Blackberry Crumble (45 page)

“Are they all violent?” Sadie asked.

Pete shook his head. “Not necessarily. Many of them live relatively normal lives and are contributing members of society. Once their disorder turns malignant—meaning it escalates to the point where they’re aggressively acting on their most base instincts—they become dangerous, which is where I end up coming in.”

“That’s scary,” Sadie said. “To think there are people with no conscience living their lives amid the rest of us.”

Pete nodded. “But, like I said, they aren’t all criminals. Some of them find ways to control people and situations to their liking without breaking the law. Pat was involved in the PTA for years, and I’m pretty sure there were a few psychopaths involved in that organization.”

Sadie smiled as she moved to the table and put a fork on each plate. Pete knew so much about so many things. Then she paused. “Shouldn’t the boys have been back by now?”

Pete cocked an ear toward the doorway. “I hate to interrupt them if they aren’t screaming . . . Wait.”

Sadie heard it too. Whispers. She and Pete shared a quick look and then bolted toward the doorway. Sadie reached it first and came up short when she saw the three boys kneeling on the couch and peeking over the back in order to look out the big picture window. They were in their pajamas, she noted with relief, but were obviously intent on something happening outside. She looked over her shoulder at Pete, who was standing directly behind her, and he shrugged.

Slowly, they moved into the room, Sadie veering to the left side of the couch and Pete toward the right. They leaned forward to look out the window, and Sadie scanned the street to figure out what the boys were looking at. After a few seconds, she spotted a woman across the street, digging in a flower bed outside the house . . . in late October . . . at night. And she wasn’t using a trowel to worry out some dead flowers—she was using a spade and making a pile of dirt on the sidewalk that led to the front door.

“Who’s that?” Sadie asked Kalan, who was closest to her.

“Mrs. Wapple,” Kalan said quietly.

“What’s she doing?”

“Being weird,” Kalan whispered.

“Does she do weird things a lot?”

Kalan nodded and folded his arms over the back of the couch, resting his chin on his hands. “We like to watch her when Mom turns off the TV.”

“She’s a witch!” Chance said.

“Witch!” Fig repeated.

Sadie’s eyes flickered to the large cardboard cartoon witch on the wall—one of a dozen decorations Heather had put up in preparation for Halloween next week.

“I think she’s just . . . digging,” Pete said. But Sadie knew he found it strange as well.

“Mr. Forsberk’s dog pooped in her yard and she cast a spell on it and it got hit by a car,” Kalan said.

Sadie flicked a look at Pete, inviting him with her eyes to help her out. He didn’t get the cue. “I feel bad for Mr. Forsberk’s dog,” Sadie said, “but unless Mrs. Wapple was driving the car, then it was probably just a very sad accident.”

“It wasn’t,” Kalan said, still wide-eyed and sincere. “It was a spell. Mama even said.”

“Your mom said it was a spell?” Pete asked for clarification.

“Well, no,” Kalan said. “But she did say Mrs. Wapple is a witch.”

“A witch!” Fig said, loudly this time, and began jumping on the couch. Apparently, his interest had waned. “A witch, a witch, a witch.”

Pete tried to shush him, and Sadie once again launched into a defense of the poor old woman digging across the street. Then Chance pointed out the window, his mouth open. Sadie followed his gaze and was startled to see Mrs. Wapple facing them, standing on the sidewalk that ran parallel to the street rather than on the walkway leading to her house. The streetlight down the block illuminated the gray hat made of some type of coarse fabric on her head, and the long dark hair that fell in frizzy waves past her shoulders. As they watched, Mrs. Wapple lifted her hand and began drawing pictures in the air with her index finger.

“Okay, boys,” Sadie said, ushering them off the couch. “She’s just a silly old lady. And there’s cake in the kitchen, so let’s eat.”

“Cake!” Fig shouted as he bounded off the couch. Chance and Kalan followed, though Kalan kept looking back over his shoulder. Pete finished herding them into the kitchen, and soon the boys were arguing about which piece of cake was the biggest.

Alone in the living room, Sadie hurried to the side of the window near the floor lamp, but before she pulled the blinds closed, she turned off the light, hoping it would make her less visible. Then she looked at Mrs. Wapple one last time. The woman was still on the sidewalk. Still staring, with her finger still pointing toward the house. No, not the house—pointing at Sadie.

Sadie swallowed and pulled herself a little further behind the heavy curtains. But she didn’t take her eyes off the strange woman outside.

Mrs. Wapple lifted her hand so that it was pointing at the sky, and then she closed her fingers into a fist. Still staring in Sadie’s direction, she punched her hand upward at the precise moment that the lightbulb in the lamp next to Sadie exploded with a pop. Sadie jumped out of the way as a thousand tiny shards of paper-thin glass tinkled to the floor.

“What was that?” Pete asked, stepping into the doorway that led to the kitchen.

Sadie looked at him. “The lightbulb exploded,” she said, refusing to consider the coincidence that it had happened at the same time Mrs. Wapple punched her fist over her head. She looked out the window again, but Mrs. Wapple was gone.

She wasn’t on the sidewalk; she wasn’t digging in the garden. She was gone.

Sadie felt a strange tingling sensation wash over her skin like a chilled breeze as Kalan’s words came back to her:
Mama says she’s a witch.

Good thing Sadie didn’t believe in that kind of thing.