“My father is seated behind that,” she said in a low voice. The hair on my neck stood on end. “It was his last request, so that his spirit might always watch over this cave.”
She stopped as eerie howls echoed from deep within. I held tight to Greg’s hand as we followed the sounds to the next chamber. Macduff was pawing and growling at something we couldn’t make out in the dim light. As Dana brought her lantern forward we gasped in horror.
Blood was splashed on the walls and drying pools lay on the floor of the natural stage. Tufts of animal hair—red, white and black—were scattered here and there on the ground, and in the middle of the mess lay Jupiter’s striped, tailless, mutilated body.
Chapter Seventeen
“Lo! Yonder comes the Black Man wi’ his demons o’ hell! There be Indians and Goody Nurse and Goody Esty and the Proctors and—Goody Corey and Goody Bishop all dancing around! Don’t you see them? There, Goodman Wilkins! Your eyes be none too sharp. They’re marchin’ round the meetin’ house yellin’ to get in! Hold the door! Guard the windows! Aiyee! The Black Man’s got me—he’s pinching me—don’t, please don’t! God in Heaven help me! Draw your sword, Mr. Hutchinson! Run ’im through! Oh, there’s the whole hellish bunch at the windows. Aim low, Deacon Ingersoll! Forty devils and a big black woman from Stonington! Fire! Fire! Ah, see the blood all over the ground—devils’ blood! They’re running away! Someone help Mercy here—she’s taken bad! Abigail! What ails ye?”
“Goody Esty’s choking me. She bit me, too. I’m hungry. I’m going to the parsonage for supper. Picking up her cloak and walking out…
“Not that way, dummy!” Rowan, who had delivered the first speech from memory, now turned on Jessica Willard in disgust. “You don’t read the directions out loud!”
Rowan had won the coveted part of Anne Putnam, thanks to Charity’s support. Secretly I was gratified. Not just because she was my daughter, but a strong role needs a strong actress, and it was daily more and more apparent that Rowan had inherited Owen’s talent. If I could just check that artistic temperament! “That’s all right, Jessica,” I soothed the other girl, “you’re doing fine. Rowan has had the script for weeks and this is your first crack at it. Just remember not to read the words in parentheses. Those are things you’re supposed to do, not say. As for you, Rowan, you must really see those spectral Indians and witches outside the meeting house. Anne wasn’t just putting on an act—she believed it. That’s why she could convince her elders.
“Now Abigail Williams was just the opposite,” I continued. “To her it was all a game. It was fun to be the center of attention and to have adults defer to her, but she couldn’t sustain her act. When she got hungry she said to heck with it and went home.”
“I don’t exactly understand what was happening here, Mrs. Llewellyn,” Jessica confessed. “You mean the demons and Indians were just imaginary?”
“Of course, silly!” Rowan laughed.
I frowned at her. “It’s my fault, Jessica,” I said. “I should have explained. In this scene the people have just poured into the meeting house from Ingersoll’s ordinary—we’d call it a tavern. The girls are hallucinating and screaming that Parson Burroughs and his demons are attacking Salem Village. Their elders feel they can better defend themselves from the forces of hell, which they imagine they see, by barricading themselves in the meeting house. This is one of the few funny scenes in the pageant and we’ll play it for comic relief.”
Cissie Osburn was still sprawled on the floor. “Don’t I have any lines here?” she whined.
“Not in this scene.” Her constant complaining annoyed me. “Marcy Lewis is the Putnam’s servant girl and—”
“I don’t want to be a servant,” she pouted.
“But it’s one of the best parts.” I tried to be patient. “You can emote to your heart’s content. Just keep convulsing—you’ll be noticed, don’t worry. You have lines in other scenes. All right, we’ll take it from your speech again, Rowan.”
A lot had happened in two weeks. Tryouts had been held for the girls’ roles and some of the adult leads, and we were now rehearsing in the basement of the church on Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well as some days after school. I had become much more involved than I’d intended. From scenery designer I had progressed to co-director, actress, and casting director. In the last capacity I found myself practically alone. Except for assigning the roles of Anne Putnam and Mary Esty to Rowan and me (Greg had insisted on the latter), the casting committee had hardly functioned.
“Oh, Mitti, you’ve had so much more stage experience!” they insisted, and I rather enjoyed doing the casting, although I knew I’d be held accountable for any mistakes. It’s not easy to build a production with amateurs; so I was guilty of type casting. It was only natural to choose Iris Faulkner for the role of Dorcas Hoar and Charity and Damon as the senior Ann Putnam and her irascible husband, Thomas. My dreams had dictated those choices, as they had Greg for William Stoughton. At first, some of them objected to their unsympathetic roles, but I reminded them that audiences remember the villains better than the heroes. Lucian also helped by consenting to play the austere Rev. Samuel Parris, in whose parsonage the trouble started, and Lucy would play his daughter Betty.
Among the adult parts, I assigned the roles of Martha and Giles Corey to Darcy and Marion Zagrodnik. Darcy was a Corey herself, and, like Martha, the dominant partner in her marriage. Nevertheless, I had begun to appreciate a quiet strength in Marion. He’d been polishing brasses in their living room the day Greg and I reluctantly brought the news about Jupiter. Keeping the truth from Darcy would have been the greater disservice, as we knew she would only continue her futile search. Marion answered the door, a tall, bony man with curly gray hair and long, veined, ring-adorned hands sticking out of billowing sleeves. He had taken the news quietly, then called Darcy. For the first time I realized that Darcy leaned on him as much as he did on her.
The part of Sarah Bibber, one of the most vindictive of the Salem accusers, had gone to Elspeth Osburn. Jim Willard, Jessica’s father, was to portray another Willard—John, the constable who refused to arrest his neighbors and was therefore accused of witchcraft himself. Irv Good was a natural for Sheriff George Corwin, who not only carried out the arrests, but confiscated his prisoners’ goods and left their children to beg in the streets.
Up to this point the casting committee went along with my recommendations, but they balked when I suggested that Rhoda and Darrell Jackson play Tituba, the Parrises’ slave, and her husband, John Indian.
“What? Such prominent roles to outsiders?” someone objected.
“Then Lucian, Lucy, Greg, Rowan and I will all have to resign,” I countered. “We’re outsiders, too.”
They had squirmed, not wanting to give their real reason, but Elspeth finally summed it up: “Well, not as outside as the Jacksons.”
I had anticipated this by calling on the Jacksons and auditioning them privately. Rhoda read her part brilliantly and Darrell, with some coaching, would shape up. After some argument, reinforced by Greg, I won my point.
“Abigail, what ails ye?” Rowan was cueing Jessica again.
“Goody—Esty’s—choking—me,” Jessica read in a monotone. “See—where—she—bit—me—I’m—hungry—I’m—going—back—to—the—parsonage—for—supper.” She stood there uncertainly.
“Jessica,” I said as gently as possible, “even though you’re not supposed to read the directions aloud, you are supposed to follow them. Let’s pretend your cloak is lying on that table over there. Go and pick it up. That’s the girl—now, just march off as if nothing was happening. Okay, Cissie, this is where you babble gibberish. You’re all going to be doing a lot of ad libbing, girls. Only watch your language—no modern slang!”
They gathered around me as I talked. In addition to Rowan, Jessica, and Cissie, there were Linda Proct
or, Lucy, Debby Cloyce, and Carol Redd. Carol’s younger sister Nancy had come just to watch, but she was so cute and pert with her turned-up nose and fair hair that I promptly assigned her the role of five-year-old Dorcas Good, the youngest of the witches. Nancy was two years older, but she was small for her age. She raised her hand now.
“Yes, Nancy?” I asked.
“Did you know there’s a really, truly witch here?”
The other girls shifted uneasily. “She’s talking about Ruby Hobbs,” Carol explained. “Kids like to go there on Halloween and throw mud at her windows and call her names.”
“I bet you wouldn’t dare,” Cissie put in.
“I would so,” Carol retorted.
“Me, too,” Nancy echoed her sister.
“We could tip over her outhouse,” Debby suggested.
“With her in it,” Cissie added.
“Now wait a minute!” I interrupted. “I hope you don’t mean that. Ruby’s no witch. She’s just a poor, lonely old woman.”
“She’s not poor,” Cissie contradicted me. “They say her brother buried money in the barn and his ghost guards it.”
“My dad thinks that’s baloney,” Jessica scoffed.
“Well, anyway, she’s dirty and she’s crazy,” Cissie retorted. “It’s scary over there. Last year Junior and I smashed pumpkins all over her porch and you know what? She came after us with a hatchet.”
“I’ll bet your parents didn’t like your doing that,” I said.
She dismissed this summarily. “They don’t care. They say she’s crazy, too. She never gave us treats, so she deserved it.”
“Yeah,” breathed Nancy, impressed by Cissie’s bravery.
“Well, I’ll have treats for you that night,” I promised them, “so I hope you won’t bother Ruby. She’s too poor to buy candy.”
“I don’t care what Jessie’s father says, my folks think she has lots of money stashed away,” Debby Cloyce insisted.
“Yeah, she’s an old miser,” Cissie chimed in. “My mother says she must have valuable antiques. Mom’s just waiting for the old hag to die so she can get some of those things on auction.”
“Believe me, there’s nothing of real value there,” I told them. “I’ve been over there and—”
“You have?” in unison. “Weren’t you scared?”
“What’s it like?”
“Was it spooky?” The questions were coming too fast to be answered. Only Rowan stayed aloof, sitting cross-legged on the floor, gazing up at me with an almost hypnotic gleam in her eyes.
“Iris says Ruby can put a spell on you if you get close enough,” Lucy said.
“And she can curse you, too,” Rowan added deliberately, letting the words sink in. She didn’t mean Ruby.
Carol rocked forward on her haunches. “Pa rents her fields,” she said importantly. “One day when he was disking, she came up alongside his tractor and it conked out. Wouldn’t run for half a day, but he never found anything wrong with it.”
Nancy shivered and crossed her arms across her flat chest. “This year she wanted Pa to pay her more rent for her fields. When he wouldn’t she said he’d be sorry. The next morning seven of our chickens were dead.”
“Aw, a fox did that,” Carol said scornfully.
Nancy shook her head. “Uh—uh, Pa didn’t find any tracks.”
“He did so.”
“Did not!”
“My parents say curses can’t hurt anyone,” Linda observed.
“Can too!”
“Mother goes to Ruby’s farm every fall to buy apples,” Linda remembered, “but they weren’t any good this year, they were full of worms so Mom didn’t buy any.”
“I’d hate to be in your mother’s place,” Cissie said. “Ruby’s liable to make something bad happen to her.”
“If Ruby should die, would my father have to preach her funeral?”
“I know one thing—if my parents have to embalm her, they’d better drive a stake through her heart,” Cissie declared.
“That’s quite enough!” I lashed out. “Do you girls realize what you’ve been doing? You’ve been acting exactly like those Salem girls did three hundred years ago. They sent twenty innocent men and women to their deaths. Are you starting in, too?”
They squirmed uneasily—all except Nancy, who was too little to catch the analogy. I would have continued the scolding, but Alison walked in.
“Okay, girls,” I dropped the subject, “take it from page forty-eight. Mrs. Proctor is playing Rebecca Nurse, who was old and deaf and ill—and a very religious woman, but they hanged her anyway.”
“Mrs. Proctor doesn’t look that old,” Jessica objected. “Somehow that didn’t come out quite right,” Alison made a wry face.
“Girls,” I broke in hastily, “just make up your lines as you go along. I want you to get used to improvising. You lead off, Rowan…
She immediately pitched forward on her face, shrieking, “Up there! Look up there! ’Tis Goody Nurse on that beam with a little yellow bird sucking her finger…
Jessica’s dubious compliment had been apt. Even in her softly cut, white jersey dress, Alison did look only a little less old and tired than Rebecca Nurse, and the lines had deepened in her fine skin. I wondered at my wisdom in assigning her the part, but she had been so anxious to do it. Where was Cissie? We needed her for this scene. I was walking toward the kitchen when genuine screams coming from the auditorium stopped me. Linda came running wildly toward me as I dashed onstage. The other girls were watching Alison in horror as great gobbets of blood gushed from her lips and down her white dress.
Chapter Eighteen
Cloyce’s Market, Peacehaven’s only food store, was a missing link between the old-fashioned grocery and the supermarket. Things could still be bought from bins, and the meat was cut to order. The store also served as a women’s gossip exchange. Three generations of Cloyces alternated shifts. They all had high, canted foreheads, grosbeak noses, and disappearing chins; although these characteristics were watered down in Debby, the youngest member of the family. I generally left my car in Cloyce’s parking lot and after rehearsal Debby and I would walk back to the store together.
The church and Cloyce’s were at opposite ends of Essex Street, the main thoroughfare, along which was clustered what was left of the commercial section. I enjoyed the walk. I had spent too much time up at the Phoenix and it was fun now to renew my acquaintance with the town itself. Essex Street, named for Salem’s county, was little altered. Ownership had changed in some cases, as had the nature of many of the businesses, but the newness was only cosmetic. Most of the old buildings were still there, their bricks grimed and darkened with age.
The others generally accompanied us only as far as the Patch, where the loudspeaker was a modern Pied Piper blaring rock music out into the street. Iris was usually at the door to greet the girls, her yellow eyes daring me to protest. I tried to forestall this by inviting the girls up to the Phoenix for pizza, but so far they had been unwilling to break their routine—for an obvious reason. Peace-haven was peculiarly devoid of boys their age. Junior Osburn must have been cock o’ the walk while he was alive. Now only Jonah Good remained, and he was no better than a doorstop, sitting there for hours with a simpering grin until his father would come striding in, yank him roughly to his feet, and send him off on some errand. Iris, seeing the girls’ need, had partitioned off half the floor space to create the semblance of a discotheque, and placed ads in the newspapers in nearby towns, thus attracting boys from there—and therein lay the chief attraction of the place.
Underneath the orange and white paint of the Clark station on the corner of the next block were the recognizable lines of the old Wadhams’ filling station pagoda. The red brick edifice beyond housed the editorial office of the Peacehaven Puritan and G
reg’s apartment. The old linotypes stood abandoned in a back room, as the printing had long been contracted out to an offset press in Richland Center. I resisted the temptation to stop in, knowing the whole town would talk. There had been no repetition of the incident in the cave; Greg’s visits now were pointedly concerned with the pageant. I argued with myself that it was just as well. I wasn’t ready to commit myself either and Rowan’s evident hostility toward him both troubled and annoyed me. Did she expect me to remain a widow forever?
Unlike other places, Peacehaven had kept up the old custom of having trick or treat on Halloween after dark, so we had rehearsal Saturday as usual. When Debby and I entered Cloyce’s late that afternoon the store was filled with women buying what was left of Halloween candy. They descended on me instantly.
“How’s Alison?” Gladys got the first question in.
It was a week since Alison had returned from the Madison hospital where she’d been put on a program of immunotherapy. Dana had mounted guard over her—to limit the visits of those who came bearing cakes and casseroles and curiosity—so I found myself in the role of unofficial press secretary.
“She’s weak but improving,” I said as I secured a cart for myself.
“What’s that she has—melancholia?” Aunt Jenny asked.
“No—melanoma.” I pushed the cart toward the baking section. Andy Cloyce had looked up from his cash register and his brother Henry was leaning over the meat counter.
“Spread to the lungs, I heard,” the old woman clucked her tongue. “Can’t get used to all these new-fangled diseases. In my day if a person bled from the mouth they had galloping consumption and that was it. I wish they’d stop inventing new diseases.”
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 26