Author Archives: tim

School began shortly after the egging incident. We had just started middle school, so for the month of September, we had bigger things to worry about than a witch. Around Halloween, though, Mark and Adam started bringing the witch into more and more conversations. It impressed girls.

Some time in early November, Mark missed a weekend basketball game. When he showed up to practice on Monday, some guys started joking that he’d seen the witch and had to be hospitalized.

After practice, Adam and I were waiting for Mom to come pick us up. Adam asked Mark what happened, but he brushed us off.

“Did you see the witch?” Adam asked. I stayed silent.

“No.”

“Where did you see her?”

“I didn’t see the stupid witch,” Mark said.

“So what happened to you last weekend?”

“Look, I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Mark walked off just as Mom pulled up. In the car, Adam said, “He definitely saw the witch.” I said nothing.
“What are you guys talking about?” Mom asked. She seemed a little annoyed.

“Nothing,” I said. But then I thought I’d better prove my innocence. “Adam thinks Mark saw the witch last weekend “˜cause he wasn’t at the basketball game.”

“Oh really?” Mom said. “Did you know that Mark’s grandpa died and his family went to the funeral last weekend?”

We were struck dumb. Adam’s smile faded. For a second, I got really sad. I almost choked on a sob. But then I came to my senses. It happened to Mark, not me, I repeated to myself. It happened to Mark, not me.

Unfortunately, it was going to happen to me. And it was going to be worse.

One day, when Mom picked me up from the pool, she was oddly silent. At home, she sat me down. “I have some bad news,” she began.

“This is it,” I thought, “I am cursed.”

“Scarlet’s left us. She’s flown away.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

She saw the confusion on my face. “To heaven,” she added. “A neighbor called me today and said they found Scarlet in their yard.”

It still took a minute for it to register. When I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized she was trying to say that Scarlet was dead. And then slowly, my disbelief turned to anger. I wanted to ask which yard, but I’d already decided on the yard. There was only one possibility. I clenched my jaw and walked up to my room. Later, when it came time to feed Scarlet, I felt the loss a bit more. The house seemed quieter, even though it wasn’t really – how much noise does a cat make?

I couldn’t hide my sorrow when I mentioned the news to my friends at baseball practice. Adam came up to me later with a plan: he and his brother had two dozen eggs. They were going to throw them at the witch’s house.

“Does Mark know?” I asked.

“No.” Adam said, “It’s just us.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll go with you guys.”

I don’t know how Mom found out, but she did. She stormed into my bedroom the next morning and jolted me awake, shouting, “Alex James Sandoval! There is no excuse for what you did last night, do you understand me?” I looked down at my bed sheet. I noticed there were some black cat hairs on it. “Look at me!” she shouted. “Look at me!” I looked. “I certainly hope this wasn’t your idea. Was it?” I didn’t answer. “Was it?”

“No,” I whispered.

“So why did it sound like a good idea to throw eggs at someone’s house?” I started brushing the hairs into a little black fur ball. “Tell me something. If Mrs. Morton was the devil herself, how would it help things to throw eggs at her house?”

Her gaze was boring into me. There I was, sitting in bed in my pajamas, getting scolded by my mother, who kept asking, “how does it help – even if she’s guilty – to throw eggs at her house? How does it help?” I started crying. I was aware that she was right; I was hoping for pity. “Answer me, Alex. How does it help?”

“It doesn’t,” I whispered, wiping away a tear and sniffling.

“What?”

“It doesn’t,” I said louder.

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” She slammed the door behind her. I felt horrible. She made me feel horrible.

I decided to stay in my room all day, partly to punish myself, partly to punish her. I thought about running away. I thought about faking my own death. If she came in and found me dead, she’d really be sorry. But an hour later, Mom knocked on my door. I couldn’t say no when she asked if she could come in.

“You know I love you, right Alex?” she said. I didn’t answer. She came over and sat on the bed and started to rub my back. “If you’re as upset as I am about Scarlet dying, you must be pretty upset,” she said. “But she was an old cat, you know? She was almost eighteen.” She was still rubbing my back. I didn’t want to admit it, but it felt nice. “You know, sometimes animals just walk off alone when they know they’re going to die.” I saw a tear fall onto my pillow. “I think Scarlet was just old. I think she just walked off because she knew it was her time. There’s not always someone to blame. Sometimes, bad things just happen.” She pulled me toward her. “Baby, you know I love you, right?” If I had spoken, I would have burst into tears, so I just nodded. She hugged me. “Good,” she said.

When we got to our bikes, Mark and Ajay yelled at us, asking what took so long. We got on and pedaled back to my house, where we burst through the front door, shouting out theories over what the sounds might have been – trolls eating a neighborhood toddler, gremlins playing hot potato with baby rabbits, or maybe the witch herself slicing off her own big toe for some evil concoction.

As we were yelling out our theories, Scarlet, our black house cat, ran through the living room, and Adam shouted, “Ah, it followed us!” We joined in with a chorus of theatrical cries of terror. Mom told us we were being ridiculous.

Dad walked in from the kitchen. “If only you knew the truth about the witch,” he said. He paused until one of us asked, “Well, what’s the truth?”

“Every summer . . . .” He leaned in. “At the fourth of July . . . .” He looked from Mark to Ajay to Adam to me. “She grills . . . .” His eyes grew wide. “Little boys!” He made an evil laugh and came after me.

I grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at him, causing an eruption of pillow tossing, until Mom shouted, “Hey! Boys!” We stopped. “Act your age,” she shouted. My friends were kind of shocked. They weren’t sure if she was serious. “Oh wait,” she added, pointing at us, “I guess you four 11 year-olds are acting your age.” She flashed my father an evil glare, but she was smiling at the same time. “Take it outside,” she said, and we kids piled through the sliding doors to the back yard.

“Your parents are pretty cool,” Adam said later.

“Yeah?” I wasn’t sure if he was being serious. Mark and Ajay nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, they’re pretty cool.” I felt pretty cool myself.

The next morning, Adam’s dad called and said he should come home. He didn’t tell him then, but he had discovered their cat Remi dead. Later, when we learned they found the cat in the witch’s yard, we realized we may have heard Adam’s cat that night. As we were biking through the cool, dark streets and then pillow-fighting each other, Adam’s cat was dying. Maybe being murdered. It was a chilling revelation. It seemed a crime to have been enjoying ourselves while this tragedy was unfolding so close. Later, we wouldn’t admit that we had fun that night. And so it would be forgotten that my parents – and thus I – were cool.

Privately, Mark announced a theory to me. “I think that anything or anyone who goes into the witch’s yard ends up dead.”

“But I was in the yard,” I said.

He stared back at me and didn’t respond.

I wondered if it was possible. Could I have been cursed?

Mom assured me I wasn’t cursed and called Mark insecure. “He’s like Yertle the Turtle, building himself up by stepping on others. Some people need to hurt others to feel good about themselves.”

I hated Mark for making me go on the property in the first place and then for coming up with his stupid theory, which he shared with everyone. I tried proposing different theories that might level the field: What if everyone who sets eyes on the property ends up dead? What if everyone she sets eyes on ends up dead? But no one else wanted to share my curse.

Maybe at the pool that afternoon or maybe at a baseball practice later that week, Mark said we should go to the witch house “to see what really goes on there.” Adam and Ajay said they were in. I pictured Mrs. Morton’s daughter, looking in my direction and smiling at me. And then I pictured my mother shaking her head and mouthing “poor decision.”

When Mark asked, “Alex, are you in?” the faces of my friends replaced the faces of my daydream.

“Um . . . sure.”

We began a series of surveillance stakeouts that included binoculars, flashlights, ski masks, and once a set of walkie-talkies which were too loud to use. Each time, I was as much afraid of getting caught as I was hopeful that I would. I didn’t want to meet Mrs. Morton, but I sure did want to see her daughter again.

One night, while I was having a group sleepover, we snuck over to the witch house, stashed our bikes down the block, and staked out a few houses away. Mark suggested that one of us peek through a back window. He flipped and re-flipped a coin several times, and before we knew what he was doing, he said, “Alex. It’s you.” I thought about arguing with him, but I knew I’d lose.

It was a moonless night, and there were patches of shadows alongside every gate, hedge, and parked car. I scoped out my path, keeping an eye out for any headlights that might be approaching. As I passed over the freshly mowed and watered grass of the yard next door, I kept low. At the edge of the property, I paused to listen for neighbors out for a night stroll. I was hoping for some noise that might give me a reason to abort the mission. All I heard was the blood rushing through my ears.

On the dead lawn, I crawled toward the backyard, where a flickering light was shining from a sliding glass door, which opened to a back deck. I figured if I could spy through the cleavage of the closed curtains, I might see something our binoculars couldn’t.

The dry stubble of the lawn cut into my hands and knees as I moved along the side of the house. Near the back corner, the lights from inside sent blue shadows dancing across the neighbor’s trees. Behind me, the boys were whispering something I couldn’t hear. I was almost to the deck when a low grumbling sound stopped me. I froze so I could concentrate fully on listening. I heard a loud, phlegmy cough, followed by my friends franticly whispering my name, and then just as I was turning around to face them, a feline wail cut through the air.

Mark and Ajay ran, but Adam stayed behind, shouting, “Alex, c’mon.” I couldn’t move. The hair-raising yowl had me paralyzed.

Then I heard a click followed by a sound like a skateboard on pavement. I realized it was the sliding doors on the back deck. I ran.

Mark shouted, “ooh,” and skidded to a stop behind me.

I braked ten feet in front of him. “What happened?”

“See that house?” he said. “A witch lives there.”

I looked across the street at a single-story, white house on a corner lot. It had crooked aluminum awnings hanging above the windows; the paint was chipped and flaking; and there was a crumbling rock wall in the front yard. But the weird thing was that all the vegetation in the yard was dead. Though it was mid June, the two trees in the front remained leafless, and the grass was a sandy shade of brown. The foundation of the house was lined by dry dirt.

“Looks like an old person lives there,” I said, just to say something. Mark didn’t respond, so I added, “Creepy.”

“It’s not that creepy,” he said. He took off on his bike. “C’mon.” I lingered for a second, looking at the dead lot, curious. Then I worked up a sweat catching up to him.

I didn’t really think of the house as creepy. Not yet. But a few days later, I was on my bike again, riding alongside my mother on one of her jogs. We went into the older section of the neighborhood where the houses were smaller, and I noticed the witch house. I guess I thought pointing it out to her would be cool.

“See that house? A witch lives there.”

Mom stopped suddenly in front. I hit the brakes and looked back at her. “You mean Mrs. Morton?” she asked. It occurred to me I didn’t know who I meant. “I’ll show you a witch.” She marched up the front walk and rang the doorbell.

“Uh-oh,” I thought. I wanted to say something to stop her, but when I opened my mouth, I only managed a “wa.”

From the street, I watched as the door opened, and a gorgeous blonde woman stepped out. Their conversation was impossible to hear, and I was frozen still, staring at her. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I only took my eyes off her when she looked at me and I looked down at my feet.

Mom jogged back to me. “Was that Mrs. Morton?” I asked.

She shot me a sly smile. “No. That was her daughter. Mrs. Morton isn’t feeling well.”

“Oh.”

I was trying to memorize that face when Mom said, “She just graduated from college.”

“Mrs. Morton?”

“No,” Mom said, “her daughter.” She smiled at me again. “I think she’s a little old for you.” I would have turned red had she not changed the subject quickly: “So, I thought we could head to the pool around one.”

“Okay.” I was grateful to be let off the hook.