Chapter 27
Chapter 27
Fern watched Hagar pour a thick line of salt across the floor inside the kitchen door.
“She’ll step over it,” Fern said.
“Nothing unnatural steps over salt,” Hagar said, straightening her stiff back and putting the dark blue canister of Morton’s on the counter.
When it rains it pours , the container proclaimed.
“Can’t y’all stay here tonight?” Fern asked. “They’re going to get in.”
Hagar was out of patience.
“Nothing’s going to get in,” she said. “Sister and I are putting down salt along all the doors. In the morning, y’all have to get up before anyone and sweep it up. I wouldn’t want to be either one of us if Miss Wellwood finds out we’ve been pouring Morton’s all over her floors.”
“I don’t know,” Fern said, eyeing the straight white line. “It doesn’t look like it can keep out a witch.”
“Well,” Hagar said. “It better.”
Night came. Fern sat in the Cong, clutching Zinnia’s hand, letting whatever was on TV wash over her, dreading the moment Nurse Kent would send them to bed.
“She wants me,” Fern said, pacing the room before lights out. “She’ll find a way to get in. Those rocks were to let us know she could reach us even over the silver and now we don’t even have that. She can come right up to the house.”
“Hagar said the salt would keep her out,” Zinnia said.
“She doesn’t know!” Fern said. “And neither do you!”
Charlie Brown rolled inside her. He was coming. Any minute one of his kicks would just keep on going and going and going and she would scream until the corners of her mouth tore, and bleed like Myrtle, and the witches were hunting her.
She missed the lava lamp.
It had felt like the spirit of Rose, staying with them in solidarity, making the room less gloomy. Without it, everything looked darker. There were more shadows. They’d tacked black garbage bags over the broken window, and the night breeze made the plastic crackle and luff.
Zinnia let Fern share her bed, and Fern felt a little safer away from the window. She listened to the plastic bag crinkle and snap, ears probing every corner of the Home for the sound of a door opening, a window sliding up, a witch stepping over the salt for her.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
Fern opened her eyes in the dark, right as the sound from downstairs stopped. At first she thought it must be Miss Wellwood’s clock striking twelve, then she remembered hearing that hours ago. Her skin prickled beneath the sheet.
Light from the hall shone under the crack at the bottom of the door and she stared at its glowing line, ears straining. Zinnia inhaled deep, held it, then puffed it back out again. Holly snorted air in and out in her regular rhythm. The plastic bags rustled gently. Crickets whirred on the other side.
Something rattled downstairs, muffled by the hall carpet. Over and over— rattle, rattle, rattle . It floated up the stairs, angry, urgent. Fern thought it would wake up everyone in the house, but she didn’t hear any doors opening. No footsteps in the hall. Nothing but this urgent rattling downstairs.
It stopped.
Holly sucked in a snore, long and nasal. Zinnia released another puff of her breath. Fern sat up in bed. She had to know. Carefully, slowly, she put her feet on the floor and stood. She crept to their bedroom door and eased it open, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the bright hall light and all that pink. She crossed to the banister and listened.
Nothing.
Maybe a raccoon got on the porch, or Nurse Kent had broken something downstairs. Maybe she should—
RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE THUMP THUMP THUMP
It rushed up the stairs at her, the angry sound of someone rattling a doorknob, banging on a door.
BANG BANG BANG KLATTER BANG
The door beside Fern opened, and she jumped.
“What’s—?” Ginger started.
“Shh!” Fern shushed her.
“What’s that?” Ginger whispered.
“I don’t know,” Fern said.
Two loud THUMPS came from downstairs then turned into RATTLING again, repetitive, monotonous, getting louder and more frantic. Why wasn’t anyone coming out of their rooms?
“Someone’s trying to get in,” Ginger whispered.
She was right. It sounded like someone trying to get in the front door. Any second they were going to break the knob off. They were going to kick down the—
—it stopped. In the silence, Ginger stared at Fern, her hair wrapped in a silk scarf, and Fern stared back. Then—
KNOCK…KNOCK…KNOCK…
“What’s happening?” a voice whispered, and the two of them saw Jasmine coming down the hall, yawning and rubbing her eyes.
Ginger held one finger to her lips.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
Slow and deliberate, the way someone knocks when they know you’re inside, when they want you to know they hear you.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
“What is going on out here?” Nurse Kent said in a loud voice, coming around the corner at the other end of the hall.
“SSSSHHH!” all three of them hissed at once.
She reached the top of the stairs and repeated herself in a whisper.
“Why aren’t y’all in bed?”
“Someone’s at the front door,” Ginger whispered.
Nurse Kent listened. They all listened. Fern braced herself for the next knock, but the house was quiet.
“Did y’all hear a car?” Nurse Kent whispered.
They all shook their heads.
“It’s probably townies,” Nurse Kent said. “Stay here.”
She started down the stairs. She took the first steps slow, like someone wading into a cold swimming pool, but as the silence grew she picked up speed. Finally, she stood on the bottom step, one hand on the newel post, facing the front door.
Silence.
Fern gripped the banister hard enough to make her knuckles ache. Nurse Kent started toward the front door. She passed under the chandelier, then the silent fan in the hall, and was about to disappear from view when the banging SLAMMED to life, front doors RATTLING in their frame, knobs SHAKING frantically back and forth, someone POUNDING to get in, and Nurse Kent turned and ran up the stairs. Jasmine screamed, short and sharp. Ginger dug her nails into Fern’s arm. The KNOCKING turned into BANGING ; whatever was outside DRUMMING on the door, SHAKING it in a rage. Nurse Kent took the steps two at a time until she reached the girls at the top.
The banging STOPPED.
Silence had never sounded so loud.
Everyone looked at Nurse Kent.
“The phone’s downstairs,” she said.
They all looked down the stairs at the door of the telephone cubby, right beside the office.
“There’s no phones up here?” Ginger whispered.
Nurse Kent shook her head.
BANG! Something hit the other side of the front door once, and the girls startled. It was the kind of bang you made to shut people up. The kind of bang you made to scare people.
It worked.
They were thirteen women alone in a house in the middle of the woods and they couldn’t get to a phone. No one ever knocked on that door after dark; no stranded motorists in the middle of the night, no friendly neighbors. They all knew about Richard Speck and those eight nurses. They all knew about Sharon Tate, pregnant with her baby, killed by people like the ones camping in the woods. Fern thought about the witches.
Nurse Kent ran away.
She pushed through the knot of girls and ran away down the hall, heading for her room, leaving them behind.
“Where’s she going?” Ginger hissed, and they all imagined her locking herself in her office, abandoning them to their doom.
“Maybe she’s going to the second phone?” Jasmine said.
“There is no second phone,” Ginger snapped.
Then, almost as rapidly as she’d left, Nurse Kent was back, looking down at her hands, checking the cylinder on a little pistol as she came striding down the hall, snapping it shut. They gave her plenty of room when she reached the top of the stairs.
“I need someone to come with me,” she said, and all the girls instinctively shrank back. She looked right at Fern. “Fern, I’ll watch the door while you call the police.”
Fern heard a high-pitched whine in her ears, and her hands and feet went cold.
“Come on,” Nurse Kent said from the end of a long tunnel.
She started down the stairs, holding her little black pistol in front of her with both hands, taking the steps one at a time, eyes glued to the front door. Her pistol looked puny. Fern followed on wooden legs, gripping the banister with both hands.
Step down. Step down. Every step revealed more of the dark front hall. They were almost there, five stairs left, and Fern was very aware of the girls watching from above, and she bet they were relieved Nurse Kent had picked her instead of them.
Nurse Kent stepped onto the hall carpet and Fern had three steps to go, two steps, one step, and now she stood on the hall carpet, too. Now she could see the front door.
KNOCK.
A single, firm knock. Letting them know she was there. The librarian. The witch. Miss Parcae.
KNOCK.
Nurse Kent pointed her pistol at the door. Her hands shook and the barrel of the gun made crazy figure eights in the air.
“Get the phone,” she said without moving her lips.
Fern’s hands clung to the banister. She couldn’t make them let go.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Bite a nail, sweetheart,” Nurse Kent said. “And get that phone.”
Fern let go and went behind Nurse Kent fast and she could smell a wild animal odor coming off the tall woman, like a quivering rabbit frozen in the eyes of a wolf. Nurse Kent pulled one palm off the butt of her pistol and wiped it down her hip, then slapped it back into place again.
“Go,” she said.
Fern made herself walk as fast as she could and flung open the phone cubby. She picked up the handset and heard its solid green body make a faint ding . She pressed the smooth circle to her ear and dialed 0 and waited for the rotary to spin slowly back into place.
She turned to Nurse Kent.
“No one’s there,” she said.
Nurse Kent was beside her in three long strides, yanking the receiver out of her hand, pressing it to her ear, quickly turning her attention to the phone, rattling the hook.
“Hello?” she said into the handset. “Hello?”
She hung up.
“Shit,” she said.
KNOCK.
Nurse Kent snapped back to the front door, raising the pistol so fast her arms knocked Fern into the doorframe.
“I need you to come with me,” she whispered.
A bead of sweat dripped off her chin. Fern whimpered real small.
“I can’t hold the gun and turn the doorknob at the same time,” Nurse Kent said.
Fern shook her head, frantically.
“Dammit, Fern,” Nurse Kent hissed. “The only other phone’s in the office and I don’t have a key.”
KNOCK.
Nurse Kent sidestepped down the front hall, carefully placing one foot ahead of the other. Fern made herself follow, feeling the eyes of the other girls on her.
KNOCK.
They passed the powder room and kept going and the ceiling cut them off from the girls upstairs, and they were passing the dining room, and the doors to the music room and front parlor were up ahead and the front door kept getting bigger, looking so innocent.
KNOCK.
Fern’s duster stuck to the sweat on her belly and the small of her back. It was dim down at this end of the hall. Fern saw the white line of salt glowing along the foot of the front door. She wanted to cry. Nurse Kent readjusted her sweaty grip on the pistol.
knock-knock-knock
It came from behind them, small and fast, all the way at the other end of the house. Nurse Kent spun around so fast Fern had to duck her stiff arms.
knock-knock-knock
They both stared back down the hall. The sound came from behind the stairs. From the side door.
KNOCK…KNOCK…KNOCK
From the front door. So hard and loud they felt the knocks concuss the air. Fern spun and saw the front doorknobs twisting slowly back and forth.
knock-knock-knock
From the side door again. Nurse Kent spun back in that direction but Fern couldn’t take her eyes off the front door.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
From off to one side, in the music room, something banging against the side of the house.
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM
The front parlor, now, on their other side, something slapping one of the few intact windows.
KNOCK…KNOCK…KNOCK
knock-knock-knock
BANG! BANG! BANG!
knock-knock-knock
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM
The knocking surrounded them, ceaseless, coming from all the doors, from all sides of the house, frantic, furious, desperate to get in, pounding, banging, knocking, rattling. Coming for Fern. She couldn’t take it. She had to make it stop. She had to get this over with.
Fern grabbed the front doorknob, twisted the deadbolt, yanked the door open, and pulled it back toward herself, cringing into the wall.
Nurse Kent charged forward into the chaos of sound, shouldering through the screen door, leading with her pistol, and everything
stopped.
She stood on the front porch, pointing her gun one way, then the other. Crickets screamed in the darkness, but the brightly lit porch was deserted. The steps led down into an empty front yard.
Nurse Kent stepped back inside and lowered her gun, yanking the door out of Fern’s hands and slamming it hard. She snapped the deadbolt shut.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s try the phone again.”
***
There was nothing wrong with it this time. Nurse Kent called Miss Wellwood first, and she sent Mrs. Deckle, whose hair was still in pink rollers beneath a flowered kerchief. She arrived when the police did and there was half an hour of confusion and excitement as they walked around the house, running flashlights over the bushes.
They left a police car parked in the driveway in case whoever it was came back. Occasionally the men inside would get out and walk around the house, shining their flashlights into the trees.
“The important thing is she didn’t get in the house,” Zinnia said to Fern. “The salt worked exactly like Hagar said.”
“They got right up to the front door,” Fern said.
“But they didn’t get inside.”
Zinnia rubbed Fern’s back. Holly huddled in Zinnia’s bed between them. They’d agreed to leave the light on.
“They want me,” Fern said. “They’re not going to stop. They’re never going to stop.”
***
“She didn’t get in, did she?” Hagar snapped the next morning.
She’d gotten the full story, first from Nurse Kent, then from Mrs. Deckle. She was making toast and stirring up a pot of stewed prunes when they came in to ask her what to do. A wisp of her graying hair stuck out over one ear.
“Exactly what happened is what I told y’all would happen. She can’t get in, so all she can do is scare you.”
“We’re not scared,” Zinnia said, and Fern thought that was easy for someone to say who hadn’t had to open the front door last night. “We’re concerned.”
“Concern yourselves right out of my kitchen,” Hagar said, turning back to her pot of steaming prunes. “Everything binding this house will hold. Now leave me alone. I’m tired of your mess.”
Fern had to ask, though, because maybe Hagar had forgotten.
“I go to the hospital soon,” she said. “I have to leave the house.”
Hagar gave it a single stir’s worth of thought.
“She’ll grow tired of y’all long before then. I’m tired of y’all now.”
Even though she was on two-week warning, Fern stayed close to Holly and Zinnia all day while they dusted the bookshelves in the front parlor and vacuumed the curtains in the music room. When dinner was over, she and Holly and Zinnia went to the Cong to kill time until they had to go to bed.
All the other girls were excited and terrified about another night at the mercy of a possible intruder. They talked about the Miami Strangler, or where they’d been when the news about Manson came on. They all knew someone who’d been murdered, or someone who knew someone who’d been murdered, or someone whose house had been broken into. They sounded like girls on a campout, trying to scare each other around the fire. Half of them thought it was college kids playing Dixie Doorbell. The other half thought they were going to wind up on the news.
Fern felt like she was being backed up to the edge of a cliff. Second by second, the ticking of the clock in Miss Wellwood’s office pushed her closer to the edge. The witches crowded toward her. She was running out of choices.
Over by the windows of the Cong, Willow burst out crying.
“I’m so scared,” she wailed.
“You think they’ll give her something for her nerves?” Violet asked. “Because she’s getting on mine.”
Nurse gave girls who wanted it a little white pill to help them sleep, then she got some of them to help her put a chair and table at the top of the stairs. She sat there all night, pistol next to her ashtray, smoking, waiting for whoever it was to come back.
They didn’t.
***
The next morning, Hagar called them into the kitchen.
She handed them three red felt pouches on strings, their ends tied shut. Holly tried to open hers.
“Don’t,” Hagar said, slapping her hand away. “Sister and I made those last night. That thing won’t get in the house, but y’all go back and forth to the clinic, and y’all are eventually going downtown. As long as y’all wear these, she can’t see you or smell you. Whatever mischief she’s playing at, this will protect you.”
“Thank you, Hagar,” Zinnia said, taking hers.
Hagar blew air between her lips.
“Protecting y’all from the trouble you stirred up isn’t worth my job anymore,” she said. “This is the last I do for you. Now put those on and leave me alone.”
They took their pouches and went to the door.
“You girls?” Hagar said, behind them.
They stopped.
“Y’all let Miss Wellwood see those, she’ll snatch them off your necks and throw them away. I’m not making any more, understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said.
In the hall, Zinnia turned to Fern.
“Do you feel better now?” she asked.
Fern slipped her pouch around her neck and took a look. It was made out of scraps and string. It was light and flimsy. It felt too small to keep out a witch.