We were warned by the grownups never to go near her house or even into her yard, but for two curious eleven year olds it was a temptation we couldn’t resist.

There were only four houses on our street separated by acres of forest. My friend, Cheryl, lived in one of them. Mrs. McTavish lived in the old brown clapboard house perched on the hill at the end of the road across from Cheryl’s.

No one knew what became of her husband. He disappeared one day many years ago. The adults said that she killed him and kept him in the basement in a deep freeze.

“Let’s go spy on the old witch.” Cheryl blurted out one day.

“We shouldn’t.” I said.

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Annie.” Cheryl was turning twelve in a couple of weeks and figured she knew everything about everything.

“It’s almost supper time. I have to go home.” I said weakly.

“You’re just a ‘fraidy cat.” She taunted.

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I gotta go.” I turned and hurried away.

“I’ll meet you down at the slough tomorrow at lunch time.” Cheryl called after me.

I knew where she meant. We had gone to that spot once before but we were too scared to go any farther.

Just before noon the next day I left the house giving my mother an extra big hug, like maybe I was never going to see her again. My legs were already shaking. But I had to do it – I didn’t want Cheryl to go to school and tell everybody that I was a wimp.

We climbed through the opening of the fence where so many children had gone before us – and one of them hadn’t come back. Had Luke Cartwright really fallen into the slough and drowned or…?

“Wait! Something’s got me!” I screamed.

“Oh, you ninny. It’s just your coat caught on a broken board.”

We waded through the bushes until we could see the McTavish house through the clearing. The old woman was sweeping off the porch with an old corn broom that was worn away up to the stitching. She didn’t look like a witch, I thought, she just looked like an old lady. Her hair was the color of straw, not black like a witches’, and hung in ratty clumps down past her waist. She didn’t even have a witches’ hat or a black cat – not that we could see, anyway.

Mrs. McTavish looked up in our direction shielding her face from the sun. Had she heard us?

“She’s looking right at us!” I whispered hoarsely, trying to hide behind a skinny tree.

“Shhhh!” Cheryl warned.

“Who’s there? Come out.” Her voice was soft and sweet, not at all like I had imagined. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

We showed ourselves.

“Well, if it isn’t Cheryl Smith and Annie Brecks.” Mrs. McTavish said.

“How did she know our names?” I asked Cheryl, grabbing her arm. My heart was pounding so hard I thought this must have been how old Mr. Saunders felt when he had that heart attack last year. He died. Maybe I was going to die, too, although I’d never heard of a kid dying of a heart attack before, but that was probably one of those endless somethings adults never told you the truth about…

Cheryl was pushing me ahead of her up to the steps of the house.

“Oh, such sweet children.” I pictured her stirring some concoction in a cauldron, at least I think that’s what those big pots were called, with me and Cheryl tied to wooden chairs with duct tape just waiting until the temperature of the soup was right…

Mrs. McTavish was saying, “I never had any children.” She sounded so normal, just like Aunt Hilda who was going on eighty.

“My Aunt Hilda never had any kids either.” I said through a dry mouth.

Cheryl punched me softly in the back.

Mrs. McTavish continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t get many visitors.”

Cheryl and I stood there not saying a word and, let me tell you, for Cheryl to be speechless was quite a rare thing.

“Come on up and let me get a closer look at you two.” Mrs. M. had put her broom aside. “And watch that third step, it’s loose.”

It was like she had a spell on us. We walked like zombies up the steps to the landing. I wanted to turn and run but my legs wouldn’t go the way I wanted them to.

“I’ve got something in the basement for you girls.” The sweet voice continued.

She couldn’t be a witch with a voice like that, could she? But, of course, she could change her voice…

Cheryl stopped just before she reached the door the old lady was holding open for us. “Mrs. McTavish, I don’t think we should…”

“Call me Magdalena, please.”

The next thing I knew we were almost at the bottom of the basement stairs. I scarcely remembered walking down them. Maybe the witch had transported us…

The basement was dark and smelled like mould. Magdalena McTavish pulled a chain that turned on a bare hanging light bulb. The old woman walked over to the deepfreeze and lifted the lid. “Come closer,” she beckoned with a crooked finger, her voice cracking just the tiniest bit.

“Look at her finger,” Cheryl whispered. “If that isn’t the finger of a witch…”

“My Aunt Hilda has fingers like that, and she’s not a witch,” I said.

Cheryl shoved me towards the deep freeze and I almost tripped and fell.

As the lid creaked open I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Cheryl…”

I turned around but she wasn’t behind me. My heart started pounding faster. Then I saw her in the shadows. My friend looked like a corpse. “Cheryl, come here and look at this,” I ordered, though my voice shook with fear.

Cheryl crept up slowly, peering over my shoulder.

Our eyes fell upon brightly colored Christmas wrapped boxes.

“Oh, my God! She’s chopped up Mr. McTavish and gift wrapped him!” Cheryl exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hand. “I think I’m going to barf!”

The old woman’s crooked finger pointed at a large box. One large enough to hold a head, I thought. “No. No. Not that one,” she said, putting the crooked finger to her lips. She chose a smaller, flatter one and carefully unwrapped it the way Aunt Hilda did to save the paper. Mrs. McTavish lifted the lid and shoved the box towards us. “Chocolate covered cherries. My favorite,” she said.

I turned around to face Cheryl, who still had her hand over her mouth. I whispered, “She thinks they’re chocolates. She must have that disease that old people get when they forget things. She’s forgotten she murdered her husband and chopped him up into pieces and dipped them in melted chocolate and put them in old boxes of chocolates that she had saved from past Christmases and then rewrapped them up in the Christmas wrapping paper!”

But then, maybe they were just chocolate covered cherries – which I loved. I don’t know how one ended up in my hand, but I put it to my teeth and just as I was about to bite down Cheryl slapped my hand and the frozen chocolate made a sound like a marble when it hit the bare cement.

“No thanks.” Cheryl said to Mrs. McTavish. “We have to be going now.”

And with that we flew up the creaking stairs two at a time, out the front door and down the landing steps, avoiding the loose one. We didn’t stop running until we got to the road.

Breathing hard, we turned around. Mrs. McTavish was sweeping the porch the same way as when we first got there, as if nothing had happened. Had it happened? Were we really in the basement? I looked at Cheryl and she looked at me. Was she thinking the same thing?

Magdalena McTavish died the next day.

A week later a moving truck showed up and took the furniture away. Jimmy Larsen and Sean Stiller watched with me and Cheryl as they carried the deepfreeze out. The two men stopped to close the lid when it popped open. A whitish chocolate rolled out onto the ground. It rolled all the way across the street and didn’t stop until it hit the toe of Sean’s boot, where it broke apart.

“What is that!” Sean asked, jumping back, trying not to look scared in front of Cheryl who he had the tiniest crush on, I knew.

“It looks like an eyeball!” Jimmy exclaimed.

The four of us stood and stared at it until Jimmy flicked it with the toe of his running shoe into the ditch, where it rolled out of sight in the underbrush.

            “What the hell is that?” Sean asked, using the h-word to impress Cheryl, who he had the biggest crush on.         

            “Yikes, is that blood?” Jimmy’s pubescent voice cracked.

            The four of them stood and stared at it until Jimmy flicked it with the toe of his running shoe into the ditch, where it rolled out of sight in the underbrush.

A few weeks after Mrs. McTavish died, the house was torn down and the four of us went down into what was left of the basement and looked everywhere to see if we could find some old bones or body parts that might belong to Mr. McTavish. “A scull would be so cool to find. Maybe it would be worth something,” Sean said seriously one day. Every day we went to ‘our place’ as we called it on the phone so the parents wouldn’t know where we were going. We went until a man told us he would charge us for trespassing if he caught us snooping around there again.

            Our adventure was over, it seemed. As we turned to leave on that last day, Jimmy stepped on something that stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He lifted his foot up so he could see underneath. “Yuck, you’ve stepped in some dog poop.” Sean laughed.

            “That’s not a dog turd.” Cheryl said. Her face went white as she whispered, “It’s old McTavish’s eyeball.”

            Cheryl and Sean took off running. Jimmy and I started to laugh. “We sure fooled them,” he said, wiping the chocolate covered cherry off of his runner. He had dropped it on the ground when Sean and Cheryl weren’t looking. I saw him do it. He put his finger to his lips as if to say ‘shhh’. Since I had a bit of a crush on him, I decided to play along.

I think he likes me, too.

                               

 

 

updated by @carolinejensen: 11/24/19 06:16:51PM