The Darkening Dream (2 page)

“So what’s the problem? Your mother married at eighteen. With your birthday coming up on us, your father’s probably barely reining her in.”

“I have to finish school,” Sarah said. “And at least begin college. What’s the point of having studied my whole life if all I do is settle down and start a family?”

“But it’s exciting just the same. At least you have prospects.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah said. “Half the boys in school would cut off an arm to court you.”

Anne sighed. “Even the thought of choosing is stressful. If it were all arranged it’d be easy. You’re lucky.”

Lucky? Sarah couldn’t imagine one of Papa’s friends’ sons allowing her the freedom he did. Or the respect. They’d only want their table set and six brilliant sons to make them proud.

“I know what we should do!” Anne said. “With this heat and with your, um, stresses, we need a break. My lummox of a twin traded for a new filly this week. Why don’t the three of us go riding tomorrow, take a picnic, make a proper outing of it?”

Anne was right. School had started only a month ago, and Sarah’s life was already dominated by study.

“What time?” she said.

The girls drifted downstairs to find Mrs. Williams and Emily entertaining a boy in the parlor. So close to becoming a man, he looked to grow four inches if you glanced away.

Emily’s pink dress was disheveled but she appeared luminous just the same. Sarah worried about what was going to happen when she came into her own. Anne could be bold and outspoken, but she had a fundamental prudence entirely absent in her little sister.

The new boy rose to greet them. He was about the same age Sarah’s brother would’ve been and almost as handsome.

“Charles Danforth.” He extended his hand. His hair was much straighter than Judah’s.

“Nice to meet you,” Anne said, shaking hands. “You’re a friend of Emily’s?”

Emily looked like she wanted to take a bite out of someone.

“We both study Bible with Pastor Parris,” the boy said.

“Charles is just leaving,” Emily said. “He stopped by to bring us some of his mother’s preserves.”

Charles offered Sarah his hand, and she took it. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the windows and threw their shadows against the wallpaper. A sound rose in her ears, slow and mournful like that of the
shofar
, the ceremonial ram’s horn blown to announce the New Year.

Sarah felt queer. Her mouth dry. Before her eyes the silhouettes on the wall contorted, human limbs and torsos shifting to form the shape of a leafless tree. The reddish hue of the sun — surely that’s what it was — made the tree look as if it was drenched in blood. The horn continued to sound in her ears, loud but seemingly blown at great distance.

She released Charles’ grip and the bloody tree vanished, in its place only the shadows of two young people who’d just shaken hands.

Two:

Dark Shadows

Near Salem, Massachusetts, Saturday evening, October 18, 1913

C
HARLES TRUDGED DOWN
the tree-shrouded lane, heading home. His visit to the Williamses hadn’t gone the way he hoped. Just last week Emily had offered to kiss him behind the chapel, then stomped on his foot when he tried. She really wasn’t very nice to him, but she brightened his time at church, in itself a small miracle. Just today — before she turned bratty — they’d been mocking the pastor’s habit of raising his voice as he said certain words, like
damnation
or
purification
.

Charles could see farmhouses in the distance and a half-collapsed old barn hunkered a couple hundred yards from the road. A rising chatter of high-pitched shrieking and leathery flapping made him stop and turn.

From the barn flew hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny dark forms. They poured out of gaps in the decrepit roof and high eaves like thick columns of smoke. Twisting languidly upward, they braided together into a larger column before passing overhead. He craned his neck to watch their crisp black silhouettes against the dusky sky.

Bats. Just bats living in an abandoned barn. They left their roosts at sunset, flying off to feed on the warm evening’s rich insect swarms. Charles took a deep breath and resumed his walk — more briskly than before.

Then he heard the voice.

The sound whispered in his head, not his ears, a soft caress made audible, issuing from all directions and none at all.

Stop, come to the trees
. The tone was rich as milk straight from the pail, yet powerfully masculine. He stopped and walked off the road toward the trees. As he entered the darkening copse, a shadowy figure flitted from trunk to trunk.

Don’t look at me, keep walking
. The figure winked at the edges of his vision as he continued forward. Why couldn’t he turn his head?

Here, stop
. He stopped.

Someone approached from behind. A powerful scent encircled him, fragrances of damp earth and exotic spices, of cinnamon, honey, almonds. One hand reached from behind to clasp one of Charles’, the other placed itself on his hip — almost in an embrace.

Your chance has come. The beginning is as light as the end
. Now the hand pulled Charles’ arm to the small of his back and jerked it upward, lifting him off the ground. A hideous, wrenching crack was accompanied by hideous, wrenching pain. His arm and shoulder burned. His gut spasmed, and he pitched forward, gasping.

Savor the feeling. On your wedding night, you must cut the cat’s head
. The hand on his hip withdrew, leaving him dangling excruciatingly by his twisted limb. His attacker hadn’t come around, but somehow was now before him. Charles felt a hand almost caress him — then slap him brutally across the face. His head slammed sideways; nails tore into his skin. The pain knocked out any other sensation. He felt himself ebbing away. Like coals in an untended hearth, he was fading, and only the agony remained. He was dragged further from the road, tugged by a hand twisted into his hair. Charles fought to dig his heels into the earth, then fought not to yield to the blackness that rose to claim him…

It was the pain that woke him.

Everything was still dark. Everything in his body still hurt. He was seated on the bare earth, legs extended. His pants and shoes were gone, and he felt the leaves and dirt under his naked buttocks and heels. His shoulder screamed as his attacker, the man whose face he couldn’t see, stripped him of his shirt. Charles tried to lash out against limbs unyielding as ironwood. The man grasped his flailing hand, held it as a lover might, then bent the index finger back until Charles felt rather than heard the bone snap. Along with the pain came an absurd thought: so much for piano practice tomorrow.

The sacred hour has arrived. The passage stirs
. Agony altered Charles’ perception, rendering his assailant in staccato images, like a picture-show projector cranked too fast. For all his strength the man wasn’t big, little taller than Charles himself. The only parts not clothed or swathed in black were his hands — and his face, featureless in the twilight but so pale it made Charles think of his dead grandmother’s sun-bleached snuff box feeding termites in the attic.

Rise to heaven
. The man gripped his bare shins and lifted Charles into the air. His limp arm flopped painfully against the ground. He felt rough bark scrape against his naked back and rope burn his ankle as it was lashed to the tree. His face nearly kissed the man’s black suede boots, square-toed but with peculiar high heels. Again he tried to scream.

Quiet
. His breath exhausted, only the smallest animal noise emerged from his throat.

One leg securely fastened, one leg to go.

Pain reminds you that you’re alive
, the voice whispered. Two hands grabbed his free leg, one on the thigh, the other on the calf, and with another terrible crunch, the man twisted at odds to the direction of his knee. Blood seeped from where the bone pierced the skin.

A thousand pardons, I neglected to measure the tree
. Charles vomited and then, because he was upside down, choked on it. Stomach acid drooled downward into his nostrils.

Gradually he became aware of a sound, a note from some titanic horn, slow and mournful, loud yet seemingly blown at great distance. He searched for its source. Below him — well, above him — was a brilliant dark orange and purple sky, clouds lit from the sides with an intense red light. Would that he could just step down into these cottony platforms. Hanging by his ankles, he could make out the gnarled roots of a great tree overhead. Warm tickles crawled across his face, dark liquid dripped off and fell upwards toward the twisted canopy of roots.

The man stood silhouetted against the luminous backdrop, his legs planted in the ground above forming a V, his features melding into the fading light.

Even in death, lost
strength may be found.
The man stepped toward him, and his dark shadow blotted out the heavens.

Three:

Sounding Call

Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday morning, October 19, 1913

S
ARAH SAT BOLT UPRIGHT
in bed, her heart racing, her ragged breaths sawing at the silence. Silver daggers of moonlight lanced through the dormered window. The desolate trumpeting of the horn lingered in her head. She inhaled deeply and held, listening.

From outside she heard the rustle of trees, the chirps of nighttime insects, the clopping of horse hooves on cobblestones. She struggled to hold onto the filaments of memory that bound her to the nightmare. All but the tree slipped away. The leafless form stood alone amid dry brown grasses. The sky behind it glowed stark orange, and the blood-stained bark glistened with something black and damp.

She threw off her heavy quilt and padded to the window in her nightgown, the old oak floor rough under her bare feet. The yard and street below were peaceful, the newly installed electric streetlights mixing their warm yellow glow with the cold moonlight.

Was her subconscious simply reprising yesterday’s trick of the eyes? She massaged her shoulder and knee. Both ached faintly, she must have slept in an awkward position.