Among the many trunks and boxes of Mom’s poetry, prose, and other papers, a Halloween story surfaced this week.

The one-page spooky story looks to be a theme paper written for a high school class. Young Joan Cassidy typed it carefully; she was a student of New Haven’s St. Mary’s Academy.

Associates in Magic

My buck-toothed product of the harvest grinned maliciously in the kitchen window. His crooked nose and glaring eyes made him appear utterly ridiculous. I attempted futilely to adjust his “tam o’ Shanter” to an appealing angle. He looked just as stupid when I finished. I left him, my humor tainted.

An attic is the perfect spot for Hallowe’en activities.

That, however, was not why I dared to ascend the rickety, dust-padded steps to that particular place. It seemed a silly thing to devote my only night off in a month to rubbish riddance, but the task couldn’t be avoided. I feared it would be bat-infested if I delayed much longer.

It was a “model” garret, chocked with cobwebs, endowed with a paper-strewn floor and two rain-streaked windows. There were two trunks stuffed with doodads, trinkets, recipes, masquerade costumes and a pair of high-buttoned boots, the favorite among Grandma’s finery.

An enormous bandbox hid in a corner, perhaps a bit wary to disclose its contents. Something had burrowed beneath the old Brussels carpet and it was left lumpy in places. Against the wall slouched a hand-painted “masterpiece,” purchased from a peddler who offered the most remarkable merchandise for minimum prices.

I knelt down in the midst of the accumulation and commenced.

Rags, magazines and broken or chipped pottery mounted in the waste basket. I tossed a paper plate, a tattered paper doll and a box of crayons into the container. A musty comforter completed the collection. Somehow I made it downstairs, then out into the yard and to the burner. I flicked a match and applied it to the newspapers already in the incinerator.

As the flames multiplied, I began to empty the basket. The quilt smothered the blaze at first but it soon was consumed by the fire. A splinter which protruded was the next victimized. The melting crayons resembled a rainbow-colored lava.

When I held the plate in my hand, I looked at it for the first time, the scene being appropriately seasonal. Inside an orange border an ebony witch clung to a broomstick while patrolling in a field scattered with pumpkins and brown cornstalks. Her shadow fell across the moon, a sketch in black and gold.

I didn’t realize I had been so involved in the picture until a bottle in the burner cracked, I saw a fire starting to die. Without further hesitation, I flung the plate into the flames. As the sparks sprang to life, I heard a horrible cackle,

“What have you done to me?”

I spun around in horror but not a soul was in sight. Then I was struck with a hunch. I sprinted into the house and pulled the light switch.

I stared at the clock softly ticking. It registered two minutes after twelve. I was right! It had been a spectre at the witching house! The voice had belonged to the witch on the plate! In my fright I could see a pair of bony hands, reaching-reaching- I dashed upstairs and buried myself. I never noticed the jack-o’-lantern flame burning low, who still grinned maliciously on the window sill.

~ Joan Cassidy, student at St. Mary’s Academy, 1946

My brothers and I reminisced a bit this week by email about the Witch Walks that Mom took us on as kids. She’d spin a spooky tale as we wandered through familiar neighborhoods, with only the moon to guide us.

Harry told us he carried on the tradition with his son, Andy:

I used to take Andy on witch walks. Once he wanted to go in November. I told him witch walk season ended on Halloween, and he asked, “Well, how about a venom-spitting turkey walk?”

Andy was six at the time. Here he is a few years later, as the top pumpkin carver in his class at school:

Here’s hoping all of us can carve out a bit of time this weekend to take a walk by the light of the moon, tell a spooky story, and outrun the witches who will be waiting just around the bend.

“Associates in Magic” ©1946 Joan Cassidy. All rights reserved.

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