Page 39 of The Witching Hours

“I don’t know what to do!” Ronny sounded just as panicked as I felt. In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly grabbed me around the waist in a bear hug and pulled. It was a great idea that backfired. Adding Ronny’s body weight to mine brought us crashing down to the floor because I couldn’t hold both boys.

God bless her. Margaret still had hold of R.W.’s shirt tail. She was determined enough that all but one button had broken off or ripped the fabric free. Ronny jumped up and wrapped both arms around R.W.’s legs. In a reverse of Ronny’s original idea, I jumped up and grabbed hold of Ronny’s waist, but all three of us were being pulled upward. By the time our feet were dangling a couple of feet off the ground, R.W. was crying like a baby, and I didn’t blame him.

“R.W.” I said. “Try to make your arms loose. Try to roll over.”

“I can’t,” he cried.

When he got close to that old ceiling, my hands went rubbery and gave way. I fell off and joined Margaret, who’d dropped off before me and was already on the ground. Ronny was holding on, but it wasn’t doing any good at all.

When I saw that R.W. was disappearing into the ceiling, I told Ronny to let go or he was gonna get swallowed up by the ceiling, too.

I will never forget R.W.’s screams. “NOOOOO! DON’T LET ME GO! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!”

When his face disappeared into the ceiling the screaming stopped abruptly. Too abruptly. What was left was an eerie quiet. So quiet you could’ve heard a ghost sigh. No bird noise. No insect noise. Nothing. We stood transfixed, staring at the waterstained wallpaper on the ceiling until the last inch of R.W.’s shirt fabric disappeared along with him.

For a long time, nobody said anything. For a long time, nobody moved. My heart was beating so fast, I could hear it in my ears and feel it in my neck. I guess I hadn’t been breathing, ‘cause I suddenly took in a big old breath like I’d been dunked by Johnny Sartain in the big pool at the park.

“Ronny. Have you ever heard of anything like…?” It was an odd sensation to hear my voice wavering. It was odd just to hear my voice. I wasn’t entirely sure it was mine. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside me. It was even stranger that I ran out of breath before I finished the sentence.

Ronny knew what I was gonna say. He started shaking his head. “Cripes no. If I had, do you think I would’ve…” He wanted to say more, but started crying instead. He hid his face in his elbow, but we knew.

I didn’t blame him. I wanted to cry, too.

I looked at Margaret. She shook her head and almost whispered, “I have a feeling nothing like this haseverhappened before.”

“What do you think we ought to do?” I asked her.

She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “Go home?”

It sounded heartless, but I didn’t have anything different to offer. I suddenly wondered if maybe R.W. was still floating where we could see him. Above the house.

I ran outside and searched the night sky, but there was no sign of him.

The others had followed me out. “Okay. I’m gonna go home and tell my Auntie Nan what happened. Maybe she’ll know what to do.”

Margaret and Ronnie followed me back to the bikes. They never said anything, but I could hear their wheels behind me moving through the grass.

I stopped when we got back to the neighborhood and came to Margaret’s street. Ronny kept going without saying bye or looking back.

“Poor R.W.” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Poor R.W.”

We both wanted to say something profound, but didn’t have better words. I was feeling sick at my stomach. After all, people didn’t see friends disappear into ceilings while screaming for help every day.

I wanted to go home and get under the bed covers and never come out again. But I knew I had to tell Nan what happened.

I half expected her to not believe me, to laugh it off like some kind of Halloween thing. That didn’t happen.

What did happen was this.

The near-constant smile my Auntie Nan wore dropped away from her face. She told me to go take off the ridiculous costume I was wearing and put on my navy-blue Sunday dress and good suede loafers out of respect for R.W.’s family. She said we were going over there to see them.

There just aren’t words to describe how much I didn’t want to do that. I would’ve rather melted into the ground than go face his people and say out loud what happened to him.

When I got ready to go, I was surprised to see my daddy standing by the back door. He was looking out at nothing, but he was twirling his car keys like he was going to drive us.

“Got the lanterns?” Nan asked my daddy.