Gramma was still sleeping and it was all right, that was his first thought; it had only been some weird sound, after all; maybe she made it all the time when he and Buddy were in school. Just a snore. Gramma was fine. Sleeping.
That was his first thought. Then he noticed that the yellow hand that had been on the coverlet was now dangling limply over the side of the bed, the long nails almost but not quite touching the floor. And her mouth was open, as wrinkled and caved-in as an orifice dug into a rotten piece of fruit.
Timidly, hesitantly, George approached her.
He stood by her side for a long time, looking down at her, not daring to touch her. The imperceptible rise and fall of the coverlet appeared to have ceased.
Appeared.
That was the key word. Appeared.
But that’s just because you are spooked, Georgie. You’re just being Seilor El-Stupido, like Buddy says — it’s a game. Your brain’s playing tricks on your eyes, she’s breathing just fine, she’s —
“Gramma?” he said, and all that came out was a whisper.
He cleared his throat and jumped back, frightened of the
sound. But his voice was a little louder. “Gramma? You
want your tea now? Gramma?”
Nothing.
The eyes were closed.
The mouth was open.
The hand hung.
Outside, the setting sun shone golden-red through the trees.
He saw her in a positive fullness then; saw her with that childish and brilliantly unhoused eye of unformed immature reflection, not here, not now, not in bed, but sitting in the white vinyl chair, holding out her arms, her face at the same time stupid and triumphant. He found himself remembering one of the “bad spells” when Gramma began to shout, as if in a foreign language — Gyaagin! Gyaagin! Hastur degryon Yos-soth-oth! — and Mom had sent them outside, had screamed.
“Just GO!” at Buddy when Buddy stopped at the box in the entry to hunt for his gloves, and Buddy had looked back over his shoulder, so scared he was walleyed with it because their mom never shouted, and they had both gone out and stood in the driveway, not talking, their hands stuffed in their pockets for warmth, wondering what was happening.
Later, Mom had called them in for supper as if nothing had happened.
(you know how to deal with her best Ruth you know how to shut her up)
George had not thought of that particular “bad spell” from that day to this. Except now, looking at Gramma, who was sleeping so strangely in her crank-up hospital bed, it occurred to him with dawning horror that it was the next day they had learned that Mrs. Harham, who lived up the road and sometimes visited Gramma, had died in her sleep that night.
Gramma’s “bad spells.”
Spells.
Witches were supposed to be able to cast spells. That’s what made them witches, wasn’t it? Poisoned apples. Princes into toads. Gingerbread nouses. Abracadabra. Presto-chango. Spells.
Spilled-out pieces of an unknown puzzle flying together in George’s mind, as if by magic.
Magic, George thought, and groaned.
What was the picture? It was Gramma, of course, Gramma and her books, Gramma who had been driven out of town, Gramma who hadn’t been able to have babies and then had been able to, Gramma who had been driven out of the church as well as out of town. The picture was Gramma, yellow and fat and wrinkled and sluglike, her toothless mouth curved into a sunken grin, her faded, blind eyes somehow sly and cunning; and on her head was a black, conical hat sprinkled with silver stars and glittering Babylonian crescents; at her feet were slinking black cats with eyes as yellow as urine, and the smells were pork and blindness, pork and burning, ancient stars and candles as dark as the earth in which coffins lay; he heard words spoken from ancient books, and each word was like a stone and each sentence like a crypt reared in some stinking boneyard and every paragraph like a nightmare caravan of the plague-dead taken to a place of burning; his eye was the eye of a child and in that moment it opened wide in startled understanding on blackness.