Page 45 of The Witching Hours

Nan got more serious. “Don’t you worry about R.W.’s mama. She’s not saying a thing.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Goodnight.”

It’s been many decades since that incident. I’ve lived through two husbands, four children, five grandchildren, and changes that have made the world small and unrecognizable. In college I changed my name to Bryn. I wasn’t ashamed of being a southern girl. Far from it. But I got tired of being the butt of jokes about “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Bryn suits me just fine.

Since that Halloween, I’ve lived a lifetime of joy. I’ve lived a lifetime of sorrow in equal measure. I decided a long time ago not to be too curious about what happened that night. I’ve never again called on my unusual abilities. I mean unless you count the nocturnal shooing. When things I don’t like come around at night, I can tell them to leave me alone in just a certain way and they skedaddle so fast it’s kind of funny really. Works for mundane things, too. Like annoying people and rabbits. I grow the most beautiful red geraniums you’ll ever see.

Anyway. I’ve never done anything like that since. I guess my curiosity was permanently scared into a hidey hole. I know one thing though.

I am one of them.

CABBAGES and KINGS

I was eight the first time I encountered a version ofThrough the Looking Glass.It was a Disney adaptation in the form of a big, beautiful book calledAlice in Wonderland.

My parents had enrolled me in the Disney Golden Book club when I was five, which meant that every other month I’d receive a colorful fairy tale with gorgeous illustrations. The book wasn’t thick, but it was tall and wide. Huge in the hands of a five-year-old. I looked forward to the art even more than the stories.

The drawings inAlicewere especially noteworthy; so detailed and colorful they pulled me right into the story,whether I wanted to go or not.

I’d already received and digestedSnow White,Pinocchio,Peter Panand many more. Each of these had elements that were psychologically disturbing, although I didn’t yet have the language or organizational thought skills to describe my misgivings. But it certainly explains my adult aversion to dark drama. Horror is out of the question.

At that age, I’d been to the emergency room and had stitches. So, watching Peter Pan’s shadow being reattached was hair-raising. Not to mention the budding feminist in me knew something was awfully wrong with kidnapping a girl to cook, clean, sew and sing sweet songs while boys ran around having fun and adventures. Years later, a wise songwriter would let folks know once and for all that “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. There could’ve been a “too” added at the end of the title, but it was implied.

Pinocchio’s nose growing to an alarming size was awful enough, but for me, it took a backseat to mischievous boys being turned into donkeys that cried huge tears.

As a child I thought Snow White was precious to her core. As an adult, I think she needed supervision. Would you take an apple from somebody who looked like that witch? The answer is no. You would not. Or, if you did take it to be polite, you surely wouldn’t eat it. Maleficent disguised as a witch made me wary of women who hadn’t aged well for years. Still, this took second place to the grizzly act of cutting out a stag’s heart to fool the queen.

Carnage was a theme. For example, what was the effect on young minds of skinning Dalmatian puppies to make a fur coat? I’ll tell you what effect it had. I, for one, give money to PETA every month.

Though fairy tales were rife with the stuff of bad dreams, the one that literally brought nightmares to life, for me, was the book commonly known asAlice in Wonderland. In my mind it is not a down-the-rabbit-hole story, but rather the telling of a little girl’s descent into hell.

Like every other night, I went to bed with prejudice, making sure everyone within earshot heard my protests. I didn’t like being in my room. It was supposed to be mine alone, but I was never alone in it. My senses confirmed this. Further, I didn’t like going to sleep. The only thing worse than being forced to go to bed was that sleep would inevitably follow.

The day I receivedAlice in Wonderlandfrom the Disney book club, I trudged to bed with slumped shoulders, wishing I could be another person in another place engaged in almost any another activity. The terrors contained in the book weren’t made less frightening by the illustrations. If anything, my young psyche found the juxtaposition of horror with beautiful drawingsin gorgeous, saturated colors all the more disturbing. I didn’t voice my thoughts to my dad, whose turn it had been to read to me. Sharing my feelings with him would only dash his hope that I was a normal kid.

I could tell by my father’s reading of the story that he saw nothing objectionable, and thought the tale was educational or entertaining or both. For me, it was just another perturbing event on the way to accepting bizarre twists in adult thought patterns which were unpredictable at best, deplorable at worst.

My bed was higher than most with a trundle underneath. I typically took three running strides and leapt into the air to land on top of the wool blanket my mom had gotten at the Army surplus. Like many things that originate with government, it was adequate, but scratchy and uncomfortable.

Unlike all the other nights this trick (worthy of Cirque de Soleil in my mind) had been flawlessly performed, my foot caught the edge of the wood block post and sent me careening off the side of the bed. I opened my mouth, but the complaint caught in my throat when I realized I hadn’t tumbled downward and hit the floor. Instead, I’d continued to fall past where the floor should be, albeit incredibly slowly. And I was no longer in my room but in a vortex that had opened in my bedroom floor. Downward I floated in a vertical tunnel lined with cupboards and shelves, some stocked with priceless books. I was going slowly enough to read some of the titles, but was not able to grab even one before I’d fallen out of reach.

Some of the bookshelves held letters with wax seals still intact. Some of the object d’art on the shelves looked priceless and eminently curious when they were obscured by cobwebs or moss tendrils. The tea service fit for a queen was less inviting in the context of an overwhelming smell of must and decay.

Even more astonishing was the white rabbit in a waistcoat, like the one in the story, who floated past memanaging, somehow, to fall slightly faster. As he passed, he looked at me from the eye on the side of his head, checked his pocket watch, and said, “Hmmmph,” before executing a perfect soft landing at the bottom of the hole. He struck me as unfriendly. “Hmmmph” is not an acceptable greeting. But I supposed not much more could be expected of a white rabbit.

Practicing good manners was on my mind because it was a theme running throughout the story that took hold in my psyche. There was little of value in the story, but manners made good sense. Rude behavior does not.

As to being overtaken in my downward progress by a rabbit, my natural competitive nature tried to kick in, but when I found myself unable to go faster, I accepted that being the tortoise in that scenario was probably the least of my worries. I don’t know why I’d want to catch up to a rude, suspicious rabbit who probably stole someone’s watch.

At some point in my young life, I’d decided rabbits weren’t meant to be white. The white ones have pink eyes. A kid in my class had gotten pinkeye and been out of school until it wasn’t contagious. I hadn’t seen what pinkeye looked like, but it seemed like a good guess it would look like white rabbit eyes. As an adult I would say there are four reasons for having pink eyes: pinkeye, crying, alcohol, or being a white rabbit. None is desirable.

Then there’s also the side eye thing. While I get that animals of prey need eyes on the sides of their heads so they know what’s going on behind them, it’s still disconcerting for fellow creatures to find it necessary to turn their heads to the side just to get a look at you.

Having seen a movie in which the hero had repeatedly coached the heroine to not look down while attempting to cross a gorge on an ancient rope bridge, I’d absorbed the lesson and began chanting, “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.”

Unfortunately, repetition backfired and made looking down an irresistible impulse. On a leap of faith that there was ground below, though shrouded in a brownish mist, I went back to studying collectibles displayed in see-through cupboards with wicker fronts. The fact that I’d just checked on my downward trajectory made the sudden landing even more sudden.

My fall was stopped by hard ground and left me in an awkward akimbo position. After a minute or two I felt well-oriented enough to sit up and look around. I wasn’t hurt. At least not seriously. The same could not be said for my pretty pink pajamas. There was just enough light for me to see that they were hopelessly dirty. After pulling away a small twig that had caught on my pajama top, my first thought was how I would explain the mess to my mother who believed me to be asleep in a bed with clean sheets.

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