The Conjure Book Read online

  From her computer’s dictionary, she read: "hyssop (‘his-up) noun from the Hebrew ezōbh for the plant used in purifying rites by the ancient Hebrews: a mint (Hyssopus officinalis) that has highly aromatic leaves and is sometimes used to season food."

  “I guess this witch liked to cook.” That thought made Jane smile as she recalled popular images of witches crouching around bubbling cauldrons. “And her familiar, Jeoffry. What’s a familiar?”

  The dictionary said a familiar was a companion. It was also a spirit embodied in an animal and believed to serve or guard a person. Jane recalled the dead cat she’d seen in the underground house. “Black cats and witches.” She gave another small smile and continued to read aloud, “A book of shadows — best read by moonlight. It says ‘best read’ ... so, there must be other ways to read it.”

  She mulled this over and scrutinized again the words visible only in moonlight. “S - O - P - H - O - S,” she spelled out, then pronounced it, “So - foe - ss.”

  When she typed sophos into a search engine, she learned that this was a Greek word meaning clever or wise.

  “I’m not being very sophos,” she chided herself, “spending my time researching a witch’s writings when I should be studying science and history for tomorrow’s tests. I am so unprepared.”

  The day’s excitement and physical exertion had tired her out, and the thought of reading textbooks made her drowsy. There was no way she would be able to get ready for tomorrow’s exams. On a lark, she decided to try out Hyssop Joan’s conjure knowing. But the very next instant, she felt foolish for even considering such a silly idea.

  The moonlight leaning through the window had crept to the edge of her desk, and soon she would not be able to read the strange writing. She typed the spell into her computer’s notebook and wondered, “Where am I going to get a dead bird anyway? This is ridiculous.”

  And then, she decided she would prove it really was ridiculous. After all, she wanted to be a scientist like her father — and so, she would have to learn to trust the scientific method. That meant collecting data from observation and experimentation to test her hypothesis, another Greek word, a four-syllable mouthful that simply meant a guess. She guessed that Hyssop Joan’s conjure knowledge was useless. To prove it, she would need a dead bird.

  Dead Bird Magic

  If you had to find a dead bird right away, where would you look?

  “The witch doesn’t say what kind of bird — so...” Jane hurried down the spiral stairs to the kitchen. She hurried even though she had typed out the exact words of the conjure book’s instructions, because she was determined to complete the chant while she could still read it directly from the grimoire. When she flubbed her exams tomorrow, she wanted to be sure that there would be no doubt whatsoever that she had followed the witch’s instructions exactly.

  From the freezer, she removed an icy, rock-hard whole chicken in a plastic bag. “This is one dead bird, that’s for sure.”

  Lester, having heard the refrigerator door open, bounded into the kitchen, expecting a treat. Jane shooed him away and, careful not to make any noise that would disturb sleepy Mrs. Babcock, hastened back to her room with the frozen chicken swaddled in a dishcloth.

  She placed the dead, plastic-wrapped bird on the moonlit windowsill, breast down, the better to avoid staring at the brand name and market label. Beside it, she laid the conjure book open to the page that promised she would be shown all that she wished she had known.

  The instructions required her to hold in hand what she would understand; so, she grasped her history textbook in her left hand and her science book in her right. Then, she stood as perfectly still as she could and exuberantly chanted directly above the frozen chicken, “Sophos - sophos - sophos!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Well, what did I think was going to happen?” She laughed at herself, a little louder than she expected when she imagined how she must look to an observer standing across the street and seeing her with a book in each hand bending over a frozen roaster in the moonlight.

  She put her textbooks down on her desk and closed the conjure book. For a moment, she stared at the grimoire the way she would an interesting rock. Its upraised star cast a bold moon-shadow across a cover of ochre leather, a cover broken into many tiny cracks like a jigsaw. It belonged in a museum. She would hold onto it only long enough to show her father. And she decided not to tell anyone about the house in the hill until her father had a chance to see it for himself.

  Quietly, she slipped back downstairs and returned the frozen chicken to the freezer. Through the kitchen windows, she noticed the garden shiny with moonlight. At the center of the garden, a gazebo glowed like an ice palace. Around it, blurs of darkness shimmered. Witchy devils? No. The sharp, black-winged silhouettes were only bats.

  Back in her room, lying in the dark, waiting for sleep, she tossed with excitement. She had found something that scientists could study for years to come. And it might even help Mrs. Babcock keep her house. Today she had been an archeologist, and that thought thrilled her — until she remembered the hanged skeleton.

  Was that the skeleton of the witch — Hyssop Joan?

  She recalled how she had almost wet her pants when she had collided with those moldering bones. She looked like she was hanged. But the rope should have rotted long ago. What was holding her up there?

  From the corner of her eye, Jane caught a wisp of motion in the stiff darkness beside the window, and she sat bolt upright. A cry caught at the back of her throat. Then, she realized that a breeze stirred the lace curtains. The room was empty.

  “What a wuss!” She flopped onto her back and faced away from the window. She didn’t want to see the shadows where moonlight folded among the lace curtains and darkness spread its hair over her desk and the closed conjure book.

  A Ghost in Study Hall

  After the exams, Jane had lunch in the cafeteria with her friends, Sheryl Macadangdang and Alfred Contini. They were the only friends Jane had made in the four months since moving to Wessex from Buford, New Mexico. Making friends was not one of Jane’s strengths, because she wasn’t interested in movies, pop music, pets, the latest fashions or boys.

  Sheryl Macadangdang’s parents, immigrants from the Philippines, spoke little English, yet she was the smartest kid in the class. Curly, red-haired, freckle-faced Alfred Contini, on the other hand, had no interest in grades or studying. The other kids considered Alfred an oddball and avoided him, because he collected action figures, which some boys called dolls, much to Alfred’s annoyance.

  And much to Jane’s annoyance, he had developed a crush on her the day that she had arrived at Wessex Middle School. He was constantly giving her his sketches of muscular superheroes and tentacled space aliens. She would have avoided him entirely, but he was Sheryl’s friend since kindergarten.

  “I just came from the office,” Alfred announced around a mouthful of tofu and black beans. “I saw the scan results from the history exam. Jane aced it.”

  “I did?” Jane asked with genuine surprise.

  “Alfred, just because your aunt works in the school office doesn’t give you the right to peek at other kids’ exams,” Sheryl griped, wagging a forkful of Salisbury steak at her vegetarian friend. “What grade did I get?”

  “Not a perfect grade like Jane,” Alfred replied, not taking his eyes off the startled young witch. “You must have studied hard from day one, Jane. That test was a beast!”

  Jane offered a frail smile and busied herself with her mashed potatoes. The remainder of lunch passed in a daze for her. Still reeling from Alfred’s news, she drifted through the hallway on her way to study hall.

  Following a nervous hunch, she made a detour to science class. Her teacher, a usually dour man with permanently frowning eyebrows, greeted her with an extravagant smile. “You keep this up, Jane, you’re going to be my ace student. A perfect score!”

  Awe and fear frosted Jane’s insides. She shuffled into study hall like a zombie. No one
else was there yet, and she sat at her customary desk and pondered what had happened.

  The possibilities thrilled her. But the thrill was unpleasant, something like the thrill of free fall when a foothold suddenly gives out while caving and the safety clip hasn’t caught yet. Through this blur of feeling, she wondered how the conjure book could possibly have worked. Hypnosis? The power of suggestion? Sheer luck?

  While she mulled this over, the door to study hall opened. Who entered, she could not say. The old woman looked like no one Jane had ever seen, not even in movies or dreams. She appeared that strange. A stale musty stench preceded her, and Jane lifted a hand to her offended nostrils.

  Lank and crookbacked in a gray and shapeless frock, the crone hobbled in slowly. Her knobby hand at her wrinkled throat clutched a shawl green as mold, and in her other gnarled hand she grasped a shaved tree branch topped off with a stiff mass of straw. Raven claws and a necklace of dogteeth hung from her odd garments — and, in her braids of long gray hair that fell almost to the floor, dried husks of toads dangled.

  The crone gazed directly at Jane, and the room’s fluorescent light split in the hag’s small, silvery eyes, very like a snake’s.

  “Dearest Jane!” she spoke in a voice of sandpaper. Her sunken mouth twisted to a smile no different than a grimace, and her tiny teeth gleamed orange, yellow, purple and black like kernels of maize. “Dearest Jane! My subject’s happiness! Picture of peace! Argument of all my prayers! Let perfect joy forever bathe thee!”

  Jane sat up straighter, and though she realized very well now who this antique woman was, nonetheless her voice croaked, “Who — who are you?”

  The old woman’s nutshell eyelids closed, and she slowly shook her waxen head. “If great things by smaller may be guessed, then surely, clever Jane, thou knowest my name.”

  “No — ” Jane reared back with fright. “I don’t know you.”

  The old woman’s eyes snapped open, shining bright as candle flames. “Say it!” With a loud clack, she stamped her misshapen broomstick on the floor. “How can such courage and daring as thine want for words? Thou knowest my name, brave child. Mine hungry ears would feed on that which quiets greedy appetite. Say my name and make of my earthen pain a paradise of mirth!”

  Jane pushed back her chair and jumped to her feet. She wanted to flee the room, get away from this horrid woman. But she was transfixed. Wooziness sat her back down again. “Go away.”

  The crone raised her broom at Jane and cackled, “Most happy child, thou works magic from my grimoire and things unseen do see, unheard do hear. Ye bold child, grown richer by thine spoil, how dare thee drive me away?”

  “I — I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jane’s voice sounded shrill. “Go away — or I’ll call for help.”

  “Impotent words! Impudent words!” The sour reek from the hag curdled the air almost visibly. “Before that under earth was buried and now above earth is carried, I lay claim. Thou knowest well whereof I speak. Wouldst thou deny thy delight in my handiwork?”

  Jane gawked silently, unsure what to say.

  “Find thy tongue, girl!” The crone edged closer. “Silence says but what it means.” She took another step, and when her withered figure entered the sunlight that poured through the windows, she vanished.

  Jane gasped.

  On the empty green chalkboard, a life-size chalk image of the crone emerged. The picture appeared perfect in every detail, revealing each wart and wrinkle in that shriveled face. Every strand of long, knotted hair stood out clearly, and Jane could count the countless haysticks of the broom the crone gripped in her warped hand.

  The terrified teenager rose and approached the chalkboard slow as a sleepwalker. Am I dreaming? She clenched both fists until her fingernails bit her palms and convinced her she was awake.

  Her heart punched against her ribs, hurting her with fear. Am I going crazy?

  At the bottom of the realistic chalk-drawing, words appeared, scrawled in the same flowery handwriting from the conjure book: Hyssop Joan, mentor to wisdom’s child — Jane Riggs.

  “Hyssop Joan, mentor to wisdom’s child — Jane Riggs,” Jane read aloud. She wanted to run away. Before she could move, the door opened. She jumped about, afraid the witch had returned.

  Kids streamed into the room, jabbering and jostling. The breeze that accompanied them smeared the image of Hyssop Joan to a smudge of chalk dust.

  “You okay, Jane?” Alfred Contini inquired, squinting at her with concern. “You look sick.”

  Jeoffry

  The call from the nurse had reassured Mrs. Babcock that Jane merely needed to recuperate from a bout of overwork. After paying the taxi, the old woman asked only if Jane wanted some hot chocolate. The shaken teen politely declined and went up to her room.

  On her desk beside her keyboard, the conjure book lay where she had left it. Jane held the small book up to the brash sunlight streaming through her window and asked, “Are you for real?”

  She opened the cover and studied again the first page. “‘Strange sights for you to behold,’” she read aloud. “No kidding.”

  The second page looked blank, and no matter how she angled the book in the brilliant sunlight or how close she brought it to her eyes, she could see no writing there. The other pages remained stuck together, glued by time and decay. After what had happened in study hall, she was not so eager to separate them.

  But she did want to understand the reality of this book. She had to know for sure that she wasn’t crazy. “There has to be a scientific explanation,” she insisted to herself. “What would a scientist do?” The answer was simple: “Observation and experimentation.”

  Stealthily, she descended the spiral stairs with the conjure book in hand. When she spotted Mrs. Babcock working busily in her garden composting leaves and withered tomato vines, Jane crept into the kitchen.

  The frozen chicken from last night’s experiment sat defrosting in the sink, unwrapped and covered with water.

  “Sophos - sophos - sophos,” she whispered over the dead bird, holding the conjure book in both hands.

  Nothing apparently happened — just like last night - and she wondered if somehow all the secret knowledge of the conjure book had already entered her brain. When she tried to quiz herself about the contents of the book, she drew a perfect blank.

  Before Mrs. Babcock could see her, Jane returned to her room, more mystified than ever. “Maybe it was the water covering the chicken,” she figured and shut the door to her room behind her. “In The Wizard of Oz, water melts witches. Perhaps the water broke the spell.” As she was about to return downstairs to drain the sink and repeat the experiment, she heard a muffled sound, a voice struggling to speak, “Mmm-mmft! Nng-uhn!”

  The sound came from Chubs, the teddy bear she kept on her bookshelf next to her ferns. The stuffed animal rocked back and forth, and its furry snout puckered in and out as if trying to breathe!

  Jane hooted with fear, opened the door to flee and nearly tripped over Lester. The cat scampered into the room. Attracted by the squirming teddy bear, Lester leaped onto the bookshelf. He batted the stuffed animal with both front claws, and Chubs toppled off the bookshelf and lay still on the floor.

  “Ah, that is so much more satisfactory,” a distinguished voice spoke — a voice that emerged from the cat! “Oh, dear! A Manx breed. Poor, tailless devil. And white no less. Black suits me so much better. Well, well, beggars and all that. Just have to carry on.”

  Jane stood dumbfounded. “Lester...”

  “No, no. Not Lester.” The cat jumped from the bookshelf to the bed and sat there upright and proud. “I am Jeoffry, familiar to Hyssop Joan of the West Woods — and now, by way of your most clever inspiration to conjure the conjure book itself, I am the familiar to Jane Riggs of Wessex.”

  Jane felt the room spinning and understood she was about to faint. She staggered backward, banged into the door and slid to the floor. A cry caught in her throat. She wanted to shout with fright — b
ut she couldn’t, because she wasn’t breathing! She gasped for air and lurched clumsily to her feet.

  “Don’t be afraid, young miss,” the cat said. “I mean you no harm.”

  “You’re talking...” she said weakly. “Cats ... can’t talk.”

  “Quite.” The cat bobbed his head in agreement. “But, you see, I am not in fact a cat. I am a spirit. My name is Jeoffry.”

  “Jeoffry...” Jane blinked slowly, waiting for her stunned brain to comprehend. “What happened to Lester?”

  “Don’t fret for Lester,” Jeoffry said, blue eyes narrowing contentedly. “He’s quite all right. Just taking a rather extended catnap while I avail myself of his body — which is so much more suitable than that — that stuffed cub.”

  A swarm of bright, pinprick lights glittered before Jane’s eyes.

  “Young miss, I recommend you sit down again.” Jeoffry hopped off the bed. “You are about to swoon.”

  Jane turned to leave the room. But the husky cat had already stepped past her and blocked the door. She pulled it open anyway and rushed out. Halfway down the stairs, she stopped. “This can’t be happening.” She sat on the steps and inhaled deep, slow breaths. “Cats can’t talk.”

  In her trembling hand, she still held the conjure book. She thought of running outside and throwing it in the trash. “Stop acting like a baby and think. Think!”

  “Did you say something, dearie?” Mrs. Babcock emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands.

  “No! No, Mrs. Babcock. I — I was just shooing Lester out of my room.”

  “Is that naughty cat up there?” Mrs. Babcock headed back toward the kitchen. “I was wondering where he went. If he’s bothering you, Jane dear, you just send him downstairs.”

  Timidly, Jane climbed back up the stairs and poked her head into her room. Jeoffry sat on a sunny windowsill, staring down into the yard. The cat swiveled a look over his shoulder. “Ah! You’ve returned, miss. Are we done so soon with the trembling lips, the goose bumps, et cetera?”