Page 2 of The Witch

Before I can reach for it, the door suddenly starts to move of its own accord. I scream—a ridiculous overreaction. I feel utterly stupid for getting a jump scare from someone opening a door. Moreover, the man who opened the door for me looks as frightened as I am. He’s backing away from the door, clutching his chest.

It takes me a split second to recognize Mick Wheeler, my grandmother’s housekeeper and groundskeeper. He’s been with her for as long as I can remember. And that means he’s very, very old now, and even more skinny and frail looking than I remember. My scream might have triggered a heart attack.

“Mick!” I cry. “I’m so sorry!”

Mick is rubbing the left side of his chest. He had a full head of red hair when I came here as a little girl, but now it’s just a few white tufts that look like dandelion fluff. “Entirely my fault,” he wheezes. “I saw you through the window and thought I’d greet you at the door. Can I help you with your bags?”

Help me with my bags? Mick is gasping for air and doesn’t look like he could help anyone with their bags. My bags could carry him better than he could carry them.

“Maybe we should sit down?” I suggest.

“Yes,” he manages. “Actually…that…would be nice.”

I follow Mick into the house, which has a musty smell that is unfamiliar from my childhood. It almost smells like this house has been vacant for a long time, and I am the first person venturing inside in many decades. Just as I feared, the entire place is badly in need of a deep cleaning.

In the living room, I help Mick over to the flowered sofa, which sits atop four sturdy wooden legs. He looks very pale, but his breathing slows down once we’re sitting. When we used to visit as a child, Mick was about the same height as my father, but now he seems like he’s shrunk an inch or two and lost thirty or forty pounds. No wonder the grass is overgrown.

“Can I get you some water?” I offer.

“Yes, please.”

I hurry to the kitchen, where dishes are piled up in the sink. I check the cabinets and find an array of glasses, none of which are entirely clean. I give one of them a quick scrub, then fill it up with water. When I bring it back to Mick, he offers me a brave smile, which makes the lines on his face get deeper. This man is supposed to be taking care of my grandmother’s home? I can only hope my great-aunt Ethel is in better condition.

As we sit there, waiting for Mick to recover, I become aware of the ticking of the grandfather clock in the room. It’s just about as old as the knocker on the door—another antique from the days of my distant ancestors. I forgot about the almost hypnotic sound that it makes.

Tick tick tick tick…

I shake my head, focusing my attention back on Mick and his possible coronary. “Should I call 911?”

“Don’t be silly,” he insists, dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “It’s just a bit of indigestion.”

I take my phone out of my pocket, but I’m dismayed to discover I don’t have any bars. Now that I think about it, whenever we came to visit when I was a teenager, the phone service was always choppy. Whenever I complained about it, my mother would point out that there was a “perfectly good landline.” Then she would show me the rotary phone in the living room, and I would just stare at it, horrified at the barbaric way people used to live. There’s still a landline in the living room, and although the prehistoric dial has been replaced with buttons, it’s an old-school model with a cord tethering the receiver to the phone.

“I’m fine, Julia.” Mick’s voice is stronger this time. “Just got a little bit of a scare. It’s nice that you keep me on my toes!”

Some of the color has come back into his face. Thank God, it looks like I haven’t managed to kill Mick.

“Your grandmother is so excited you’re here,” he continues. “She’s been talking about it for days.”

A second later, Gram sweeps into the room in her bare feet, wearing something that I’m not sure is a nightgown or an actual dress. It’s a pale pink color, long enough to graze her ankles. Her hair is silver, and she always wears it untamed and long, flowing down her back. If my grandmother ever returned to Pemberton as an apparition, she would look exactly like this—she wouldn’t need to change a thing.

Gram’s gaze settles on me. I rise to my feet, expecting her to open her arms for a hug, but instead, the smile falters from her lips. She sways on her feet. For a moment, she looks terrified.

“Ethel,” she warbles. “What are you doing here?”

She thinks I’m her sister? That’s not a good sign. I’ve been here less than five minutes, and in that time, I have managed to nearly kill the groundskeeper and be mistaken for an eighty-year-old woman.

“Letty.” Mick shakes his head in amusement. I’m glad one of us finds this funny. “This is Julia, your granddaughter.”

“Oh.” She clutches her chest in relief. “Of course. I’m sorry, Julia. For a moment, you just looked so much like Ethel.” She must notice the horrified expression on my face, because she quickly adds, “When she was young, of course.”

That’s it. I’m buying that fancy age-defying moisturizer just as soon as I have some money in the bank.

Of course, that will probably be never, since I am officially broke. The reason I’m moving in with Gram is that I was recently laid off from my job at a nonprofit. The goal of the nonprofit was to tutor inner-city children, which was really wonderful, except we lost all our funding back in April and got shut down. I eventually ended up tutoring half the kids on my own for free, which seemed like a great solution until I looked up one day and realized I was out of savings. So when my father told me Gram’s memory was going and he was worried about her, I was quick to agree to help out.

Now that we have clarified that I am not Gram’s sister, she wraps her frail arms around me in an embrace. Gram turned eighty-five this year, and she looks every day of her years. When we hug, I can feel all the bones in her spine and ribs. While Ethel claims Gram is fine, my parents aren’t so sure, and neither am I. I’m not glad to be broke, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend time with my grandmother before it’s too late.

“Is that all you brought?” Gram looks at my two pieces of luggage, neither of which is very large. “Barbara said you would be staying for a few months.”