Rhymes with Witches

“I can’t believe you wore that to school,” she said.

“What? I never wore this to school.”

Camilla gazed at me. “We are at school.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Third floor—that’s where Lurl’s office allegedly is, right?” she said. She marched down the hall. “We better get a move on.”

Ceiling-level fire alarms shone faintly, casting an eerie red light over the rows of lockers. In the stairwells, moonlight streamed in from square windows. What looked normal by day was claustrophobic by night, full of hungry shadows stretching toward us as we padded toward Lurl’s office. Or as I padded, rather. Camilla walked normally, spine erect and arms swinging. I admired her for it even as I resented it.

On the third floor, I banged my shin against what turned out to be a wire Animal Control cage. “Fuck,” I said. Pain bloomed under my skin, and I paused to massage my muscle. Camilla stopped, too, turning around when she realized I was no longer with her, and in the sudden quiet I heard a scrabbly sound. Like claws tic-tacking across the floor.

Clamminess squeezed my insides. “Do you hear that?” I whispered.

“Hear what?” Camilla said in her normal voice.

“Shhh,” I said. I strained my ears, but the noise was gone. We continued on. We reached the corridor that co

Camilla exhaled impatiently.

I tugged it open, and we stepped into the dark passageway. This section had neither windows not fire alarms, so when the door thunked shut behind us, we were thrown into black. My body went rigid.

“Open it back,” Camilla said beside me. Her voice slipped higher up the register. “I can’t see a thing.”

I scrambled for the handle. At first I couldn’t find it, and my panic mounted. Then my fingers found purchase, and I pushed the door open to let in a sliver of gray.

“Use your shoe to prop it,” Camilla said.

“Use your shoe,” I said, still feeling freaked and hoping it didn’t show. But my shoes, safe in my backpack, were delicate silver sling-backs. Hers were some weird kind of sneakers involving velour.

She made as if to return to the main hall. “Fine. Guess it’s not that important to you after all.”

“Wait,” I said. I fumbled in my pack, pushing my shoes aside, and grasped the teddy bear. I jammed it between the door and the frame.

The corridor was still dark, but not as dark, and the quality of the light gave the night a kind of dreamlike unreality. I hesitated, then walked to Lurl’s office. I really didn’t want to do this, but I had the dreadful sense that it was the only way.

I drew the key from my pack. “Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

“Here goes nothing,” Camilla said.

I turned the key in the lock. I twisted the knob.

A yowl pierced the air, and a mass of fur and muscle drove into my chest. I yelped and tried to get it off me, but its claws dug into my quilted vest.

“Help!” I cried. I pried one paw free, only to have the cat latch back on and climb higher on my shoulder. “Camilla! Do something!”

The cat howled. I shoved. Digging my hands under its front legs, I flung it to the floor. It scrambled to its feet and trotted back over. It meowed and butted my leg. A rumbling purr started up in its chest.

“He likes you,” Camilla said.

I breathed hard and examined my vest, now scratched and ripped. “This would have been my skin,” I said. “I would have been, like, shredded.”

Camilla strode into Lurl’s office and flicked on the lights. One of the bulbs popped and went out, leaving us in half-lit dusk.

“So where’s the great mystery?” she said, sca

I moved forward, but the cat twined between my legs and made me trip.

“Goddammit,” I said.

The cat stretched on its hind feet and attempted to scale me. I winced as it pawed my bruised shin.

“Quit it. I mean it—quit it!”

“I don’t see anything,” Camilla said. She turned to leave.

“Will you just give me a minute?” I snapped. I shook the cat from my leg and tugged the J pendant out of my pack. I jerked the cord, and the J danced. The cat meowed and batted it with its paw.

“You want this?” I said. “Huh?” I dangled the pendant down low and dragged it across the floor. I slung it down the hall, and the cat skittered after it. I closed the door.

“Okay,” I said. “All right.”

“All right, what?” Camilla said.

I pointed to the office’s rear door, the one that led to what I knew must be an empty storage room. Or who knows, maybe not so empty. “In there. It’s got to be.”

“What’s got to be?” she said. But she crossed the room, and I followed. For a moment, she wavered. Then she opened the door.

“Holy shit,” she said.

My blood reversed directions in my veins. Staring from the shadows were corpses, mute and still. Then my brain caught on, and I realized they weren’t corpses—of course not corpses, why had I thought corpses?—but lifesize goddess figures. The room was packed with them. A rough stone goddess with arms out-spread stood by a marble goddess with a swollen belly. A black Aphrodite. A lifesize Kali, goddess of death and resurrection, with her ever-present string of skulls around her neck.

“What the hell … ?” I whispered. The light filtering in from Lurl’s office wasn’t much, but as my eyes began to adjust, I made out bits and bobs of brightness in the gloom. A butterfly barrette sparkled from an ivory snake goddess. A tiny mirror was tucked among the skulls on the figure of Kali. A heavy-breasted goddess held Alicia’s lip balm in her upturned limestone palm.

“Do you believe me now?” I asked. “Can we get out of here?”

Camilla was pale.

“That’s my headband,” she said. She snatched a creamy suede headband from a statue sculpted to look like the Egyptian goddess Isis. “And that’s my necklace! I looked everywhere for that necklace!” She ripped a chain off the tip of a crescent moon, which an alabaster goddess lifted to the heavens.

“Camilla,” I said. “Come on, don’t mess it up.”

She stared at me incredulously. She strode across the room, careless of the offerings she knocked out of place, and reclaimed a silver bracelet. From its links dangled a heart-shaped charm, etched with a B for ballet.

“Stop,” I pleaded. “This isn’t cool.”

“Is there anything else?” she demanded.

I thought of the bobby pin. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“There’s nothing else, I swear.”

We heard a noise, and both of our heads swung toward the source. There. A stain in the darkness.

Camilla rejoined me in a series of jackrabbit steps. The Isis figure tottered as she passed, and a collection of bracelets clinked to the floor.

“What’s over there?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How should I know?”

Our voices were strained.

“Go look,” she said.

“What? You go look.”

We stared into the shadowy corner. A shape shifted almost imperceptibly. There was a muted thump.

My heart rose in my throat, and I whispered, “Where’s the light? There’s got to be a light for this room, too.” I turned from the shape and found the switch. I flicked it, but nothing happened.

“It’s a cradle,” Camilla said.

I faced it again. Terror fluttered in my chest.

“Go look,” she commanded. “Or I will.”

Everything inside me grew dizzy, and I blamed her. Who was she to throw out a dare? Who was she to imply that she was the one in charge?

I forced my feet to move. The goddess figures seemed to watch me as I approached—it was like being in a room filled with menacing strangers—and the air grew unpleasantly warm. I smelled cat shit and old pee. I stepped closer, and the shape in the corner gained definition. Yes. A cradle, small and worn. A thump as its rockers met the floor.