Suffer a Witch (23 page)

On July 19, 1692, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes were hanged as witches on Gallows Hill. Because Rebecca wasn’t with them now, and Susannah had been living in Pennsylvania, they rarely got together to acknowledge this hanging. Caught between her guilt over her daughter Dorothy and her rage at what happened, Sarah Good usually sulked alone in DC. Elizabeth and Sarah Wildes often spent the day working with underprivileged children.

Em was determined that this year would be different. She asked everyone to meet her at the graveyard at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead before dawn. Twenty-five acres of Rebecca’s historic homestead and her colonial home were now open to the public. Em had asked Sam to pick up Sarah Good and Alice to bring Susannah. She and George brought Elizabeth and Sarah Wildes with them. They arrived within minutes of each other.

A barn owl hooted at them from a tall oak.

“Spooky,” Ann Pudeator said.

“Just an owl.” John Willard pointed at the bird in the tree.

Margaret and Mary Ayer giggled nervously. The rest peered up into the tree to see if they could spot the owl.

“You’d think it was haunted!” Alice said.

Everyone laughed. Bridget pulled in, with Giles in her passenger seat.

“We brought. . .” Bridget started. She was equally as excited as she was deeply embarrassed. She scooted around her SUV rather than complete the sentence. She opened the back to show five large bouquets of flowers.

“We made them last night from flowers from our garden,” Giles said.

He gave them a wide smile and picked up a bouquet. He gave it to Elizabeth.

“My dear, you are simply the finest human being I know,” Giles said to Elizabeth.

Tears fell down Elizabeth’s face. She nodded her thank-you. He took another bouquet from the car. He hugged Sarah Wildes.

“You are simply the finest human being I know,” Giles said to Sarah Wildes.

He kissed her cheek. She put her nose into her flowers to keep from crying. He selected another bouquet and walked to Sarah Good.

“Sarah, I’ve known you a long time,” Giles said. “I can only say that you are simply the finest human being I know.”

“What about. . . Elizabeth and Sarah and. . .?” Sarah Good argued.

“I’m a doddering old man who celebrates only the finest things in life — such as you,” Giles said. Giles gave Sarah Good a soft smile. “I’ve seen you suffer for Dorothy. She’s at peace now. You deserve to love this life because. . .”

“I am the finest person you know?” Sarah Good asked.

“Exactly,” Giles said.

Sarah Good hugged Giles tight. When they separated, Sarah Good’s face was wet with tears. Not one to stand on formality, Susannah grabbed Giles and hugged him tight. They spoke quietly to each other. When they separated, they both looked like they’d been crying. Giles took a bouquet from Bridget and gave it to Susannah.

“We have one last one for Rebecca,” Bridget said.

“We’re here to put Rebecca, George Jacobs, and John Proctor to rest,” Em said.

“I thought we did that already,” Mary Eastey said.

They had spent the last couple of days working with their friends’ remains. Half of the witches had worked to energetically cleanse Rebecca, George Jacobs, and John Proctor’s physical remains to remove all vestiges of cruelty and injustice related to their hanging. The other half of the witches cleansed their friends’ souls. It was hot, sweaty work. When they finished, they’d used magic to set their friends remains at peace in the graveyard on the Nurse Homestead.

“We did the work of it,” Em said. “Now we need to give them to God.”

The witches smiled and nodded.

“We should do it in our old clothes!” Alice said.

Everyone transformed into their Puritan dress. Laughing and talking, they made their way to the graveyard. They formed a circle around their friends’ graves. Em nudged George to hurry up.

“It will be dawn soon!” Em said in a low tone.

This morning’s dawn would provide the light to finally set their friends to rest. Smiling at Em’s impatience, George went to the center of the circle.

“Let’s begin,” George said.

“For a moment,” George looked from person to person, “bring to mind all that you know about Rebecca, George Jacobs, and John Proctor. Remember the good times and the bad. Remember when we knew that we couldn’t save them?”

His spell caused them to slip back in time. Em found herself standing in the Boston jail. She simply couldn’t believe that they would hang these women. Sure, they had hanged Bridget a little more than a month ago. But would they really hang these pious women? Em couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

They had been strangers when they were thrown in jail together. Now they were closer than family. Em had watched helplessly while the lecherous guards abused Elizabeth and Sarah Good one last time. When guards had finished, they had pushed Elizabeth and Sarah onto the open wagon. A crowd of vicious spectators had begun to form around the cart. Susannah went to the cart next. Even with Sarah Wildes’ help, Rebecca had moved too slowly. One particularly awful guard had dragged the addled woman onto the cart by her hair.

The cart had jerked and tipped. The women in the back had knocked into each other, and the more than three hundred people in the jail became hysterical. Em had screamed with rage. A few people had confessed to witchcraft on the spot. Wilmot had fainted. Giles had ranted like a madman. Martha Carrier had screeched with rage. George had tried to lead everyone in a prayer, but George had been out shouted by the guards. The crowd of bystanders had pelted the women with rotten fruit and awful words. As if to encourage the crowd’s abuse, the cart had crept through the muddy streets. Weeping, Em had watched until the women were long out of sight.

She blinked, and she was back at Rebecca Nurse’s homestead. Looking around the circle, she saw that everyone had been lost in their memory of that awful day. Susannah was silently weeping. Elizabeth, who looked caught in her own private hell, leaned against Sarah Good.

“Come back,” George said. “Come back to the present.”

He waited until everyone was back from the past.

“We can only remember the past,” George said. “We cannot change it. In the present, we know peace. We know love. We know our Lord. Peace be with you.”

“Peace be with you,” the witches said.

“It is time to set our friends Rebecca Nurse, George Jacobs, and John Proctor to their final rest,” George said. “Peace be with them.”

“Peace be with them,” the witches repeated.

“Rebecca Nurse.” George said her name, and the spirit of the woman appeared. “You are loved. You are remembered.”

The spirit of Rebecca Nurse rose from her grave and hung in the air. The elderly woman looked from face to face.

“Mary?” George nodded to Mary Eastey, Rebecca Nurse’s younger sister.

“Sister,” Mary Eastey said. “I love you and wish for you the silence of the sweetest rest in the bosom of our Lord.”

“My dear Mary,” Rebecca smiled. “I love you, too.”

“Go,” Mary Eastey said. “Be at peace.”

“You are at peace,” the witches said in unison.

The spirit of Rebecca Nurse closed her eyes. Her translucent spirit began to fade until it was mist.

“George Jacobs.” George said his name, and his spirit appeared as a translucent image of the man.

“Bless you for this,” George Jacobs said. “I long to see my Lord and my beloveds. I yearn to be at peace.”

“You are loved, George Jacobs,” George said. “You are remembered.”

“You are at peace,” the witches said in unison.

“Love to you and yours!” George Jacobs raised his hand in a wave before fading away.

“John Proctor,” George said, and John Proctor’s spirit appeared.

Smiling from ear to ear, John Proctor looked from face to face. He nodded to encourage George to get on with it.

“You are loved,” George said. “You are remembered.”

“You are at. . .” the witches started.

The charcoal-grey hand of Em’s demon reached up and grabbed John Proctor’s shoulder. The witches gasped, but John Proctor laughed. He lifted the demon’s hand from his shoulder and stood face to face with the horrifying creature.

“I don’t choose you,” John Proctor said. He nodded to Em. “My friend Em taught me to have power over you! I
choose
light. I
choose
love. I am no longer confused.”

“Everyone!” Em yelled.

“We have to complete the spell,” George said. “John Proctor, you are at peace!”

“You are at peace,” the witches repeated in unison.

“Bless you, friends,” John Proctor said.

Like George Jacobs and Rebecca Nurse, his specter faded. He gave one final wave before he was gone. In the grey light of the breaking dawn, they saw that the demon had remained.

“You have no hold here,” Em said. “Be gone.”

“Be gone!” Alice said.

“Be gone!” the witches said.

The demon snarled at the witches before turning his malice to Em.

“You
will
deal with me,” the demon said.

“But not today,” Em said. She held her right hand in front of her. “Be gone!”

The demon vanished, and the witches cheered. As if to punctuate their cheer, the first of the sun’s rays rose over the horizon. The witches turned toward the sun only to see a Fox News van pull into the homestead parking lot. Em groaned.

“We should keep. . .” Margaret said.

She pulled on her clothing. Em nodded. The reporter scrambled toward them.

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Giles said.

He walked to Rebecca’s grave and laid the flowers there. Bridget knelt down at the grave to say a prayer.

“What are you doing here?” the reporter asked.

“What are you doing here?” George asked. “This is hardly the day or the place for mocking the dead!”

Elizabeth, Susannah, and Sam moved toward their cars.

“If you’ll excuse me,” George said.

He put his arm around Em, and they walked toward her car.

“Hey! You own the Mystic Divine!” the reporter persisted. “Don’t you?”

Rather than answer, they kept walking toward Em’s car. Em whispered a forget spell. For a moment, the reporter watched them go. The cameraman yelled at the reporter, and he trotted back to the graveyard. The others managed to make it to their vehicles unscathed.

Standing at the passenger seat of her Land Cruiser, Em looked back at the graveyard. Using her senses, she used her intuition to energetically scan the graves. Rebecca Nurse was at peace. Em sighed with relief. George Jacobs was also at peace. Em nodded. Holding her breath, she scanned John Proctor’s grave. He was at peace. Nodding to herself, she got into the SUV.

She was just putting on her safety belt when she saw the demon. He was standing under an oak tree with a barn owl on his shoulder. He was watching the reporter talk about the day. When he noticed that she was looking at him, the demon shook his head at her.

“You will not win,” Em heard the demon say, as clearly as if he were standing next to her. “You will join me in the end.”

Em closed her eyes to avoid looking at the demon. George started the car, and they drove away from Rebecca Nurse’s homestead. Turning onto the road, George clicked on the radio.

“Ever wonder what’s behind your local pharmacy? Boston University has announced that it has found at least some of the remains of the Salem Witches on a small strip of land owned by the railroad behind the Danvers Walgreen’s. BU plans to excavate the site in conjunction with UMass and Harvard. As you may know, today is the three hundred and twenty-second anniversary of. . .”

Clicking off the radio, George grinned at Em.

She smiled.

“Where to?” George asked.

“Sarah Wildes insisted on having the party at her house,” Em said. “She wants to use today as a celebration of life, not the celebration of her hanging.”

“A day in the country,” George said. Sarah Wildes lived on a five-acre horse property outside of Walpole. “Nice.”

He glanced at her. His eyebrows rose with anxiety.

“Is she cooking?” George asked.

“Sarah Good’s chef,” Em said.

“Perfect,” George said with a smile.

She grinned at him, and he drove to Sarah Wildes’.

Truth be told, Em loved summertime. George was home. The store was busy. The sun came up early and stayed up well after any reasonable bedtime. The temperature was warm. It was muggy enough to curl even Em’s magic-straightened hair. And everything was just right.

After Em’s recent death in Jamaica Plains, George decided to show Em a few of the many places he’d died. They camped on the Boston Harbor islands, visited unmarked revolutionary war sites, and went to the Indian frontier in Maine. Sometimes they were joined by other witches; more often than not, they were alone. At each location, George reenacted his death scene, which never failed to leave Em laughing so hard that she gasped for breath.

July slid unnoticed into August. The long, warm days pushed them out of the building and onto the roof at night. They built bonfires and ate s’mores with Alice and Susannah. They spent whole sun-drenched days laughing and spent entire nights watching the Perseid meteor shower batter the world.

But when Friday the 15
th
rolled over into Saturday the 16th, George began to shut down. As she did every year, she tried to engage George with the things he loved — great food, good friends, and fun times. By the end of the week, he was too withdrawn to speak. There was nothing she could do. He pulled the blinds to the apartment and closed the shutters of his mind. He didn’t leave their bed.

On August 19, 1692, the bastards in Salem Village had hanged Reverend George Burroughs. More than three hundred years later, he still couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t anything Em could do to make it better. This year, he had shut down in a way she’d never seen.

Monday night, August 18, he took himself to bed at six. She’d wrapped herself around him and held on tight. Sometime around three in the morning, she woke to his body shaking with silent sobs. She held on while he wept.

He hadn’t cried the night before he was hanged. He’d not cried even one tear any other year. He wept uncontrollably tonight.

She’d never felt more helpless. She tried to surround him with her love and hold on. Sometime around the edge of dawn, he finally fell asleep.

An hour later, John Willard and Martha Carrier arrived. Their faces were tear stained and their voices husky. George dragged himself from the bed to be with them. They took one look at him and began to weep. Em guided them to their living-room couches, and they settled in.

She brought them tea, which stayed in the pot until it was cold. She made their favorite scones, which they didn’t eat. She turned on music, which went unnoticed. As if they were in a trance, they held each other’s hands and grieved for their catastrophic betrayal all those years ago.

The other witches checked in with Em over the course of the day. She turned away Alice and Susannah. Wilmot dropped by with her wonderful cookies, which went uneaten. She let Mary Eastey in the apartment. John Willard looked up at her for a moment before returning to his gloom. After a while, Mary Eastey joined Em in the kitchen.

“What do you think. . .?” Mary Eastey whispered.

“I think it just caught up to them,” Em said. “Maybe. Honestly, I have no idea.”

“Do you think it’s the demon?” Mary Eastey asked.

Em shook her head and then shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Em said. “You?”

Mary Eastey shook her head.

“They seem to be sad,” Em said. She turned to look at Mary Eastey. “Have you ever let yourself be sad about what happened?”

Mary Eastey gave Em a long look before she shook her head. Em gave her a compassionate nod.

“What can we do?” Mary Eastey echoed what each of the witches had said.

“Pray for their peace,” Em said. “They are strong. They will get through this. But for now, we have to pray for their peace.”

“Easy,” Mary Eastey said.

She gave Em a partial smile. Em put her arm over Mary Eastey’s shoulder. When they returned to the living room, John Willard moved over. Mary Eastey went to sit next to him. She took John Willard’s hand to support him.