Charlaine Harris - Crimes by Moonlight

If someone were in the house, I’d have heard. That’s the beauty of old, ratty, creaky, in-need-of-renovation, soft pine floors. And an old, ratty, paranoid spaniel. I climbed thirteen steps from the landing to the second floor, each one a warning system, the boys ahead of me, Tooth’s toenails clattering alongside me.

The bed was in disarray. The comforter, all bunched up on my husband’s side of the bed, could hide a couple of bodies. I moved closer, telling Tooth to stop whining. The twins were there already, standing on tiptoe to look under the covers.

“She’s not here,” Charlie said, at the same moment Paco said, “Where did she go?”

“She went back to twelvey twenty-one-y,” Charlie added.

One down pillow still bore the imprint of a head. I tossed it aside and yanked the sheet toward the wrought-iron headboard, smoothing it down and tucking it in. A faint scent-Shalimar?-seemed to waft upward, but that had to be my imagination. Pregnant nose. “What did the lady look like?” I asked, adopting a cheery, sitcom-mom voice.

“She has purple hair,” Charlie said. “Curly.”

“All of her is purple,” added Paco.

The boys’ consonants, like their numbers, were still works in progress, so the words came out “coolly” and “poople.” I found the description reassuring.

“Part of her is green,” Charlie said. “She has a fancy dress. A blue dress.”

“A ugly dress,” Paco said. “She’s a mean lady.”

Charlie nodded. “A mean witch.”

That night, when I told Richard, my husband, that the boys had seen a green and purple witch in our bed, he did not express concern. He did not, in fact, look up from the Dow Jones Industrials. “Hm. What’d you do?”

“I made the bed.”

I did not mention to him that I’d already made the bed earlier that morning.

NOT that the boys couldn’t drag a chair across the room in order to climb onto the bed and undo the sheets. This is what I told myself the next afternoon at the farmers’ market, two freeway stops away. Except the chair had been in its usual place by the closet, and the boys, at age two plus, were not in the habit of covering their tracks. It wasn’t age-appropriate behavior. Even now Paco, in the double stroller, was brazenly throwing grapes at a sparrow while telling me he wasn’t throwing grapes at a sparrow. But I couldn’t think of another explanation, except for pregnant brain. Could I swear that I had made the bed? Not absolutely, but beyond a reasonable doubt. You made your bed and now you have to lie in it, my grandma would say, but in fact, I made my bed every morning precisely so I wouldn’t be tempted to lie in it, minutes later, for a quick two-hour nap. Sleep was a siren song these days, my drug, my crack cocaine. Sleep was more seductive than sex, food, or True Love. The only thing stronger was the biological imperative to answer the cry of “Mommy!”

“Mommy, Charlie see Madeeda,” Paco said.

“Who’s Madeeda?” I glanced down at my son’s upturned face. Charlie was slumped next to him, asleep, mouth open.

“The bad witch.”

“The one who was sleeping in Mommy and Daddy’s bed?”

Paco nodded. A stand of irises distracted me, sending an odor my way. And something else-vanilla? Jasmine? “Where did you see her?” I asked.

“Not me. Charlie.”

“Where did Charlie see her?”

“Here.”

I stopped instantly, looking around. Another shopper bumped into me from behind. He apologized. I counter-apologized. He maneuvered past me. I moved the stroller over to a grassy area and squatted. “Paco. When did Charlie see the lady? Back near the car?”

“Right now,” Paco said. “In the clouds. Twelvey twenty-one-y.” And before I could stop him, he was rousing his brother by squeezing his hair.

Charlie woke up hot and cranky, and it took several ounces of apple juice and some string cheese to restore equilibrium. He had, as it turned out, seen the witch fly across the sky. And “twelvey twenty-one-y” did indeed figure into it; Charlie was very clear about that, but whether it described a particular cloud, time, or latitude was hard to say.

That night when I told Richard that the boys could apparently eavesdrop on each other’s dreams, he was so engrossed in the Somdahl & Associates prospectus he was reading, he could only manage a “Huh.” I decided it wasn’t the time to announce we had a recurring witch in our midst.

OVER the next few days Madeeda’s presence in our conversation was pervasive, and I found myself ascribing to her a voice, deep and foreign-accented, whispering numbers in my ear. Which was odd. I, unlike the men in my life, found numbers uninteresting. I formed a picture of Madeeda, too, a lithe creature with a concave belly. Of course, most people seemed lithe to me, as the baby in my belly grew heavier and my pregnancy shorts grew tighter. It was too hot for clothes, and I let the boys run around wearing only Pull-Ups, but my own choices were limited. I wasn’t Californian enough to be less than fully dressed, given my figure. I cranked up the AC in the house, but it produced more noise than cold air, the creaks and thuds emanating from the vents like captives in a dungeon. I needed to stay out of the sun and off my feet, Dr. Iqbal had said. So I plopped the boys at the kitchen table, pointed a desk fan at them, and brought out crayons. “Draw Madeeda for me,” I said.

My attention was drawn to the bay window, where the afternoon light streamed through, showing the dirt on the outside, the dust inside, and a crack up in one corner. I needed a professional window washer, but even a walk through the Yellow Pages sounded exhausting, and they’d probably be prohibitively expensive, like everything else in L.A. Richard had loved the look of this imitation farmhouse, snapped up in a short sale, but we’d been unprepared for how expensive quaint can be. Maintenance had not been high on the previous owner’s agenda in his steady march toward bankruptcy.

As I watched, the crack in the window seemed to grow. Which was impossible, of course, but-

“Mommy. Look.” Charlie tugged at my sleeve to show me his Madeeda, a stick figure without arms, which is to say, an inverted V. Paco’s was a close-up, a large, torsoless head with vacant eyes.

“Very nice, guys,” I said, and turned back to the window. The crack was halfway down now. Surely that wasn’t normal window behavior. A windshield hit with a flying pebble might do that, but could a regular window just fracture for no reason? I was scaring myself. I forced my attention back to the table and picked up a crayon. I would sketch. I liked sketching.

“That’s Madeeda,” Charlie said, after a moment.

“This?” I’d drawn a gaunt woman with a green face and long purple hair flowing in cascades around her head. She had a flat chest and ballerina-skinny arms. Because I can’t do credible feet, hers appeared to be en pointe, a few inches above the ground, giving her a floaty, untethered quality. “This is what Madeeda looks like?” I asked.

Charlie nodded. Paco nodded.

“Twelvy twenty-one-y,” Charlie said. “Madeeda.”

“And Madeeda says if we don’t listen we are going to hell,” Paco added.

THAT night while chopping vegetables, I phoned Karen, my cousin in Denver. “Is it normal for twins to share an imaginary playmate?”

Karen snorted. “I can’t even get my twins to share breakfast cereal. I need two of everything, on separate shelves. It’s like keeping kosher. What’s that noise?”

“I’m chopping carrots.”

“You’re cooking at-what, ten p.m.?”

“Only nine here. It’s for tomorrow. Crock-Pot beef bourguignon. I’m doing a lot of night cooking now. It’s the weirdest thing; I can’t sleep. I can always sleep.” I glanced at the window, illuminated by the back porch light. It now sported two full-length vertical cracks.