A Thousand Deaths (44 page)

"Times change," offered Courane wisely.

The wicked old witch shrugged. "I'm seasoned enough myself to wish that they didn't. Change, I mean. Still, you can't hold back progress, however so much you disapprove of what you see going on. It's the same in music and literature, to take two examples, as it is in the clothes people wear or the school of witchcraft they subscribe to."

Courane's expression was less than a grimace, more than a frown. "I think maturing is a constant process of waiting for one dumb fashion after another to go away."

The witch very nearly smiled. "As you said, things change. If we don't change with them, we're left behind by the times. We become foolish relics, or else we drop out of society completely, as I have, and end up someplace like this. You've got to admit that the median strip of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is what you might call
out of the cultural mainstream."

Courane coughed nervously into his hand. "I'll go so far as to say I never expected to find a gingerbread house and an orthodox witch of the old school here, with cars and trucks zooming by on either side. In the depths of some glowering, primeval forest, maybe, but not here, along a major state thoroughfare."

Courane sat on a small davenport not much larger than a love seat, really. The witch had long ago placed a large knitted doily on the back, but Courane leaned forward, perched on the front two or three inches of the cushions. He was still agitated despite the witch's sentiments, and he could not relax.

Perhaps at this moment the average reader is thinking,
Worry and timorousness will not improve Courane's circumstances. It would certainly be better for him to sit back comfortably, get a good grip on his nerves, and be open and receptive to whatever happens.

Perhaps so. However, that was not Courane's way. He was by nature a man frequently on the edge of nervous collapse. Sometimes he panicked nearly to the same degree during the Chicago Cubs's pregame interviews he watched on cable television. Telling him to chill out had no noticeable beneficial effect. And this time, in the wicked old witch's gingerbread house, he had a valid, legitimate cause for his barely suppressed terror.

Creeping into his conscious mind was the thought that he still needed to relieve himself. That presented a frightening etiquette problem, too. He wished he'd made more effective use of the ten-minute walk through the woods; but no, that would have been the smart thing to do. If there was a way to make an adventure more desperate, Courane could be counted on to find it.

Moments of tense silence passed, as both the witch and Courane tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Courane took note of the objects on the Eisenhower-era blond wood coffee table. There was a stack of magazines—
The New Yorker, Life,
and
Vanity Fair—
all yellowed, from the 1930s. To Courane's left was a chrome-plated, Art Deco nude woman holding up a shallow, chrome-plated bowl. In the bowl was an amethyst glass insert containing dusty, cellophane-wrapped cubes of caramel. To Courane's right was a milk-glass chicken sitting on a nest. The chicken separated from the nest about halfway down. Courane lifted the chicken to reveal a double handful of rock-hard, ruined spearmint leaves and petrified candy gumdrops of many flavors and ancient of age. Courane replaced the top of the glass chicken carefully, trying to make not even the smallest sound.

"Help yourself," said the witch brightly. It was her first attempt at pleasantry with him. The result was not likely what she'd intended: he grew wary and on guard. It occurred to Courane that eating a spearmint leaf could well prove fatal, as these various sucroliths might conceivably come under the same prohibition as the gingerbread clapboards of the house's exterior.

Better safe than sorry, Courane told himself. He had vague, schoolboy memories of what had befallen the Greek goddess Persephone. Her annual four-month exile to the underworld had been the penalty for eating seven crummy pomegranate seeds given to her by Hades. Reading that myth in Mrs. Cooper's class had taught Courane that the judges of Hell did not grade on the curve.

The witch seated herself in a deep, dusty old armchair. "You realize this is a no-win situation for me," she said in a weary voice.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, take a look at yourself. You're not what any witch would choose for a victim, are you? Nothing personal, after all, but if I bake you into a pie or shrivel, wither, and blister you beyond recognition, what do I stand to gain?"

She stared through the dismal dimness of her home and sighed. "It's not your fault, I understand that. The days when the fraternal twin children of local woodcutters would pass by to be tempted are long gone. No one appreciates a good gingerbread shingle anymore. I've been thinking of having the house done over, you know. Cover the outside with a good dark chocolate. A forward-looking, progressive idea, I think. Even got estimates from the Godiva people and Frango of Marshall Field's in Chicago." She paused to cackle bitterly. "Maybe some plutocrat witch with a gingerbread town house on Fifth Avenue could afford it, but not I. Now were you a lissome princess with flowers in your hair, or a hero on a great white charger, it would be worthwhile to trot out the complete shadow play of wicked witchery. As it is, you make a rather scanty victim, and I don't feel inspired to give it much more than the bare minimum."

Courane felt several emotions at once, ranging from disbelief to outrage. "Well, pardon
me,
then, madam," he said. "I apologize for not being a pair of pre-pubic kids lost in the muttering forest. I'm a grown man and you'll just have to deal with it. You can't always get what you want, you know. I'm not overwhelmingly thrilled about being here in the first place, if I may speak freely. After a lifetime of hearing witch stories, I must admit that I'm somewhat disappointed. The terror I might have expected is completely absent. If you don't mind, I have a wrecked car that needs attention. I suppose I'll have to flag down another driver after all. I'd hoped to avoid that."

Courane stood up and took a couple of steps. "Wait," cried the wicked old witch in her hoarse voice. "I said that you'd make an unrewarding victim, but I didn't say that I'd let you walk away scot-free. I can't do that. Tradition, you see. And union rules."

Courane sat down again on the antique davenport. "I'm an unrewarding victim, and you're a pretty poor excuse for a witch. We're made for each other."

"So sad, really," she said. "This is what I've come to."

"This is what
I've
come to," said Courane. They stared at each other for a while in the growing darkness. The only sounds were the gingerbread and candy fixtures contracting as the heat of the day began to dissipate.

Finally, Courane spoke. "Well, what the hell
are
you and your gingerbread house doing on the median strip of the Pennsylvania Turnpike?"

"You're bleeding. Did you know your face is bleeding?" asked the witch.

" 'S nothing. Hit a tree."

"Well, let me take care of it." She got slowly and painfully to her feet and crossed the parlor to look closely into Courane's face. She touched him lightly on the neck and shoulders. "Does this hurt?"

"Yes, a little."

The wicked old witch nodded. She began to murmur, almost under her breath. Courane couldn't make out any words. It sounded like a chant. Or a spell—that was it, it was a magical spell. It would either ease his discomfort or turn him into a bewildered amphibian. Or both at once.

"It was several decades ago, before you were born," said the witch, digging into the grimy apron she wore around her waist. She brought out a tin of salve that looked as if she'd bought it outside the courthouse of the Scopes Monkey Trial. "I'd been living in this house for almost a hundred years. At that time, this was a great, lovely, ancient forest. Now hold still."

Courane tried to keep from flinching as the witch applied a thin layer of salve to his cuts and bruises. He was amazed when the pain vanished almost as soon as her fingers touched him. "So you had this gingerbread house here even before, say, the Civil War?"

The witch nodded. "I gave some thought to being a station along the route of the Underground Railway. As a political statement, it wouldn't have given me any personal difficulty. However, I was a great deal younger then, and a great deal more wicked. I was more active in union business, and I was informed that what I was considering was unwitchlike. So I just came back to the house and followed the course of history from my lonely outpost in the woods. Take off your shirt."

Courane did as he was told, and she applied the salve to his neck, shoulders, and back. The whiplash pain went away immediately. "I wish I could help you somehow," he said softly.

The witch replaced the lid on the salve and dropped the tin back into her apron. "Well," she said thoughtfully, "what do you do for a living?"

"I sell aluminum siding," he said.

"Uh huh. Aluminum siding on a gingerbread house. Just what I need."

"I'm sorry," said Courane. He'd rarely felt so useless.

"So, some years ago the state decides it's going to build a great highway linking the New York State Thruway to the Ohio Turnpike. It meant blasting tunnels through mountains and cutting down huge swaths of virgin woodland. Used to be a magic forest around here, with all kinds of supernatural critters about, elves and trolls and whatnot. And the humans lived in their frail little cabins and respected us. Not the state of Pennsylvania, though. All they cared about in Harrisburg was the highway. My friends moved away, but I couldn't. I had too much invested in gingerbread. I was stuck. They ripped down the trees to the left of me for the westbound lanes and the trees to the right of me for eastbound traffic. As luck would have it, they never even discovered that I was here."

"I feel great," said Courane wonderingly. "How can a topical salve cure bone and muscle injuries?"

"It's a secret combination of seventeen herbs and spices," said the witch. "Anyway, this median strip is all that remains of that magic forest. And me. I'm still here."

Courane wore a thoughtful expression as he put his shirt back on. He didn't like the sticky feeling of the shirt on his back. It reminded him of when he was a kid, when his mother used to smear Vicks VapoRub on his chest, and then he'd have to wear his flannel pajamas over it.

"Ever thought of leaving?" he asked.

"Leaving?" said the witch. She sounded shocked. "Leave my gingerbread house? Leave the forest?"

Courane shrugged. "You said yourself nobody passes by much anymore. When was the last time you baked someone in a pie? Or ground somebody's bones to make your bread?"

"That's giants," she said, drawing herself up haughtily. "There are clear rules about that sort of thing. Why, if the WSFA ever found out that I'd ground somebody's bones to make my bread, the word would get out, and I'd have to deal with the giants' union, too. Not me, sir. I'm an honest witch, I am."

"And lonely, too."

She looked at him for several seconds before she replied. "And lonely. And exhausted. And not particularly wicked anymore, if the truth be known." There was a long silence again. It had become dark in the parlor. "I suppose I could consider moving, if I had somewhere to go," she said at last.

"I'll tell you what," said Courane. "I'm heading east. I was going to New York City, but I could make a little detour. To the Jersey Shore. You'd love the Jersey Shore. It's mile after mile of boardwalk and beach, and mile after mile of concession stands and pin- ball arcades and all kinds of things like that. I was thinking—"

"I could open up a little business," said the witch, testing out the idea.

"I was thinking you could open up a little business, right there on the boardwalk in Asbury Park."

"Madame Mimi's Tarot Den," she said, a little excitement in her voice. "Fortunes told, palms read, that sort of thing. And if blond brother and sister twins happen by, why, I could just pop them into my oven, just for old times' sake, and—"

"I'm not sure about that last part," said Courane. "But I don't think you'd have a problem opening a fortune-telling booth on the boardwalk. I think you'd be a big hit. And the change would do wonders for you."

"Could do with a change," she said. "And I could always come back to the gingerbread house whenever I wanted. It would be safe. I mean, you're the first person who's happened by in ages. I don't need much time to pack. How long will it take us to get to Asbury Park?"

Courane chewed his lower lip. "There is the matter of the car," he said finally. "It's smashed up against a tree. I don't even know if it can be fixed."

"Don't worry about that," said the witch confidently. "The salve will fix anything. We'll just rub it on the car, and it'll be as good as new."

"Jeez," said Courane, for the first time realizing that he might make it out of this story alive. "I'll be glad to have the company, too."

"Facing the world again is kind of intimidating," she said, "but change means growth, and I think I was just stagnating here. I've got the guts to try it, if you do."

"Just rub the salve on the car then?" he asked. Courane felt through the gloom until he found her in her chair. "How's your night vision? Will you be able to see the car in the darkness?"

The witch cackled. "I won't, but my familiar, Monica, will. Hold out your hand."

Courane extended his hand nervously. He felt the witch put something into it. Whatever it was, it crawled around for a few moments and then jumped away.

"Minor demon, no trouble," said the witch. "Then it's all settled. We should celebrate or something. Come on, have a Collie Bar. It's on the house. No strings."

Courane took the candy bar and began to unwrap it. How odd, he thought. The story was just about finished and he was still a—

 

 

 

Mango Red Goes to War

 

 

Sandor Courane was having a prescient dream.

He seemed to be walking through a dense evergreen forest, with sunlight raining down through the heavy boughs; Courane walked through the well-stocked aisles of the forest in wonder. He gazed up and saw small patches of blue sky. He was just noticing the unusual absence of sound in this dream when he looked down and saw something wedged in the roots of the next tree.