Her Dear and Loving Husband (21 page)

“What are you doing out in this weather, dear? I was about to close for the day. Come in.”

Sarah couldn’t control herself and the tears dripped down her cheeks like the rain that had broken through, washing Salem clean. She watched the floor, certain the heavy iron chains had followed her. She expected them to reach out like tentacles, grab her, and drag her away to somewhere she would never escape. She searched the store’s shadows frantically for the leering, pock-faced monster who wanted to make her disappear. She couldn’t see him, though she felt him everywhere around her. 

“Oh no.” Olivia put her arms around Sarah. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing makes sense. Who is this woman? Why is she haunting me?” She waved the clothbound notebook around her face, her eyes frantic, nearly hysterical. “How is it possible?”

Olivia took the notebook from Sarah's hands and helped her sit in the chair behind the counter. “How is what possible, dear?”

“How can I be dreaming through James’s life?”

Olivia stopped cold. She stood so still Sarah thought she lost her motor movement. Olivia exhaled, then leaned over Sarah, brushing her matted curls from her eyes.

“Tell me everything.”

Sarah sighed. She would have cried more, but she was exhausted suddenly and didn’t have the strength.

“James has been telling me about his life with his wife. They lived here in Salem during the witch trials. Last night he told me how he knew Rebecca Nurse—he went to her pre-trial examination. When I woke up this morning something kept nagging at me…something he said. Then I remembered my dreams.” Sarah’s eyes grew wide, and she had to choke out the words because her throat was dry. She leaned close to Olivia and whispered, paranoid that the chain-wielding pock-faced monster might overhear. “I’ve been dreaming about his life. It’s all right there in the notebook.”

“Haven’t you been reading about the witch trials? Perhaps that’s where your dreams are coming from.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t even made it to the museums yet. I’ve been busy with the library, and…”

“And James.”

Sarah blushed. “Yes, and James.”

“Are all your dreams about the witch trials?”

“No. I don’t think so. They’re about some other woman’s life, but I don’t know who she is. I thought she might be the ancestor my great-aunt told me about, but how can I dream about some woman when I don’t even know her name? And now James is telling me about his life…”

Sarah grasped her head with her hands, trying to still the same frantic pounding she felt the night before in the car. Olivia nodded, looking as she always did, warm and motherly, as though Sarah’s meandering thoughts didn’t surprise her at all. She gestured to the clothbound notebook on the counter. “This is where you write your dreams?” Sarah nodded. “May I see it?”

Sarah handed her the journal. Olivia read aloud: 

I am looking lovingly into the eyes of a man, though I cannot see his face because it is featureless, like a blank slate…

I am sitting at a table surrounded by people who look like they should be part of a Thanksgiving Feast tableau with their modest Pilgrim-style clothing, old-fashioned manners, and antiquated way of speaking…  

I am at a wedding. It is a wedding from long ago, centuries past, a simple affair with family and a few close friends…

I am in the kitchen cooking supper, stirring a pottage in the cauldron in the hearth…

I am standing in front of a tree. The tree is scarred, hunched, ugly, not beautiful like other trees because this tree knows its sinister purpose…

Though I am too weak to see clearly I know I am locked and chained in a dank, gloomy cage in a dungeon infested with rats…

When Olivia stopped reading it was silent in the store, the only noise coming from the rain pellets striking the store with barely restrained fury. Sarah walked to the window and looked out at the wharf. She saw the murky black sky, the water crashing down, the bay cracking in harsh waves under the nor’easter’s strength. She stayed by the window, watching, finding comfort in the acerbic weather. The disturbance she felt locked inside was there as a winter storm for all of Salem to see. When she felt Olivia watching her, she turned and saw concern in her friend’s steel-gray eyes.   

“The one about her husband telling her that Rebecca had been arrested—that’s the story James told me last night. He had done the same thing, gone home to tell Elizabeth that Rebecca had been taken away. Elizabeth was cooking in the cauldron, and they talked about returning to England…”

Olivia handed Sarah the clothbound notebook. “What do you think it means?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said.

Olivia closed her eyes and nodded her head the way she did the night of Sarah's psychic reading, a rhythmic meditation. Suddenly she was still and she stayed that way a long moment. When she opened her eyes she smiled. She clutched Sarah’s hands so tightly Sarah flinched.

“I think I know what to do. Will you meet me at Jennifer’s tonight, Sarah? And bring James. He should be there as well.”

Sarah agreed. She would agree to anything that would help her make sense of her dreams.

CHAPTER 18

Jennifer’s house was silent, the nervous, impatient kind of silence you feel when something unwanted is about to happen. Along with Jennifer, Sarah and James were there, as well as Olivia and her friend Martha, a heavy-set woman with her black hair cut into a flapper’s bob. Martha lingered near the window on the fringe of the scene, silent, listening, watching. Sarah stood with her back to the wall, her arms crossed in front of her, her body a tight  standing board, her muscles stiff, her joints heavy. She felt like she needed to shield herself from something, only she didn’t know what. Everyone darted their eyes around the room, looking at each other, away from each other, but no one was speaking. Somehow she knew she wasn’t going to like what they had to say.   

“James,” Jennifer said, “why don’t you tell Sarah how your wife died.”

James didn’t look at Sarah. He spoke to the polished wood floor beneath his feet. 

“My wife died during the Salem Witch Trials. She was accused of being a witch, arrested, and she died in jail before she was tried.” 

He looked at Sarah with the same searching stare he had since he first saw her outside his house. But all Sarah could think to say was, “I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”

“It was.”

Olivia put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “You’ve been dreaming about the witch trials, haven’t you? Don’t you dream about watching some of the convicted witches die as they’re hung from a tree?”

“Yes, I dream about that.”    

Sarah looked at everyone in the room, and she could tell by their drawn, worried faces that they were trying to tell her something she might not want to know.   

“Think about this,” Jennifer said. “The first time we drove by James’s house you thought it looked familiar. Then you went back to get a better look. What happened when he saw you?”

“He was confused. He called me Elizabeth. He thought I was Elizabeth.” She closed her eyes as she remembered that night. Then she looked at James. “Elizabeth was your wife.” He nodded. “And she died during the witch trials? She died in jail?” He nodded again.

“And didn’t you tell me once that you thought James seemed like the man in your dreams?” Jennifer asked. “You can’t see his face, but the silhouette is the same?”

Sarah pressed her hand to her chest, pushing on her ribs because her heart felt ready to implode through her bones. She sat in the chair next to Olivia, darting her eyes around the blank canvas of the white wall, afraid to look at anyone. 

“Who you are is not yourself,” Sarah said, recalling Olivia’s cryptic words from her reading at the Witches Lair five months before. “He will find you. He is here and he will find you. Who you are is not yourself.” Her hands went to her head. James rushed to her side.

“Sarah? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing makes sense,” she said. The words felt scattered in her mind, like disconnected letters on a crossword puzzle. She shook her head, pushing the unnerving thoughts away. Olivia took Sarah’s hand, then gestured toward Martha, standing silently in the background.   

“Martha is here to help you, dear. If you learned the truth about what your dreams are telling you then it might make the nightmares go away. You could sleep again.”

Sarah sighed with stilted breath. Her eyes brimmed with saltwater, the terror barely tucked beneath the edges of her mind. “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked. But she already knew. The pained look on their faces verified what she already knew. 

“We think you might be the reincarnation of James’s wife,” Martha said. She spoke with a southern accent, her voice soft and easy. “We think Elizabeth’s spirit has been reborn in you, and I’d like to lead you through a past-life regression to see if it’s true.”   

Sarah jumped out of her chair. “How can you say that to me! How gullible do you think I am? What other metaphysical powers do you want me to believe in next? Now I have to believe in vampires because James is a vampire.” It was the first time she spit the word out with disgust, as if it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She stared at Jennifer, pointing an accusing finger. “Now you’re going to tell me you’re not just a Wiccan but a witch with real magic?”

Jennifer held her hands out, palms up, a gesture of surrender. “Yes, Sarah, I’m a witch with real magic.”

Olivia squeezed Sarah’s hand. “Don’t worry, dear, we’re not wicked witches. It’s part of the Wiccan Rede that we can’t use our spells for evil, and the Covenant of the Goddess says we can’t interfere in people’s lives unless we have their permission. People need to acknowledge the power our magic contains before we can cast a spell for them. Harm none, Sarah, that’s our motto. We harm none.” 

“Black arts is a terrible term for what we do,” Jennifer said. “We’re good witches, Sarah. You have nothing to fear from us.”

Sarah slumped in her chair. “Great,” she said, the sarcasm grating her voice. “Next you’re going to tell me werewolves are real and Frankenstein lives down the street.”

The others shook their heads. Sarah was so visibly disturbed they were afraid to say anything that might upset her more. She looked at them, one at a time, but they stayed silent. 

“James?”

 He didn’t look at her. “There’s no such thing as Frankenstein,” he said.

“There’s no such thing as Frankenstein,” Sarah repeated, a manic hysteria creeping into her voice. “There’s no such thing as Frankenstein! So there are vampires, witches, and werewolves in the world, walking around among us while most people think they’re make-believe. And now you’re trying to tell me that someone else’s spirit is living inside my body? What does that make me, a ghost? Doesn’t that make us one great big happy haunted family. We should join the Halloween festival next year.”

She began pacing the kitchen, around and around the granite island. She couldn’t face the others, and she couldn’t hold back the despair she felt creeping inside her fragile, sleep-deprived mind.   

“Sarah,” James said, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to do the past-life regression then don’t. It’s your decision.”

Sarah dropped her head into her hands and wept. She was too overwhelmed. James walked to her, put his arms around her, pulled her close.

“Everything is going to be all right,” he said.   

“Don’t you touch me!”

Sarah tried to push him away, but he was too strong. She turned away from him instead. 

“This is all your idea,” she said, spitting the words like wooden stakes aimed at his heart. “All you ever cared about was finding your wife. You want me to be your wife so you won’t have to miss her anymore.” 

“Sarah, no,” James said. “That’s not true.”

“You don’t care that I look like Elizabeth? That’s not why you want to spend time with me?”

“It was at first, but not now.”  

Sarah didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. It didn’t matter. It was all nonsense. She pushed her way out the front door, weeping and unable to see in front of her, her vision blurred with salt and bitterness. She was determined to make it home where she could lock herself inside, safe from the superstitious madness she was sure they were trying to feed her. James reached the street first and frightened her. 

“Sarah, please, listen to me.” 

He grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. When he wouldn’t let go she tried to wriggle away.   

“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” 

He dropped her arm and stepped back. “I’m so sorry—I just want you to listen. Sarah!”

But she was already running away.   

“Sarah!” he called. But she kept running away.

She wanted to escape Salem and go back to Los Angeles, back to the husband she never loved but who wouldn’t let her give in weakly to the dreams, the man who wouldn’t expect her to believe such ludicrous superstitions. Back to a life where she could be like everyone else, going to work, coming home, reading books, watching television, listening to music, going out with friends. Normal things normal people do every day. Since she moved to Salem she had been asked to believe things no sane person should be expected to believe. She began to feel foolish for ever going along with any of it. Vampires, witches, and werewolves, oh my. Where was normal here? 

If the others hadn’t been so serious she would have laughed in their faces. She couldn’t believe what she heard, and worse, they seemed to expect her to believe them. There she goes again, she thought, silly Sarah too gullible to be rational, too out of touch with reality. She felt paranoid suddenly, as if they were trying to push her over the edge of sanity where she would stay, sitting forever in the corner of the mental hospital, a modern-day Renfield waiting for the call of her demon master. She would spend the rest of her life babbling about vampires and witches and how she had known some once. Then she would tell the doctors that who she was was not herself because she was really someone who died over three hundred years before. The doctors would nod with grim faces as they scribbled notes onto their legal pads, upped the dosage of her medication, and ordered a straight jacket to bind her arms to stop her from rubbing away the horror movie of evil witches and bloodthirsty vampires playing on a continuous reel behind her eyes. The thought of being bound by the straight jacket terrified her as much as the tentacle-like chains that followed her everywhere in her nightmares.