Fiction by Michelle R. Brady
The Witch of Deer Park Woods
The first time we saw her, we still had a home of sorts. An apartment that used to be a classroom in a school built in 1908, with a photo of the kids from back then, framed and kind of crooked in the main hallway, in black and white. Once, the woods behind the school, where the witch lived, were a swimming pool and what we thought must have been sports fields, but now the cracked concrete bowl was filled in with trees and dirt—and water and fish, too, like all ruins returning to nature—and all that remained of the fields was an area of short trees that formed too many right angles to be natural.
She didn't have real shelter, but she'd made a lean-to from small logs and parts of tents and a blanket. We marked the trail to her with condiment packets Mom took from work so we could see what she was up to, make sure she wasn't doing voodoo on anyone we knew, and then find our way back again. She talked to herself constantly, a kind of muttering we were sure were spells, but her stringy black hair stuck to the sides of her old face so that it was harder to see her lips move and make out what she was saying. Marcus and I were careful to make sure she never knew we watched her, but gradually the ketchup packets disappeared until only mustard and relish were left. "If she has hotdogs in there, she'd need all three," Marcus said. "So, it wasn't her that took them."
I nodded. At the time, it seemed more likely that some animal probably liked tomatoes. But something about the idea of her eating hotdogs, of her actually living there, made us realize with a growing hope that we could, too. The night we agreed to escape, Abe tried pouring liquid soap down Marcus' throat for some cuss word he'd said. Mom got home just in time, and Abe told me to shut up, but he let go and let me pull Marcus out of the bathroom.
When they were asleep, I examined the scratches on his neck from Abe's watch, where his forearm pinned Marcus against the wall. Abe always smelled like he swam in cologne; it made me gag when he was near me, and I hated the smell of it on my brother more than his broken skin. We packed our backpacks with stuff we'd need, but not too much. We knew Mom would be gone to her morning job before we got up, so she wouldn't notice we weren’t where we were supposed to be until maybe dinner time. That'd give us time to get away.
Marcus' bag was smaller, of course, so I let him put a dinosaur in mine. His neck looked okay now, and I asked him, "Are you sure?"
He was sure. Our apartment was in the basement of the school, so I boosted him up to the window in our room and climbed out after him. It was darker than we thought it would be, and the sounds were different. People were louder, shouting at each other across the street and playing music from their cars. For a moment we stood, watching wisps of smoke—coming off of cigarette tips and whatever else—move like fireflies. I held Marcus close to me. "Let's get behind the bush and crawl to the woods," I whispered.
"All the way around the school?" he asked, not fully believing my words. And he had a point. The woods were behind the building, but our window was in front. Still, it was safest, so I nodded, and we crawled. I kept him in front of me where I could see him, and he was brave when rocks dug into our knees and thorns poked into our sides. Honestly, he was always brave.
I felt like I could breathe again when we passed the tree line and the sounds of the street faded. Marcus felt it, too. I could tell because he let go of my hand and smiled up at me. I couldn't stop myself from grinning back. There were real fireflies then, and we knew the way, easy as anything, to the pool. But we hadn't discussed this part. Originally, we'd planned to trek through the woods to the highway on the other side before finally trying to get a ride. Now though, we moved without speaking toward the place that we knew.
The night sounds quickly became less city noise, more owls and rustling leaves and our own footfalls—and with every step, we felt safer. It wasn't cold because it was almost summer, but we brought a blanket anyway, and when we got to a spot across the pool from the witch, where the pine needles made a bed under the trees, we stopped. I hadn't seen my brother so happy since before Abe moved in, and I couldn't stop my mouth from turning up at the ends. It was weird and good and I hugged Marcus and kissed his head. “This is it. I know it,” he said. And I nodded and shushed him, gesturing toward the witch's silent lean-to.
He laughed quietly, and jumped up and down like kids do, and I hoped his movements would scatter any lingering spiders. I unpacked the few things we had brought with us. “Hey—blanket on top or bottom?”
He chose bottom, so I spread the thinning fabric over pine needles. After a while, I asked him: "Do you miss Mom?" And after a while he replied: "Yeah, but I always miss her."
"Me, too." I wrapped my arms around him, and we watched the stars peeking through tree branches until we fell asleep.
×
The next day, we spoke to the witch for the very first time. We didn't have a choice because we woke up covered in her blanket, and even though it smelled like mud and urine, we had to return it and thank her. It was hard to be afraid of her after that—after she'd stood over our sleeping bodies without hurting us—but I wasn't sure whether or not witches could even speak, form words, to have a conversation.
She wasn't in the lean-to. And we hadn’t expected that. All those times we had watched her, she always stayed close, but now she wasn't anywhere. I folded the maybe once green blanket and held it tightly in front of me. "Put it inside," Marcus said, pointing to her door with his dinosaur. But that seemed wrong, so I left it just barely outside, tucked up against a log, and we walked back to our pine bed. We had plans to make.
In the daylight, though, we could clearly see her lean-to across the pool. When it started to rain and she still wasn't back, I said, "Let's grab the blanket, put it inside so it doesn't get wet."
"Us, too." Marcus voiced what I was thinking.
Inside, there was a small made bed, and a nook for a seemingly random assortment of dishes, and a stained photo of a smiling girl with something something 1964 scribbled on. But nothing else. I didn't feel so happy anymore. And Marcus said, "This is worse than home."
"But no Abe," I couldn’t stop myself from adding.
My brother nodded. "But no food, either." I remember wondering if all kids had to choose between starving and violence. I guess I still wonder this sometimes.
"Git, git, git, GIT!" And then suddenly the witch appeared, and she shooed at us, pushing us into the rain, muttering and shuffling in a thrashing way, in a flurry of arms.
"We're sorry! We're so sorry.” The words tumbled out, panicked and quick. "Thank you for the blanket."
"We didn't want it to get wet," Marcus offered. But she had closed her door, which was really just a mass of sticks tied together with different colors of yarn and string. "What do we do?” Marcus whispered. “Leave?"
Inside, the muttering stopped, and the door flew open again. She shoved the photo at us. "See!" she said. "Still here!" She waved her arms around, like she meant the woods, but then Marcus asked her, directly, "Where?"
For a second, she looked shocked, and then she grabbed his arm, dragging him toward the pool, rain sliding down Marcus' plastic dinosaur.
I ran after them. Yelled "Let him go!" But she’d already reached the edge by then and released him to me. We stood behind her at the edge of the muddy water, circles rippling out from every single drop of rain. As we stood there, her black hair became soaked, collecting and releasing water from the ends. She turned to us and said deliberately, clear as any day except this one, "Drowned," and she pointed to the picture now flimsy in her hands. Her eyes were blue and bloodshot. Marcus shivered in my arms. I took the picture when she thrust it out at me, and I asked, "She drowned here?"
Her eyes closed then, and she sank to the ground. Newly-forming mud slid away to make room for the shape of her. She nodded.
"Is she your daughter?" Marcus asked before I could stop him.
She reached for the picture, ready to have it in her hands again, and she tucked it away into her coat. "Can't leave, I can't leave, not leave, she's here, still here. She’s still here."
My brother squeezed my hand. Water fell from our knuckles to the mud. This woman was a mother—not a witch. I helped her up, and I knew we had to go home.
Michelle R. Brady is a writer and attorney. Her fiction is included in Umbrella Factory Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Hair Trigger Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Maudlin House, The Big Ugly Review, and Fine Lines Journal, and has been awarded a Gold Circle Award for fiction from the CSPA. She holds a BFA in fiction writing and a JD. Find her at www.michellereneebrady.com. Follow her on X @BradyMichelleR.