How to Hang a Witch

by Adriana Mather

  His eyes land on me like a gavel on wood. “Sam?” Jaxon runs toward me, stopping short when he sees the blood that streaks my clothes and skin. He wraps his arms around me. His heart beats forcefully against my shoulder.

  Elijah looks at us and smiles. No! I want to yell at him. I can tell what he’s thinking. That I’m safe, that this is how it should be.

  “I’m okay.” My voice is raspy.

  Jaxon pulls back. “You look anything but okay.” He scans my beat-up body.

  “Jaxon, will you give me a minute?” I ask, my eyes fixed on Elijah. “And will you call for help?”

  He nods, but steps away reluctantly. He moves toward the Descendants as they rub their wrists and check their wounds.

  I grab on to Elijah with all my might. “Please, don’t go,” I whisper. “I barely had any time with you. We only had one floor picnic.”

  He holds my face in his hand and tickles my ear with his breath. “And I enjoyed it immensely.”

  I press my cheek into his. This can’t be goodbye. How could I ever tell him what he means to me? I wouldn’t know where to start.

  The air next to us shimmers. A faint breeze billows the ashes from the fire and flickers the flames. A beautiful girl with long dark hair appears.

  She wears the same content smile she did in her painting. “Abigail…,” I whisper. My arms slip from Elijah’s body.

  He turns toward her, tension vanishing from places on his face I never noticed it was hiding. Immediately, he seems lighter, freer. I can’t take this moment away from him. I can’t plead with him to stay. I would have to be the most selfish person in the world. I pull both my arms into my chest, trying to shield myself from the heartache that has started there.

  “My sweet brother,” she says, her voice ethereal and surprisingly playful.

  He takes her small hand in his. “How long I have waited to see you.”

  “In three hundred years, not one haircut,” she teases.

  He smiles, dimples and all. “I was not born with your natural beauty. I will make a better effort.”

  “Beauty, my eye. You were prettier than half the girls in town,” she replies, and I’m now sure that they’re repeating familiar banter.

  Their shared look is intoxicating. They’re bonded in a way that I’ve never experienced.

  Abigail shifts her gaze to me. She has the same intense gray eyes Elijah does. Without warning, she reaches her delicate arms toward me. Warmth fills me as she holds on to my shoulders. “The witch of Salem.” There’s silence for a long moment. She leans close to my ear and whispers, “Your father just woke up, Samantha.”

  My cracked heart tries to leap out of my chest, breaking the tenuous hold I had on it. I immediately start sobbing. All the tension and heartache I’ve felt for the past four months pours out of me. I have wanted this more than I ever wanted anything in the world. And now that it’s real, I can’t breathe. Elijah gently touches my face, intercepting my stream of tears.

  He mouths “I will always love you,” and disappears with Abigail. I sob harder. I don’t know whether to collapse or jump for joy. My body probably couldn’t stand either.

  “Sam?” Jaxon asks in a worried tone, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

  “My dad’s awake,” I say through my staggered breaths.

  Jaxon walks toward me. My upset about Elijah and my happiness about my dad mix together in a confusing way.

  I wipe tears away from my cheeks. “I’m sorry I put you to sleep with that spell. I really am.”

  Jaxon shakes his head. “You always threatened to knock me out. I guess I should have expected it.”

  “How did you wake up from it?” I ask as Susannah comes to my side.

  He pulls my grandmother’s pendant out of his pocket. “I woke up and this was on my chest.”

  Elijah! He knew Jaxon would come here to help. I almost can’t take this.

  “You should be happy you slept through this,” Mary says as she stands.

  Alice nods, free from her usual ice. “You get to show up at the end, Jaxon, and look cool for having discovered us.”

  “I wish I could’ve been here to help,” Jaxon says.

  “Nah, better to let the girls handle it,” says Susannah in her raspy voice, and the girls laugh. She slips her delicate hand into mine.

  Jaxon examines the room and spots the bones, the blood splattered on the floor, and the noose. “Was someone hanged?”

  It’s Lizzie who answers. “All of us. If it wasn’t for Sam, we’d be dead.”

  “The crow woman?” Jaxon asks me. “Where is she?”

  “Gone. Very much gone.” She died in my arms, I think, but I don’t say it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Black-Eyed Susan

  I take the last couple of stairs slowly, one foot at a time. With each movement, my bandaged body protests. The smell of French toast and eggs motivates me to attempt a faster pace. Pans clink and clatter.

  I step through the arched doorway of the kitchen, and Jaxon and his mother turn, with matching Meriwether smiles on their faces.

  Jaxon puts down a plate of biscuits and approaches me. “Sam, you’re not supposed to get out of bed.”

  “And how do you propose I pee, then?” I ask, breathing in the scent of delicious freshly brewed coffee.

  Jaxon smirks. “I could carry you.”

  “Yeah, fat chance that’s gonna happen.”

  Mrs. Meriwether comes to inspect me. “I’ll run you a hot bath after breakfast and make another poultice. We’ll get you feeling shipshape in no time.”

  I smile at the fitting expression. “Thanks, Mrs. Meriwether.”

  “Why don’t we all head into the dining room,” Mrs. Meriwether proposes as she scoops fresh whipped cream into a bowl.

  “Need help, Sam?” Jaxon asks.

  “If you keep treating me like I’m helpless, I will bop you,” I reply with a smile that hurts my face.

  “Now that you can do spells, I guess I better be careful.”

  Mrs. Meriwether grins at us. I follow them down the hall to the dining room and stop dead in my tracks. I’ve never seen so much food, and it is a thing of beauty.

  “There are four place settings,” I say to Mrs. Meriwether as she puts down her bowls of strawberries and whipped cream.

  “Yes, dear. Your father will be joining us.” She winks.

  I grab a nearby chair for support. “He’s coming here already?” They wouldn’t even let me speak to my dad these past couple of days. They kept saying they didn’t understand how he could recover so quickly, and they wanted to run more tests. I guess broken spells don’t act the same way real illnesses do.

  “He cannot wait to see you.” Her smile is kind. Jaxon beams.

  Tears form droplets on my eyelashes, and I put my hand over my mouth. I turn around and head for the back door.

  “You okay, Sam?” Jaxon runs after me.

  “Yeah! I just need to get something.”

  I run through the grass, stray leaves crunching under my feet. I forget my aches as I enter my house and head for the kitchen. I open the cabinet and push the front cups aside. I pull down the #1 DAD mug. He won’t have his coffee without it.

  I swing the back door open again, anticipation fueling my steps, and stop. A single freshly cut black-eyed Susan rests on the doormat. I search the porch, but no one’s there. I smile. Elijah.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  Cotton Mather was the third generation of Mathers in America, and I’m the twelfth. I’ve known this since I was a kid, not because we have the same last name and he’s in history textbooks, but because my grandmother Claire Mather told me so. Gram walked me through her house, telling me stories of presidents, forbidden love, and inventions. I recognized my own eyes in my ancestors’ paintings and appreciated their humor from their letters. History isn’t some distant remembrance in my family; it has a pulse.

  My relatives have done everyt
hing from fighting in the Revolutionary War to surviving the Titanic. They’re a colorful and diverse group who definitely made their mark on American history. But Cotton was always a point of controversy. Even when my father was a kid and studied the Salem Witch Trials in school, the other kids gave him a hard time for his last name.

  I was always so curious about this infamous man and the reactions he got out of people, even three hundred years later. So I started doing some research. And what I found was surprising—Cotton was way more complex than I had ever imagined. He fought for implementing smallpox inoculations, he wrote America’s first true-crime book, he conducted one of the first experiments in plant hybridization, and he was instrumental in founding Yale. Many writers after him looked to his books as a record of early American Puritan culture.

  Nothing about Cotton was straightforward. Historians argue about his role in the Witch Trials. But that’s not just because of Cotton’s complexity. It’s because the Witch Trials were a perfect storm. And the further I dug into the mysterious circumstances surrounding them, the more I wanted to know. So I went to Salem and began poking around.

  One of the first things I did there was go to a bookstore and order an out-of-print book about my relatives. When I arrived at the address, it wasn’t a shop like I was expecting, but an old house filled with books. I wrote my name on the order form, and the woman raised her eyebrows and said, “Mather…that isn’t a popular name around here.” I wasn’t offended; I was completely intrigued. No one had ever reacted that way to my last name before. Was I a historical villain of sorts in Salem, if nowhere else?

  I knew then that visiting wasn’t enough. I wanted to actually spend a few nights and get a real feel for the place. I walked along cobblestone streets with black houses, took tours, and got goose bumps hearing all the (sometimes creepy) historical stories. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the bed-and-breakfast I chose to stay in. It was a converted old mansion with winding hallways and staircases that stopped and started at random. Beautiful, no doubt. But when I found my room, I couldn’t help but feel like something was off.

  I kept looking over my shoulder (and under my bed). I went all the way back down to the reception desk and asked if there was any chance the place was haunted. The woman at the desk nodded and said, “Definitely.” Then she told me how scared she was to lock the place up at night by herself. She said to look in the guest books if I wanted to know about the ghosts. Everything in me told me not to. But of course, I just couldn’t help myself. It was page after page of people waking up to screams, rocking chairs rocking by themselves, and messages written on the steamed mirrors after showers. People traveled from all over the world to stay in this haunted inn, and I had accidentally and unknowingly booked a room there.

  I flipped. I’m a huge scaredy-cat. I slept—if you could call it that—the entire night with one eye open and the light on. But what I learned the more time I spent in Salem was that almost everywhere you went there was a haunted house, a curse, or a graveyard. People didn’t ask you if you believed in ghosts, but instead when was the last time you saw one. After a few days, I was utterly charmed by the mysterious history of the town and the secrets that were hidden there. So I wrote a book.

  With this story I really wanted to highlight some of the fascinating historical personalities I found in Salem and give them another chance to have a voice. A lot (but not all) of the history in this book is accurate. If there’s a better explanation for the hanging location than Sidney Perley’s essay “Where the Salem ‘Witches’ Were Hanged,” I haven’t found it. However, the causes of the Salem Witch Trials are more complicated than I can tackle in this fictional narrative. But that’s okay, because this story wasn’t only written to revisit history. It was written to be learned from and to specifically show the parallel between hanging a witch in Salem and modern-day bullying.

  To understand more about what led up to the Salem Witch Trials, it’s important to consider what we know and how we know it. Then we should examine the lens through which we view the events. Otherwise, it becomes super easy to shake a finger at history while shouting, “You’re all nuts, and your clothes look uncomfortable!”

  While addressing the causes of the Salem Witch Trials in my book, I definitely took some artistic liberties. My character Ann, for instance, is only loosely based on Ann Putnam, Jr., who was twelve years old when the accusations started and not the teenager I made her in this story. The black house in the woods is imaginary, but there was an actual house that belonged to John Symonds’s relatives (which is quoted in Perley’s essay and Sam’s grandmother’s journal) from which it was possible to see the hanging location. Unfortunately, this house no longer exists. Also, Cotton’s writings and his role in the Trials themselves are way more involved than what I could capture here. However, there are many real landmarks from old and modern Salem in this story that are worth visiting and exploring.

  Even though not all of the historical sites still stand and some information was lost over time, the lessons of the Trials remain relevant. On a basic level, social uncertainty and fear created an unstable emotional environment that allowed things to spiral out of control in Puritan Salem. Some citizens were singled out and made an example of by powerful groups that the community both admired and feared. And once the community supported an accusation of witchcraft, it became nearly impossible for the accused to escape conviction—and punishment.

  Where once witchcraft accusations were the norm, bullying has taken its place. And just as during the Trials, it’s not always the usual suspects who get bullied; it can happen to anyone for any reason. But the only way it happens is if the community supports it. Group agreement and group silence are equally as deadly. The moment someone speaks up, it’s possible to stop that cycle. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but greatness is never without risk. And there is nothing greater in the whole world than kindness—kindness to someone being bullied, kindness to a stranger, kindness to an injured animal. Every act counts.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  Sometimes you just get lucky, as in “win the lotto and a lifetime supply of donuts on the same day” lucky. For me, this was Halloween 2014, when the genius coordinating my cosmic matchmaking directed me to Rosemary Stimola and Nancy Hinkel. They are kind, humorous, and fiercely clever women whom I am honored to call friends. That Ro is my agent, Nan is my editor, and I get to work with them only adds donuts to my lotto. My love and respect for them is big.

  On top of that, Knopf/Random House is a magical place, where everyone adores books and there are illustrations of familiar book-friends on the walls. I’m especially grateful to Julia Maguire for all her hard work and amazing dedication; without her this journey would not have been the same. And the entire team continues to impress me. Barbara Marcus, Stephen Brown, Melanie Cecka, Dawn Ryan, Artie Bennett, Janet Wygal, Lisa Leventer, Marianne Cohen, Trish Parcell, Alison Impey, Kim Lauber, Mary McCue, Judith Haut, John Adamo, Dominique Cimina, Adrienne Waintraub—thank you all for being wonderfully creative people and my story’s supportive village.

  Also, a special thank-you to Marilynne K. Roach, an insightful Salem historian. Her own wonderful books made a real contribution to my understanding of Salem history.

  Now, before Ro saw this manuscript, when I was still wondering “what in the heck is a plot?” there were friends and family who read and gave me invaluable feedback. My Right Club—Cristen Barnes, Leah Briesé, Kristin Minter, and Raj Velu—were there from the beginning. So were Frank and Claire Mather, Marcia Wood, Peter Ciccariello, Ron Wood, Linda Levy, Candis Wood, Saul Levy, Mollie Warren, Allie Merriam, Meghan Best, Maggie Conlon, Nan Shipley, Patrick Maloney, Matt Daddona, Michael McDonagh, Kara Barbieri, Geoffrey Gordon, Samantha Joyce, Jeff Zentner, and Kali Wallace. A big thanks to Dani Bernfeld for her generosity from day one; it will forever be appreciated. And thanks to Anya Remizova for always being supportive, to my cats for their superior snuggling skills, and to all my friends and fami
ly for their love.

  But truly, I wouldn’t have written this book if it weren’t for my mama (Sandra Mather) and my pirate (James Bird). The way they love and encourage me is astounding. Their support may also be unwise. I believe in every way that anything is possible, which I’m sure will get me into trouble one of these days. And then these two will be cheering on my starry-eyed optimism. So I would like to preemptively blame them for any future folly. And thank them with everything I have for giving me a bit of space in the world to fill with dreams. In the words of ee cummings, “I carry your heart; I carry it in my heart.”

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