The Pariah (23 page)

‘Do you think he
had
met with Satan? Or anything similar?’ asked Edward.

‘Judge Saltonstall investigated this claim,’ said Duglass Evelith. ‘All that he could discover was that David Dark had become friends during the previous year with some Narragansett Indians, and one Indian in particular who was claimed by his tribe to be the greatest worker of magical wonders who had ever lived. The judge wasn’t a man to leap to conclusions; he liked his evidence to be cut and dried. But he did cautiously express the opinion that it was conceivable that David Dark and this Indian magician could have summoned up between them one of the ancient and evil Indian deities, and that Dark could have taken this manifestation to be Satan, or one of his cohorts.’

The dark-haired girl called Enid came into the library with a crystal decanter on her silver tray, and asked us if we would care for another glass of sherry. Personally, I was dying for a large whisky, but I took the sherry and was grateful for it.

Duglass Evelith said, ‘Very little was heard about David Dark between 1683 and 1689.

Apparently he gave up preaching for several years, and devoted himself to study. Quite
what
he was studying, nobody could ever discover, but Judge Saltonstall says that at night there were lights in the sky above his cottage; and that the local people wouldn’t go near the woods where he lived because they had heard the howling of strange beasts.

‘In 1689, however, David Dark reappeared and began to preach once more; often in church in the centre of Salem. After a particularly fiery sermon, he was approached by the merchant Esau Hasket, who was much impressed with what Dark had been saying, and Hasket, who was something of a religious zealot himself, suggested that between them they should begin a campaign to improve the morals and the minds of everyone in Salem.

This is where the testimony of Micah Burrough comes into its own. Micah Burrough had worked for Esau Hasket for fifteen years, and was one of his most trusted employees.

That was why, when David Dark suggested to Hasket that he should send a ship to Mexico on a very special errand, Micah Burrough was there to record what was said.’

‘Mexico?’ asked Edward. ‘Where does Mexico come into it?’

‘Mexico is crucial and central to the whole story of the
David Dark,’
said Duglass Evelith.

‘For whatever spirits or creatures David Dark had been raising at his cottage at Mill Pond, all of them were subservient to the grimmest of demons on the entire American continent. I am speaking of the living skeleton who was worshipped by the Aztecs on the island of Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City. How David Dark came to know of this demon, Judge Saltonstall does not say; but it is quite likely that the Narragansett wonder-worker told him about it. In any case, David Dark persuaded Esau Hasket that he should mount an expedition to Mexico City, discover the remains of this demon, and bring it back to Salem in order to frighten and discipline the local people.

That, after all, was how the Aztecs had used it - as a way of encouraging any religious back-sliders to renew their worship of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl.’

‘Surely the Spanish were in control of Mexico City in those days,’ said Forrest. ‘When did Cortes overthrow the Aztecs? Fifteen-twenty?’

‘Fifteen-nineteen,’ Duglass Evelith corrected him. ‘But remember that the Aztecs were a remarkably organized people. Long before Cortes had reached the island of Tenochtitlan, the living skeleton had been carried away from the city on one of the causeways which joined it to the mainland, and secreted on the slopes of the volcano of Ixtacihuatl. Again, it was impossible for Judge Saltonstall to establish how David Dark had discovered this, but Dark had travelled away from Salem several times during the six years between 1683 and 1689, and it is quite conceivable that he went to Mexico.

He may well have contacted some of the surviving Aztec magicians whose hereditary task it was to guard the demon from the Spanish invaders, and made an arrangement with them for the demon to be shipped secretly out of Mexico to Massachusetts. On the other hand, rather than bothering to make an arrangement with them, he may have had them killed. Judge Saltonstall thinks so.’

‘So Esau Hasket sent a ship to bring this demon back to Salem?’ asked Edward.

That’s exactly what happened. The ship was called the
Arabella,
and it was generally considered to be one of the finest vessels in Salem. David Dark went on the voyage as commander, and the ship was captained by Charles Fisk, the older brother of Thomas Fisk, who was later to be a juror at the witch-trials.

The
Arabella
was away for nearly a year, and when she returned the crew refused to speak about their expedition, and even David Dark himself seemed like a different man.

They had aged, every one of them, Judge Saltonstall reported; and out of a crew of 70 men, 31 of them were dead within the year, either of disease, or of heart failure, or of brainstorms.
The Arabella’s
mysterious cargo was unloaded by six men who had been specially hired from Boston to do the work, and paid three times the going rate. Then it was carried by wagon to David Dark’s cottage at Mill Pond.

‘At first, nothing happened. David Dark visited Esau Hasket at his offices several times, and told him that the demon appeared to be comatose, or dead. Perhaps the Aztec magicians had lied to him, and the demon was no demon at all , but simply the skeleton of an unusually tall man. Hasket, who to begin with had been so enthusiastic that he had re-christened the
Arabella
the
David Dark,
started to have doubts about the expedition, and about the money he had spent on sending the
Arabella
and her crew to Mexico for a whole year, and most of all he began to have doubts about the sanity of David Dark. Micah Burrough overheard a conversation that Hasket had with Dr Griggs about the possibility of Dark being “possess’d, or mad”.

‘In the spring of 1691, however, extraordinary events began to occur around Salem.

Several people began to report that they had seen or heard their deceased relatives, walking around the streets of the village at the dead of night. One man awoke in his bed to find his dead mother standing beside his bed, and he was so frightened that he jumped out of the skylight, and rolled all the way down the long sloping roof, breaking his ankle, but fortunately doing no other damage.’

I leaned forward across the table. ‘How were these dead people described? Were they like ghosts? Or flickering lights?’

Duglass Evelith thumbed through the book, and then turned it around so that I could see what was written there.

‘On the morning of Aprille 2nd, 1691, Wm Sayer had visited the Rev. Noyes and tolde him of his great alarm in having seen in broade daylight his deceas’d brother Henry on St Peter Street; and how Henry had approach’d him and begg’d him to come with him or else Henry though dead would find no rest. Wm Sayer had runne off quicklie, greatly affrighted, and had tolde the Rev. Noyes that his brother had appear’d to him as much in the fleshe as if he had still been extant.’

I passed the book to Edward. ‘You see how powerful the influence was then? It could summon the dead by daylight, and they looked as solid as if they were still alive.’

'That wasn’t all,’ said Duglass Evelith. The dead began to prey on the living; and although the official history books record that there was a summer epidemic of diptheria in Salem in 1691, the truth of the matter was that the people of the village were being snatched from their beds by the corpses of their dead relatives and killed in all sorts of extraordinary and ritualistic ways. The body of Nehemiah Putnam was found butchered like a pig’s, and somehow spreadeagled to the gable at the end of his house, out of reach of windows or ladders. John Eastey was discovered impaled on the flagstaff which used to stand in the village square, although he would have had to have been lifted 70 feet in the air to drive him down on to it. Of course, the community began to panic, although David Dark now made his most dramatic reappearance and told them that they had offended the Lord, and that this was their punishment.

‘Esau Hasket, however, began to feel that enough was enough. His own sister Audrey had appeared in his garden at night, and he was terrified that
he
was going to be taken, too. He ordered Dark to destroy the demon; otherwise he would expose what had been going on, and Dark would probably find himself torn to pieces by angry Salemites.

‘Dark, however, was unable to control the power that he had brought back from Tenochtitldn; and when he attempted to break the demon to pieces with an axe, he was immediately killed. An eye-witness, an illiterate field-worker, said that she saw him explode in a cloud of blood and entrails.

‘After Dark’s death, there was chaos in Salem for a while. Judge Saltonstall said that there was “night at noontime” and that many people were buried at sea for fear they would rise from their graves and slaughter the friends and relatives who had survived them. In the fall of 1691, however, the chaos died away as quickly as it had broken out, and for the rest of the year there was peace in Salem Village.

‘What had happened, as Judge Saltonstal later discovered, was that the Narragansett wonder-worker who had originally taught David Dark how to summon evil spirits had visited David Dark’s cottage and had come across the demon from Mexico. Although he had been unable to destroy it, he had bound it with enough powerful Indian ritual to suppress its malevolence. Apparently he hoped to use it to further his own influence within his tribe, and over other Indian magicians. He didn’t realize what havoc it had been causing amongst the villagers of Salem.

‘But, shackles are only as strong as their weakest link, and by the spring of the following year, it seems that the demon had worked out ways in which it could break the ritual bonds that the Narragansett had imposed on it. There was some kind of struggle between the Indian and the demon, a struggle in which the demon was temporarily weakened but in which the Indian was severely crippled. The demon then sought to re-establish its grip on the community of Salem by enticing to its lair three young girls who were out walking near Mill Pond: Anne Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcot.

‘The demon must have slaughtered them all, although Judge Saltonstall could never find out how. Their bones were later found in a shallow grave in the woods near David Dark’s former home. But their ghosts, if you like, returned to Salem Village and began to throw fits, and scream, and writhe around as if possessed. Because of this 19 good people were accused of witchcraft, and hung; and Giles Corey was pressed to death. Twenty souls were claimed by the demon in just a few short weeks; a feast.’

‘But why did the hysteria stop so suddenly?’ asked Edward.

Duglass Evelith finished his sherry, and then twisted the glass around between his fingers as if he were trying to decide whether he ought to have another one or not.

‘It stopped because Esau Hasket saw two of the girls, Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcot, walking through Salem Village in the very early hours of the morning. He had been up most of the night, supervising the on-loading of a very valuable cargo of indigo. He stopped them, when he saw them, and asked them why they were up so late. But all they did, according to Judge Saltonstall, was “to glare at him with eyes that glowed blue, and to snarle at him like wolverines, frightening him away.” Hasket now suspected that David Dark’s demon was active again, and he made plans to visit the cottage, along with a pastor friend of his, to see what was happening there.

‘What they saw in Dark’s cottage frightened them beyond all measure. Here, let me read from SaltonstalFs diary itself. “Regardless of the houre, which was onlie three and some minutes past, the skies began to grow dark as Mr Esau Hasket and the Rev. Roger Cornwall approached the erstwhile residence of David Dark. According to Micah Burrough, to whom Mr Hasket later related this description, the Rev. Cornwall stopped at the stile which bounded Dark’s propertie, and declined for some time to precede any further, feigning a severe sick-nesse. Mr Hasket however persuaded him to continue, and eventualie the two men reached the cottage. The windows were obscured in some fashion, and therefore Mr Hasket elected to force an entrie, which he achieved with an axe. What met their eyes inside the cottage Mr Hasket refused to relate in anything but the most circum-stantialle manner, but Micah Burrough concluded that the stench of putrefaction within the building was such that bothe Mr Hasket and the Rev. Cornwall were sicke unto vomiting; and that having recovered they saw in the darknesse a huge and terrifying Skeleton, “bone-white,” said Mr Hasket, “and .in alle natural proportions, except that it was many times the size of a human, &
alive.”
The Skeleton’s ribs were hung like a gamekeeper’s gibbet with the intestines of hogs, chickens, and goats, and the skulles of animals formed caps for each of its bonie fingers. Worst of all was a copper basin which rested on the floor beside it, a basin heaped with darke and bloodie things. Even as Mr Hasket and the Rev. Cornwall watched in sicknesse & in feare, the Skeleton plunged one hand into the basin, and lifted uppe some of the grusome contents of the basin for them to see; and it was then that Mr Hasket under-stoode that he was looking at a basin of human hearts, the hearts of every man and woman who had beene hung during the Great Delusion.” ‘

Duglass Evelith turned over the last few pages of the black notebook. ‘Esau Hasket now fully realized what devilry he had unleashed on Salem, and he was shrewd enough to understand that the witch-hunts were only the beginning. The demon presumably took its strength from slaughtered animals and from human hearts, and used the dead whose hearts it had already taken to bring it more. The hysteria of the Great Delusion was increasing; and Hasket foresaw a time when the skies would be permanently dark, and the walking dead would overwhelm the living.’

'That’s why the cemetery beside the Granitehead shoreline used to be called “The Walking Place,” ‘ I put in.