The Fifth Petal

by Brunonia Barry

  Rose didn’t move. She didn’t blink. Her bloodshot blue eyes stared straight ahead.

  “The morning after…what happened…” Callie didn’t want to say “the murders.” Not if Rose could hear her. “I was so scared. The nuns from St. James’s found me—and they sent me to a group home in western Mass. I told them over and over that you saved me. Did you know that? I told the police, too.” Nothing too disturbing. How could she tell her life story and not include anything disturbing? She paused, then started again. “The nuns have been good to me. They got me the job I have now at a nursing home. They convinced me to go to college. You always told me I had to go to college. Remember? I went to U Mass. I started as a music major. Remember you telling me I was musical? You always used to tell me that when I was little. Then I switched to music therapy and then went on to grad school for an MA.”

  As she told her story, Callie realized how randomly she had fallen into her own life. There were causes and effects, certainly, and there were decisions. But sitting in this hospital room, she was reminded that the only thing you could be certain of in this world was change. Yesterday Rose was dead. Then Rose was alive. Now Rose was alive, but in a vegetative state.

  Callie watched her stare blankly at the ceiling.

  For the longest time, she had believed it was All Hallows’ Eve that killed her mother and the others. The nuns said it was the one night each year when evil prevailed without God’s intervention. They also said that bestowing a blessing without a priest—as Rose had done—was a terrible transgression. And even worse was the fact that the women had called themselves Goddesses. That was simply intolerable to God, the nuns said. It was why he looked the other way, allowing them all to receive just punishment for their arrogance.

  Callie slammed on the mental brakes. Can’t I think of anything that isn’t morbid? She was tempted to start lying, to weave a story threaded with friends and joy, but she refrained; banshees and talking trees aside, the Rose that Callie remembered always wanted the facts and had taught Callie never to settle for less than what was true. Even so, after all that had happened, she’d never thought to challenge what the nuns had told her about the night of the murders.

  Callie left the room and made a call on her cell, leaving a message at the nursing home, saying she wouldn’t be back until further notice, then leaving another message for her private patients on her voice mail, referring them to another therapist she knew from school. She had money saved and could afford to take time off. She’d start visiting Rose daily if it could make a difference. Callie was glad she hadn’t reached anyone directly—she didn’t want to speak to any of the nuns now. God knows what she might have said. Callie had a reputation for saying things she shouldn’t. She’d learned in therapy this was a defensive measure against the fear she’d experienced growing up. She had been working to change it. So far, she hadn’t had much success.

  Though it probably wasn’t necessary, Callie left another message at the apartment in Amherst that she’d been sharing with a changing cast of grad students for the last few years, letting them know she’d be away for a bit. She didn’t know any of them well. Though she rented a bedroom there, Callie often didn’t come home at night. She’d had a number of boyfriends, but all of those relationships were short-lived, disposable. No one would call out the National Guard if she went missing for a day or two.

  She went back into Rose’s room, sat down, and continued her story, trying with everything she had to keep it positive.

  “Remember when we used to sing that song, Rose?” Callie began a Gaelic tune that Rose had taught her. A lullaby from Rose’s Irish grandmother that she’d sung to Callie each night when she went to sleep.

  The nurses’ shift changed, and an aide came in to adjust Rose’s position in the bed. “I’m glad to see someone’s visiting her,” the aide said. “I’m sure it’s helping.”

  “I hope so,” Callie said.

  The aide stopped what she was doing. She was staring at Callie. “I know you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Could have sworn…”

  Callie stared back, as silent as Rose, hoping the woman’s conviction would fade before she could place Callie.

  She’d been to the Salem library many times with Rose. It was one of their favorite spots to spend an afternoon. The front steps had been too steep for Callie then. She remembered Rose slowing her normally rapid pace, smiling as Callie cautiously giant-stepped her way to the top, Rose holding the heavy wooden door for her to enter. Today, Callie adopted Rose’s usual pace, taking the stairs easily and opening the door herself. Though the faces were different, the old brick building had changed little since she was a child. The librarian looked up when she saw Callie enter, then went back to her computer. Callie picked up the day’s copy of The Salem Journal as she passed the desk.

  The library smelled of books and radiators, the same musty smell she’d once loved. She looked ahead toward the children’s wing and was seized with an urge to enter, to sit in one of the old overstuffed chairs she had once shared with Rose and look through the illustrated pages of Treasure Island or the first book of poetry Rose had read to her: A Child’s Garden of Verses. She remembered one of her favorites:

  All night long and every night,

  When my mama puts out the light,

  I see the people marching by,

  As plain as day, before my eye.

  She couldn’t remember the rest of the poem or its title. She wanted to go into the children’s room and look it up. Instead, she approached the research desk. A middle-aged man in a bow tie and starched shirt looked up. “May I help you with something?”

  “Where would I find archived copies of this paper?” She held up The Salem Journal.

  “What year are you looking for?”

  “Nineteen eighty-nine,” she said, hoping he would not make the connection.

  If he did, he showed no sign. He directed her to the microfiche room. It was off to the side, hidden by a few stacks of books. It didn’t have any windows, just a set of jaundiced fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling. There were four wooden tables with a fiche reader on each. An aide sat off to one side in front of a wall of filing cabinets.

  “She’s looking for the Journal. Nineteen eighty-nine,” the bow-tie man said.

  “What month?” the aide asked Callie.

  “Late October, early November.”

  The aide directed Callie to one of the tables. “Do you need a demonstration?”

  “No,” Callie said. “I’m all set.”

  Before she started looking at the fiche, she read today’s Salem Journal, the one she had grabbed on her way in. The article about Rose was disturbing, as she’d known it would be. The town was angry and upset and reacting to the fact that the police had not arraigned Rose for the crime on Halloween, or even determined if a crime had been committed. It was very clear that this incident reminded too many people of the crime they believed Rose guilty of in the past.

  It took Callie a while to locate what she was looking for on the microfiche, and when she finally found it, she immediately wished she hadn’t. A local paper usually concerned with street closings and firemen’s musters, The Salem Journal seemed to have reveled in being the go-to source for morbid rumors and innuendo, reporting that was far beneath, it seemed to Callie, the standards of a more reputable paper. Day after day, article after article was filled with the grisly details of what had happened that night. One even contained graphic photos of the lifeless bodies, throats slashed, being pulled from the crevasse: the victims bloodied and almost unrecognizable. Callie had never seen these photos. One more thing the nuns had kept from her, though this time she was grateful. As she looked at the images, she could feel her body going into shock, her hand throbbing and then numbing.

  The articles were less sensational than the photos, but there was an undercurrent, a subtext to the reporting Callie couldn’t quite define. It was straight news—matter-of-fact, the way news
should be but often wasn’t these days, but the things they chose to focus on were more morbid than she might have expected. Callie read them several times, but nothing stood out as wrong. They reported the events, the time, the place, the facts, a direct contrast to the photos. If the photographer had been shocked by the image he recorded, the writer was not. Journalistically, the story was absolutely correct, but the focus seemed odd.

  After she finished the articles from the week following the murders, she went on to read the follow-ups from the next few months. As time passed, more and more editorial opinions emerged. Some speculated that the young women were part of a Satanic cult. Some said they were in a recreational sex club or ran an escort service. One article detailed theories on the manner in which their throats had been cut, suggesting a box cutter or straight razor as opposed to a knife. Callie had to go outside to get some air after she read that one. It had taken her a while to drum up the courage to go back and read more.

  Everyone seemed to have a theory. One article featured a photo of the wound on Callie’s palm with the caption A MODERN-DAY MIRACLE? There were several photos of the victims, the girls they called the Goddesses: Olivia Cahill, Cheryl Cassella, and Susan Symms, her white albino skin even paler in death than it had been in life. It was reported that trophies of skin and hair had been taken from Susan’s body during the murders.

  But there were also pictures taken before the murders, and these were the ones that really touched Callie. It had been so long ago, and Callie had been so young that all she had of them were traces of memory; she’d forgotten what they actually looked like. The first shots were of Susan and Cheryl. They’re younger than I am now, Callie realized. And so beautiful. When she got to the photo of her mother, she began to cry. Strangely, when she let herself think of the Goddesses, she always had the most trouble picturing her mother. Olivia had been distant, somehow, had kept herself apart. The image Callie conjured when she thought of Olivia was ethereal, a dark-eyed beauty with vague edges that never quite sharpened into focus. But the photo in front of her wasn’t distant or ethereal: the backlit image on the microfiche stared back all too humanly, and Callie knew her mother immediately. The wild dark hair. The gypsy eyes. Part dark angel, part something else. But it was her expression that Callie recognized. Defiant. Challenging. A survivor. “Mess with me,” it said. “I dare you.”

  It was the face that Callie saw every morning in her mirror.

  As she finished the final article and shut down the fiche reader, the memory of that night came back to her complete and with the precision of a pinpoint.

  “This is really the place?” Cheryl asked as they pushed through the thick brambles of Proctor’s Ledge. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was thicker, her speech slower. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” Rose declared, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses and looking back at the younger women she was escorting.

  “But the witches are going up to Gallows Hill,” Susan slurred, rubbing her hands as if she was cold.

  “The witches are wrong.” Rose stopped and looked from Susan to Cheryl, then back to Olivia. “Despite its name, Gallows Hill is not where our ancestors lost their lives.” She did not take her eyes off them as she spoke; instead she stared as if seeing through them. “What’s wrong with all of you tonight? You know the history!”

  They shifted uncomfortably.

  “I thought you were going to stand me up again like you did in July,” Rose grumbled.

  “We’re here just like we said we would be,” Olivia replied.

  “Late, drunk, and wearing revealing Halloween costumes.” Rose shot a look at Susan’s low-cut costume, more Playboy bunny than Alice in Wonderland inspired, with rabbit ears that perfectly matched the color of her snow white hair. “This is how you honor our ancestors? I hope you took time out from your party schedule to pack your belongings.”

  No one answered.

  “I’m serious. I want you out of my house tomorrow.”

  Rose herself was wearing black for the solemn occasion, her long brown braid tucked under a cap that looked vaguely Puritan. “This is a new low, even for you,” she said to Olivia, who was dressed as the Mad Hatter with dark skintight trousers, a top hat, and a black coat with tails. “And as usual, we’re waiting for Leah.”

  The young women exchanged guilty looks but said nothing.

  Rose gave a dismissive wave of her hand and turned uphill. “Let’s pick up the pace and hope that Leah can catch up.” She pushed through the brambles, moving higher on the hill into a thick patch of dying brush, its branches dense and dry, snapping back like rubber bands as each of them passed.

  “You need a damned machete to get through this stuff,” Cheryl muttered under her breath.

  Susan stumbled, then stifled a cry.

  “Shhh,” Cheryl warned.

  “Hurry up,” Olivia whispered, taking her daughter’s hand, pulling her along.

  A branch cracked behind them. A squirrel ran across their path, scrambling up a nearby sumac, then onto the branches of a taller tree, leaping from limb to limb in an effort to escape. Callie’s eyes followed until the squirrel disappeared into the darkness, leaving only the sound of the wind moving through the tangled trees.

  When they finally reached the clearing, Callie stopped short. Her mother tugged at her hand, but the girl refused to budge.

  “What now?” Rose turned back with a huff.

  The light from the full moon behind the branches cast veined patterns across their faces. Just ahead of them, the crevasse dropped into dark nothingness. Callie recognized the place from the stories Rose had told her over and over. This was where it happened, the pit where the bodies were dumped after the execution.

  “I’m scared,” Callie said.

  “It’s okay,” Olivia answered. “There’s nothing here to be afraid of.” She tried to hurry the child to catch up with Rose, who was standing now at the rocky edge of the crevasse, waiting for them. Callie wouldn’t move.

  “No,” she said, her voice shaky, almost inaudible. She gazed past her mother to Rose. “I want to go home, Auntie Rose.”

  “Oh, honey.” Rose came over and leaned down, bringing herself to Callie’s eye level. In the moonlight, she could see the little girl’s tear-streaked face. “Your mother’s right, there’s nothing here to be afraid of. Not anymore.”

  Callie looked doubtful.

  “Is that why you were crying?”

  Callie shook her head no and seemed about to offer another explanation when Olivia spoke up. “She wanted to go trick-or-treating, but I told her we had to come here instead, that you were going to kick us out of the house if we didn’t show up.”

  The remark was supposed to make Rose feel guilty.

  “Was that before or after the adults-only party you took her to?” Rose retorted.

  Olivia removed her Mad Hatter cap but said nothing.

  “It was a costume party,” Callie said, trying to help her mother. “I got to be Alice in Wonderland.”

  “I can see that,” Rose said softly. “You make a very pretty Alice.”

  “I want to go home now,” Callie again insisted, fresh tears forming. “Please don’t kick us out.”

  Rose shot a look at Olivia. She leaned down, bringing her face close to Callie’s. “Sweetie, don’t you worry about that tonight. Tonight is the special night you and I talked about. Tonight we are going to do something important that is long overdue: We are going to say a prayer and consecrate the ground where our ancestors were hanged and buried.” She smiled tenderly. “Can you tell me the name of your ancestor?”

  “Rebecca Nurse?”

  “That’s right,” Rose said, patting the girl’s cheek.

  “Let’s do this already,” Cheryl said.

  “We can’t start until Leah gets here,” Rose said.

  “Leah isn’t coming,” Olivia blurted.

  “What do you mean, Leah isn’t coming? This is our last chance to do this. We’ve been planning
it for months!”

  Another look passed among the three younger women.

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “She isn’t coming, Rose,” Cheryl confirmed, swaying and worrying the tail of her dormouse costume.

  “Explain yourselves,” Rose said.

  “We don’t need to explain ourselves,” Olivia snapped. “You’re not our mother.”

  The minute she said it, Olivia regretted the words. Rose was clearly seething.

  Behind them, more branches cracked.

  “What the hell?” Cheryl turned as two more squirrels scrambled out of the brush, one running directly across Susan’s foot, causing the March Hare to shriek as the creature went scrambling up a nearby elm.

  It was colder here in the clearing, and Callie started to shake. Rose removed her dark jacket and draped it around the girl’s shoulders, creating a long cape over the blue dress and white pinafore.

  “Can we just get on with it?” Olivia asked. “I’ve got to get her home.”

  Rose considered. “For the child, yes.”

  The women gathered, forming a circle at the edge of the crevasse, just as they had practiced. Rose raised her arms to the heavens and cleared her throat. “Mother Mary, we know our prayer circle is not complete, but we pray that our intention and our strength will overcome any absence. Hallow this ground, dear Mother, in the name of our five ancestors who died here on July nineteenth, 1692. Bless it for all nineteen poor souls who were hanged that terrible year and for the one pressed to death. All innocent victims of government-sanctioned murder. Mary, in your name and in the name of your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, bless the souls of our faithful departed.” She fingered the first petal of her old wooden rosary, the one with a carved rose instead of a cross. “Elizabeth Howe,” she said, turning to Susan and moving her fingers to the second petal.

  “Susannah Martin,” Susan said. In the moonlight, her skin looked even paler than usual.

  Everyone turned to Cheryl.