Elizabeth Massie - Naked, on the Edge

I swallowed, the sound loud in my skull. I began to hum in case the cotton wasn’t good at keeping out witch sounds. The humming worked, or the witch had decided to be silent. Hitty-Pitty sniffed the step, then hauled her little furry body up to the next step, then to the next, and she was on the porch. She scurried into the darkness, and that was that.

Withdrawing the tube I immediately crumpled it, avoiding the end that had touched the porch step, then threw it into a trash barrel in the alley. I caught up with Marla and Jena, who had tired of the tree house and had flooded a hole in our front yard with the garden hose. “We’re making soup,” Jena said.

“Can we play with Hitty-Pitty?” I asked Marla.

“Hitty-Pitty?” Marla blinked.

“Your hamster.”

“Shut up, Annie.”

“Shut up why?”

“You know my mom won’t let me have a pet. You’re rubbing it in.”

My blood went cold. “Jena, do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No, and be quiet.” She was sprinkling bits of dandelion into the mud hole. “I have to get the soup right or the queen will be mad.”

Hitty-Pitty. Gone to the witch and forgotten.

“You want to play?” Marla asked.

I shook my head then went to the tree house and climbed up alone. I broke off a thin, dry branch and snapped it into tiny pieces. Tossing the handful of broken branch bits into the air, I watched as they spun in a breeze then fell to the ground. Why was I the only one who remembered Buddy and Hitty-Pitty? Miss Dowdy’s house was creepy, but this was the creepiest thing of all.

I avoided Jena and the others for the next few days. Mom wondered why I was moping around, looking at television but not really watching it, spinning my fork in my food but not really eating it, cradling my Breyer horse models but not really playing with them. She said if I didn’t quit it she’d make me go to the doctor’s and get a shot.

I began to really wonder what Miss Dowdy looked liked. I wondered what it was like inside her house. I wondered if she had baked Buddy and Hitty-Pitty in a pie. I wondered what would happen if a person wandered into her yard and onto her porch. Would they be forgotten just like the pets? Had it already happened but those people were forgotten?

I wondered if I could kill her.

There were no guns in the house; Dad had taken those. Jena had a wooden bow and arrow set but it didn’t shoot very well. I’d have to drive the arrow right into the witch’s heart if that was my weapon of choice. I wondered if witches even had hearts.

There was powdered poison in the basement that Mom used to kill mice. All I needed to do was poison something Miss Dowdy liked to eat and somehow get her to eat it. What did witches like to eat?

I figured everybody likes cookies. We had a pack of Oreos in the kitchen, partly eaten, held shut with a clothespin. I took the Oreo pack to the basement, dumped in some poison and shook it up. Back in the kitchen, I put five cookies on a plastic plate, covered it in plastic wrap and taped the wrap securely. Next, I secured cotton balls in my ears. Then, making sure Jena, Marla, and David weren’t spying on me so they could then tell on me, I took the plate down the street, over the chalk marks, past the kids in their wading pool behind the chain link fence, and around to Miss Dowdy’s house.

Nothing had changed. The shadows that held the porch hostage were as deep as before, as if the sun didn’t dare challenge the will of the witch. But the distance from the sidewalk was too far to toss the plate.

The only option was to run to the porch without touching it or the steps, and run back. It wasn’t until Buddy or Hitty-Pitty touched the porch that the trouble began.

Inhaling deeply and then holding it so I wouldn’t breathe Miss Dowdy’s foul air, I dashed across the yard. Four feet from the porch, I hurled the plastic plate at the top step. Then my foot struck an overturned birdbath base hidden in the tall weeds, and I went down. My head hit the edge of the porch, driving stars clear through my brain.

“Are you all right?” The voice sounded far away.

Head pounding, I pushed myself into a sitting position. The world wobbled.

“I said, are you all right?”

I touched my forehead. It wasn’t bleeding, but it stung like blazes and there was going to be a huge bruise.

“Take out that cotton so you can hear me better.”

I glanced at the porch and saw something move in the shadows. “No!” I managed.

The movement shifted, developing a shape, coming closer to the top step. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see. But the voice said, “Look at me, it’s all right.”

I looked back at the street and the sidewalk, which continued to waver.

“It’s all right.”

I looked. She was on the top step now, a small woman in a pale blue dress and white sneakers. Her gray hair was in two braids that were coiled and pinned to her head. Her skin was nearly as white as her shoes, but she bore no horns, no warts that I could see, no claws or fangs.

“They’re all scared of me, I know, but not you.”

Oh, yes I am! I thought.

“You’re my first real visitor in a long time. Won’t you come in?”

No! I know what happened to Hansel and Gretel!

“I know you remember the dog. The hamster. If you come in, I will tell you the truth.”

“I don’t want to come in.”

“Then sit on the porch. I don’t mean any harm. Truly I don’t.”

I stood up and looked over my shoulder, hoping to find someone to talk me out of this. There was no one on the street.

“Never mind, then,” said Miss Dowdy with a sigh. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

I heard myself say, “I’m not scared,” and in saying it, I found I wasn’t so much. I pulled the cotton out of my ears.

“Come.” She smiled. It was a lovely smile, really. “I’ll explain it to you. Sit with me on the porch.”

Once up the steps I could see the porch clearly. It had a little glider and a rattan chair with a sunny yellow cushion. She motioned for me to sit. I chose the chair.

“In a way,” Miss Dowdy said as she lowered herself on the glider and began to rock back and forth, pushing at the porch floor with the tips of her shoes, “you children are right. No, I’m not a witch but yes, I do have power. You know that there was a dog. There was a hamster.”

I nodded, noting with surprise my head didn’t hurt any more.

“I’ve got a responsibility to help people, to try and keep their lives from being any sadder than they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Buddy was riddled with cancer, but David didn’t know it. He would have been very upset if he’d had to watch his dog to wither away and die. I called for Buddy and he came to me. Now, David doesn’t know there was a Buddy, so he won’t be sad.”

I thought about this. What a strange idea, yet it made sense. “But…what about Hitty-Pitty? You didn’t call for her. I brought her to you.”

“Honey, that hamster was going to get away from you kids the very evening you brought it here. A feral cat was going to eat it almost to death, and Marla was going to find it and have to put it out of its misery. Do you know how much that would hurt your friend?”

“But I didn’t know that. I only did it as a test, to see what would happen.”

“You might not have realized what you were doing, but something in you knew the hamster was in trouble and it made you bring it to me. Now, it won’t suffer and neither will Marla.”

Something in me? What the hell? “But…but what about…?”

“Yes, there have been others. There was one little girl a couple years back, who was soon to be kidnapped, raped, and murdered. I called her here, like I called Buddy. Her parents forgot they had a child, and so didn’t miss her.”