Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem

by Vera Jane Cook

  My darkness was replaced with a vague sight of your earth. Faintly, I could hear the wood as it creaked under Michele’s step. As he entered the room, he wore a black velvet robe and carried a decanter of wine. I lay back on my pillows and stared. He seemed so very different now.

  “Michele?” I whispered.

  He smiled into the light of the candle. His face seemed to hold thoughts I could not read. He seemed so much older, so much older than the handsome Michele I had seen from my darkness. The lines in his face traversed his skin like cul-de-sacs that led to places I would not trace with my hand for fear I would never be recovered.

  I found myself praying that he would not touch me, would not further reveal his skin to me as it lay against the open velvet like hard white stone.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  His voice was harsh and seemed to lash out at the night air. He was staring at me as though he sought to hypnotize me. His gaze seemed haunting and sinister. My body stiffened as he moved toward me. Suddenly, I felt myself shudder. The room had become terribly cold. He seemed to be aware of my flesh as it chilled.

  “Shall I build a fire?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He set the wine near me and walked to the mantle. The nearness of his flesh had repulsed me. What is happening; how can this be?

  Soon the flames were flickering like fighting cats and the crimson warmth filled my new flesh like food. He turned back to me. I noticed that his eyes looked like fire in the light.

  “Annabel,” I thought I heard him say.

  A chill went down my spine.

  “What did you call me?”

  I took my head from the pillows and sat straight up. I had just become Patience Stokes Guyon. He had never called that horrid woman anything else but Patience.

  “Annabel,” he said again.

  I shuddered as he spoke it. He came to me and took me in his arms. I fought to free myself from his embrace. I would not consummate a marriage with this imposter. I heard the wine fall to the floor. I heard the glass shatter. He held me tighter.

  “Who are you?” I screamed.

  “Do not fight me, Annabel.”

  As he held me down, I felt myself in a horrific spin.

  “I have you now, my lost avenging angel,” he said fiercely.

  He took my hair and held my head back with it. I made my hands into fists and beat him wildly upon the arm.

  “Look, Annabel,” he demanded.

  Suddenly a sharp, vivid light blinded my eyes. An awful pain shot through my head.

  “I bring you through time, my little one,” he whispered.

  I felt the earth as it spun around me with such velocity that I had no other choice but to hold on to him and bury my face in his neck. In a matter of seconds, the sharp white light gave way to sky. When I lifted my head, I immediately noticed that my vision was clear and sharp. I had not seen the blue of the sky with such vividness for a century. I turned quickly around. To my right was the sea. It was the very same sea that surrounded my village. I was sure of it. My sense of hearing was suddenly as normal as if I were a girl again in Salem. I began to weep as I listened to the sound of water falling over a rock. I had not heard the sound that water makes as it runs for so many of your years. I felt the dampness of dirt on my back as he held me on the ground and ripped off my gown. The blessed smell of the dirt filled my lungs. My good God! I was surely in the village of Salem again and the devil himself was forcing his dalliance upon me…wielding his large, hard appendage before me like some proud royal scepter. I tried to free myself but he held me so very tightly. I tried to run back to the home on the other side of the hill, where my father must surely be kneeling in evening prayer.

  “Let me go, Michele!” I demanded.

  He laughed so loud that the tree branches trembled. I screamed out as he placed his mouth on mine. I pounded my fists against his chest, but he held me to the damp earth and forced my legs toward heaven with his hands.

  “Annabel,” he said. “I give you life!”

  I fell into darkness. When I awoke, my bed was empty, and the demon was gone.

  Chapter Five

  The very next evening, there was a knock at my door.

  “Mrs. Guyon?”

  Before me stood a police captain. He was accompanied by two officers. I shook my head, barely remembering who I was.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “I’m sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news.” The captain looked uncomfortably beyond me.

  “What is it?” I asked; my borrowed heart seemed still.

  “A body turned up in the city mortuary last night. He was burned beyond recognition. We believe it to be your husband.”

  “What?” I held onto the post for support.

  “May we come in?” the captain asked me.

  “Of course,” I said and stepped aside.

  I felt faint and threw myself onto the nearest chair.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” one of the officers asked.

  I nodded. “What happened?” I whispered, my question barely audible.

  “The man was trapped in a building down there on Fulton Street. It went up in flames from a faulty furnace.” The captain stared at me.

  I met his eyes. “How do you know it’s my husband if the body was burned beyond recognition?”

  “Well,” the captain began, as he looked admiringly around the lavish house. “The building warehoused fine European music boxes and imported porcelain dogs from France. Your husband was from France, am I correct?”

  “Yes, but surely you must have more evidence than that. Is this not a city filled with Frenchmen?”

  “We found this,” he said and held it out to me. My heart beat rapidly, for even without the luxury of perfect eyesight I had seen the emerald ring on Michele’s finger many times.

  “You’ll find the initials MPG inside the band. Your husband’s initials, I presume?” The captain looked apologetic, but I, on the other hand, was not so sure I would miss my husband at all.

  * * * *

  So, there I was, the poor widow, left alone to raise the baby I carried from a night I could barely explain.

  My son, Matthew Joshua Horton Guyon, was born in February of 1807. He carried the name of my ghostly lover from so many years past, and my own dear father. I loved the baby with all my soul. For over a century I had given birth to children. Some I had loved. Some were not lovable. But this child was mine. He did not come from borrowed flesh; he came from me. He had my face. My face! Not the face of a woman people saw as his mother, that horrid Patience, but the face of the real Annabel Horton. His hair waved and shone in the light, though it was not golden like mine, but black as night. His jawline was strong and lean, and his eyes seemed to dance in kindness and humor. He was my boy. My Matthew.

  How I pampered him. He was, after all, fatherless. But we were rich. Michele had left us more money than I had ever dreamed. Soon, I began to forget that the devil himself might have fathered my child and enjoyed the luxury of living quite well on the devil’s money. Of course, I tried to piece together a history for Michele Guyon, but I could find nothing. I questioned Philippe, who had remained with the house, but the boy seemed reluctant to talk to me.

  “I can find not a trace of Michele Guyon in Paris; what do you make of that?” I asked Philippe.

  The boy merely shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

  “This makes no sense to me, Philippe,” I said. “My son’s skin is the color of a cashew and his eyes shine black like the evening sky. I am fair and Michele Guyon was fair. What do you make of that?”

  Philippe stood there, his face a mask. “Yes, fair,” he said.

  “Ah,” I exclaimed in exasperation. “You are of no help to me, Philippe.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, ma’am.”

  I realized I was being hard on Philippe and sent him back to his room. I would be better served with my own thoughts. I could not tell Philippe wha
t I was really thinking. He would think me mad, for I suspected that someone like myself—someone able to steal the body of another—had in fact, committed this heinous act of violence against me and had then murdered the real Michele. How could I voice that thought to anyone?

  * * * *

  I hoped that Hendrika would quell my suspicions, but unfortunately, she only verified them. I coerced her into talking about Michele shortly after Matthew’s birth.

  “I knew poor Michele for such a short time,” I began.

  “He was such a beautiful man,” she reminisced.

  “Tell me, Mother. Tell me everything that you can remember about him,” I pleaded.

  “Well, he was kind and always teased us; he had wonderful humor.”

  “And handsome too. No?”

  She smiled and took my hand.

  “He was so dashing and so dark like his son.”

  “Dark?”

  “Ah, yes. His skin was the color of the sand out by the marshlands, and his eyes were like the sky at midnight. I will miss him.”

  I was shocked.

  “Are you sure, Mother?” I laughed. “Do not fool me. He was dark? His eyes like coal?”

  “Patience, you frighten me. I never know anymore if you suffer a breakdown. You have not been the same since the morning of his death,” she said with concern.

  * * * *

  I knew then that I had lain with the devil’s own, but surely nothing from the devil could have fathered my child. I was certain that this entity had stolen the body of a man called Michele…and it was this man to whom I identified my son’s thick dark hair and deep-set, almond-shaped eyes. I realized that everyone—that horrid Patience and her mother, Hendrika—must have seen the real Michele Guyon while the demon courted and charmed them both in Michele’s name, hiding himself behind the eyes of Michele’s glance. But I saw only the demon as he pandered in the flesh of the man who had fathered my son. Oh, the demon had a name, but I did not know it then. I did not yet remember the face of Urbain Grandier, chosen by the devil to be my nemesis.

  But what could it matter to me that a monster had tricked me into believing he was humorous and kind? I had my son and he was innocent, entirely innocent of evil. In all the centuries that I have known men, all sorts of noble men, I have never known a man of such gentility. Not even my own father, whom I adored. No, my son was not of the devil or the devil’s lackey. The devil is not so complex as to proliferate kindness. And why would the demon bother to force his vile affections upon me? To that, I had no answer.

  So be it. I certainly would not call the devil forth for explanations. I wanted no part of him. I could not explain what had happened to me and I refused to become obsessed with it. I only knew that the man who called himself Michele Guyon had been a fake and a murderer. Why should the real Michele be prey for the devil, I pondered? But I had not a clue, and I prayed never to know.

  * * * *

  My son grew so tall that I was always after him not to stoop, and from the moment he could walk he became my gallant and protective knight, always checking to see how I felt and whether or not I needed tea from the kitchen, or a shawl to put about my shoulders. I never entertained the notion that he might have powers that could move time aside or reach out past tomorrow and return from the journey. No, I simply assumed he was as normal as any other child and did not even look for hints of the craft. Then, in his thirteenth year, my innocence was shattered, and I was faced with the unimaginable.

  We could not find Matthew for five days. We searched everywhere but there was no trace of him. I was frantic. Andrew and Hendrika did all they could to console me, but I felt as if I would die of grief. At just that moment, when I feared I might never see my son again, he appeared at my bedroom door as if by magic. Philippe stood by his side.

  “The boy has returned,” Philippe announced reassuringly.

  “Good God!” I cried.

  “Mother!” he said. “I’ve been to a strange place.”

  I fell to my knees and held him in my arms. I wept from happiness. I was so overcome with relief to have him back that I did not even ask him where he had been. But then, he began to tell me.

  “I have been to a strange place, Mother. There are lots of children there and they speak funny. They run into walls and call me the devil.” He laughed.

  I held him firmly and looked into his eyes.

  “How did you get there?” I asked him.

  “I’m not sure, Mother.”

  I stared at Philippe, who was listening intently.

  “Tell me more, Matthew,” I asked quietly.

  “Well, the children,” he continued, “they run around pointing at me. ‘There he is! Can you not see him? There! There!’” They point and scream at me. They say I torment them and tell them to do things.

  “What kind of things?”

  “To roll on the floor. To beat their heads with their fists.”

  “Have you ever seen these children before?” I asked him while my heart pounded in my chest.

  “No, Mother. Never.”

  “Matthew, I do not ever want you to see these children again. The children are evil and they may not let you go. Do you understand? This is very important.”

  I looked up at Philippe, who stood very still, his dark skin nearly white.

  “Leave us, please, Philippe,” I said and wondered what on earth the poor boy could be thinking.

  “If you’ll forgive me, Miss Guyon,” he began, “but perhaps it is time.”

  “Time? Time for what?”

  “The truth,” he said simply.

  Something in his expression frightened me. I dismissed him. How dare he intervene? “No information you have could be of any interest to me. Please leave us,” I commanded and returned my attention back to my son.

  “Yes, ma’am, if you insist,” he said with a long sigh.

  I waited for the door to close behind Philippe before I spoke.

  “You must promise never to go there again. Please, Matthew. I beg of you.”

  He made me a promise, and I believed he would honor it. I now knew that my son’s powers were far greater than my own, for at that time, I could not reenter another dimension without killing off the body I was in. I followed a linear path because I was consumed by human consciousness and the human mind believes in chronological order. But my son’s experience of time was far more advanced. He could absorb the walls of gravity and travel through. In 1820, I wanted only to believe he simply spoke to ghosts. Now I know better. Now I know that he pushed beyond the barriers of perception.

  * * * *

  I kept a watchful eye on Matthew after that, and I believed he never experimented with his powers again. I ignored Philippe’s attempt to speak with me about the incident, though I knew how much he wanted to. I was grateful that my son had gifts, that he had the sight to see his mother as the real Annabel Horton, but I would not discuss our powers. My ancestry, at that time, was as much a mystery to me as I would insist it would remain to Matthew. I was deathly afraid to accept this special ability we both possessed, and I shunned any belief in the supernatural. I raised my son as a good Christian. And despite that one incident, he seemed to have a perfectly uneventful adolescence.

  * * * *

  Eventually, I remarried. The demon had been correct about the invention of the steamboat and now, with its close proximity to Manhattan, Clover Hill was becoming a sought-after spot on the Hudson River. I met many of the families who began to build houses around the area, and one evening I was introduced to a wealthy businessman who had never married.

  * * * *

  “Why, Patience Stokes Guyon, I am so honored to make your acquaintance.” And with that Seth kissed my hand, his gaze traveling up to mine.

  He was plain and short and not put off by the ghastly appearance of Patience Stokes.

  “How lovely you are, like a lone dove perched upon a spring branch in full bloom.”

  “You flatter me so, sir,” I said with a smile.
“A cherry tree, I hope. I do love them.”

  “Pink and delicious.” He smiled with a blush to his cheek.

  I was amused by Seth and became increasingly fond of him. His laughter was infectious and he loved my son—and would have, no doubt, done anything for either of us. He courted me with sincerity and dined me on exquisite food.

  “Fit for a queen,” he would say, handing me foie gras.

  I pretended to adore the fine cuisine, but unfortunately, all that I could actually experience was my unquenchable desire to taste that which I could not.

  “My dear Patience,” he would say. “I would almost swear that you do not experience your food. Let it sit upon the tongue before you swallow. Taste! Taste is everything.” He’d close his eyes and softly chew.

  “And always cleanse the palette with wine when you move from meat to vegetable,” he’d say as he sipped on the liquid and ran his thumb and finger across his mustache, softly smiling in my direction.

  Poor Seth did not realize that my palette was an empty vessel that hungered to feel the sweetbreads upon my tongue and even the water that washed them down. The useless body I had stolen only gave me a reflection and a voice. If he only knew that I could barely feel his embrace.

  * * * *

  My son approved of my relationship with this boisterous and endearing man and went into business with him when he was nineteen years old. Seth manufactured ink. At first, Matthew thought it was a common trade, but Seth soon gained his respect.

  “A man must earn his living,” he told Matthew. “A man builds his character by providing his community with an honest day’s work.”

  My son had always cared about art and music but little else, and though I appreciated our mutual interests, I asked Seth to instill a sense of economics. I did not want Matthew to become complacent and limited. I often feared he might. He was a delicate man whose only friend thus far had been the servant, Philippe, so I welcomed the developing relationship between Seth and my son. For the time being, we had more money than we needed, but if it were the devil that gave me this child, then what would prevent the devil from claiming his fortune? Then what would become of Matthew?