Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem

by Vera Jane Cook

  Seth was happy to teach Matthew the printing-ink business, and I believe that he caught on quickly and even grew to enjoy the work. I had spoiled him terribly all his life, so I knew that I must ensure that he could survive the devil’s blow, should the devil decide to strike.

  * * * *

  “It’s time for you to take a wife, Matthew.”

  I was concerned; women did not hold his interest for very long. Though he was terribly amusing and attracted many a young woman to grace our parlor and peer at him from behind their fans, he seemed bored by the attention.

  “In due time, Mother,” he said. “I’ll know her the minute I lay eyes on her; I’m quite sure of it.”

  “You will be gray by the time that happens.”

  “Oh, Mother.” He laughed. “Then she will be as gray as I.”

  Well, he was, after all, my son, of my spirit. Hadn’t I found my desires nurtured in a ghostly prince, my beloved Matthew, a man that had appeared as a shadow in my arms more than one hundred years ago? I knew that my son also possessed my talent to absorb life from some other time. How could I expect this boy of my flesh to satisfy himself with girls of his day if girls of his day could not capture him?

  As for me, I had not even allowed Seth to kiss me during our courtship. However, Seth’s intentions were earnest. The night he proposed, I heard his step on the front walk and noticed that his eyes, even from my shadowy sight, appeared to sparkle. He had Philippe take his cloak, and he entered my parlor with a sheepish grin.

  “My dear Patience,” he began, as he fell to his knees before me and took my hands.

  “You know how I feel about you, and I hope you feel the same. Close your eyes, dearest.”

  I felt him slip the diamond on my finger, and as I opened my eyes, he threw his face in my lap. “Will you marry me?” he whispered.

  I agreed to marry him. You must understand, my son needed a mentor and I was lonely. Men saw me as that horrid Patience, not as the beautiful Annabel. They treated me with politeness and indifference, as though I were actually a homely woman, or one past thirty. But, Seth loved me and said that I had inner beauty. Ah, Seth, my darling Seth, if you but knew whom you take in your arms. I was called beautiful, the beautiful Annabel, they would whisper behind me. Ah well. Yes, I agreed to marry him, but our marriage lasted only one year. Urbain saw to that. Read on. I will tell you more.

  Chapter Six

  You do not understand evil. I can see that. It is too prevalent in your world for you to comprehend the subtleties. It has infiltrated your earth so entirely that your consciousness accepts it and your vision misinterprets it. Evil is everywhere. Oh, how the devil makes a fool of you. But let me continue.

  My son came to me one evening as I sat beneath the oak tree that graced our rear yard. I sat there often, for the branches offered me shade from the sun. “God’s music,” Father used to say of trees. Yes, dear Father, God’s music. I thought. And one thing the Devil cannot alter.

  “Mother,” he said as he came toward me, my beautiful son. He walked with his chest out and his head held high.

  What is this? I thought as I noticed his usual smile replaced by furrows that formed lines above his nose. He sat and took my hands.

  “We must talk,” he said.

  I sat up sharply. I saw it immediately: a form, dark like a shadow, and it passed quickly behind him.

  “Shall we go inside?” I asked, with some amount of concern.

  My son seemed not to hear me.

  “Mother, I’m in love!” he said.

  Again, I saw the ghostly form. It did not pass so quickly this time, but paused for a moment, hovering behind my son. I stared directly at it and wondered if I could shoo it away.

  “Mother, did you hear me? I’m in love,” Matthew said earnestly and squeezed my hands.

  “I want to hear all about it. Everything,” I said as I tried to ignore the presence that now shifted its position and moved about the yard, resembling what some of you might call a spirit.

  “Let’s go inside, my dear. I’ve caught a chill.”

  I moved swiftly toward the house. Matthew ran ahead to open the door. I noticed his furrows were gone and his face now glowed.

  “Mother, she is beautiful. She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” he said as he led me in to the parlor and sat me down.

  It was then I heard it. Laughter. It was low at first. I shuddered. Then, suddenly, it faded.

  “Mother, have you heard a word I’ve said?”

  My son got on his knees before me.

  “Yes, dear,” I answered. “You are in love and I want you to tell me all about it. Tell me all about her.”

  He paused and the furrows returned.

  “What is it, dear?” I asked as I reached out and touched his hair.

  “Do you love me, Mother?” he asked with eyes that searched mine so seriously, and hands that held my own so tightly, that he might have cracked my bones.

  “What kind of a question is that?” I asked. “You are my life. I worship you,” I answered.

  He put his face so near to mine, I could detect the faint sweet scent of his breath.

  “Do you know me to be sane?” he asked me.

  “Are you afraid to tell me about her, Matthew?” I smiled. “Is this girl of yours a two-headed monster?”

  He laughed then. “Oh, Mother,” he said, “quite the contrary. She is exquisite.”

  “Oh, Matthew,” I whispered. “Is she is an actress?”

  He put his hands to his eyes, and he laughed so hard that tears formed and fell down his cheeks.

  I stood up quickly. I heard another laugh other than my son’s. Someone was laughing with him. I felt afraid and agitated.

  “Matthew, I demand to know more about this girl!”

  I walked to the mantle and stood before the fire. I felt the darkness follow me.

  Matthew came to me and took my hands again. I was bewildered that he seemed not to be aware of this menacing presence.

  “Mother,” he said. “Forgive me. I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to. Come, sit back down and I will tell you all about her.”

  As he led me back to the sofa, I heard the laughter behind me, loud and insane. It came from the mirror above the mantle.

  My son sat beside me.

  “Mother, do you remember when I was a child and I went to that place where I had no right to be, but I felt the air in my lungs and the sun in my eyes all the same?”

  My blood turned cold and I stood up sharply.

  “Matthew, you promised never, never to go there again.” I took his face in both my hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “Have you betrayed me?”

  He brought my hands down from his face and held them to his lips.

  “Yes.” He sighed.

  There was a long pause between us. I heard the laughter rise so loudly that it hurt my ears. I stood up and ran to the mirror. Briefly, so briefly, I saw the form of a man. Yes, there it was. The blond, broad demon now stared back at me, with eyes that glowed red, from the glass.

  “The devil!” I screamed. “It is the devil’s doing.”

  “Mother!” My son ran to me and took me in his arms. “I never returned until last year. I swear it. But they called me…those children kept calling me back and when I returned they went wild, and screamed, ‘there, he makes me do this and that…look there, look there, look there…he is the devil…do you not see him?’ I know this sounds crazy, but there is a girl, Annabel, and she is in danger. Mother, I must help her…those children will surely have her killed.”

  “Annabel?” The blood in my borrowed veins ran cold. “No!” I screamed and turned back to the shadow.

  “Mother, you must not worry for me. I love this girl with all my heart. She is my Annabel. My beautiful, beautiful Annabel.”

  “Your Annabel?” I said to him. “You cannot love her.”

  The memory of the ghostly presence from years past flitted across my brain. I burned as if I were on fire.r />
  “Yes, Mother. I must find a way to be with her. I have a power…a power that allows me to enter time. It is not a dream. You know it is not a dream.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Dear Lord, no!” I cried. “You cannot love this girl.”

  “I must save her, Mother. I must try. Please understand.”

  I fell to my knees. “You cannot save her, Matthew. You are decades too late. Her soul has rotted in time like the flesh she lost.”

  I turned toward the mantle where I knew the demon lingered in the shadows like slime on the water’s surface.

  “You bastard!” I screamed.

  The laughter filled my eardrums and reverberated against the walls. My son’s horrified sadness gripped my heart and tore it open.

  “You bastard!” I screamed again.

  But the demon only laughed.

  “What do you want of me?” I said as I fell to my knees and beat my fists against the floor.

  But the devil does not answer you. The devil leads you. The devil uses you.

  * * * *

  My son’s despair, and my own horrified confusion, tortured my days and turned my nights into sorrowful weeping and endless pacing. I assumed that my son had been there in 1692 as I lay in my bed and fell in love with him. We were surely witches…the two of us, pawns for the devil’s deviance, but surely it was God that granted us power and not Satan. Why won’t God speak to us as clearly as this demonic spirit? Why had God allowed this evil? But, both God and the devil were silent now, and I had only my son’s sorrow to haunt me.

  * * * *

  I refused to let him speak of this “phantom from his imagination,” and I insisted that he take a wife. He pleaded with Seth to talk sense to me, to allow him at least his bachelorhood, but my dear Seth regretted not marrying earlier, and therefore he invested a great deal of his time in helping me find an appropriate bride for my son.

  Andrew Stokes, the man who had fathered Patience, in whose flesh I lingered, had a distant cousin by the name of Oscar Everett Stokes. Oscar had married and moved to Chatham, New York, before the century turned. He and his wife, Katrina, had three daughters. The two oldest, Alice and Sarah Ann, had married, but their youngest daughter, Maebelle, was just twenty. It was Maebelle to whom I married off my son. I did not like her. She was a bit odd. Her features were very irregular, and her voice was thin. However, she adored my Matthew. He grimaced at the sight of her, and my heart ached for him, but I had to act quickly.

  “I will never have a wedding night with her,” he told me.

  “Please, Matthew,” I begged. “This is for your own good. You cannot follow around a ghost for the rest of your days.”

  “I will go to my Annabel again. I will find her waiting.” His fist hit the side of the table and his handsome face was distorted in distress. “Please, Mother. Do not make me marry Maebelle. I cannot stand her.”

  “I am sorry, Matthew. But I insist that you start a family.”

  “For God’s sake, Mother. Is there no one else in the city of Brooklyn for me?”

  He was angry…terribly angry. I wanted the earth to swallow me. If it were possible to shoot the devil in the heart, I would have shot him. But alas, the devil dies not by gunshot.

  “I am sorry, Matthew. I insist on this. Please, trust me.”

  He turned from me and left the room. His fists were tight and his eyes were teary. I felt this heart I had stolen beating as if it would burst open. From somewhere in the shadows, I heard the devil’s laughter. The air around me was cold and stunk of must. I spit in the direction of the darkness, but the devil’s laughter did not cease.

  Chapter Seven

  Maebelle Stokes and Matthew Joshua Horton Guyon were married at St. Evangeline Christian Church on July 26th, 1829. I bought them a new house on King Street in Manhattan, close to Seth’s manufacturing plant on Varick Street. Seth moved into the house on Montague Street after we were married in October of that same year. But my son was not happy, and Maebelle complained of his long evenings at the theater and his endless conversations on literature and art with Philippe, from which she was excluded.

  “He recites Lord Byron’s poetry into the air, as if to a lover,” she told me.

  “I am sure he is reciting to you, dear,” I said reassuringly.

  “He is not,” she insisted. “He shares his passion with another.”

  I could not intervene. I mourned the loss of my son, for his anger had created a distance between us, but I could not change the circumstances and permit any exercise of his power.

  Soon, Maebelle became pregnant. I was thrilled that their marriage had been consummated. I prayed that her love for my son would eventually penetrate the barriers of his resistance, and ultimately, I hoped her determination would win her a place in his heart. I was convinced that a child would awaken him to the responsibilities of the dimension he was in. I did not want him to even think of “his Annabel” again.

  * * * *

  Seth and Matthew renamed their company Quality Printing Ink and set up lucrative contracts with major publishers. The bank was willing to advance them on a loan so they could expand to a new location on West Street and hire more employees. We might have all eventually been happy. I was beginning to see a tolerance develop in my son for Maebelle’s awkward but endearing affection for him. And Seth was filled with energy and plans for the future. We were all excited over the birth of the child, and I felt that Matthew’s anger had subsided. I began to fantasize that I had imagined my identity as Annabel Horton and had never seen the devil’s face. If it were not for my beautiful image in the glass, I might have all together forgotten that I was a transient in their world.

  * * * *

  They found Seth’s body in March of 1830. I knew it was the demon that had caused me this grief, but I could not prove it. And even if I could, who would believe me? They said that Seth had drowned at the Fulton Street Pier while waiting for a ferry into Manhattan, and that my son, Matthew, had probably drowned with him.

  “Matthew Guyon’s body is probably adrift in the river,” the police told Maebelle and me. “It should surface.”

  “Was there a witness?” I asked tearfully, and the policeman shook his head as Maebelle sobbed in my arms.

  I sought out the devil and demanded he justify this cruelty, this vindictive act of violence. But the demon cowered behind his evil and would not show his face again for many years.

  They never found my son’s body, but they were able to return a gold pocket watch that I had given him on his eighteenth year. Strangely enough, the watch was found in Seth’s pocket, but it was clearly engraved, To Matthew from his loving Mother.

  My son’s child was not yet born, and though I pitied poor Maebelle, I could not bring myself to comfort her. My despair had crippled my desire for life. For thirty days I stayed indoors and would not look upon the light of day. I thought about killing this horrible flesh that I had borrowed and freeing myself from the pain that I felt. But this much I know: when the flesh dies, spiritual pain continues. I prayed that my son might still be alive, but I prayed in vain. I prayed until my anger at God overwhelmed me. Finally, I sought solace in my son’s child.

  * * * *

  Matthew’s daughter was born at the house on King Street on June 6th, 1830. I was there at the moment of Meredith Mae’s arrival on earth.

  “Oh God, she is so beautiful,” I cried as Maebelle held her out to me and I rocked her in my arms.

  The child so eased my grief. Maebelle was quick to allow me to care for her. Perhaps she was still too despondent over Matthew’s death to nurture the child. Eventually, Meredith Mae stayed with me entirely. I did not care or need to know why Maebelle did not want her. The bond between my grandchild and I was apparent. She was the prettiest child I had ever seen, and she had her father’s beautiful almond eyes. There seemed to be not a trace of Maebelle in her.

  * * * *

  My son was eventually declared dead, and though Maebelle grieved, she remarrie
d shortly after Meredith Mae’s birth. She and her new husband, Malcolm Jacob Northrup, had three other children in quick succession. Maebelle then ignored Meredith Mae all together, and the child was content to pretend that I was her mother. Of course, I had to open the house to visits twice a month. Maebelle and her husband would bring the other children, and Meredith Mae and I would have to pretend we enjoyed their company. It was an abysmal bore to be tied to these peculiar people, but we did our best to make them feel welcome.

  Malcolm assumed the position of lord and master and insisted that I do this and that with my money. I told him my attorney managed my fortune and I was quite content.

  But Malcolm believed he had some inalienable right to my estate. I am sure he calculated that my death could not be far off and surely he would become the executor of all that I would leave to Meredith Mae.

  “You have no right to assume that I am frivolous with money, Malcolm,” I calmly reiterated over and over again.

  “Well, women, dear Patience, are better suited to other things than managing money. What do you know of it? You make none.”

  His arrogance was a sore spot of constant tension. He treated my servants poorly as well, and I was always apologizing for his behavior. He believed himself to be better than people of a different skin tone. He felt that his white, fine masculine features were the mark of beauty, and he and his kind were fashioned in the likeness of God. Poor fool, he thinks this false proximity to God gives him the right to control the earth.

  Maebelle doted on Malcolm Jacob Northrup in much the same way she had doted upon my son. Their children resembled them in both their features and mental limitations. Their oldest daughter, Catherine, was a cruel child. She was a bossy little brat, and she was consistently in a foul temper. Poor Catherine had a rather hooked nose and a portly body. Unfortunately, she resembled Malcolm’s father, the stoic Ebenezer Ryan Northrup. Their other daughter, Beth Ann, resembled a broomstick. She was skinny, like Maebelle, and her hair stood straight and rough.