Spirit

by J. P. Hightman

  “Nobody else shares this view, among the experts,” Tobias chided. “Is this all science has come up with?”

  Science. Science was his new religion, as with everyone these days. Tess was at the end of her patience. “There are other, obvious possibilities, Tobias. Salem and all of New England had been through the Indian Wars. They’d seen bloodshed and scalping and terrible things, and these shocks and tragedies had wormed their way into their imaginations. They thought up witches to explain nightmarish visions that were really just violent memories.”

  “No,” he said. “Something’s missing.”

  “Turns out she was right,” said a voice, and the couple turned to see their butler entering the room. Horrick was a portly man of fifty with reddish hair and beard, who looked rather like a worried orangutan.

  “Who was right?” asked Tobias.

  Horrick slammed down several books and old newspapers at a long table. “The spirit you met with at the graves. It spoke the truth. There were some who escaped the Salem witch trials. And I think I understand why your spirit called them ‘the Unseen Ones.’”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lore. How Tess and Tobias loved it.

  Horrick knew they were captivated. “These escaped witches. When they left Salem, they went to a little town called Blackthorne.”

  Tess arched her back, trying to see what he’d brought, knowing she’d be the one who’d have to read through it in detail. “What have you got there?”

  “Did your research for you, as usual,” answered the butler. “These are old papers from the Times archive, original documents, letters, but this is the last of it.”

  Tobias stared. “The last of what, Horrick?”

  “The last time I do this sort of thing.” Horrick’s voice descended, and he sent out a pervasive dread that Tess could pluck from the air. “It’s bad for the soul, these things you have me look into—you and her gone off all the time, leaving me alone in this house, reading on all manner of horrifying calamities—”

  Tobias was untroubled. “We count on you to dig this stuff up, Horrick. Double your salary.”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “Why not, Horrick?”

  “I don’t handle the money, the accountant does, excepting petty expenses.”

  “Then I’ll have him deduct two dollars a week for your complaining all the time.”

  Tess looked at Tobias, bemused, and said, “Don’t mind him, Horrick. If there’s any good hauntings we haven’t been to, he likes to be the one to find them.”

  “I always do find them,” bragged Tobias. “He just fleshes out the details. In fact, Horrick, why exactly do we bother with you?”

  Horrick sighed unhappily, familiar with the routine. “I’m not coming back, sir,” the butler said solemnly. “If you go off looking for these spirits, I’ll be done in this house. You engage in these hunts, and for no reason but for sport.”

  “All hunts are for sport, Horrick. Deduct two more dollars for your impertinence,” ordered Tobias, and after Tess gave a disapproving look he said, “and add two dollars for your dramatic performance here.”

  “That still leaves me two dollars down, sir.”

  “And well it should.” Tobias sighed. “What else did you find out?”

  Horrick lifted a very old page among the stacks. “It’s really quite an oddity,” he said. “You see here some older papers on the Salem trials of 1692, journals and the like. Here the prosecutor listed the accused, but if you look…” He pointed to an ornamented space at the top of the page. “There was a first name. Behind all the others. A First Accused…who has been wiped out from history. Painted over. Unseen.”

  He then pulled over an old, tattered book. “It’s not the only reference. Another journal states there were rituals observed around this person: terrible deaths, intestines ripped out of living bodies and come to life like snakes, strangling other men…fires that grew out of people’s eyes…Quite shocking. She or he is listed only as Accused Number One. All this was recorded before the trials we know….”

  Tess withheld a shiver. “Caused by this unknown person?”

  Horrick nodded. “The origin of all the hysteria. A First Witch.”

  Tobias tapped his bow on his chin. “We have no name?”

  “No,” said Tess, drawing closer. “Listen for a change.”

  “I’m an excellent listener,” he said, distracted by the fluttering of a moth.

  “Someday they’re going to diagnose your condition. You can’t pay attention for half a second,” said Tess.

  “Wish they’d diagnose my other condition,” Tobias answered, snapping up the moth in his hand.

  “And which sickness would that be? You’ve got thousands…”

  “My sad and depressive states. Which you never help,” said Tobias, pondering what to do with the insect.

  Tess grinned at him. “You wouldn’t survive a minute without me.”

  Tobias thought about it, and then nodded begrudgingly. “True. I suppose I wouldn’t.” Then he shut the moth in a book, smashing it and immediately wishing he hadn’t. Tobias loved books. For living things, he had less concern.

  Horrick, annoyed, began tapping the old court journal. “These records were doctored. Most likely by railroaders wanting to draw people back into town….”

  “The town of Blackthorne? The railroad has business that way?” Tobias asked.

  “New business,” answered Horrick, setting aside the ancient documents and pulling out a crisp newspaper. “This article clarifies a few things: Back in 1692 some of the accused in Salem ran away to Blackthorne and were killed there. Since then, the town has gone through every variety of misfortune. The place died out several times, in fact. In the early 1700s a plague drove everyone away; bad water was blamed. Then about twenty years ago they laid tracks there, but some kind of accident scared the investors off. But now there’s interest in resettling it again.”

  “Let me see that for myself,” said Tobias, impatient, but Tess snapped the paper away playfully before he could take it.

  “I will read it to you,” she said, enjoying her power.

  “Let me see there—”

  “What do you want to know?” asked Tess, looking over the paper. “Around Yuletide, the town is going to have a carnival on the spot where they hanged the witches, and they’re going to use the occasion to…draw people in.”

  Horrick nodded. “It’s a sad little place, abandoned; people think it’s haunted. The New Haven and Boston families who own the town want to rebuild, put all that to rest—”

  “Well, that’s going to be something of a trick.” Tobias snorted.

  “Give them a chance; it’s just the beginning. It’s a nice thing, really. They’re rededicating the old town square.” Tess read further. “It’s a winter carnival, sort of a celebration—”

  “Of having killed witches?”

  “Of course not, that was two hundred years ago. Let them bury the past,” Tess chastised him. “It’s supposed to be a much-needed break in the winter gloom. I would think you above all would appreciate that.”

  Tobias was thinking, letting her words soak in. “I suppose I do. We could all use a break from the annoyances of the season.”

  She looked at him, immediately regretful. “Tobias.”

  “Well, what were you planning to do for Christmas?”

  “Something normal and traditional. I don’t plan to spend the holiday at the reopening of a ghost town. Sooner or later you have to work this ghosthunting business out of your system.”

  Tobias smiled naughtily, and rested his cello bow on his shoulder. “Sooner or later I will. A few more years of it, and I’m done.” She glowered at him, and he said, coaxingly, “Tell me it doesn’t sound like fun. The two hundredth year. If I were a ghost witch monstrosity, I’d want to be there.”

  “That’s what bothers me,” she said, her humor fading away.

  Their mutual sensitivity to the world around them, seen and uns
een, was becoming more and more highly attuned. Little things had been bothering her lately, which she hardly admitted even to herself. Now he was confronting it directly. “You don’t want to say it, Tess, but you’ve felt it, too. We’re being summoned there. Like a voice in the next room…The whole spirit plane is rippling with it. Something is calling us.”

  “There is always a calling somewhere, if you listen for it. Often it’s so faint, it could easily be our imagination.”

  “Not this time. It’s stronger. Piercing. Don’t you want to know why?”

  Tess grew frightened, and no longer cared to disguise it. “We test fate every time we reach out to a spirit. We’re lucky nothing truly regrettable has ever happened to us.”

  “I want you to consider the outlandish idea that you might someday die a dreadful death, and be left somewhere improper. There you are, and your spirit calls out for help. You are heard by certain sensitives. And ignored. Left to fester unjustly.”

  His words wounded Tess, who feared loneliness in life, and had never considered such a state in death.

  “If you don’t wish to join me,” Tobias added, “I’ll make my own way, and Horrick can look after you.”

  “Not me, sir,” the butler answered. “Your endeavors are too improper for me to continue here. I meant what I said.”

  Tobias looked back at Tess. She knew Horrick was quite serious; a tremor of disharmony flew out from him, uncertainty about where he would go and what he would do now.

  Tobias felt it as well. “Well, Tess, I’m sure you can manage a week or so with just the maids and the cook.”

  A quiet panic stirred within her at the prospect of losing her first married Christmas with Tobias. He was keenly aware of everything in her heart, as always. She envied his perfect clarity about what he wanted.

  Tobias could tell she was leaning toward accepting his offer. “It’s simple. A plea is being made. We have to answer this,” he said, smiling, his eyes victorious already. “Your curiosity is as awful as mine, you just won’t let yourself feel it.”

  She sighed, making no reply. Tobias took this as agreement.

  He looked at Horrick. “When does the train leave for this fine little hamlet?”

  And so Christmas plans were made.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Not a day later, they took the quickest, most direct way available to them, at least according to Horrick. Tobias was sad to see him go. A butler who knew where to get occult artifacts and make decent travel arrangements was hard to find.

  As the small ship from New York to Massachusetts groaned and rocked, Tess stood on deck in the cold air and kept herself from worries of drowning by examining Tobias’s behavior instead.

  He was inside the ship, enjoying the camaraderie of other travelers, but Tess had needed separation from the group. Crowds were a poison to her. Quit thinking about it, she told herself. Quit thinking about what it would be like if the boat were to sink, and what the screaming, panicked passengers would look like, and sound like, and feel like. I’m trying, she thought again. Not hard enough.

  Then she wanted to laugh. Normal people have conversations with other people. Stop nurturing these images of your death in a completely unlikely disaster and think of something else.

  Consider Tobias.

  Tess felt herself wondering how she had gotten pushed into this dark journey, with barely a day to prepare. She laid out the meager clues, one by one. A graveyard spirit tells us that not all the accused in Salem were innocent. Horrick uncovers an unnamed First Accused, a person who may have fled with the others to the mysterious, dead town of Blackthorne, where there is now a winter carnival. And, though it was too vague to count as evidence, she and Tobias had begun sensing a kind of distress call. Or was it merely the power of suggestion?

  She reconsidered. No, it wasn’t that alone. There were emanations from the woods beyond Salem, and they were strong. To be precise, it felt something like a wave of chilled air, or like hearing a roaring crowd from a great distance.

  But Tobias was not above a bit of cunning to convince her to do what he wanted. It occurred to her this was happening more often. These emanations were real. So why the trickery, the oiling of the truth? He made that a habit for others, but why now for her?

  She wondered if she knew him well enough to say. He was hardly a bully, but he had seemed more concerned with her happiness when she was in Pennsylvania. In his letters back then, he quoted poetry and wrote fantastic meditations on the change of seasons or about birdsong—imagine him reciting pretty little poems now. She couldn’t help feeling rather ensnared, caught up in his recklessness.

  She remembered a moment when they first met, at the church overrun with orphans, when he had cleverly sent a constantly chattering boy on an errand so that Tess could have some quiet. She had been impressed with his ability to keep the others away and to protect her without seeming overbearing. Later, he had become artful in managing his uncle, who would never do anything Tobias wanted unless Tobias could trick him into it.

  But the years with Uncle were just part of the picture. Tobias had always needed to shepherd people carefully. His father and mother had rarely paid attention to him unless he did something outrageous or morbid—so Tobias strived to satisfy them.

  His parents had argued frequently, and Tobias learned to lie to each about the other’s habits to avoid conflicts.

  Thinking about this, Tess arrived at the conclusion life had rewarded Tobias for his minor deceptions. The question was, did he employ his bag of tricks with her? Regardless, she had to admit he was terribly amusing when he wasn’t scaring her to death.

  The chill wind shifted. The boat was steering toward port. The weak flow of spirit tidings coming from the land seemed to grow slightly, to push against her mind.

  Inside the ship’s cabin, Tobias felt the prickling in his head, the turning of some faraway spirit force and he lusted for it. He calmed himself by looking out the porthole at the lonely figure of his wife on deck. What a unique girl she is, he thought. With a full mind and heart. Not like the boring, prattling society birdbrains in here. Is it only because I let my wife be as she wishes and other husbands do not?

  “Is she yours?” asked a nearby gentleman, who reeked of jealousy, like a scent on his skin.

  “You mean like a horse or a caged bird?” said Tobias. “No. But we’ve been married almost a year…and I’m afraid the constant excitement of my company is wearing her down.”

  “Constant excitement, huh? You think well of yourself.”

  “Not at all. I long for a day, hopeless though it may be, when I am as colorless and unremarkable as those around me.”

  “Ah,” said the gentleman, oblivious to the insult.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Goodravens spent the night in Salem, awaiting the next day’s festivities in Blackthorne. They slept at an inn dripping with fangs of icy ivory. Their dreams were unmemorable, washed in a moodless whiteness, as if winter had found a way to freeze the images in their minds. They were left with a sense that in all the world, they had only each other.

  When they awoke they felt a heaviness of movement, a dazed quality, as if they had taken a long afternoon nap and could not shake themselves to full alertness. Each felt as if it were not early dawn at all, but a vague, unmoving time of day that had leaked out of their dreams.

  Wind rattled the frosted windows. The sensations they’d felt of invisible forces in the forests beyond the city seemed to withdraw. We are not here, the presences seemed to say. Do not worry yourself.

  As Tess dressed, she wondered if the things she sensed in Blackthorne could be sensing her back, becoming aware of her.

  Tobias pretended to be energetic, pulling his clothes on quickly, starting a fire, and packing up for the trip. This morning he had the odd feeling that the Blackthorne presence had a family characteristic to it. That is, he felt unmistakably that his own father and mother were the ones calling to him.

  He did not mention it to Tess. It
was impossible that his parents could have anything to do with the Salem witch trials. They had never been to this place. And yet he had a subtle feeling they were, in fact, out there waiting for him. Intriguing.

  Was it possible that a spirit could look inside him and be aware of his memories? Could a spirit imitate a feeling of family? He’d never known this to happen before. But if it wasn’t mimicry, then what on earth was his family’s connection to witches killed two hundred years ago?

  Downstairs, he begged a coffee cup from a fellow traveler so he could avoid the babbling innkeeper, Mrs. Celia Harnow, who could be heard clanging pots in the kitchen, her laugh grating obnoxiously at this early hour.

  Back in the room, he made an effort to smile at Tess as he threw open the curtains, but he didn’t hold her gaze. He had to be careful, or she’d sense his uneasiness.

  Keeping his feelings secret was difficult, but vital. Tess had spent much of her early life with a half-mad mother who lavished her with love and affection—then suddenly took it away and hid in her room for days on end. Tess had been trained to need the crutch of someone beside her; at first, a kindly housemaid, and later her governess. She couldn’t have him faltering in his confidence.

  He’d have to disguise his mood better, perhaps by playing the cello. He put his mind on a melody, and complimented himself on keeping his worries completely silent.

  But in fact, Tess could sense perfectly well he was hiding something.

  Later that morning the Goodravens arrived at the train station in a comfortable coach. Salem, its frosty harbor bustling with sea traffic and its streets busy with factory clamor, proved harder to get through than expected, but they would make the train to Blackthorne in plenty of time.

  As the horses halted, the couple appreciated the stillness for a moment, not wanting to leave the relative warmth of the coach just yet, or to rush into a new crowd of unknown travelers. Tobias took a breath, and nervously tapped his cello case.