IGMS - Issue 12 Page 6

  And, oh, her voice! She would sing so many songs to us as she attempted to teach us music, and that sweet alto would weave its way down to my deepest core, tugging at my soul with sorrow or joy, or whatever emotion to which the song was tuned. I remember she would sing "A Time for Us," the theme to Romeo and Juliet, with such passion that the whole class would be in tears.

  No one else could have ever done that to me, or to any of my friends.

  She was a witch.

  Some of the songs we had to learn were stupid, and she took great pleasure in watching us humiliate ourselves by singing them -- badly, at that -- and I loved her all the more for it. Songs like "Morning Comes Bringing" and "Dreidle" and "Cherry Ripe" made my teeth grind, but because she desired it, I would sing my little heart out, and she would smile with joy. She was our mistress, and we could not refuse her. Sometimes, she would reward us with chocolate milk and cookies, or even let us out five minutes before the bell rang in the afternoon, for hers was the last class of the day.

  It was late in the school year when I learned what she had held in store for me from the beginning. Not only for me, I might add, but for Johnny McCrickard and Tina Truman as well. The horror of it nearly destroyed me, and I think the day she announced it was the first and only time I ever hyperventilated. Johnny and Tina's reactions were not so violent, but the dread showed just as plainly in their eyes and chalky faces. The rest of the class, of course, cheered and sang their praises to Mrs. Weiler, no doubt relieved that she had not singled out any of them.

  Johnny, Tina and I were to sing solos. Not only in front of the class, but in front of the school. We had shown such superior achievement that Mrs. Weiler was certain we would shine, and make her, our parents -- everyone -- very, very proud.

  Johnny would sing "The Impossible Dream." Tina would sing "Love is Blue." And I -- I would sing "Somewhere My Love," Lara's theme from Dr. Zhivago, the big blockbuster of the day.

  Mrs. Weiler looked pained and fearful when I began breathing and sobbing so hard -- and came immediately to me and stroked my hand, and gazed at me with such sadness in her green eyes. Almost immediately the paroxysm passed. Kneeling before me, she looked truly beautiful, and I wanted to kiss her. But she said, "Warren, you can do it, I know. Won't you sing for us? Won't you please?"

  And taking a deep breath, I said, "Yes, Mrs. Weiler," because I could not refuse her.

  The big event would happen two weeks later, at a special assembly held in the evening so the parents could come. There was plenty of other programming: scholastic awards, athletic awards, a farewell presentation for Mrs. Clairmont, who would be retiring at the end of the term. The music event would not occur until almost the end of the assembly, which gave the three unlucky participants all the more time to sweat and fidget.

  And through it all, Mrs. Weiler stood by me, whispered little encouragements in my ear, ran her fingers affectionately through my hair -- making me melt as her power coursed through my body like an electrical current. She was kind enough to Johnny and Tina, but her attention was focused on me; an attempt, I suppose, to cast a spell upon me like none she had ever conjured before. It must have worked, for by the time I was to sing my song, my heart was thumping and my knees were weak, but I went out on stage after Tina and Johnny, consumed with desire to please Mrs. Weiler. The multitudes of eyes on me, and all those expectant faces -- including my mom and dad's -- meant nothing. Only the green eyes gazing at me with such tenderness had any influence, any meaning, whatsoever.

  The record began playing over the loudspeakers. It was an instrumental version, which left the vocals entirely up to me. I glanced at my teacher, who nodded at just the right moment, giving me the cue to begin. I stepped up to the microphone and the voice that came out was no longer mine. It was a rich, hearty stranger's voice, entirely on key, and absent any trace of quaver.

  "Somewhere my love," I sang, and nearly fell over right there on stage, surprised and shocked by the entity that must have entered me for the sole purpose of releasing its voice.

  I saw my teacher leave her place behind the curtain and make her way down the stage steps, coming slowly to stand at the edge of the platform before me. Her eyes gleamed at me, and this thing of Mrs. Weiler's making, having seized my lungs and my vocal cords, had its way with me until the music ended, and I stood there alone in a vacuum, without so much as a whisper of breath to break the silence.

  Until I looked down at the green eyes, and saw them smiling. And then a single pair of hands came together, cracking in the air like a gunshot, and a moment later a thunder erupted in the auditorium: a monstrous peal of applause joined by the crying out of hundreds of voices. I nearly swooned, for it seemed that a cold wind swept past my body, threatening to topple me as my adrenaline high faded, leaving me unsteady and on the verge of hyperventilating again.

  Mrs. Weiler's strong hands supported me, though, for in an instant she was beside me, and I looked into my parents' eyes and saw them beaming with pride. I smiled, probably for the first time since the news of my "performance" had been broken to me. Without looking at her, I knew that Mrs. Weiler's eyes were focused on me, perhaps in attempt to take back the thing she had released to take possession of my body. Was it a kind thing? I wondered. A dangerous thing? All I knew was that for time it had been mine, and Mrs. Weiler had made it so.

  Because she was a witch.

  That night became something special in my memory. Afterward, I sang and I enjoyed the sound of my voice, but it was always my voice. The sounds falling from my lips at that assembly had come from something apart from me, and try as I might, I could not regain it. Only Mrs. Weiler knew the secret.

  Shortly after school ended for that summer, Mrs. Weiler died. I do not know how or why, only that I never saw her again. I cried, harder than when my grandparents died, more bitterly than when my father passed away a couple of years later. My mother is still alive, and I love her dearly, yet I cannot imagine shedding tears more meaningful when her time comes than those I shed for Mrs. Weiler.

  One day when I was eighteen, I went to the house where she had lived, for it still stood then, and indeed, remains today as something of a monument in this old town. On that day, though, remembering so well the effect she'd had on my life, I wandered around the place, taken by a feeling of melancholy. I stepped up to the rickety front porch and tried the front door, not expecting it to be unlocked.

  But it was. As if I were expected.

  So I went inside and as soon as I stepped over the darkened threshold, the scent of her rushed into my nostrils, undiluted after so many years. Dust-shrouded furniture remained in place, as if nothing had been touched since her death. A grand piano occupied one corner of the large living room, and stepping up to it, I touched a key. A clear note rang out, and so I played a few chords, to my surprise finding each key in perfect tune. I had become proficient playing the piano, though never so well had Mrs. Weiler been there to guide my hand and attune my senses to the music.

  But what came out in that dusty old chamber was a clear melody -- "Somewhere My Love" -- a song I had never played myself, now played as perfectly as I had sung it on that night in fourth grade. I felt the same current in my soul as on the night she had released her power into me, and I would have sworn then I heard her voice singing in accompaniment.

  When I stopped playing, the notes echoed into the darkened halls of that house, stirring something. Something that whispered my name and touched my cheek and brushed my lips with a sweet caress.

  I left there knowing I would return. Soon.

  And I did.

  When I graduated college, I disavowed the ritual practiced by my friends and virtually all the rest of the town's youth -- leaving home for greener pastures, never to return, or if so, only for brief family visits. Instead, I managed to place myself as music teacher in the local school system.

  I moved into the old Weiler place, which is where I still reside. I often wish I had been able to know her as an adult, for I had come
to understand her power and her love of music. I came to feel what she must have felt when a beautiful melody played and touched her heart. I still feel her and hear her and smell her in the halls of this house, and within these walls, I feel the magic she once gave to me on the stage of our little elementary school.

  I take that magic with me every day, and when I encounter a little one who shares, however vaguely, the power that Mrs. Weiler bestowed upon me, I give to that child all I can spare, conjuring up that thing that once took me and that still lives within the walls of my old house. It doesn't like light, but favors the dark, so in the evenings, I walk with it and sing, or play the piano or the guitar, or whichever instrument that brings it pleasure. It prefers the old things, so I don't change the furniture, or otherwise renovate the place any more than necessary to keep it habitable. And I remember those times when I was a child and heard Mrs. Weiler's voice in the night, and didn't understand.

  But I am older now, and I understand so much more. And though most children don't understand, there are those few who one day will. Those are the ones upon whom I focus -- to perpetuate the spirit that Mrs. Weiler passed on to me. I can do this; I have that power.

  Because I am a witch.

  Of course.

  The End-of-the-World Pool

  by Scott M. Roberts

  Artwork by Anna Repp

  "So. Birthday dare. Something egregious," Grant said.

  "Egregious," Evan murmured. A fat wasp droned over his chest. Evan swatted it away before it could land on him. "Outlandish."

  "Wild," Grant said.

  "Crazy."

  "Egregious doesn't mean crazy."

  "Sure it does." The wasp came back. Evan picked one of his sneakers off, slashed at it, and connected. The wasp's body arched high, caught the breeze, and fell into the pool.

  And now Grant was looking at the scummy pool, his mismatched eyes glittering. Evan knew that look. He waited for the words.

  "I dare you," Grant said.

  "I'll go get my trunks." A couple of years ago, Evan had eaten a grasshopper for his birthday dare. No matter how much scum was on the top of the pool, it couldn't be more disgusting than a grasshopper wriggling and spitting and kicking in his mouth.

  "No," said Grant. "No trunks."

  Evan rolled his eyes. He'd gone skinny dipping in the pond behind Janie Winecke's house in fourth grade. Three years, a hundred years ago.

  "In your underwear." Grant said.

  Somehow, going in wearing his underwear was even more obscene than going in with nothing at all. Evan stared at the water, at the brown and green flotillas of algae, imagined them clinging to his skivvies. "Egregious," he muttered, and kicked off his other shoe.

  Grant whooped and began giving details. "You have to dive all the way in, no panty-waist, tiptoey, dippy dunk. And you have to swim all the way down, in the deep end."

  Dad's hammer and Uncle Hector's saw banged and buzzed away up at the house. Evan squatted, listening to their ruckus. A cacophony, that's what they were making, pounding the deck into repair. If they stopped for more than a couple seconds, that would mean they were done. They'd come down here to see how their boys were getting along, see Evan in his tighty-whities, and Grant grinning, and what? Uncle Hector would laugh, and would probably throw Grant in, tit-for-tat. And Dad would laugh, he'd laugh right now, but later, he'd find an excuse to pull Evan aside, and . . . question him. And he'd remind Evan about James Van Driekson last year, and the preverts all over the internet, and he'd use his church voice the whole time, and Evan would have to say at least a thousand times, No, I'm fine, it was just the birthday dare, that's all, same as it's always been since Grant and I were five years old.

  The hammering went on. The saw went on. Evan took a step and a breath, and held onto his briefs with one hand as he dived.

  The pool was as warm as sweat. Evan kicked away from the surface, algae shifting and bumping against his bare legs. Even with his mouth squeezed tight, he could taste the foulness of the water, like it had seeped through his ears to touch the back of his throat.

  Down!

  There'd been no squares edging the poolside, advertising the depth. It could be ten feet, twelve feet, a thousand feet deep. Evan couldn't sense the bottom or the surface. All around him, floaties and foulness and warm water, like piss. He was swimming through a toilet, that's what, and maybe he'd gotten in the bend without realizing it, and what if someone flushed?

  Evan opened his eyes. Light blurred above him, at the end of the angle of his skinny body. And below him, more water, darker and deeper. He stretched his arms, kicked his legs, and pushed on. Pushed in, he thought, through slick, sweaty water.

  The water grew cooler the deeper he swam. He kept his eyes open, despite how they burned. The light above dwindled, and then was gone, and the water didn't end. That wasn't right -- where the pool was dark and deep, that was where the bottom had to be. Covered by a layer of muck, maybe; maybe inches of decaying leaves blown into the pool during the winter. But water and quiet surrounded him instead.

  Quiet. He couldn't hear Dad and Uncle Hector banging on the deck. He couldn't even hear the bubbles when he let some air out of his lungs. Evan swiped at the water, edging deeper. His fingers touched sand. Sand. At the bottom of a pool.

  Something touched him back.

  Not the soft touch of algae, not the drift of debris against his skin. It caressed his arm, a direct, intentional touch. Evan exhaled, and kicked against the sandy floor, sending him careening, screaming for the surface. He could feel it, whatever it was, reaching for him again, reaching for his bare legs, it was there in the way the water spun away from his feet as he fought for air, for sunlight.

  A hand on his thigh. Evan struck out with his other leg, struck nothing, and there was still a hand on him, creeping up toward the elastic leg-band of his briefs, scrabbling on him, slow as a falling leaf.

  He burst out of the pool and gasped and grabbed for the concrete. Solid, yes, air, yes, sunlight yes! The hand slipped down his leg, pinched his calf, stroked the bottom of his foot. Evan hauled himself out of the foul water, not caring now that some dripped out of his hair into his mouth. He rolled away from the pool, and coughed and shivered.

  "Evan!"

  Another hand on his leg, but this was a large hand, warm and callused with work. Dad's hand, and that big hand gripped his leg and his bare shoulder, tightly, and when Evan looked, there Dad was, fear etched all over his face.

  Uncle Hector and Grant were both in the pool, waist deep in water, the same fear on their faces. Their hair, and Dad's, was wet. A dark leaf stuck against Dad's face; he didn't seem to notice it.

  Evan coughed. He said, "Something grabbed my leg."

  Dad's hand tightened on Evan's shoulder. Uncle Hector said, "You were under there for . . ."

  "Three minutes, forty-two seconds," Grant said. His mismatched eyes were unblinking and clear. He wiped his nose, leaving a grimy streak across his face. "I counted."

  The Big House sat by itself at the end of a long gravel drive. That was what Uncle Hector had called it, Big House, like it was one word. Bighouse. Pig house, Grant had said, when Dad and Hector had given them the tour. Everything was damp and muddy, even the few rooms where Mr. Valadanov had lived. It'd had a real name once -- the Moldau.

  Moldy, Grant had said. Yeah, that fits.

  Mr. Valadanov had only used three rooms in the Big House: the kitchen, the bedroom, and the bathroom. The kitchen took up half of the first floor, with its cavernous brick oven built right into the chimney, and its black iron woodstove. It smelled sour. The only electrical thing in it was a microwave. The bedroom and bathroom were as small as closets.

  The upstairs was a warren of messy bedrooms; none of the mess was the least bit interesting: nails and fusty clothes and broken light bulbs. Dust and air as dead as old Carmen Valadanov himself, that was what was upstairs.

  But outside, the world was alive. Blackberries and wild grapes tangled the fence that ran
down to the old pool-house, sealing wrought-iron posts behind green cascades. The yard sloped away from the pool, a long, smooth sledding hill if ever Evan had seen one. From the pool-house, all the way down to the woods at the far end of the field, there was nothing but grass.

  Grass and wind and sunlight. And June, that was outside, and the storms and brightness of a long summer stretching out forever for three months, and it stuck in Evan's nose, it lodged in his throat, it itched him, until he was so full of it, not all the chores and sweating Dad and Uncle Hector laid on him could drain it.

  But the pool did.

  Three minutes, forty-two seconds beneath scummy water with some kind of pervy pool mermaid? And was he fine, yessir, he was. Except he wasn't, because the hand that had touched his legs had drawn summer out of his bones. The mad June-buzz he'd been infected with was gone, gone gone.

  So quiet, so dark.

  So lovely. Not even standing under the shower Dad had rigged up against the garage, not even the taste of Uncle Hector's chili, not even the birthday cake Grant had smeared in his face, in his nostrils, could get the smell, the feel, out of his skin, or the taste of the pool out his mouth.

  In the dryness of the tent he shared with Grant, Evan dug his fingers into his sleeping bag and felt wet sand gritting beneath his fingernails. And thinking of the water, and the darkness beneath the water, and the sand, he thought of the Edgar Allen Poe poem Uncle Hector had taught them last summer:

  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

  Of my darling -- my darling -- my life and my bride,

  In her sepulchre there by the sea,

  In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  "Annabel Lee," Evan whispered, and the wind breaching the tent flap brushed his mouth. He licked his lips and tasted salt.

  Grant snored on.

  Evan stretched and wriggled out of his sleeping bag. Damp grass licked his bare feet and calves as he stepped away from the tent. The house hulked sixty feet away from him, the front porch lights glowing around the corner. No saws, no hammers -- but he could hear Dad and Uncle Hector talking, and the clink of bottles being laid down on the porch's steps. Evan turned away from the house, toward the darkness at the end of the fence.