When I was seventeen and reckless, I dated a boy who feared nothing. Together, we discovered every vice, and after school we’d slip away into a haze of smoke and wine coolers and explore each others’ bodies until dark.

One day, he told me about a secret garden where fruit grew even in the winter. Eating it gave you a lift better than any orgasm. I’m not sure if he knew that garden belonged to a witch, but either way, he didn’t tell me, and I followed him blindly over a high brick wall.

It was just as he said. Surrounded by the bitter snow stood a small green tree, its branches bowing under the weight of peaches. When I picked one and took a bite, the world blossomed into a thousand colors. I saw every falling snowflake at once in perfect detail, and I saw how together they formed a swirling pattern, and how that shape too belonged to a greater whole: out, out, out into the spiral of the Milky Way.

It soon became our daily ritual, and we spent the better part of a month there until we’d picked nearly every piece of fruit. We should have worried, but we were young and stupid.

In all that time, it never occurred to me that someone was living in the house that adjoined the garden. The place was weather-beaten and cumbling, barely fit for rats.

Of course, I should have known better.

Each night, someone carefully collected the discarded peach stones, the cigarette butts and beer bottles. Someone shoveled the snow when it grew high.

It was only as he plucked the final fruit from the tree that I saw her, looking out at me from the house’s one unbroken window. The witch’s skin hung from her bones as if she were long dead, but her eyes were as bright as a child’s. When she put her hands to the window glass, I saw that her fingers were a foot long each, tapering to points at the ends like tree branches.

“We need to run,” I said, but the boy was busy staring up into the face of god.

“It’s so beautiful,” he said.

At the window, the witch had disappeared. Somewhere in the house, I heard the rapid beat of footsteps down crumbling stairs.

I ran, sprinting to the wall. I jumped high as I could and hoisted myself up. Then, looking back I saw her approach him from behind. I called his name, and our eyes met one last time. He smiled at me dreamily.

Then she stuck a long finger into the spot where his neck met his back. It pierced his windpipe and emerged below his chin. Blood gushed from the wound, dying his whole front crimson. His whole body went limp, but the light was still on in his eyes.

Suddenly terrified, he gulped at the air like a fish. The witch held him up to the setting sun, hoisting him as easily as if he were built of cotton and paper.

For a moment, the old woman and I met eyes. Then she blew out a white breath, almost whistling. Something stabbed at me, like ice wrapping my heart. Then the witch smiled and took the boy by the leg, dragging him inside. I never saw him again.

The police didn’t believe in witches, and when they visited the address I gave them, they found an empty lot. I cried and raved and told them to keep looking, but most of the cops just rolled their eyes.

One younger officer took me aside though and handed me a crumpled up piece of paper.

“I know you’ve seen her,” he whispered. “These other guys don’t get it. Honestly, it’s easier for them to just let her take you and pretend it never happened. But if you want to live, you can. It just won’t be easy.”

I looked down at the paper in my hand and considered throwing it in his face. But then I slipped it in my pocket and walked away.

At night, I could hear a scraping at my window. A little louder each night. Sometimes, there’d be thumps on the roof, and then the air would freeze around me, so cold that I could see my breath in the moonlight.

Other times, the air would fill with the smell of ripe peaches, and I’d feel the sudden urge to open the window and jump out into the darkness.

And then one morning I woke to find five pinpick holes in the glass, so small they hadn’t even created cracks. The winter cold air blew in, as I remembered the witch’s breath, and I sensed my time was running out.

I uncrumpled the paper the cop had given me. It was an address downtown, an infamous block where you had to watch your step to avoid the discarded needles.

I put on my heaviest coat and walked there, only to find an empty lot.

“Hello?” I called out. There were a few old men sitting against a wall eating plain slices of wheat bread. Two ignored me, but the third rose and walked over. From the dirt caked onto his face and the rank odor of his overcoat, I could tell he’d been on the street for longer than I’d been alive.

“She blew you a kiss, didn’t she?” he asked. “You don’t gotta answer. I see it on you. Old Tom here knows these things. You haven’t got much time left unless you listen to me and listen careful.”

I didn’t respond, but I felt the ice around my heart stabbing softly at me.

“Tough curse,” said Old Tom. “Unbreakable. But it can be lived though, if living’s your goal. Is it?”

I shrugged, unsure.

“Do you want to live or not?” he asked, growing frustrated. “Won’t ask again. Ignore me, and she’ll come for you. You’ll wake one day to find her standing over you in bed, your heart dripping in them long fingers she got.”

Now I was shaking. Because I knew he had seen her too.

“I don’t want to die,” I finally said. “Tell me what I have to do.”

“It’s easy and it’s hard,” said the man. “All you have to do is say the Witch’s Prayer at midnight. That hard part is that you gotta do it every day for the rest of your life. Fuck up even one word or miss midnight by a few seconds, and she’ll come for you. Fall asleep at 11:30 and sleep through the appointed time? You wake up dead. You get me?”

I nodded again.

“What’s the prayer?”

He raised his hands and whispered:

We who have eaten the fruit and seen the other side

Ask mercy from the mother with the empty womb.

For we know that broken hearts can’t hide

The ice that lies inside our body’s tomb.

Old Tom made me say it with him after that. Once, when I missed a word, he slapped me hard across the face.

“You sure you want to live?” he asked.

The next time I got the words right. Together, we said them over and over again until I knew it by heart.

“Remember,” he said. “Every night from now on. Every night. You’ve made enough mistakes for a lifetime, girl. You don’t get another one.”

That night at eight, I started getting edgy and opened a bottle of my dad’s wine, but after half a glass I started feeling sleepy, so I poured it down the sink and made a pot of coffee instead.

I missed the boy hard, but he was dead, and I was still here, and I wasn’t ready to join him. But I couldn't help let me mind wander to the taste of his skin, or the way he’d smile at me with a cigarette hanging out the corner of this mouth.

I suddenly realized that I was intensely bored. All of the TV shows that had made me laugh before seemed mind-numbingly insipid now.

Finally, I picked up one of my grandfather’s old books and started to read. It was some dense volume of Dickens I could barely comprehend, but as I kept chipping away at the meaning of the old words, I felt my mind start to loosen and comprehend, like some long-frozen creature coming back to life.

At midnight, I said the prayer, and for the first time in a while, I felt safe. I went to sleep with the book in hand.

As the days went by, everything began to change. I had become used to waking sick and hungover. Now, for the first time since I’d met the boy, I felt okay.

I’d wake before my parents and walk through the dark, sleepy neighborhoods. As weeks passed, the walks became runs. My smoker’s cough soon disappeared, and my doughy body firmed up.

School went from an impossible chore to something bearable. I pulled my D’s up to B’s and even A’s. My future plans pivoted from ‘Dead by 27 like Kurt and Janis’ to college and more. Pre-law. A family of my own.

And then one day as I was jogging, I saw the house. It was just like I remembered, except this time, smoke was pouring out the chimney. I slowed as I approached. Everything in me screamed to run, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to take another look.

I hoisted myself up to the top of the red brick wall, and there was the tree. It was spring now, and the fruit was riper and more plentiful than I could have ever imagined. It seemed impossible that the branches wouldn’t snap under the weight of it.

Sitting in the shade of the tree sat the witch. She was eating something, chewing slowly as if enjoying every last bit. At first I thought it was beef jerky, but then I realized the truth. Beside her lay a corpse, its skin leathery and firm, as if it had spent all week in a smoker. As I watched, she sliced off a thin strip of thigh with her razor fingers and brought it to her lips, smelling it like fine wine before she put it to her lips.

Then she noticed me for the first time, and she smiled. She beckoned to me, and then struck the tree, causing an avalanche of fruit to fall in the soft grass around her. When I stood frozen, she speared a peach on one finger and held it out like a candy apple. When I still remained, she tossed it at me, a perfect arc that I caught in two hands.

For a second, I stared at the fruit, and imagined seeing the world explode into magic just one more time. Then I watched the witch take another bite of the corpse, and my stomach turned. I dropped the fruit and ran home as fast as I could go.

In college, I met a lot of boys who wanted me, but I knew they’d never understand. I couldn’t risk going to a frat party, not even a single beer. If I missed my midnight curfew, I knew the witch would return for me.

And so I spent my nights in my room, studying and watching the clock. And dutifully at midnight, I’d recite the prayer.

We who have eaten the fruit and seen the other side…

As I finished one night, I thought I heard an echo of the final words, our body’s tomb. Sure enough, I peeked out my door to see a young man on his knees in the dorm lounge, just finishing the same prayer.

“Sorry,” he said, getting up. “I thought everyone was out at the Midnight Movie Madness thing.”

“Not us,” I said. “We’ve got midnight plans, don’t we. Permanently.”

He met my eye, suddenly curious.

“So you’ve seen her?” he asked.

“Back in high school,” I said.

His name was Nathan, and though I didn’t know it yet, he was the man destined to be the father of my child.

He had seen the witch too, though his encounter was a little different. He and a group of his friends had stolen a truck. They didn’t even notice the fruit in the back until they were back at his ranch.

All day they sat in a cornfield munching on stolen peaches and watching clouds turn into angels and whales. Then, as night fell and the fruit ran out, the witch arrived. The guys were so blissed out that they didn’t even notice her until she was on top of them, her long nails piercing one’s eyes and poking through the back of his skull.

She went through the group quickly, killing most of them while they were half in dream. Only Nathan had survived, jumping in the truck and driving away as fast as he could while his friends screamed for him to come back.

All through college we remained inseparable, running through the foothills of campus, studying together, and of course, saying our midnight prayers.

I wasn’t as blissfully in love with him as with the other boy, but he was dependable in a way I’d never know, bringing me my morning coffee and dutifully running flashcards with me when I struggled in my anatomy class.

And when I got pregnant senior year, he never once pressured me one way or the other. He let me decide. And when I made the choice to keep it, he offered up a ring. It wasn’t the way I’d wanted things to be, but I loved him, and I said yes.

We held the wedding privately on the beach, just the two of us and an officiant, a local minister who agreed to a reduced fee. Later, we sat in the dark sand watching the stars come out, and Nathan pulled out a bottle of champagne from a cooler in the trunk of his car.

“Nathan,” I said. “You know we can’t. The prayer is coming up soon. Not to mention the baby.”

Nathan laughed.

“I thought about that,” he said. “One sip won’t kill us, or the kid. And we can do it right after midnight, so we’re not taking any risk.”

In a way, he had a point. Drinking right after midnight was probably the safest way to go. I didn’t want to say no to him, not on our wedding night.

“Maybe,” I said.

At midnight, we said the prayer together, and he popped the bottle open. As he did, I looked down at the waves and saw her there, watching us, the surf curling around her ankles.

“Nathan,” I said as he drank straight from the bottle. “Look.”

The witch walked slowly toward us, dragging her long fingers in the sand, leaving ten narrow lines in her wake.

“You can’t touch us,” he shouted, standing and taking another drink. “We said the prayer. We didn’t stutter. We got every word!”

The witch came closer, and then closer still. Twenty feet. Ten feet. I felt my icy heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings. She was so close now that I could smell her rank breath and see the red-brown stains ringing her mouth.

“Please,” I said. “We did it right. We did everything right.”

And then she walked right past us. There, in his car, was the officiant who had married us just a few hours earlier. He was dead asleep.

The witch opened the driver’s side door and then lined up the sharp fingers of one hand with his chest. Suddenly, she pushed forward, burying the hand all the way up to her wrist. When she pulled it back, she held his heart, its white crystals gleaming in the moonlight. The man looked dreamily at it, and then he was gone.

I screamed and closed my eyes, but Nathan drank and drank and drank as we watched the witch drag the man through the parking lot and back out to the ocean.

The marriage that had started badly only got worse. The 12:01 drinks got more and more frequent, until one day he decided he could get started at 11:00. After all, he could say the prayer a little buzzed.

And then one day, he mumbled as he said the final line. Instead of ‘tomb,’ the word came out more like, ‘thumb.’

I tried to correct him. Maybe if he said it all over again, he’d be okay. Maybe she wouldn’t come. But he wouldn’t listen.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I said it fine.”

And then he went downstairs to drink more while I held my swollen belly and cried.

The next morning, he was gone. All that remained was a trail of blood leading from the couch to the front door, which lay open, rocking rustily on its hinges.

And that brings us to Emma.

She came just a few weeks later, just after midnight. I still remember the contraction hitting mid-prayer, the way I struggled to say every word with perfect diction. And I did.

Then Emma was there, barely even crying. I felt her heart beating in her chest and knew I hadn’t passed the curse to her. I wept at her perfect warmth.

As I kissed her for the first time, I looked out the hospital window and saw the witch there, watching jealously. I remembered hearing once that she coveted the flesh of children most of all.

The witch tapped her long sharp fingers on the glass and smiled hungrily. She did not enter, but she stayed there most of the night, waiting patiently.

So many bleary nights would follow, times when I thought I’d never keep my eyes open. We fought off colds and flu, roseola and croup. Sometimes I didn’t sleep for 48 hours at a time. But no matter how tired I got, I was always ready at midnight. I refused to let that bitch rip my heart out in front of my daughter. Or to leave her an orphan, alone with my body in our small apartment.

And so the years passed one midnight at a time. Emma is eight now.

Emma is bright and sweet and whole. If I had known love like hers when I was younger, I never would have gone wandering. I never would have met the witch. Every day after school, she returns with armfuls of pencil sketches all for me. Usually, they are of us: a queen and a princess or a mother cat and her kitten.

At night, she snuggles up to me in our double bed, tucking her cold feet under my stomach, falling asleep as I say my prayer

And that brings us to last week.

It wasn’t anything I did. I’ve never backslid once. Not one drink, never a late night partying with friends. But I just got sick. Maybe covid, maybe flu. I could barely walk to the bathroom. I couldn’t catch a breath.

During the worst night, around 10:00 my body was just giving up. I was so tired I hard to sleep. And so I set an alarm for 11:45 and told Emma that if I slept though it, she needed to wake me. I told her if I couldn’t say my prayer at midnight the witch would come.

She nodded, and said okay, but I could tell that she was scared.

And then I fell into a deep dark sleep.

I woke in the morning alive but alone. I cried out for Emma, but there was no answer. Barely able to breath, I ran to the door and threw it open. She wasn’t in her room either, or on the couch.

I imagined the scene as it must have played out. The witch approaching my body just after midnight and finding the sleeping child beside me. The way she must have reached into Emma’s tiny chest with her razor fingers.

I fell to the floor sobbing, cursing the witch, cursing myself for even summoning her in the first place. I was ready to go now, and I called for her to come take me, take me to be with my baby.

“Mom?”

I looked up to see Emma holding a plate of burnt pancakes, I ran over and hugged her, my lungs burning with the effort.

“What happened?” I asked. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You seemed so tired,” she said. “So at midnight, I just said the prayer for you. It’s not like I haven’t heard you say it a million times.”

And I held her and sobbed and sobbed, not knowing if the curse was broken or just getting started.