What Is Her Name
All during camp the next day Katie and Mandy wondered about the little old lady. They talked at lunch about her, about the hats. They tried to remember if she said anything about herself. The only thing they could remember was that she bought the hats in Iowa when she was a young woman. They didn't even know where Iowa was or how it was spelled. They agreed that the cookies were excellent. They decided not to tell anyone about their visit - just yet.
After dinner that night they were all outside playing. The sun had cooled down a little, but a few people were still splashing in the hose. Bret was riding his bike around, revving it up as fast as he could, then jamming on his brakes so that he could make the back tire squeal and kick up dirt. Ryan was throwing a frisbee with Jason, who could never catch it and was always having to run to fetch it. Brie and Katie and Mandy and Kara were running through the water, taking mouthfuls of it and trying to spit it at each other. Their squeals of laughter echoed off the houses around them.
Debbie, Brie and Bret and Ryan's mother, came out onto the porch with a bag of marshmallows. They'd cooked steak for dinner and the coals of the grill were still warm. She'd also brought out a bunch of shish-kabob skewers to hang the marshmallows on. She called everyone over and everyone stuck their marshmallow over the heat, watching it turn brown (or, in the case of Jason, watch it catch fire and fall into the ashes) and then nibbling at the white goo, drooping it over their chin or getting it on their fingers.
The sun was just going down and the sky was a bright orange. A few stars had started to jump out. Debbie brought over a lawn chair, sat down, and announced "Time for ghost stories!!" With marshmallows and laughter the kids gathered around her feet. Everyone knew that Debbie was the best ghost-story teller around. "I'll have to make it quick, though. The skeets will be out pretty soon."
"I got the idea for this story from Katie and Mandy and their little 'dare' the other day." She adjusted herself in the chair. "There was an old woman who lived alone in a big house" - she smiled at Katie and Mandy, but didn't notice the look that Mandy and Katie gave each other - "and all the kids in the neighborhood thought she was a witch. The parents tried to tell them that witches didn't exist, but everybody knew differently. The old woman was a witch - that was for sure.
"Of course, no one had ever seen her do any witch stuff. And they weren't quite sure what witch stuff was - though they thought it had to do with frogs and turning people into rats and things like that. They played around her house and shouted at her, but she never came outside and they began to make up stories about what she looked like and what she did. She looked like a troll, with warts on her face, a nose that hooked like a boomerang, and hairs that came out of her ears. At night, they said, she came out of her house and flew around the sky and turned cats into hotdogs and fish into underwear and Coca-Cola into shampoo. Before the sun came up she'd go back to her house down the chimney and people would get up in the morning and find that a lot of things had been changed around, that their underwear had fish scales in them and that when they drank Coke soap bubbles came out of their mouths.
"Like I said, no one ever saw her do any of this." The sun had almost gone down. The coals gave off a weak red glow. "One night, when it was real hot, like it's been all this week" - she looked around the group and let her eyes rest on Katie - "Katie couldn't sleep very well." Everyone looked at Katie and smiled, but Katie felt distinctly weird inside, like she wasn't going to like this story at all. "She woke up because she thought she heard a noise in the kitchen. She lay in her bed, wondering if she was wide awake or dreaming, and suddenly remembered that it might be the witch!!
"She got out of bed." ("Boy, I wouldn't do that," someone in the group said out loud.) "She went into the kitchen. The only thing she could see was the moonlight coming in the windows and the sound of the fans going in each bedroom. But then, there it was again, that noise!! It sounded like someone crying and laughing and gargling with salt water all at the same time! And it wasn't coming from the kitchen. It was coming from the porch! And on the porch, lighted up by the moon, was an enormous shadow with a big hook on it, like a boomerang!
"Katie froze. Her feet had roots coming out of them into the floor so she couldn't run away. And the shadow moved! It moved like a big bat flapping incredibly huge wings. And it was going to come in the window, and it was going to take Katie away and turn her into a compact disc. She didn't want to be a compact disc for the rest of her life!
"The shadow seemed to come closer. The gargling sound got louder, it sounded like a hungry stomach with a squeak." Everyone's face was lifted up to Debbie. A car passed by on the street, its light raking across the small group on the lawn - no one noticed. Little Candice moved closer to her brother. The streetlight buzzed on the corner and moths and gnats flew around its light. "For a moment Katie thought that it wouldn't be able to get through the screens on the windows but if a witch could do anything, then screens wouldn't stop her. This was it - she was a goner. Her heart pounded like a hammer gone crazy.
"But somehow she moved her feet, somehow she turned and ran into her bedroom, somehow she dived into her bed under the covers. She kept saying to herself over and over again `Miss Susie had a steamboat, Miss Susie had a steamboat (because everyone knows that saying that will keep any witch away). She waited for a pair of claws to pick her up - but they never did. Finally she had to come out from under the covers because she was suffocating and sweating. She threw them off - and nothing happened. She was still in her room. She breathed deeply. And fell asleep.
"The next morning she fully intended to tell everybody about how close the witch had come to her, how she had narrowly escaped becoming a compact disc, and she rolled out of bed ready to talk. But as she ran into the kitchen and looked out onto the porch, what do you think she saw?" Debbie paused, but everyone waited for her to continue - they wanted the story filled in. "The night before her mother had done some laundry. Katie hadn't heard her do it because she was asleep. On the line, drying in the morning sunlight, was a big dark blue sheet. On the line next to the sheet was her sneakers, which her mother had washed, and sure enough, they were curved up at the toe. As she looked at them a small breeze blew in and the sheet flapped a little - sort of like a big bat. And the sneaker looked sort of like a boomerang - or would look like a boomerang in the moonlight. At that moment the refrigerator's motor turned on and it sounded sort of like someone crying and laughing and gargling with salt water."
Someone slapped a shoulder and whispered "Got him." Debbie said, as she got up from the chair, "And that's the time the witch came to visit Katie. C'mon, let's go in. The skeeters are coming!" At that point everyone disappeared to their houses, a few parents voices floating out a name or two calling their children home.
As Katie went upstairs she decided she liked the story, but she knew that it was also pretty wrong. Debbie had never met the old woman. So it was just a story. A pretty good one. But still just a story. She knew more than Debbie - she knew the old woman's name. Debbie hadn't given her a name, but Katie knew the name. And she knew the old woman had hats. She thought that was funny.
Katie was tired, and after she washed her face and hands she went right to bed. Kara was sitting on the coach talking to their mother, and Katie could just hear their voices over the sound of the fans. Suddenly, she jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen. Good, there weren't any sheets on the line. The last thing she needed to be worrying about was whether a big bat with a hook nose and sounding like gargling was going to bother her during the night.
