs. Did you take anything tonight, or drink anything? Do you know where you are?”“I’m right here. Can’t you feel me?” She put her hand on his chest and then, before he could react, she put his hand on hers too. Her skin felt red hot. Herb dropped his beer. He didn’t notice. “My, uh, wife’s in the other room,” he said. Nancy shook her head.“I made sure she won‘t hear anything. And Willie is asleep too. Nobody will bother us. I’ve got a story to tell you, Herb.”“A, uh, ghost story?”“A story about me and you.”She took off her robe. Herb couldn’t take his eyes off of her. No, scratch that: He could, but why the hell would he want to? She pushed him down into his chair and climbed onto his lap. When she put her face next to his, her hair hung around him like a curling curtain. “I thought you never left the house?” he said. The feeling of her round ass rubbing through his shorts immediately gave him the most urgent hard-on he’d had since he was 22. He touched her bare legs tentatively at first, like he was checking to see if a stovetop had been left on. “I don’t,” she said.
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