The Headless Cupid Read online

  When Janie arrived upstairs a minute later, she was out of breath and there was something very strange about her appearance. She reached in her mouth and pulled out the tennis sock.

  “Yick,” she said, waving the sock in the air to dry it. “That was a close one. I almost had to swallow it.”

  Getting the tennis socks solved the hardest part of the initiation robes problems, except that the whole thing nearly turned out to be wasted. It wasn’t until everyone had finished stealing a sock that David remembered that nothing could be white—and the socks were definitely white. David was very discouraged.

  “Look,” he told the kids. “We’re going to have to do the whole stealing thing over again.”

  “Goody,” Janie said. “I get to steal mine first this time.”

  “No, I mean we’ll have to steal something else. The socks are white. Remember, nothing can be white?”

  “Ohhh yeah,” Janie said, holding up her sock and looking at it. Then all of a sudden her face lit up. “Hey, Tesser,” she said, “where’s Lopsided?”

  Lopsided was a stuffed elephant that had been Esther’s favorite toy until she got her vacuum cleaner. He was large and floppy and a deep dark red in color.

  “Remember what happened to the sheets when Tesser put Lopsided in the wash with them?” Janie asked.

  “Hey,” David said, “yeah. Go get Lopsided, Tesser.”

  A few minutes later the socks were soaking in the wash basin along with Esther’s elephant, and David was thinking that every once in a while Janie used her brains for something besides making a nuisance of herself.

  The next day the tennis socks definitely weren’t white, and everyone was ready for the initiation.

  Chapter Ten

  AMANDA HAD PICKED A TIME FOR THE INITIATION WHEN MOLLY WAS GOING to be away in the city all day. There was to be an opening at an art gallery where some of Molly’s paintings were being shown, and Molly had promised to be there to help out. That left the whole day free and private for the initiation. David stayed awake a while the night before, thinking about it.

  He didn’t know exactly what he was expecting, but he felt strangely excited. He felt certain that something supernatural was about to happen. He went over in his mind all the things Amanda had told him about supernatural manifestations that had occurred while she and Leah were practicing magic—things like ghostly shapes appearing, mysterious voices being heard and people going into trances. David didn’t know if he really expected something like that, but it didn’t seem to matter. What did matter was his premonition that something fantastic was going to happen during the initiation.

  Before Molly left that morning, she told everybody to be good and take care of things. She told Amanda to get the lunch and keep the house neat, and David to take care of the kids and keep them out of trouble.

  “Why can’t I take care of the kids and David get the lunch?” Amanda said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Molly said. “It’s just that David has had a great deal of experience in taking care of them, but I suppose—”

  “Never mind,” Amanda interrupted. “I don’t really want to take care of them. I just don’t see why we couldn’t arrange who does what ourselves without being told exactly what we have to do.”

  For a minute it looked as if Molly might be going to yell, or something, and David surprised himself by kind of wishing she would. But instead she caught her breath and bit her lip and got into her car.

  As soon as she drove away, Amanda said, “Okay, let’s get started. I hope you have your ceremonial robes all ready.”

  “They’re ready,” David said. “But it’ll take us a while to get them on.”

  “It’ll take me a while to get ready, too,” Amanda said. “We’ll meet in my room in about a half hour. Okay?” She turned to go upstairs, but then she stopped. “Hey,” she said. “I need a dead lizard. Do you still have your lizard from the ordeal, Tesser?”

  “I have him,” Esther said, “but he’s not a dead one.” After the reptile ordeal everyone else had turned his reptile loose, but Esther had been keeping hers in a shoebox under her bed.

  “You kill him and bring him along,” Amanda said to David.

  Suddenly David got mad. He didn’t get mad very easily, and it always made it hard for him to talk. “Li—listen, Amanda,” he said. “I’m not going to kill Tesser’s lizard. Why don’t you kill your horny toad if you need a dead reptile?”

  Amanda glared at David. “I told you about that horny toad,” she said. She turned to Esther. “Look, Tesser,” she said, “nobody gave you that lizard as a gift or anything, and you can catch a million more just like him down in the creek bed. There’s nothing special about that lizard.”

  Esther glared back at Amanda. “He thinks he’s special,” she said.

  “Hey,” Janie yelled so suddenly that everybody jumped. “Hey, I know where there’s a—”

  She started running out the door before she finished yelling so no one heard the last part of what she said, but in a minute she was back with something horrible between her thumb and forefinger. It was a very dead, very flat lizard.

  “I saw him yesterday out on the road. Will he do?”

  Amanda looked at the squashed lizard doubtfully.

  “He’s good and dead!” Janie said cheerfully, holding the lizard up towards Amanda.

  Amanda turned away. “Okay,” she said. “You go take him up and put him on the floor outside my door. I have a couple of things to do before I go up.”

  Janie gave the lizard to Esther. “Take it up to Amanda’s room,” she said. “Okay?”

  Esther took it carefully in both hands, and Blair went over to look at it. As they both started off for the stairs, Esther said, “He’s pretty dead, huh, Blair?”

  “Dead,” Blair said. “Can we fix him?”

  “No,” Esther said. “He’s too dead.”

  “Can David?”

  “Not David, even. He’s too dead for David even.”

  Janie giggled. “Blair and Tesser think David can do anything,” she said to Amanda. “Even fix dead things. Blair and Tesser are pretty dumb yet.”

  Amanda made her snorting noise, but then she stood looking after the twins for a long time with a funny look on her face.

  Getting all the Stanleys into their ceremonial robes turned out to be even more hectic than David had expected. He’d been collecting all the stuff in a box in his closet, and he had everyone come into his room to dress, so he could be sure they didn’t make any mistakes, but even so, things kept going wrong. Janie had a pouting spell because she wanted the necklace that had been their mother’s, instead of the ring, and Blair and Esther kept losing their stolen socks because they were so much too big for their feet. Finally it was way past a half hour, and David was sure Amanda would be getting mad, so he rushed them into the last things, did a quick check to see if everybody had everything on the list, and pushed them all down the hall to Amanda’s room.

  When Amanda came to her door, she just stood staring at them for a minute. Then she put her hand over her eyes, and took it away and stared at them some more. Then she put her hand back across her eyes and held it there for a minute, and when she took it away she said, “You’re kidding.”

  “What do you mean, we’re kidding?” David asked.

  “Those aren’t your ceremonial robes, are they?”

  “Well, yes,” David said. “What’s wrong with them?” But while he was saying it, he suddenly knew. He’d been so busy putting all the little requirements on everybody that he hadn’t paid much attention to the overall effect. And now when he thought about it, the overall effect of the Stanley kids’ outfits wasn’t too good, particularly when you compared it to the way Amanda looked.

  Amanda was wearing the long slinky black dress that came almost down to her ankles. Below the dress you could see her special ceremonial shoes, high topped old ladies’ shoes, made of cracked and peeling patent leather. Around her neck on a leather thong was a magic
medalion. Her hair was braided and looped; the shiny triangle shone on her forehead; and draped over everything like gaudy wings, was the shimmery purplish-red shawl. Anyone looking at Amanda, even if he’d never seen her before, would immediately think of things like cloudy, moon-haunted nights, low chanting voices and bubbling cauldrons.

  On the other hand, looking at the Stanley kids in their ceremonial costumes didn’t make you think of anything in particular. Of course the difference was that David hadn’t been able to spend a lot of time going through junk shops and attending rummage sales. He’d had to depend on just what he could find in the rag bag and a couple of boxes of old stuff in the attic. All of it fit the rules, David had seen to that. All of it was fairly old, none of it was white, and each one of the kids had one thing that had belonged to a dead person, and one stolen sock. It was just the general overall appearance that wasn’t right. For instance, there was something particularly wrong with the way Blair looked.

  Blair was wearing a sweatshirt that Dad had worn in college, so obviously it was very old. It was a faded blue color except for the yellow letters that said University of California across the front. It bagged a lot on Blair, except where the tightly knit waist pulled it in fairly close, just below his knees. David had rolled the sleeves way up, into big fat doughnuts of cloth, to get them short enough to let the tips of Blair’s fingers hang out. For his article that had belonged to a dead person, David had tied a scarf that had been their mother’s around Blair’s neck like a necktie. The scarf was pink and filmy and so long that Blair stepped on the ends now and then when he tried to walk. He had a fuzzy slipper on one foot, and on the other was the stolen sock, a dirty pink now and tied around the ankle with one of Esther’s hair ribbons to keep it from falling off.

  Looking at Blair, really looking at the overall picture for the first time, David couldn’t help smiling.

  “He does look a little weird,” he said to Amanda.

  Amanda snorted. “Weird?” she said. “No, he doesn’t look weird. That’s just it. He ought to look weird, and all he looks is ridiculous. All of you do.”

  David had to admit she was right. All of the Stanleys looked pretty ridiculous, with odds and ends of rag bag stuff and baggy pink tennis socks on one foot.

  “Come on,” David said to the kids and started back towards his room.

  “Wait a minute,” Amanda yelled. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To get out of this junk,” David said, feeling more ridiculous—and angrier—every minute.

  Amanda snorted. “Come back here. I never said it wouldn’t do. I just said it looked funny. You’ll have to do, because there’s no telling when we’ll have another private day without any adults around.”

  David almost didn’t go back. He almost went into his room and locked the door, but he didn’t. He went back, but it wasn’t because Amanda had said they would do. He went back because he suddenly remembered about his premonition, and he knew he had to. Something was going to happen, and he had to find out what—ridiculous or not.

  As they went in the door to Amanda’s room, Esther pulled on his hand.

  “We do too look weird,” she said. “Don’t we, David?”

  Chapter Eleven

  IN AMANDA’S ROOM EVERYTHING WAS READY FOR THE INITIATION. THE blinds were pulled and blankets hung over the blinds to shut out the slightest glow of light. Walking through the door was like walking out of a bright morning into midnight. Only a faint flicker of candlelight glowed in the center of the room, leaving the corners in deep shadow.

  Moving forward, David could see that the light came from a candle burning under a metal frame on which sat a small round kettle. When everyone was in the room, Amanda closed the door, walked to the opposite side of the room, turned slowly and faced David and the kids.

  “Will the neophytes be seated around the cauldron,” she said in a solemn high-pitched voice.

  Esther, who was still hanging onto David’s hand, began to tug on it.

  “Cauldron,” David whispered out of the corner of his mouth, pointing at the kettle.

  “Oh,” Esther whispered. She turned around to Blair and said, “That’s it, Blair. That’s a cauldron.”

  “Shhh,” David hissed. Putting one hand over Esther’s mouth and the other on top of her head, he shoved her down onto the floor. Then he showed Blair where to sit, next to Esther.

  “Sit down around the cauldron,” Amanda repeated, and David turned in time to see Janie tiptoeing up to peek in the kettle. He grabbed her by the back of her robe and pulled her back to her place in the circle. When everyone was finally seated, Amanda got a large roll of paper from her desk and brought it back to the circle.

  “First,” she said, “every neophyte must be given a new name. A spiritual name.”

  Janie got to be first. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed while Amanda spread out the roll of paper in front of her. David could see that words had been written here and there at different angles, all over the paper.

  “Touch the paper with your finger and the name you touch will be your new name,” Amanda said. “Keep your eyes closed.”

  “What if I don’t like it?” Janie said.

  “Touch the paper.”

  Janie leaned forward, and David was pretty sure she was peeking from under her long eyelashes. Finally she put her finger down exactly in the middle of one of the words.

  Amanda picked up the paper. “Calla,” she said. “The spirits have given you Calla as your new name.”

  Janie smiled. “I like it,” she said.

  David was next, and his finger lit on the word Templar. It didn’t seem like much of a name to him, but he liked the sound of it pretty well.

  Blair was next and without peeking he put his finger down at the beginning of a short word that turned out to be Star.

  “Hey,” David said. “That’s good. That’s a good name for Blair.”

  “The spirits don’t make mistakes,” Amanda said.

  Esther was next, but when Amanda put the paper down in front of her, she put her hands behind her back and wouldn’t take them out.

  “I’m Tesser,” she said. “I don’t want to be anybody else.”

  Everyone argued and scolded, but it didn’t do any good. Esther was that way. She didn’t have too many opinions, but when she had one, there was no use trying to change it.

  “Look,” David said to Amanda. “Remember you said once you thought Tesser was her spiritual name. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s why she started calling herself that. Why can’t her spiritual name be Tesser?”

  Amanda shrugged. “All right,” she said. “It’s all right with me. But if it’s the wrong name she’ll never get very far in the occult world.” She looked down at Esther, sitting solid and stubborn with her hands behind her. “Not that she would anyway,” Amanda said.

  As soon as everyone had his name chosen, Amanda put a record on her record player. It was weird music, oriental David decided, with high pitched wailing instruments and soft deep drums that thudded monotonously, like giant heartbeats. Then she lit some incense sticks and put them in holders in the four corners of the room. When that was done, she disappeared behind the curtain that hung over the closet doorway. The light came on behind the curtain, and Amanda stayed there for several minutes.

  In the bedroom the dark air was becoming sweet and smoky, from the burning incense. The strange music droned on and on, and the Stanleys went on sitting cross-legged around the cauldron waiting for Amanda to reappear. At last the light went off in the closet, and Amanda came out, walking slowly and ceremoniously and carrying at arm’s length a small metal box. She began to walk around and around the cauldron, holding the box out in front of her and chanting some strange words. The words were something like, “malu—arabon—ralu—belabor.”

  The walking and the chanting went on and on, and David found himself swaying in a slow circle in time with Amanda’s progress around the cauldron. The dim flickering light, Amanda’s slowly
swaying step, the wailing, throbbing music, the heavy sweetness of the incense, the occasional flash of reflected light from the triangle on Amanda’s forehead—all of it—began to blend and swirl in David’s mind. He was beginning to feel very strange; his head felt light and dizzy and there were some strange sensations right around his stomach. He was wondering vaguely, with a strange detached kind of excitement, if he were beginning to go into a trance, when a loud voice said, “You better stop that, Amanda.”

  It was Esther. Everyone looked at her. Even Amanda stopped her stately progress around the cauldron and looked at Esther.

  “You better stop that before you throw up. When I ran around and around the coffee table, I threw up. Didn’t I David.”

  “Shhh!” David said, shaking his head at her.

  “I did, too,” Esther said. “All over the Indian rug and clear out the door. Don’t you remember?”

  “Shhh!” everyone said so fiercely that Esther looked startled.

  “I did. I did, too,” she whispered stubbornly, but her face crinkled, on the edge of crying.

  Amanda went on walking around the table, and Esther was quiet except for a few sniffs. After one or two more times around, Amanda stopped and stood still, holding the metal box out over the cauldron with one hand. With the other hand she reached into the box and took something out. She held the object—it looked like a few dead twigs—out over the cauldron and repeated the chant, “Malu—arabon—ralu—belabor.” Then she dropped the twigs into the steaming kettle.

  She walked around the cauldron once more and stopped again, to drop something else into the brew. This time it looked like a few long strands of hair. The next time around it was a dead flower, and after that came what seemed to be a piece of bone, a feather, a dried mushroom, and a small white object that looked like somebody’s tooth.