Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Hagar, the home’s resident cook, has known Miss Wellwood for nearly 20 years. In all of that time, Miss Wellwood has only missed one day of work. Now that she has been gone for weeks, Hagar grows worried enough to borrow a car and visit Miss Wellwood at home. Miss Wellwood tries to stall her and initially refuses to turn on any of the lights. Hagar flips the switch herself and sees that Miss Wellwood is pregnant. She quickly does the math and realizes that Miss Wellwood is nearly 60 years old, so she decides that this pregnancy is the work of the devil. She runs home to get her sister Miriam. The two help to deliver whatever is inside Miss Wellwood. Miss Wellwood writhes in pain and remembers her own teenage pregnancy, recalling that she wanted to marry the father, but her father forbade it and forced her to give the child up. Miss Wellwood gives birth to a bucket of writhing eels.

Fern and Holly head outside to perform the rain spell. Holly has been studying this particular incantation, and both girls are hopeful that it will work. They do exactly as the book instructs. At first, it seems as though the rain will come, but the skies remain dry. Fern considers their problem and wonders if they might need to induce more pain in order to get the spell to work. Rose had to nearly cut off her fingertip for her spell to be effective. She hands a pair of scissors to Holly and encourages her to cut off part of her tongue. Holly cannot do it, and the girls are interrupted by Hagar. She tells them that they have some explaining to do and marches them back to the home.

When they return to Hagar’s kitchen, Zinnia is standing by the door. She mumbles an apology. Hagar demands an explanation, and Fern tells her everything. When described aloud, their recent activities sound silly, but Hagar takes the girls seriously. She asks about Miss Parcae and the coven, then demands that the girls give her the spell book. She burns it, places the ashes in a bottle, and directs the girls to bury it. They ask her if she is a witch, and she responds that she has lived by the woods all her life. She knows what happens there, and she knows how to take care of herself. Zinnia then tells Fern that when the bookmobile comes back, they must tell Miss Parcae that they are done with witchcraft. She is sure that Miss Parcae never meant to help them and that she wanted something for herself all along. She tells Fern that the two of them will have to figure out how to save Holly on their own.

The bookmobile shows up. Miss Parcae looks better than she did the last time Fern saw her. She accepts their books, and then asks them about the weather, wondering aloud if it is going to rain. Fern and Zinnia explain everything, revealing that Hagar burned the spell book. Miss Parcae is livid and tells them that the book was sacred. She demands that Fern come with her because she is about to die and needs Fern’s body so that her consciousness, as well as the memories of all her ancestors, might live on. Fern is terrified and refuses to go. Miss Parcae explains that she can force Fer to obey because Fern swore an oath. When Zinnia places her own body between the two, Miss Parcae backs down. The girls return to the home and consult Hagar, who has them place 16 pieces of silver around the home to bar the witches from entering. The girls go to bed. In the middle of the night, Fern looks out the window to see that the trees around the home are full of the witches from the coven. She is terrified, but the witches do not cross the silver.

On laundry day, the girls gather outside to do the washing as usual. It is unbearably hot. There is an electric tension in the air, and Fern and Zinnia cannot help but notice that storm clouds are gathering. Nervous about the coven, they watch the skies. The clouds erupt in what the girls first believe to be hail, but they soon realize that the sky is raining stones. They run as quickly as possible into the house, but many of the girls sustain injuries, some of which require treatment at the local hospital. Later that day, both the police and Miss Wellwood arrive. She announces that the stones were thrown by a local group of hippies who have been living in the woods and doing drugs. She is aware that several of the girls have joined these hippies more than once. She instructs the police officers to search the house. They turn up little other than contraband books and snacks, but Miss Wellwood announces that everyone will be punished.

Hagar creates a line of salt on the floor to repel witches. Later that night, everyone is awakened by a loud knocking on the door. Nurse Kent comes to see what the racket is, and the noise gets louder. Suddenly, it sounds as though the knocking is coming from every door and every wall in the house. The girls are terrified that the witches will gain entry to the house, but Hagar’s line holds. The next day, she makes them small pouches to wear around their necks that render them invisible to witches. She tells them that she is sick of helping them clean up their mess and that this will be her final act of assistance.

Miss Wellwood has the house sealed off from the world. The windows are covered with plywood, and the doors are kept locked at all times. Still, the girls are sure that Miss Parcae will return. One night, they find out that Violet, another of their roommates at the home, has gathered up some of the salt that Hagar still puts down to ward off witches. Violet has deduced that this salt can keep her safe from whatever is lurking outside of the house. The girls are horrified to realize that Miss Parcae can now gain access to the house. One night, they wake to find that Miss Parcae is downstairs. The girls are still invisible to her, but she can hear them as they try to move silently out of her path. Fern is gripped by a terrible pain which she assumes is a spell, but she soon realizes that she is going into labor. She, Holly, and Zinnia try to slip quietly past Miss Parcae, and Nurse Kent eventually comes. Seeing that Fern is in labor, she calls a taxi to take her to the hospital.

Fern arrives at the hospital. Because she is young and unmarried, she is labeled a “Jane Doe” and met with cold stares, unkind jokes, and hostility. The orderly will not help her onto her bed, and the nurse is unkind to her as well. Everyone she encounters treats her as though she has committed an unforgivable sin. The pain is stark and brutal. She has never experienced anything like it before, and she desperately wants it to be over. Miss Parcae appears and tells her that she can make all of the pain go away if Fern agrees to join her. Fern refuses. The pain intensifies. It is a long, difficult labor. Finally, her baby is born.

Fern wakes up in the same bed in which she has just given birth. She is still in pain, and she is overcome by a powerful need to see her child. She has been calling him Charlie Brown in her head and is sure that the baby is a boy, but she learns that she has given birth to a girl. Diane comes, and Fern demands to see her baby. Diane explains that her baby has a good home and loving parents who will be able to provide for her. Diane states that there is no reason for Fern to see the baby because doing so will only make it more difficult for her to give the baby up. Fern insists. She immediately falls in love with the tiny girl and decides that Charlie is an equally suitable name for a daughter. She does not want to give her up. Miss Parcae comes and angrily demands that either Fern or her baby join the coven so that one of them can take over the line of women’s consciousnesses, which goes back thousands of years. Fern refuses. She decides to allow the adoption to happen. Bereft, she worries that she has made a terrible mistake.

Fern returns to the home. She feels emotionally flat and does not want to socialize with the pregnant girls. She has little desire to be in a room with babies, even unborn. She has no idea how she is going to go home and return to her normal life after everything that has happened. Zinnia tells her that they have a plan to help Holly. They plan to convince Hagar to deliver the child and hide Holly for a few days. Then, Holly will hide at Rose’s house. After a couple of weeks of hiding, she and the baby will go live in the commune that Rose was part of. Now that Fern has experienced childbirth, she finds this plan ridiculous and says as much. An offended Zinnia and Holly leave her alone. Later, when Reverend Jerry shows up at the home to visit Holly, Holly becomes despondent, and Fern once again feels as though she must do something to help.