Darker Than You Think (13 page)

Her
oval face turned very white.

"And
Father, too," she whispered. "I used to flaunt my red hair
at him—it was lighter then, and my mother kept it in long
curls. It happened that he and Mother were both dark-haired, and now
I'm sure that other man, the one he suspected, must have been a
redhead. Then I only knew that the color of my hair goaded him to
fury. I was just five years old the first time he called me a witch
child—and snatched me out of Mother's arms to whip me."

Her
greenish eyes were dark and dry. To Barbee they seemed hard as
emeralds, ruthless with an old and unforgotten hate. Her face, except
for the scarlet bows of her lips, seemed white as the wolf fur flung
over the chair beside her. Her hushed, hurried voice was bitter and
dry—as cruel, he thought, as the parching winds of the Ala-shan
must be.

"My
father always hated me," she told him. "His children
did—no, I never believed that I was really his. They hated me
because I was different. Because I was prettier than any of the
girls, and quicker than any of the boys. Because I could do things
none of them could. Yes—because I was already a witch!"

She
made a savage little nod.

"They
all stood against me—all except Mother. I had to defend myself
and strike back when I could. I knew about witches from the
Bible—Father used to read a chapter at every mealtime, and then
chant an endless grace before he would let us eat. I asked questions
about what witches could do. Mother told me some things, and I
learned a lot from the old midwife who came when my married sister
had a child—she was a queer old woman! By the time I was seven
years old, I had started to practice the things I had learned."

Barbee
sat listening, half incredulous and yet fascinated. The girl's taut
face swam close to him in the thick blue haze, mirroring all she
said, a white enigma of old pain and hate and occasional glee,
sullen-lipped and yet strangely lovely.

"I
began with small things," she whispered. "As a child would.
The first serious incident came later, when I was nearly nine. My
half brother Harry had a dog named Tige. For some reason Tige always
hated me. He would growl when I tried to touch him—like that
Mondrick woman's ugly dog did today. Another sign, my father said,
that I was a witch child sent to visit the wrath of God upon his
house.

"One
day Tige bit me. Harry laughed at me and called me a wicked little
witch. He was going to let Tige chase me—that was what he said.
Maybe he was just teasing. I don't know—but I said I'd show him
that I really was a witch. I told him I'd put a spell on Tige and
kill him. I did my best."

Her
long eyes narrowed, and her nostrils seemed to pinch.

"I
remembered all the old midwife had told me. I made up a little chant
about Tige dying, and whispered it during family prayers. I gathered
hairs out of his blanket and spit on them and burned them in the
kitchen stove. And I waited for Tige to die."

Barbee
tried to ease her painful intensity.

"You
were just a child," he murmured. "Just playing."

"Tige
went mad the very next week," she said quietly. "Father had
to shoot him."

Her
quiet seemed more startling than a scream. Barbee moved uneasily and
caught his breath.

"Coincidence,"
he muttered.

"Maybe."
A brief amusement lit the girl's face, as if she had seen his
apprehensive start. "I don't think so." That shadow of old
bitterness came back. "I believed in my power. Harry did. So did
my father, when Harry told him. I ran to Mother, where she was
sewing. Father dragged me outside, and whipped me again."

Her
long trembling fingers lifted her glass, but she set it back
untasted, absorbed in her narrative.

"Father
hurt me cruelly, and I felt that he was savagely unjust. While he was
whipping me, I screamed that I would get even. As soon as he let me
go, I tried to. I slipped out to the dairy and pulled hairs out of
the three best cows and the bull my father had just bought for the
herd. I spat on the hairs and burned them with a match and buried
them behind the barn. I made another chant."

Her
long dark eyes peered somberly through the smoke.

"Probably
a week afterward, the bull dropped dead."

"Coincidence,"
Barbee whispered faintly. "It must have been coincidence."

Her
scarlet lips twisted to a wry, slight smile.

"The
veterinarian said it was hemorrhagic septicemia," she said
softly. "The three cows died, too, as well as the best yearling
heifer and two steer calves. My father remembered the threats I had
screamed, and Harry had watched me digging behind the barn. Harry
tattled, and Father whipped me until I confessed that I had tried to
kill the cattle."

Abruptly,
with a swift, catlike grace of motion, she tossed off her drink. Her
greenish eyes looked straight at Barbee, glazed and hard as if she
didn't see anything. Nervously, her tense fingers started twirling
the glass. The thin stem snapped, and the bowl splintered on the
floor. Without seeming to notice, she went on huskily: "That was
a dreadful night, Barbee. Father sent all the other children to stay
at my married sister's house —to escape the taint of
witchcraft, he ranted, and avoid the dreadful wrath of God. Just he
and Mother and I were left, to pray it out together, Father said, and
let me suffer the just retribution for my sin."

Nervously,
her red-nailed fingers spun the stem of the shattered glass.

"I'll
never forget that night. Mother cried and tried to make excuses for
me and begged for mercy—I remember her down on her knees, on
the splintered pine floor before my father, as if he had been another
angry deity. But he didn't pay much attention to her prayers. He
stamped up and down that gloomy little room, and shouted his
questions and his cruel accusations at Mother and me, and read from
the Bible by the light of a smelly coal-oil lamp. Again and again he
read that terrible line:
Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Afraid
she might cut her trembling hand on the daggerpoint of the broken
glass, Barbee lifted it out of her fingers. She didn't seem to
notice.

"It
went on all night," she whispered. "Father would make us
kneel and pray. He would walk the floor and sob, and curse my mother
and me. He would jerk her up when she knelt at his feet and cuff her
about the room and warn her not to shelter a witch child in her
bosom. Finally he would snatch me out of her arms, and whip me again,
until he nearly killed me. And then he would read out of the Bible.

"Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live."

She
paused, her long eyes staring at his hands. Barbee looked down and
saw a bright red drop on his finger. Carefully, he set the broken
glass stem in the ash tray. He wiped the blood on his handkerchief,
and lit another cigarette.

"He
would have killed me, too," the girl's hoarse, bitter voice went
on. "Mother fought him, the last time, to make him let me go.
She broke a chair over his head, but that didn't seem to hurt him
much. He dropped me on the floor, and started for his shotgun leaning
by the door. I knew he meant to kill us both, and I screamed out a
chant to stop him."

Her
husky voice caught, and she swallowed hard.

"It
worked. He fell on the floor, just as he reached the gun. The doctors
said later that it was a cerebral hemorrhage. They told him he had
better learn to control his temper. I don't suppose he ever did,
because he dropped dead the day he got out of the hospital and heard
that Mother had taken me and run away to California."

Barbee
was a little startled to discover that the waiter had swept up the
shattered glass and set two fresh daiquiris on the tiny table. April
Bell lifted her drink thirstily. Barbee found two more dollars in his
flat pocketbook, and wondered briefly what the dinner check would
come to. He sipped at his own drink, and carefully held himself from
interrupting.

"I
never knew exactly what Mother believed." That answered the
question he hadn't dared to ask. "She loved me. I think she
could have forgiven me anything. She only made me promise, when we
were safe out of Father's house, that I would never try to make
another spell. I didn't—so long as she lived."

She
set back her empty glass, her white fingers steady again.

"Mother
was all right—you'd have liked her, Barbee. You couldn't really
blame her for not trusting men, and she did all she could for me. As
the years went by, I think she almost forgot all that had happened
back here at Clarendon. I know she wanted to. She would never talk of
coming back, even to visit her old friends here. I know it would have
shocked her horribly to know what I was—what I really am."

That
hardness had melted from the girl's greenish eyes; they seemed liquid
now, huge and dark and queerly eager. "I kept my promise not to
work any more spells," she told him softly. "But nothing
could stop my knowledge of the powers awakening and growing within
me. Nothing could keep me from feeling what other people thought and
foreseeing things that were going to happen."

"I
know." Barbee nodded. "That's what we call the nose for
news."

She
shook her bright head gravely.

"It's
more than that," she insisted quietly. "Other things
happened. I didn't work any more spells—not on purpose. But
things happened that I couldn't help."

He
listened, and tried not to let her see him shiver.

"There
was a girl at school," she said. "I didn't like her,
anyhow—she was too nasty-nice, always quoting the Bible and
meddling in other people's lives like those half sisters I hated.
Once she won a journalism scholarship that I had set my heart on. I
knew she had cheated to get it. I couldn't help wishing something
would happen to her."

"And,"
Barbee breathed, "did it?"

"It
did," April told him gently. "The day that girl was
supposed to accept the scholarship, she woke up ill. She tried to go
to the auditorium anyhow and fainted on the way. It was acute
appendicitis—the doctors said. She nearly died. If she had—"

Nearly
black, her long eyes stared straight at Barbee. He saw the bleak
memories in them, of dread and pain. He saw her white body shudder in
the daring gown.

"Another
coincidence, you can say. That's what I wanted to think, Barbee.
Because I didn't really hate that girl. I thought I'd lose my mind
until the doctors said she would pull through. But that wasn't the
only incident. Other things kept happening, almost as serious. I grew
to be afraid of myself."

Her
voice sank.

"Don't
you see, Barbee?" Her dark eyes begged him to understand. "I
didn't make any conscious spells, but still that power was working in
me. When such seeming accidents always follow the acts and wishes of
a person, it gets to be beyond the realm of coincidence. Can't you
see?"

Barbee
nodded. After a while he remembered to breathe again. At last he
muttered huskily, "I guess so."

"Please
try to see my side of it," the girl urged softly. "I didn't
ask to be a witch—I was born this way."

Barbee
drummed nervously on the table with his knuckles. He saw the waiter
coming back and impatiently waved him away. He gulped, and said
uneasily: "Look here, April—do you mind if I ask a few
more questions?"