I'd heard the word witch before. Creeping in the shadowed whispers, hiding behind cupped hands and hanging tendrils of hair. Escaping like puff blown winds from ruby lips and traveling through the empty spaces before curling in the soft white cartilage of ears.

When I was younger, we'd walk hand in hand. Hanna's bony fingers tight and dry wrapped around my smaller pudgy one. Her nails weren't black then, before it all started. She would put her long blonde hair up in a scarf, the kind that matched the tight belt cinched around her tiny waist, contrasting the sundress below it and fluffing out the bottom in waves that swooshed in the wind. That stopped when the wind blew in the sickness. It stopped for lots of people, but I didn't notice, or care. I just cared about my hand empty as I ran through the streets for the first time with a fist balled up at my side and a knife in my pocket.

It was morning, that I remember. Cold and crisp in October, pumpkins lining fences, and people wrapped in jackets with scarves that matched the colors of the turning leaves. The night before it started, we had sat on the stump outside in the yard. Me waiting to go in and get out of the crisp night and Hanna crowing about Sally again, how she always had time for Jenny and Danny and never for making time for her. She called Sally a sow, and kept groaning on about how people let you down. I remember being bored of hearing it, and cupping my hands over my ears wishing she would stop repeating the same boring things over and over.

I picked up a stick and made an X in the dirt, putting a circle around it and spitting right in the middle. "There, it's done. I cursed her to the pigs and now she won't be bugging you again. Can we please go inside now, you promised I could work on your hair."

Her mouth stopped moving and she looked at me like I broke mom's favorite plate, the one with the tiny green vines climbing around the edges. Her foot shot out and rubbed away the circle, the bright full moon glaring off her black heeled boots. "Don't do that Mary, and don't say things like that. It's never wise to curse a person, it comes back to you, don't you know that? Take it back."

I could tell by her wild animal eyes and open mouth she wasn't mad, she was afraid. I'd never made anyone afraid before, and I felt somehow bigger, taller, and a little tickle traveled up my inside and crawled around my brain moving things around like furniture. I crossed my arms, and looked down at the scruffed up dirt, letting the moment wiggle around like a candy you pop in your mouth before you know it's flavor, letting it slowly make its presence from your tongue to your mind, that's usually the best part, that moment of mystery.

"I'll take it back," I said, "if you stop talking about it all the time. Everybody knows you like Danny, he doesn't like you back or else he'd stop having moon eyes over Sally and start paying attention to you. So tell him, or tell her, or move on, but stop whining all the time, I'm sick of that boring old talk."

The fear left her eyes then, and a fire lit up somewhere deep in them, even without a light but the glow of the moon I could see it, her face turned whiter, and before I could back up, or take my words back, she smacked me across the cheek and stormed into the house.

I stood there cupping my cheek, feeling the sizzle of slapped skin against the cool night air. Wondering how I'd managed to get myself from being taller in one moment, to feeling so much smaller the next. The cool wind was a sharp contrast to my rising heated anger, and I stomped my feet into the house and into the safety of my bedroom. Staring at the red puffy outline of fingers on my cheek I cursed Hanna, and Sally, and Danny and Jenny. I cursed my mother for raising her, and my father for dying. In haste, I threw the hairbrush at the mirror and felt even angrier when it spidered and fell into triangled splinters reflecting my face as they clashed to the floor.

I left them there, those jagged shards, swearing to never clean them up. As long as my anger burned I'd leave them there to remember, and no one could make me clean them. I threw myself on the bed, inhaling the smell of my sleeping sweaty night self as I wiped my falling tears upon the pillow.

Sometime later, when dawn and the dark fight for sky space, I heard a gasp, trying to hold on to the curls of sleep I ignored it until my mother's hands shook my shoulders. "Mary, get up, I need you to help me." She didn't say another word as she limped out of the room in the early dawn light leaving tiny red splatters across my wooden floor.

I stared at the wall, my insides wiggly and pushing me to rise up and find out what was happening, while a deeper part of me already started numbing. Part of me wanted to stay wrapped in the blankets, knowing when I stepped out of my room the world would somehow have changed. I can't say how I knew it, just that I did. As sure as you know when someone says your name in a whisper to another, I knew it.

The table was empty, and the stove hadn't been lit. Ma's voice rose and fell from Hanna's room, singing and making murmured promises to make things better. My legs felt heavy as they trudged me forward, half of me wanting so bad to see, and half of me screaming to run while I didn't know a thing. But I dragged them anyway, my clothes, still on from last night getting damp with the cold kind of sweat that comes from straight up fear.

I peered around the doorway, slow and deliberate like a wild tiger might be in there. My eyes stinging and fighting me to close them. My heart thumping like it might just take off and start flying around the room. Ma sat on the edge of the bed, washcloth in her hand, mopping up Hanna's forehead like she would wash off a spray of mud. I walked closer, four more steps in, just enough to smell that sour smell that tells your brain something bad is here.

Hanna lay in her nightgown, white as a summer sheet on the line in the sun, her hair stuck to her head like she'd spent too long in a wet hat, spidery blue veins running across her face. But it was her eyes that made me back up. Her usually bright blue eyes were black like a stormy sky, wide open and staring at nothing like the devil himself were standing at the foot of the bed. Her lips were dark blue, a shade I'd seen once in a flame back when Tommy Miller threw his old bike tire in the fire just to see what it would do. It was such a close match to her lips that my mind showed me the whole scene again, as if it were important right now.

"Did you hear me Mary? Go get doc Stevens, and don't you listen to his excuses about babies or accidents or emergencies." She thrust popa's knife in my hand, the silver one with the shiny handle, the one that poppa used to pop open to dig out walnuts and peel oranges. "Take the knife Mary, and if he says he can't come you pull it out and point it at him. You hear me? You make him come, and don't you come back without him." She closed my fingers around the knife and grabbed my arm yanking me to the door. My eyes were still staring at Hanna as she shoved me out, hard enough to fall back and bounce my head against the wooden porch floor, making a thud.

I waited for her to come to me then, to apologize and help me to my feet, but instead she looked at me and yelled "run" before slamming the door. Something in the word, or the way she said it kicked me into motion and for the first time my feet flew across the yard and down the road alone. Pumpkins grinned from porches as I counted my way down. At house 26 all the lights were on and someone was screaming. Jenny lived in house 26, it wasn't her real house number, but Hanna and I had counted all the houses from ours straight into town. That way we could talk about people without anyone knowing who we talked about.

I stopped right in the middle of the road, looking at that big yellow house, hearing the scream of a woman and I knew, Jenny wouldn't be hanging around Sally or Danny anymore. The scream should have faded when I started running, my mind swirling begging thoughts for her to take a breath, or pass out, or anything to make it stop, but no matter how far I ran I could still hear it, like a wild animal clawing its own way out of a trap. "Curses always come back to haunt you" Hanna's words floated around in the spaces between the scream. I cursed the words and pushed my feet faster, my right hand a fist at my side, not knowing what to do without having Hanna's inside it.

When I got to docs, the lights were on, and he was down on his knees on the porch facing Danny's parents who sat on the white iron bench where doc's wife sometimes read and drank tea in the evening. They sat hunched together, crying silently, his father with his arms around his mother, both shaking like leaves on a windy day. When I marched up the steps they stared at me as if I was bringing them news. Time seemed to stop, and noises stilled, as if we were all together in a crazy airtight box where any movement would destroy us all.

From inside the open door, the phone rang, and doc jumped, but kept his eyes on me, never moving his feet from the spot they were in as if I were the wild tiger in the room. "It's Hanna," my breathless lungs finally managed to croak. "My mom says come now no matter what, I gotta make you come." I took the knife out of my pocket, my grip around it so tight that it shook when I pointed it. I hadn't pushed the button, just showed him the handle as if it were a signal of distress that I waved.

He grabbed his bag from the inside the door and was off the porch before me, I started to leave but didn't want to turn around for fear Danny's mother's eyes would burn a hole in the back of my head. Somehow I felt that stare inside me, deep in the place where my curse lay, and I locked it there, just like I locked in Jenny's mother's never ending scream. When I finally turned, it was at a run, taking ten steps to every one of Doc Steven's. My breath dried up and my heart stopped thumping, there was no way to ignore the moment it went from doing jumping jacks to being a big old rock just sitting in my chest.

My tongue twisted and turned trying to scream to the doc about the curse, but my teeth became a bear trap locking it up, holding it down so hard that I could taste my own blood. I didn't count on the way back, I just kept my eyes on doc's shiny black shoes, trying to keep my boots close behind the tiny clouds of dust that flew from his steps. When we passed Jenny's house, I stared straight ahead, humming loudly to drown out adding any more layers to the scream that was already stuck in between my ears. I expected doc to stop, or at least pause, but he kept his feet moving and before I ever got caught up to him he was going through my front door.

Momma was crouched in the corner, soaking wet and filthy. Mud covered her dress and the floor, and swipes of it were smeared across Hanna's bed. Her hands were across her chest, and drying mud was caked across her cheek; the bun she'd worn since the day they put poppa in the ground was slid down to the side and hanging down. I looked around the room to see if someone else had come covered in mud. When the doc pulled back the covers Hanna was covered in leeches, her skin so white she made the sheets look dark, and her lips black like she used the oven coals for lipstick. Her eyes were still that deep stormy black and staring at the same spot she had been and I wondered if she'd even blinked while I was gone.

Doc Steven's started plucking off the leeches, fat and squirming, blood trickling down his long white fingers like juice from overripe berries. Momma started yelling and moaning how they took out bad blood, slapping and squealing until he picked her up and put her in a chair, leaving red swipes all over her muddied white blouse. He didn't speak, he just walked back to the bed and started again, until the tenth fat leech was pried of Hanna's thigh and dropped in the tin bucket with a splat and a ding.

He opened his bag and started working then, listening, and wiping, and shining a little light in those dead staring eyes and I looked from Hanna to my mother, and finally got the nerve to go to my room and close the door. My boots crunched over the broken glass and I reached down and started scooping up each triangle, putting them in my treasure box and taking it back, every word, every feeling, everything I'd carelessly said. By the time I got them all in, my hands felt the sting of the cuts, and my own blood dripped into the box and across the floor where momma's was from stepping on that cursing glass just hours ago.

I used my old sock to wipe it all clean, to erase the existence of my curses, to hide every bit of guilt and memory of what I said and thought. I washed my hands with the rough soap, the one we used when the pans were sticky and needed a good scrubbing, taking away flakes of dried blood that could have been mine or momma's or a mix of us both. The bubbles foamed pink and in them I could see the light above, reflecting like a window to a world I wished to sink into to get away from mine.

That was two summers ago now. When I was young and small and believed in curses and the power of the pumpkin moon. Jenny and Danny and Sally all died, and Hanna, she still holds my hand sometimes when I can get her out. Her nails, long and black click together when she squeezes mine. Her lips have stayed dark, and her eyes although now droopy and wrinkled still remind me of a wild animal. She looks at me sometimes, those wild eyes knowing, pointing, and I'm almost glad she's afraid and doesn't talk about it, because that box is closed now.

No one knows what happened the kids that summer. Rumors of toxic chemicals, drugs, and even poison circled around like leaves in the breeze. There's a bench by the river with their names on it, white and cool and overlooking the best part, where the sun dips below the trees. As for me, I keep a list now. Each time I think of what I want to happen I write it down, and put it in my treasure box. When the pumpkin season comes I go through them all, one by one, under the shining moon before making my circle.

I've heard the word witch before, creeping in the shadowed whispers, followed by glances towards Hanna and me. But I don't listen, I can see how they think that, her lily white skin and dark lips and nails, and a voice that up and left two years ago, but I know better. I don't pay attention to them, except for writing their names down on little white scraps of paper that I tuck into my treasure box.

Word count 2825
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