Conversion (20 page)

“Tell us about PANDAS! Are you worried you’ll get it, too? Have you had any strange symptoms you want to tell us about?”

“They’re thinking of closing the school!”

“What’s the administration telling you that it’s not telling us, girls?”

“Talk to us!”

We reached the car, Deena fumbling for her keys to get it unlocked, and then we both dove inside, slamming the doors and muffling the cries of the press into a dull throb.

“At least the days are getting longer, finally,” Deena said as she gunned the engine.

“Yeah,” I said, gasping for breath. I turned to her and grinned. She grinned back.

“To Emma’s?” she said.

“Mush!” I agreed.

We flipped on the radio and pulled away, reporters’ hands trailing off the trunk of her car, like ghosts clutching at the living.

Deena’s car crunched up the driveway to Emma’s house a few minutes later, and the curtain over the picture window into Emma’s living room twitched. Someone had been watching for us to pull up. Or watching for something, at any rate.

“You go get her,” Deena said. “I’ll stay here.”

“Why?” I asked, giving her a look.

Deena shuddered, her hands on the steering wheel.

“Honestly? Emma’s house kind of creeps me out.”

“Creeps you out? What’s to be creeped out about? It’s just a house.”

“I know.” Deena watched the closed living room curtain carefully.

I waited.

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe it’s her mom? I don’t know. I’d just rather wait here.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, climbing out of the car and slamming the door behind me.

A long silence wore by after I rang Emma’s bell. Long enough for me to turn back to Deena, see her shrug in the car, and for me to shrug back. I rocked on my heels, waiting.

Nobody answered.

I was at the point of pressing the bell again when the front door creaked open, and one pale eye surveyed me from the shadows inside the house. It was almost six, and they still hadn’t put any lights on.

“Yes?” said the wraith inside the door.

“Um. Hi, Mrs. Blackburn. Is Emma home?”

“Emma?” The pale eye blinked, as though confused about what I wanted.

“Yeah,” I said, my gaze going shifty. “She and I were texting earlier? About me coming over?”

The eye waited.

“And, anyway, I’m here with Deena. We thought we’d take her out for a coffee or something.”

“Oh.” The door opened a little wider, but the wraith retreated farther out of view. “Colleen. Yes. Were you girls in school today?”

“Yes, Mrs. Blackburn.”

“Ah. You weren’t afraid to go?”

“No, Mrs. Blackburn.”

“Oh. That’s good.” She had rounded the corner of the hallway into the family room, and I could hardly hear her. “I see. I’ll get her.”

The house went silent, and I loitered just outside the front door, not sure if I was supposed to step in or not. While I waited, I brought my fingertip to my temple and rubbed in a little circle. It felt nice. I was more tired than I’d realized.

Presently there was thumping on the stairs and Emma materialized out of the gloom, face shining with happiness at getting out of the house.

“Hey!” she chirped, giving me a quick hug. “Oh, good, Deena came. Hi!” she called, waving at the car. Deena gave a half wave back.

“Hey,” I said, baffled by the difference in tone between Emma and her mom. “Listen, is your mom okay?”

“Mom? Yeah, sure. Why?”

“I don’t know. She just seemed . . .” I paused, hesitating. The Blackburns, as I’ve mentioned, are ridiculously tight. “I don’t know. Off.”

“Nah.” Emma waved me off and started for the car. “That’s just Mom being Mom. Hey, Deena!”

Emma hopped into the backseat, grinning under a cute wool beret, her blond hair in two long ponytails over her shoulders.

“Hey,” Deena said. She still seemed hesitant to me, but that could have just been because I was watching so closely. “How’s vacation?”

“Oh my God, you guys. I am so. Bored. So bored. I was getting desperate.”

Deena backed the car down the driveway and Emma practically bounced on the backseat, she was so excited.

“I thought we’d go to the café, just hang out for a while,” I said, watching Deena’s face to make sure this plan met with her approval. After all, it was her car.

“Perfect!” Emma cried. “And I have a great idea for what we can do after that.”

“I dunno, y’all,” Deena said. When she was stressed, her Southern accent slipped back out. “I’ve got kind of a lot of work to do tonight. I’ve got a BC problem set, and a book review for Japanese.”

Emma leaned forward, thrusting her head between us.

“I know. But trust me. It won’t take long. And you’re going to love it.”

Deena shot me a glance that gave me to understand I was responsible for getting her into this mess, and I would also be responsible for getting her out.

“We’ll see,” she said as we pulled away.

In the rearview mirror, as Emma’s house retreated behind us in the encroaching night, I definitely saw the living room curtain twitch.

SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

MAY 30, 1706

R
everend Green is like a boy being told a fairy story before bed. The day’s wearing on, and I hear pans and chopping in the hall on the other side of the door, and his chubby baby, finally free of its hiccoughs, babbling to the cat. He pays them no attention.

It’s comfortable, here in the parsonage. More comfortable than my own house. My house has most of my younger siblings in it still, but there’s a coldness at the center. No happy babies beating on the kitchen table. No husband grumbling over a desk in the best room.

I’m not finished with my story, and I can tell I’ve seduced the Reverend so that he won’t let me go ’til I’m done. His lips are parted. He wants for me to keep talking. I bask in this feeling. I hoard his attention for myself, soaking it up, filling every pore with it, knowing that soon it will be snatched away.

Mary Warren and Betty Hubbard and I leave Ingersoll’s Ordinary at a trot, Betty struggling with the laces of her cloak under her chin, me pulling on my mittens in a rush, dropping one and having to run back and fetch it.

“Annie, hurry,” Mary urges me, and I flounder through the snow to keep up.

The ice crunches under our boots, and our breath puffs out in steady clouds. Mary’s brought a lamp, which smokes for want of cleaning.

It’s not often I go abroad at night. Father says it’s not safe, that though I walk with Jesus, I’m better off walking with him in the house. Some girls I know, who came down from the Eastward, know too well what kinds of devilish evil lurks in the dark. Godless men, their bodies smeared in grease, draped in the ragged skins of animals, demons who spring forth out of nothingness and burn your house to a cinder and drag your soul screaming down to hell.

I huddle closer to Betty Hubbard, who seems unconcerned. I’m glad Mary’s with us; she’s older, more sure of herself. Tree branches creak in an invisible night breeze, and in the far distance, a creature—dog or wolf or devil—howls, long and mournful. When we finally spy the black silhouette of the meetinghouse hulking up into the sky from the surrounding trees, I realize that I’ve been holding my breath.

Inside the parsonage, a terrible racket shakes the rafters, and many heads move in shadow against the narrow windows. We three cluster together, linking our arms. A girl’s scream pierces the night, and the sound startles a bird from sleep. It takes off from a nearby tree with a sudden flapping of wings.

“Perhaps we should wait?” I whisper.

“No, Annie. You want the Reverend to beat them? We’ve got to keep Betty from saying anything. I just hope we’re not already too late,” Mary admonishes me.

“And anyway,” Betty Hubbard says, “aren’t you dying to know why she’s screaming so?” I can tell from the sound of her voice that Betty’s smiling.

“All right,” I say, but my voice is small. I don’t have my friends’ boldness, not at all. I wish that I did.

We creep to the door, and ease it open without knocking.

Inside the parsonage’s hall we find a goodly number of villagers, goodwives sitting in knots of two and three, several of them arrayed around Mrs. Parris. Upstairs, screams and rumbling men’s voices yelling. Tittibe Indian stands by the wall, her face ashen. Her husband is nowhere to be seen. Heads swivel to us as we appear in the doorway.

“Good God in heaven,” someone whispers. “It’s the other ones. They’ve come.”

“Why, so they have. You were right.”

“Were they summoned? Or are they in their fits?”

“Just when the little one’s on the point of naming her tormentor, they arrive? What say you to that, I ask you?”

The women shrink from us, watching with a steady stare as we move deeper into the room. I suppose I should feel afraid, but I don’t. Instead I feel powerful. Usually no one shrinks from me for anything. I’m lucky if anyone takes notice of me at all. But now every eye in the room rests on me and Mary and Betty Hubbard, and those eyes all shine with fear and awe. A rill of wicked excitement fills me, and without meaning to, I smile.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see similar expressions on Betty Hubbard and Mary Warren’s faces. So they’re feeling it too.

“We’re going up,” Mary announces.

She doesn’t ask Mrs. Parris for permission. She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t even wait to be given leave. She does as she wills.

We advance to the attic ladder, and no one objects. No one speaks to us at all; they only whisper.

As we three mount the ladder one after the other, I hear Betty Hubbard giggling.

Up in the loft, we arrive to a baffling scene. At first none of the gentlemen upstairs even notice we’re there, so absorbed are they in the goings-on of the afflicted.

There’s the Reverend crouching next to the trundle, his hands fastened around his little daughter’s skinny upper arms. Betty Parris is bawling, her mouth open, face beet red, tears squeezing out the corners of her eyes. Her fists are in her lap, and a string of wet trickles from her nose to her chin. She wails and gasps like a baby.

Abby, meanwhile, is straining at the window, her cheek pressed to the glass, her eyes open wide, dark hair flowing back from her forehead in long snarls. Her hands clutch at the sill, and she’s pressing so hard, I can see the sinews in her throat.

“I’d fly!” she cries out. “They’d have me fly away! I’d fly well away from here, even if it meant going to one of their hideous Sabbaths, if only they’d leave me in peace! I’ll fly!”

Young Reverend Hale kneels on the floor, his arms squeezed around her waist, and another man whose name I don’t know stands behind Reverend Hale, feet braced against Abby’s struggling, gripping her shoulders hard. She thrashes and fights like a drowning cat.

“Tell me!” Reverend Parris bellows, his voice ragged from weeks of praying and speechifying and exhortation. “You tell me right now, Betty! Tell me who’s bewitching you!”

Betty Parris takes a long gulp of air, and screeches it back out. The Reverend shakes her, and her head wobbles on her shoulders.

“I’ll never sign, they can’t make me!” Abby screams. “They send their shapes in at the window in the night, and they sit on my chest until my breath is squeezed out of me and tell me I’ve got to join them!”

“Tell! You’ll tell, by God!” Reverend Parris’s voice rises.

“Tell, Betty Parris!” Mary Warren cries out. “You tell them what vile witch bedevils us!”

I look at Mary sharply. Betty Hubbard’s eyes glitter with excitement.

Betty Parris stares at us, dumbfounded. Reverend Parris glares over his shoulder, and then thrusts his face inches away from his daughter’s.

“Tell,” he hisses.

“I . . . ,” Betty Parris starts to say, eyes peeping open between puffy red lids. She inhales a long sob and stammers, “I . . . I see her come in at the window.”

“Yes?” her father urges. The other men are rapt. Even Reverend Hale turns to stare over his shoulder at the little girl who’s gone so long without speaking.

“I see her!” Abby screams in ecstasy. “Yes, Betty, I see her, too!”

Betty Hubbard’s hands clasp under her chin at the sound of her name, even though Abby’s speaking to the other Betty, Betty Parris. My heart lurches in my chest, and I wipe my wrist over my mouth because I fear I’m going to be sick.

“Who? Who do you see?” one of the periwigged magistrates worries, looking about himself as if the witch’s specter might be standing nearby, if only he had the power to see.

Downstairs, I hear shuffling and voices, and someone issuing orders to someone else.

“She sends her shape out to torment us!” Mary Warren cries, her eyes wide.

I gaze on her with horror, for Mary knows as well as I do it’s all a lie. But the look on her face says otherwise. She holds her hands palms out at her side, her face lifted to the heavens as though awaiting a divine message.

“Yes! She comes to me also, in the night, and I’m sore afraid! She shows me where their names are written in blood!”

I turn on my heel, stunned, for this exclamation comes from none other than Betty Hubbard.

“What, you, Elizabeth?” Dr. Griggs steps out from within the knot of black-coated men and moves to inspect his niece. He places his hands gently on her shoulders and looks down at her with concern.

“Since we come to stay at the Putnams,” she whispers, refusing to look at me. “A shape comes and troubles me in the night, and I don’t hardly know where I am or what I’m saying, and betimes I awaken and find I’ve wandered into some other room entirely, with no wrap and freezing with cold.”

“What shape? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I was afraid, Uncle. I knew not what sort of shape it might be, but it sometimes had a yellow bird with it, and no matter how much I cried, it wouldn’t leave me in peace.”

Betty Hubbard’s been sharing a pallet with me and my sister these past two weeks, in the loft where I sleep. And while it’s true there was one night she awoke from a dream in tears and I held her ’til she was quiet, and another night she awoke needing the chamber pot and couldn’t find it in the dark in a strange room, and I came upon her weeping in a corner and trembling with cold until I helped her, I never heard any talk of any shape coming in at the window. We’ve had no nighttime visitors intent on blood except bedbugs.

Now all eyes travel to me. After all, I’m afflicted, too. I’ve got the marks to prove it.

“Is this true, Ann?”

Mary Warren rests a beatific hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right, Annie,” she says gravely. “You can say. They only want to help.” Her eyes are deep pools of cunning. Abby, at the window, has ceased her struggling and smiles.

“Oh, Annie, tell them how we suffer!” Abigail beseeches me.

“I . . . I . . .” I stumble over my words, terrified. If I continue the lie, I’m sinning in the eyes of God. A vile, hell-sending sin. If I speak the truth, I’ll be beaten sure, and all the other girls will, too. My mouth goes dry, and bile rises in my throat.

At length, I whisper, “I cannot say whose shape it is.”

“There!” one of the gentlemen exclaims. “She sees it, too!”

Reverend Parris turns his attention back to his daughter, rattling her against the wall. “Girl! You tell us who’s tormenting you right now! Say the name!”

Betty Parris’s mouth hangs open and her eyes are panicked. She’s gurgling, speechless, helpless, even more afraid than I am.

Someone is grunting her way up the attic ladder and fiddling with the trapdoor latch, which we’d closed behind us when we came up. The trap opens with a slam, and to a man and girl we all jump, Abby letting out a blood-chilling scream.

The cloth-wrapped head of Tittibe appears in the hatch. She’s not looking at anyone, but carries some dishes of roast pork with gravy.

“It was she!” Betty Parris screams, breaking free of her father’s grasp and pointing with a trembling finger.

“What?” Reverend Parris looks with confusion at the slave who’s just climbed into the attic. The woman he’s known since the days on the island no one speaks of.

“Aye, it was she! Tittibe! She sent her shape in at the window to torment me! It’s she!”

“Yes!” Abby joins in. “I see her, too! She has that yellow bird perched on her shoulder even now, ready to tear out my eyes!”

Tittibe looks stricken, the plate of food shaking in her hands.

“But . . . ,” she says. “Betty, you know me. You’ve always known me.”

Reverend Parris has gotten to his feet, nostrils flaring, his hands curling slowly into fists. His breath comes fast. Seeing the change in the minister, the younger one, Reverend Hale, untangles himself from Abby’s skirts and scrambles to his feet, maneuvering between the elder man and the Indian woman.

“Wait, Reverend,” Reverend Hale says, his hands outstretched.

Mary Warren and Betty Hubbard fall into each other’s arms, weeping, and Mary’s arm shoots out and enfolds me, bringing us into a tight tangle of trembling, frightened girls.

“You!” Reverend Parris growls at Tittibe, whose terror deepens.

“That must be why the water charm didn’t work,” one man whispers to another. “Why, she must’ve fouled it somehow, to avoid detection!”

“You!” Reverend Parris bellows again, his voice rising an octave, and he struggles to fling himself at the woman, with only Reverend Hale’s hands holding him back.

With a cry Tittibe drops to her knees, the food falling from her grasp and splattering across the floor, the plate splintering in two. She covers her face with her hands and begins to sob.

“No, no!” she moans, rocking to and fro. “No, it cannot be, it cannot be. Not I, it’s never I, not I.”

“Are you the witch who’s tormenting my child? My child whom you’ve known from a babe in arms? Is it you?” The Reverend’s voice cracks with grief, and we can hear our commotion drawing the crowd to the foot of the ladder, gathering and murmuring, a pond of faces staring up with horror and disbelief.

She only wails, “No, no, it were never me, I’m no witch, I not be hurting my Betty!”

The Reverend turns away in anguish, wiping his face with his hands. When he turns back, his entire countenance is warped with rage.

“They’re all against me, Tittibe!” he screams. “All of them! And now you! You bring this evil witchcraft into my house? Onto my child? You’ll confess, by God! You’ll confess if I have to beat it out of you with my own hands!”