Witch Hunt (11 page)

Bridget, using a sharp stick as an awl and dried sinew as thread, made three fur capes from the small pelts she had been collecting all summer and fall. She delivered Priscilla’s to her before the first snow fell.

Per Margaret’s advice, Rebekah and Mirasaya both pled guilty to the charge of witchcraft. They were spared the gallows, but like Priscilla, sentenced to remain in prison. Without their warmth and love — and the inner escape that Samara continued to provide — Bridget knew that Priscilla would have lost her mind.

Bridget braved the difficult winter travel and continued her weekly visits to Boston to take Priscilla, Rebekah, and Mirasaya food. Her stores were meager, but she rationed carefully and kept the five of them alive through the darkest months of their lives.

Spring came, and using their bare hands and sharpened sticks, Bridget and Phip prepared the fields for planting; they had managed to save enough seed from the previous harvest to sow two fields. With great effort, they did their best.

In May, sanity returned to Massachusetts, and the governor issued a general pardon for all condemned witches and ordered their release from prison. However, according to law, all prisoners had to pay the jailer for their keep from the time of their arrest. The fee was two shillings and sixpence a week. Priscilla had been imprisoned for more than a year. Bridget couldn’t claim her sister until she sold the farm.

“What about you?” Bridget asked Rebekah and Mirasaya as she finally completed negotiations to secure Priscilla’s release.

Rebekah shrugged. “There’s no one who wants us. No one to pay the prison fee.”

Bridget was confused. “So?”

“So, we’re here for life, it seems.”

Bridget was shocked. She thought about the money she had received for the farm. After paying off their debts, there was little left. There was enough to buy freedom for one of them. But whom could she leave behind? “I can help one of you. That’s all I’ve got the money for.”

Hope lit up both their faces, but Mirasaya’s expression was quickly replaced by one more cryptic. “I no want freedom from witchcraft prison paid for by witch family. Bad luck. You take fragile one here.”

Bridget was stunned. “You know we’re witches?”

Mirasaya put her hands on her hips. “What, you think we stupid or something?”

We?
They both knew? Bridget looked at Rebekah, who shrugged. “It’s all right with me. You saved my life. I care about you.”

So it was decided.

As they prepared to leave, Bridget hesitated. She looked into Mirasaya’s eyes, and for a moment their souls touched. She realized that Mirasaya wasn’t at all concerned by the fact that the Hawthornes were witches. She had performed a supreme act of charity, and Bridget was overcome by emotion. She threw her arms around Mirasaya and wanted to make her promises of an ultimate rescue, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t want to give her false hope. “You’re very special, Mirasaya. I’ll always carry you in my heart.”

Mirasaya kissed Bridget. “I remember you ‘til I die, and even after. You good girl, strong and brave.”

Not as strong and brave as you
, Bridget thought. She returned Mirasaya’s kiss before she scurried from the Boston jail and the tragedy that remained within its walls.

Outside, Bridget lifted Priscilla onto Silver. With Phip and Rebekah walking beside her, they began the long trek south to New York. As they left Salem behind, Bridget thought about the Puritans, their religion and their law, and — despite all the loss and suffering she had endured — she was very glad she was of the blood of witches.

Chapter Three

Midummer

Montvue, Colorado

Leigh was trembling. She hadn’t stopped trembling since Preacher Cody’s startling appearance at the Hawthorne funeral. However, she held her questions until she and Craig were alone in their room.

“Witches and Satan worshipers?”

Craig snapped the strap of his polka-dot suspenders. “Not Satan worshipers.”

“What then, witches?”

He nodded, stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy black trousers, and paced.

Leigh sat on the edge of the bed. “But there is no such thing.”

“Don’t be naive, Leigh.”

His words and tone made Leigh feel as if he had slapped her across the face. To take her mind off the affront, her thoughts returned to the words of Preacher Cody. “He said something about the Hawthornes not being religious …”

Craig chuckled. “Oh, my family’s got religion. That
old
time religion, to be exact.” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “That’s what witchcraft is. It’s the old religion. It goes back to tribal society, to the individuals who had extraordinary powers, which they used to benefit the tribe. They were the shamans — or medicine men and women — who could heal, help their people with visions of future events, hex the tribe’s enemies to protect their own, charm the wild animals into not harming the tribe or, conversely, becoming the evening’s dinner. Some of those bloodlines have been preserved, along with the knowledge those individuals possessed. The Hawthornes are hereditary witches.”

They looked at each other for a long time in silence.

Inside Leigh a storm was raging.

She tried to understand the concept of witchcraft as Craig described it. She held it up against all the models her mind had: the Wicked Witch of the West in
The Wizard of Oz
, sultry Kim Novak’s Gillian in the movie
Bell, Book and Candle
, suburban Samantha Stephens and her bizarre relatives on
Bewitched
, the sexy sisters on
Charmed
, the assorted self-proclaimed modern witches who appeared on the local news shows at Halloween, and the Devil worshipers that the Christians had always painted witches to be.

If Craig’s witchcraft was hereditary, then not only Craig, but the children, too, would be witches. Were her children witches?

Craig had an extraordinary ability to heal; even his colleagues often commented on it. He had taken women who had lost baby after baby, and whom other physicians had given up on, and brought them through successful pregnancies with smooth births. His success with infertility cases was phenomenal, and he had practically developed a cult following of infertile women.

She remembered the time Kamelia held the cat that was hit by a car. Within minutes it leapt from her arms, completely well; and Leigh was so sure its back had been broken.

She thought about Adrian’s visions.

A sob escaped her.

Then anger arose, and she threw it at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I should have.”

“Why did you cut yourself off from your family?”

“They became power trippers. I was afraid of losing the magic to the politics of power.”

“How will we tell the children?”

“We don’t have to. Didn’t you see their faces when the preacher man called us witches?”

“No.”

“They knew. They just needed to be reminded.”

Leigh’s anger melted into fear. “What he said about Satan worshipers …”

“They’ve always been afraid of us, so they’ve always made us out to be evil. It isn’t the power that’s good or bad, it’s how the individual uses it that matters. It’s the same with them. There have been powerful Christians who have misused their power, just as there have been evil witches who have done the same.”

“We’ve got to get the children away from here before something comes of Preacher Cody’s accusations. I mean, things could get crazy and someone could get hurt.”

Craig burst out laughing. “Oh, Leigh. My dear, naive Leigh. Yes, that could happen.”

Leigh once again felt as if she had been slapped, and she began to cry. “Don’t be condescending to me. I’m more than a little overwhelmed.”

Craig sat down and slipped his arm around her. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m … it’s so much more serious than you understand, that’s all. Think about the things Slugger said last night.”

Adrian’s words echoed in Leigh’s mind.
They’re going to kill us all. All of us. Everywhere. It’ll start here, but it’ll spread. There will be no place that will be safe. It’ll be worse than the last time. It’ll even be worse than the time before that.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

Craig stroked her hair. “The last time was the Salem witch hunt. The Christians killed about twenty people, two of them Hawthornes. The time before that was the Inquisition, what we call The Burning Times. Somewhere between a half-million and nine million people — estimates vary depending on their source — were killed as heretics. Many were witches. Now, how many really were witches and how many were simply random victims of the Christian witch mania is also debatable. The Hawthornes were nearly wiped out during that time. Slugger said that this new killing spree would be even worse than the burning times. Do you realize what that means?”

“It couldn’t happen today. We’re more enlightened. We’ve got civil rights.”

“We’ve also got mass media and a world that’s terrified of extinction. Fear looks for scapegoats. And fear breeds hate. Look at history — the Inquisition, Salem, Nazi Germany. Charismatic people can sway the masses to support the most heinous of crimes against their fellow man. And unfortunately, the preacher man has what it takes.”

“What can we do?”

“Slugger said that perhaps we could stop it. The stakes are high. We’ve got to try.”

“Can we send the children away, at least?”

“Where do we send them? To your folks?”

Leigh thought about their alcoholism and how advanced it was. “No.”

“Besides, like Slugger said, there isn’t any place that will be safe.”

Cody sat at the desk in his study across from Diane Fox, the aggressive reporter from the
Montvue Post-Dispatch
. He had chosen her to conduct the interview because she had a reputation for hard-line journalism, and he felt she wouldn’t softsell the information he had to share. He also thought that with her reputation, which had been established during her years with
The Denver Post
, his news would be taken more seriously.

He decided to hit the Hawthornes hard in the local media; he wanted to vindicate himself among those who had heard of his cowardice during the plane crash. His attack against witchcraft would begin on the very next episode of
Preacher Cody
. It had already been filmed and was set to air. And it would be just the beginning of many more such shows. God had shown him what his next mission was to be. If the Christians were to survive the end times, their faith had to be protected from those who would seek to capture it.

Cody studied Diane as she studied her notes. She was blond and beautiful like his wife, and he had noticed earlier, like the wife of the witch Craig Hawthorne. However, they were three distinct types of women. Whereas Rachel’s beauty was chaste, Leigh’s was sexy, and Diane’s was hard. He found it uncomfortable to be around a woman such as Diane, with her painted face, her masculine clothes, and her heavy cloud of perfume. He thought it a travesty against what true femininity should be.

“So,” Diane said, interrupting his mental condemnation of her, “you claim that two of the Hawthornes’ ancestors were tried and condemned for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Another one was also arrested for the crime, but died before he could plead. Throughout the family’s history there have been repeated rumors and suspicion leveled against them for alleged supernatural behavior and activity. They have never been publicly associated with any established religion. And the two Hawthorne men buried today, Alan and Curtis, were heard to be chanting some kind of spell after the commuter airplane crashed which seemed to control the spread of fire within that plane.” She fixed her cool eyes on him. “How can you expect an intelligent, well-educated public to buy this kind of stuff?”

“It’s the truth.”

“How can you be so sure of what you saw and heard on that plane? You yourself admitted that you panicked.”

“I wasn’t the only witness to their acts.”

“Mass hysteria could account for that.”

“Those are straws you’re clutching at, Miss Fox.”

She tapped her pencil on the edge of the desk. “Okay, okay. Let’s just say it happened your way. Doesn’t your charge imply that these Hawthorne men saved lives during that crash, yours included?”

“God saved our lives. If you notice, the two witches are dead.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Preacher, but I think this all really is bunk. I mean, witches simply aren’t real. They’re Grimm’s fairy tales.”

“Like creation is Darwinism instead of Divine? I think that the well-educated public can be greatly misled about reality. It’s the sad fact of worshiping the mind as God. The Bible warns us about that. It also warns us about witches and tells us what our stand should be. Old Testament, Deuteronomy, King James Bible: ‘When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of these nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times’ — that would be an astrologer — ‘or an enchanter, or
witch
, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.’ Are you calling God’s word bunk, Miss Fox?”

“Well, I am not at all sure that the books of the Bible haven’t been altered somewhat by man over time. As a matter of fact, in college, my lit professor showed us that, indeed, the Bible had been changed a number of times to reflect the values of the times. The common man didn’t have access to the Bible until relatively recently. The church held it captive, and the church, we all know, has always been a greatly political entity.”

Cody felt his anger but willed it away. “I’ll not get into an argument with you over the verity of God’s word as reflected in the Holy Bible. Now, you’re a reporter — an excellent reporter, from all I’ve heard — and the good, Christian community of Montvue will be interested in the facts that I’ve provided you.”

“How did you dig up this stuff on the Hawthornes?”

“I have connections.”

“Through your
CIA
involvement?”

“The
CIA
doesn’t deal with domestic concerns.”

Diane smiled. “Yes, of course.”

“It is my spiritual duty to confront the Hawthornes and ask them to repent. It is my mission to save souls, you understand. I plan to go to their home Sunday night, after my show is broadcast, and inform them of God’s grace and mercy.”

Diane’s eyes widened with surprise. “I see. Do the Hawthornes know about this?”

“No, but I expect they will after your article is printed. And I expect the Christians in Montvue will, too. Any who care to accompany me in a show of God’s force will be welcome to stand with me.”

Diane stuck her pencil up behind her ear and shook her head. “That’s a terribly explosive situation you’re proposing. I don’t think I want to be party to lighting that fuse.”

“Well, then, Miss Fox, I’ll find a reporter who does.”