“Did you know a witch lives down the street from me?” Kirstina’s brown eyes were wide with excitement as her sun-bleached hair whirled wildly with the wind blowing in through the car window.
“A real one?” I asked. I had never seen a witch before, but remember Frankie mentioning that a witch lived down the street from him too. He lived in the same neighborhood as Kirstina, so the rumor must have been true. “Have you seen her before?”
“No, but I can show you where she lives.”
Kirstina brushed the hair out of her face and rolled up the window. We passed by The Oaks mall and headed up Lynn Road, past my house, and eventually turned onto the steep, skinny street Kirstina lived off of. We were in the fourth grade and, every so often, I would spend the afternoon at Kirstina’s house until my mom would pick me up when she was off work. The big silver suburban chugged up the incline until we emerged onto the dry, jagged ridge overlooking the city. We drove along the dusty mountain top, past the mansion homes with unnaturally green lawns, and pulled into Kirstina’s family’s sprawling estate.
Kirstina’s mom prepared some Bagel Bites for us and poured us some juice while we pulled open our backpacks and fished for our folders containing our homework. “Want to see the witch’s house?” Kirstina asked as she rummaged through the stack of papers in her Lisa Frank trapper keeper.
“No playing until you two finish your homework!” Kirstina’s mom’s disembodied voice echoed from down the hall. Like all mom’s, she had impeccable hearing, especially when it came to the sound of her children’s voices.
We gobbled down our Bagel Bites and raced to finish our math and spelling homework. Within the hour, we brandished our completed assignments to Kirstina’s mom before running outside to the garage, where an array of bikes and skateboards were stored. We buckled our helmets, mounted our bikes, then flew down the long, winding driveway onto the rocky street below. My heart was racing with nervous anticipation as we peddled off towards the witch’s house.
The half mile ride felt like it took hours as my mind raced with a chaotic blend of curiosity and fear of what we might find. The warm wind tickled our faces and necks and the mansions situated along the road blurred together as we sped by. Untamed brush and dried out trees created a wildfire primed canopy over the street the further we peddled along. Sweet scents of Coastal Sage Scrub and Chaparral plants, mixed with the sandy dust kicked up by our bikes, swirled around in our wake, creating a deep beige cloud. We rounded a blind corner with dizzying speeds when Kirstina suddenly squeezed both of her handlebar breaks, producing a sharp squeal as the rubber pad squeezed against the metal tire frame. I responded reflexively with my own sudden stop and turned to look at Kirstina who was dismounting her bike. She pointed to a small break in the dried tree and brush lined street next to her and said matter-of-factly, “It’s right down there.”
I dismounted my bike and followed Kirstina’s pointed finger to the thin dirt clearing with my eyes. “I don’t see anything,” I said, standing on my tiptoes, squinting to look through the brown weeds consuming the overgrown dirt driveway.
“You can’t see it from here,” Kirstina said. “Follow me.”
Before I had a chance to respond, Kirstina had slowly started to walk with her bike down the driveway. With a fresh dose of adrenaline, I jogged with my bike to catch up to her. After a slight bend to the right, the driveway veered off to the left, emptying out onto a dirt clearing surrounded by the same overgrown brush on three sides and a rocky, bare hill on the fourth. Situated in the center of the clearing, some fifty feet in front of us, was a huge, jarring concrete structure. “The witch lives in there,” Kirstina said, kicking up a plume of dust as she dropped her bike.
Besides the periodic gusts of wind blowing through the decaying foliage and the gravel crunching under our feet, it was virtually silent. Kirstina and I walked around the structure, careful to preserve our distance as we wandered the perimeter. On the back side of the building, thick rebar poles jutted out from the top of the smooth concrete walls. Torn open bags of cement lay strewn across the base of the structure, along with ragged, weather-stained sheets of plastic. Nails, screws, and chunks of plaster littered the dirt around our feet and led around the corner to the fourth side of the monolith.
Kirstina looked at me and nodded, suggesting that our exploration was not yet over. We followed the trail of discarded equipment to the final side of the cube and came to a large rectangular chunk of the concrete wall missing. As we got closer, we found that the rectangular opening led directly into the light streaked interior of the structure. The inside looked dim and completely hollow. Upon peering into the empty space from the outside, I had resolved that I’d seen enough and had no intention of entering. Kirstina, though, quietly walked in.
From the center of the building, Kirstina turned around and waved me in. I protested for a second, but eventually let my morbid curiosity propel me forward. From the center of the room, I looked up to where I could see shreds of plastic tarps stretched from one wall to the other, providing shelter from the elements above. Shadows danced across the rocky dirt floor as the wind shifted the tarps above us. Rebar stuck out haphazardly from three of the four concrete slabs around us with chunks of tarp impaled on a few of them. I could see more nails and screws all over the floor, half buried in the gravel. A glimmer of something metallic shined from the corner of the room every time the wind opened the tarp ceiling enough for a beam of light to break in. Kirstina and I walked over cautiously to investigate, only to discover a score of discarded beer cans piled next to some dirty blankets.
In another corner, melted down candles were arranged around another pile of blankets. “I think this is where she does her spells,” Kirstina declared. She nudged the pile of blankets with her foot, causing a lizard to squirm away along the wall. We both jumped with surprise and moved back towards the center of the room, looking around at the foreboding walls. “We should probably go,” Kirstina said, the first sign of fear I had heard from her all afternoon. “We don’t want to be here when she gets back.” Not in the mood to stay any longer myself, I quickly agreed.
We walked out of the cold building back into the now waning sunlight. We started walking with our bikes towards the driveway, chatting about our theories surrounding the witch’s den, when we heard a car turning into the driveway from the main road. We both froze momentarily in complete fear. Kirstina spun around and yelled for me to follow her. We ran with our bikes in the opposite direction towards the thick brush. We climbed up the hill, dodging sharp, dead branches, huffing as we dragged our bikes along. Just as we heard the car’s door shutting, we emerged onto the main road where we clumsily hopped onto our bikes, peddling as fast as our shaking legs could go.
Years later, I logged onto Google Maps and searched for the dusty road on the ridge that wove around the mansions, but couldn’t find the witch’s house. I was able to find Kirstina’s old house, assuming she’d probably long since moved away and started a life and, perhaps, a family of her own. I traced the street with my cursor, studying the pixelated rooftops. After reviewing the screen in front of me a number of times, I could not locate the witch’s house. All along the road were new mansions with impossibly green lawns. Maybe they knocked the building down to make room for some new villa. Regardless, I’ll never forget the day that Kirstina took me to see the witch’s house.
