The Witch Part 2
I was about 12, maybe 13 when she said that, and we were sitting outside on the front porch as we liked to do sometimes once the weather got nice and we could just talk. It was a nice quiet block where we lived, one where the neighbors waved at you and the kids enjoyed speeding up and down the street without fear of any wild car screeching around the corner promising a threat to their joy.
That’s the thing I’ll always remember and love the most about my mother is how we would always talk, and not always like a mother trying to give her child instruction but just one human being who especially enjoyed talking to and sharing things with another human being. It always made me feel like she didn’t just love me, like parents were supposed to be required to do as part of the contract, but that she actually liked and respected me too. And sometimes, just to emphasize that point, when our conversation was coming to a close and we were ready to go back inside, Mom would lean over and squeeze me on the knee before giving me a light kiss on the cheek and then whispering in my ear…
“I see you, Marcellus James.”
It’s What Witches Do
“What’s that you said?”
The woman gave me a mock questioning look, almost like a clown’s mask with an upside down frown painted across the bottom of her face. She shook her head, pretending she didn’t understand the question. This time, maybe because my anger was fueling my adrenaline, I managed to snatch my arm free of her grasp as I took a couple steps back.
“You called my name. You said ‘I see you’. That’s what…how do you know my damned name? How do you know my name?”
The upside down frown stretch itself slowly upward into a grotesque parody of a smile where the corners of her mouth were now so high it was a freakish near-impossible achievement that made me want to scream. It was no longer gentle. Her teeth, like her nails, were thick, dirty and sharp, and a thick blackish tongue snaked around behind them inside her mouth as if preparing to strike.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK AS THE STORY OF ‘THE WITCH’ CONTINUES…