The next day Melanie wouldn’t talk to me. I awoke at my normal time, got ready for school, and then dashed down the stairs to meet her. But when I knocked on her kitchen door, her mother told me she had left already. I raced to school, but couldn’t find her in the halls. She was in one of my midmorning classes, but when I arrived, she had taken a new seat across the room, surrounded by other girls. I waved to her. She looked away. The same happened at lunch. I found her sitting on a bench in the park behind the school. She was staring at the old monument tower that stood on the very peak of the hill.
I approached and sat. She said nothing.
“Mel, please.”
Her lips remained tight. Her eyes darted around, peering at everything that was not me. This place was called Dorchester Heights, although it wasn’t in Dorchester at all. It was a tall hill with our school on one side and a grassy park on the rest. During the revolutionary war they had put some cannons here, commanding a view of Boston Harbor. Today all you could see were the hulking triple-deckers of the surrounding neighborhood, and beyond them the tops of downtown skyscrapers.
“Sweetie, don’t give up,” I said. “We’ll keep searching.”
She got up and walked back toward the school.
I remained at the bench. The autumn sun was low in the sky. Occasionally a cold breeze drifted through and shook red and yellow leaves from rustling trees. I bundled my jersey snug and slowly ate my lunch under the shadow of the looming white monument tower. No doubt from the top of that I could see the harbor and beyond. The park officials kept it locked.
After school I tried to find her. Even if she wouldn’t speak to me, she couldn’t avoid walking with me, if I insisted on walking beside her.
But I didn’t find her after school. I searched all over. Finally, I plodded home.
When I arrived at my street, police cars were everywhere. Their lights flashed.
Q-Ball and Shanty Jones killed the Collins brothers. Apparently, from what I could gather from the cops and the neighbors, a strange car had been parked in a little lot just across from our building. When the Collins brothers got home from work, they confronted the driver and passenger — a black man and woman was the only description anybody had. Anyhow, guns were pulled, the Collins boys ran for their house, Jamie was caught in the middle of the street — two in the back and one in the neck — and then Jimmie got a shotgun from inside and unloaded on the car. Nobody knew if he hit anything. They got him in his yard. Three in the belly, one in the face.
The cops asked me a lot of questions. I shrugged and looked shocked while I glanced around to see who was there. On the front steps of our building, Melanie sat with her mom. Evidently she had gotten home before me. I figured they had already asked her what she knew. What did she say? I had no idea.
“I can’t…uh…I dunno what to say,” I said to the detectives. Then I rushed over and put my arms around Melanie.
“Sweetie,” I whispered, “what did you tell them?”
“Nothing,” she said in a flat voice.
I plopped down next to her on the steps, opposite her mom, and put my arm around her shoulder.
“I can’t believe this,” her mother said. “This is so crazy. What’s happening to the neighborhood?”
“I dunno,” I said.
Melanie said nothing.
More cops arrived. They began to measure things. They ran strings and tape between the little numbered yellow flags that were stuck in the ground all over the place. Other cops walked around with cameras and got pictures of everything from every angle.
“Mel,” I whispered again.
“Yeah?”
“Come up later. Please.”
She was quiet.
“Like, I can’t — you know — it doesn’t work alone.”
I had tried. Last night, after she left, I tried the magic again. But it seemed it really did require a circle. The candle, the ribbon, the bell, the holding hands, and the chanting, it all was necessary, as far as I could tell.
She turned to me. I said, “Really, I need you.”
Slowly, she blinked her eyes. But she didn’t speak.
“We have to do something about this.” I motioned to the swarming cops, and the little flags and tape.
“What are you girls talking about?” her mother asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just stuff for school.” I turned back to Melanie. “Please. Say you’ll come.”
With her mouth closed tight and her sad eyes glistening, she gave one small nod.
Later that evening Melanie and I again sat on my balcony and faced each other over a flickering candle. We held hands. Together we spoke the words.
I didn’t know what I could do, how far I could go, if I could reach Shanty Jones’s house, or if I could do much when I got there. But still, I was going to try something. After I separated from my body, drifting and floating, feeling softness and an airy breath, I went to Melanie and gave her the shadow of a kiss.
My little silver bell rang. She reached slowly with her hand to where I would be. But she said nothing.
Then I was off through the night, moving fast. I didn’t have to run, or even move my legs. I could, but it didn’t seem to matter and felt silly anyhow. No, I just thought of how I wanted to move, and so I moved.
First to the subway station. I might have found my way above ground, but I knew this way best, and it was a direct enough route. Down the stairs, through the gates — how lovely not to pay my fare — and then down the next set of stairs onto the platform. No waiting for a train! I shot directly down the tunnel, speeding along. The tunnel walls whipped by.
I moved fast, but not faster than the train. Soon I heard it rumble behind me, its lights shining bright. When it overtook me — how scary! — it passed through me. The passengers rushed by like a blur, my silver bell rang and rang. But I doubt anybody heard that over the roar of the train.
Next I was outside on the surface tracks, where the subway climbed above the ground and ran along the old, historic rail lines. This was Dorchester. It was three more stations to Field’s Corner, but I climbed high and moved fast. When I got over the neighborhood, I picked out her street — her house! — and then swooped down from on high directly into her yard.
I didn’t feel tired at all. No, instead, I felt only a warm glow and the soft drift of the crisp evening air. I floated inches above the ground.
She lived in the first floor apartment. Her car was there. Lights were on. I passed through the front door.
The rooms were warmly lit. The floors were hardwood, golden-brown, and well maintained — where they weren’t covered by dense, corded rugs. Pictures hung along the wall of the main hall, seemingly arranged in order from newest to oldest. By the front door were pictures of Shanty herself with her little girl. As I moved along, she got younger. Soon her girl was no longer there. Shanty was a fresh faced teen with a giant smile in front of an old Dorchester high school. She was pretty in a blue skirt. Then a man and woman, he in a suit, she in a dress and hat. Her parents, I assumed. Further and further. Back in time. The photos became black and white. Grandparents. Great-grandparents? I saw an old yellowed photo of a hardscrabble man next to a wooden shack in some flat and dismal southern state — or so I guessed. His eyes were wide, his fingers bent and gnarled. Behind him sat a tractor.
Past that last photo was a door. Behind that door I heard voices. I drifted into the room.
It was a bedroom. Shanty was there with a man — Q-Ball, I assumed.
He lay on the bed, uncovered, without a shirt, and with a wide, white bandage looped around his torso. In one particular spot, right below his chest, there was a fierce spot of blood.
Turns out Jimmie Collins had hit something with his shotgun.
Next to the man, seeming unhurt, Shanty rested with one knee on the bed and peered into his eyes.
“I gonna take you to a doctor,” she said.
“Hell no!” Q-Ball said.
“Baby! You hit bad.”
She squeezed his hand. I drifted closer.
When I got well into the room, he looked over her shoulder right at me. His eyes were feverish.
She noticed his gaze. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“She come for me,” he said.
“Who come for you?”
He tried to sit up. “The Loa! The white Loa.”
“The what?” She glanced around the room. “Baby, you okay? No, lie back, sweetie. Lie back.” He lay back. She adjusted the wet cloth that rested on his head. His eyes were filled with terror.
There were two guns plainly visible in the room. One was a small automatic sitting on the bed, where she could reach it. The other was by his head on the nightstand. That one was an enormous revolver.
I thought I could handle the small automatic better. I supposed. Maybe. I had never held a gun in my life. I drifted over to it, under his wild gaze. I reached while she fussed with his bandage. I grasped the gun.
My bell rung, a slight ring, the little tinkle of a small silver bell. As I lifted the gun, as his eyes grew even wider than before, and as it reached perhaps a foot above the bed, she turned.
When she turned, when her gaze cast across me, the gun slipped from my grasp and fell onto the bed with a dull thump.
She shot up from the bed. “Oh Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus!”
His eyes turned up toward the ceiling and he began to pray.
I drifted to the corner. He muttered prayers to sweet Mary, mother of Christ. Slowly, she stepped back across the room, staring at the now stationary gun with terror.
I thought about what had just happened. I tried an experiment. Across the room was a table covered with a lace cloth. On that cloth was a collection of pictures and bottles of perfume. I crossed the room, right in front of her, and picked up a bottle, quickly, getting it high into the air.
My bell rang. She turned. Again, just as her gaze struck me, the bottle slipped from my grasp and fell to the floor with a crash.
His gaze had been on me the entire time.
I wasn’t stupid. It was obvious. When she watched, I could not hold objects. For some reason I could under his terrified gaze.
Perhaps his fever? Perhaps he was already partway through the gates of death. Melanie would have a better guess than I.
Again I drifted to the corner. Again he began to pray.
“What’s going on?” she said. “What is it? Baby, talk to me?”
He sniffed and gurgled.
“Fuck this!” she said. “I’m calling Diedre.”
Before she left, she snatched the little automatic from the bed. When she got outside of the room, she shut the door behind her.
I was alone with Q-Ball. He stared at the ceiling, muttering prayers to Jesus and Mary through a clenched jaw.
“Q-Ball,” I said in a low voice.
He continued to pray.
“Q-Ball, look at me. This is important.”
He looked at me.
I drifted to the bed and leaned over him, floating. “The little girl, is she yours?”
He shook his head no.
“You have any other kids? I mean, any you take care of?”
He gulped and spat. A small stream of spittle ran down his chin. “I got a son. I never see him.”
He glanced away. His breath wheezed through trembling lips.
“Shanty’s girl, she got a daddy? He take care of her?”
He swallowed. “Her daddy dead.”
I nodded. Then I picked up the enormous revolver — my bell rang — grasped it tight, and aimed it square at Q-Ball’s head.
“Pray to Jesus, Q-Ball.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus — ”
I squeezed the trigger.
Moments later, when Shanty stumbled back into the room — she screamed and screamed when she saw his broken body — the gun again rested on the table. Again I watched from the corner.
“Oh baby! Oh baby!” she cried. She fell to her knees.
I only watched.
She clutched at the side of the bed and slowly pulled herself up next to him. “Oh baby! Oh Jesus!”
There was a bright red hole in the very center of his forehead. Blood and brains covered the pillow.
I had no stomach, so I couldn’t feel sick.
“Oh God!”
Again and again, she kissed his dead lips.
I watched and felt things. Pity? Remorse?
No, something else. A warmth. Resolve. I drifted to her.
“Shanty,” I said in the spookiest voice I could manage.
She rolled from the bed and stood. I hadn’t noticed until then, but the gun was in her hand. She aimed it this way and that.
“Shanty,” I said again from behind her.
She spun around. I drifted right through her.
“Shanty.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Your girl needs a mommy, Shanty.”
Again she spun. Again I moved behind her.
“Live for your girl. Give her everything.”
Her legs gave out. She collapsed back and sat on the bed.
“Forget about revenge. Bury Q-Ball, say goodbye, then forget about him.”
She set the gun down and began to sob.
“Forget about the girls in your cellar.”
She glanced up. I touched her face. My bell rang.
“Let the past be the past. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
I drifted back down the hall under the stern gaze of her ancestors — and the soft, hopeful smile of her little girl.
Melanie didn’t forgive me, or want to speak to me, or do much of anything with me, unless she was required to. When she went downstairs after that final night, the night I killed Q-Ball, she left the book, the notes, and the artifacts all with me. I tried to browse through them, a bit, to learn what I could. But it was hopeless. I had neither her curiosity nor her concentration. I put them in a stack high atop my closet under a pile of old clothes.
The days dragged on. Each day, before school, I plodded down the stairs to Melanie’s kitchen door and asked her mom if Melanie would walk with me to school today. Each day her mom gave me a sad look and said no.
When her mom asked why we were fighting, I just shrugged. She gave a soft smile and said, “Probably a boy. Am I right?”
I dropped my eyes.
The leaves fell from the trees and gathered in piles. The landlord sent some guys around to rake them all up. Last year the Collins brothers had done the job. This year, instead, their lawn was soon a mess of weeds and leaves and junk thrown from cars. Someone broke the window on their front door, so the property owner — whoever that was — sent someone around to board it up. Soon their fence was torn up by passing kids, always roaming about, blazing shortcuts through the yards.
I spent many a chilly evening on the balcony sipping tea from bone-white china, a gift from my mother, and a small reminder of her once civilized life before she married a man like my dad, and before her family turned their backs on her.
Winter came good and proper. One night in December the first dusting of snow arrived. On that night I sat outside with my tea and a wooly blanket. I felt cold and alone.
There must be other witches, I thought. I was never one to learn from a book. But if I could ask. If I could speak to some older witch, with deep knowledge, I could find out who I was, why I had this power, what I might do with it.
Could I pass it to Melanie? Could I train her? Could I get her back?
A layer of frost covered everything, except my still warm tea. I sipped and thought.
Together Melanie and I had done everything one might suppose was witchy. We had read all the magic books in the library, browsed every possible web page, gone to new-age stores and spoken to the Wiccans, wrapped in their flowery dresses and their flakey love-love nonsense. None of that was real magic.
Back then, had we come upon a real witch, she would have laughed and walked away.
But I was a real witch now. They would talk to me, I thought.
I had to learn magic properly. Melanie wouldn’t help me. I had to do it on my own. No, not all of it. Just enough to do something extraordinary and catch the attention of a real witch.
I gathered my tea set and my blanket. I headed into the house. Then, when everything was put away, I went into my room and pulled down the book, the notes, and the artifacts from the top of my closet.
I began on page one.