They paid no attention as they doted on the girl in my bed. The girl stared right at me. She reached for me again, and I cried out in disbelief. All at once, I remembered the familiar face.
“Dear God,” I whispered as I struggled to see her more clearly. In a moment I knew. Yes, I knew whose body was covered in the blanket I once felt against my own skin. It was the child who had seen me in my darkness. The little girl I tried to save from my brother, but who was lost to me, and whose loss I carried with great despair.
“Elizabeth,” I said.
I walked closer. She was now a young woman. My soul was so overjoyed that I fell into her arms and held her as best as I could in my transient state. She sensed my presence and began to cry.
We rejoiced together, though neither my father nor Matthew could see me in the girl’s arms. My father wept openly, and Matthew held the girl’s hands tightly. She was weak, as if she had been asleep for a long time.
* * * *
I prayed that Philippe and Meredith Mae would find me, but surely I could rob the flesh of the girl, Ann Putnam, without them. I was eager to have a voice, to have weight upon the earth. It must have only been moments before a loud knock came at the door. I followed my father down the stairs. I felt Philippe’s presence before he entered.
“I am Matthew Guyon’s servant,” he said to my father. “I bring him his daughter.”
I struggled to hold Meredith Mae in my arms, but she did not see me. She did not know that tears of joy ran down my face. That embrace between my son and his daughter is one I will always cherish, for it was clear that death had never robbed my granddaughter of her father’s love. Even in my shadow of darkness, I felt the despair of absence filled with his tenderness. I wanted to join in their happiness, but instead, I could only look on from a great distance.
* * * *
My father’s house was filled with excitement that evening as they sat around the girl they believed to be Annabel Horton and told her that Governor Phips had disbanded the hangings and the trials were over. She looked at them sadly and spoke in a hoarse whisper, for her neck had a horrible burn. I knew her throat must hurt because her voice was so raspy and weak.
“These hangings you speak of appear to me in a dream. They seem to be memories that offend me, but I do not recall them clearly.”
“That is just as well, my child,” my father said to her as he stroked her hair.
* * * *
I knew I had to find Thomas Putnam’s house and steal the flesh of that wretched girl or I would be lost to this darkness, where not even Meredith Mae or Philippe could find me.
I left the house, with its warm fire in the kitchen and the long wooden table filled with eggs and bread. It was difficult to find the road, for my white world had grown dim, and I assumed that the earth’s darkness had thrown a shadow over the white fire. It must be a dark night.
I had never really known Ann Putnam or her father, Thomas, or even the girl that lived in their house, Mercy Lewis. We were friends of the Porters’ and did not attend Reverend Parris’s church. In those days, the town was divided by one’s loyalty to a particular minister. The loyalties were so intense that spying and paranoia infiltrated the village like a virus. It was difficult to know the Putnams’ because they only mingled with their own and seemed suspicious of everyone else. I knew Ann on sight and everyone knew the Putnam house. They were the most powerful people in Salem and many said they were vengeful and cruel, though never aloud. I would feel no regret as I stole into Ann’s room and watched her sleep. After all, she had been my accuser. It had been she that had condemned me to my shadowy infinity.
She looked the same as I remembered her…blonde and thin. I noticed that her lips were full and her lashes were dark and long. I would not mind this flesh. She was a pretty girl. She had thrown her blankets to the floor and the fire in her room shone on her and revealed the sweat on her young, firm arms. I looked closely. Her breasts were lifted up, and her lean legs grappled with sheets that barely covered her. Soft blonde hair caressed her calves like the fuzz of a peach. I wanted her to know that I would take her, and I would not be gentle in the consumption of her body. She had doomed me to this. She had said I afflicted her…that I came in the night and tormented her. “Well, now I am really here, dear Ann, and you will not live to condemn me further.”
I covered her with my form. From my shadow coffin I lay myself over her, and I willed her to wake. She felt me and smiled. Smiled? “You dare to smile at me?”
She did not hear me. She moved under me slowly, as if I were a lover in the night that had sought her skin beneath me. I pushed harder until I felt myself lock with her bloodstream. I felt myself like warm water filling her bones with my soul. Oh, I was delirious in my taking of her. She screamed. They all scream when I take them, but the pleasure of my accuser’s screams drugged me with such power that I was able to stare in her face and watch the blue eyes behold me in fear. It was then that I kissed her, and she struggled under me and fought my mouth with her own. I covered her face with the enormous shadow of my soul, and I pushed myself into her living flesh. In the moment of her flight, she cursed me to hell. I had held her like an eagle with her prey. I had forced her soul out, and I had gone in like a child to the womb.
I knew she watched from some darkness as I stretched my lovely young body against the white sheets and sighed like a fresh new bride. I could only imagine her despair at the loss of life as she knew it. Then I laughed as she vanished into some darkness of her own, with a destiny I was never to learn.
* * * *
Philippe found me in the fields of my father’s farm. I had gone out before dawn to walk barefoot in the wet grass. I could actually see the sun rise for the first time in so long. The cool morning air sent shivers through my brand new flesh and the birds thrilled me with their song. I was delirious as I danced in the soft meadow and pulled the bark from trees to hold against my lips. I lay on the damp earth and tickled my face with the brown red leaves of autumn. I listened as the breeze caused the leaves to dance and hungry rabbits and deer scurried over the hillside. The air was sweet with the scent of fires and the pretty, light color of blue peeked through a blaze of orange and sent puffs of white clouds across God’s canvas.
Philippe called to me. “Don’t let your father find you on his land. Not with the face of Ann Putnam.”
My delirium ended when I realized I would never communicate with my father again. The girl lying in the bed that had once been mine was his daughter now, and I was the enemy, the girl who had condemned his child to the gallows.
“What year is it?” I asked Philippe.
“It is October 3, 1693.”
“My neck was broken on August 19, 1692. How could my body be lying upstairs in that bed?” I demanded of him.
“Do you remember one who put the rope around you and told you to turn your head to the right at the count of three?”
“I do,” I answered.
“Well, you listened, and you did not die. Your spirit left your body, and you should not have had a heartbeat, but when they returned for you they found that you were warm and had a pulse.”
“The girl has been asleep for fourteen months?” I asked Philippe in amazement.
“More or less,” he said. “She has not been fully conscious for fourteen months. Your father and Matthew bathed and fed her. She awoke periodically but never spoke a word. She would look around the room as if everything she saw was strange and then she would return to sleep. The morning of your arrival she fully awoke and began to talk. Just like that.”
“Yes. I was there in the room, though no one could see me. Except the girl, Elizabeth, she saw me.”
“Elizabeth? Matthew calls her ‘Annabel,’” he told me.
“I am Annabel. The girl is Elizabeth…my brother’s child…not yet born. I thought you knew everything.”
He smiled at me.
“Patience Annabel Horton, your soul is free of incestuous thoughts. Your long-ago l
over did not come to the girl. Matthew has never loved anyone but Elizabeth…no matter what name he knows her by. It is Elizabeth’s face he sees when he looks at her, not yours.”
“Her soul aged in my old flesh?”
“Precisely.”
“Philippe? Who returned for my body?”
“Your father, and your son, Matthew.”
“Who saved me? Who turned my neck so it would not break?” I asked.
“Michele Guyon.”
I walked toward the old pond I had loved as a child. Philippe followed. The face of the man with the dark curls had often come to me in dreams with so much more clarity than I actually remembered in my waking life. If I could hold on to my dreams, I might have been able to sketch his face in the dirt.
“I do not understand what poor Elizabeth is doing in my skin. If I did not die, then why am I not in my own flesh? I am Annabel Horton, and I want possession of my own body,” I said with a fury I did not know I felt. His answer was stern.
“You cannot take the flesh without killing the child in it. Your son, Matthew, loves the girl, Elizabeth. He does not see his mother in the girl’s face. He never has. Now, he will recognize his mother in Ann Putnam’s face. If you take back your flesh, you will have to explain to your son what you’ve done with his bride. Remember, it was you who took the child to begin with.”
“And now I know to what fate my darling Elizabeth came.”
The loss of my own flesh tortured me, but at least my niece Elizabeth was not lost in darkness. This gave me some solace. I had loved Elizabeth like my own daughter and began to feel a great relief that it was she who had captured my son’s heart.
“I want to see my son,” I said.
“We will wait until your father goes out to the fields and then we will enter the house.”
He sat on the grass beside me and leaned his head back against a tree. I sat on the ground before him and threw stones into the pond. Philippe spoke to me in whispers.
“It is not yet known in Salem that the girl, Annabel Horton, did not die. If they knew, they would surely know you were a witch and most likely come to burn the flesh off what is now Elizabeth’s body. It would be most suspicious and strange to these people. They still believe that they have acted in a sane and fair manner. As Ann Putnam, your friendship with Annabel Horton will protect Elizabeth and Matthew. They will respect your wishes and leave the girl alone. The accuser embracing the accused will allay any attempt to cast misfortune on the Horton family. I must tell you that Matthew is not liked in this town. He is seen as an odd stranger. They refer to him as ‘that dark, effete boy with the waves in his hair.’”
I thought of my beautiful son with his fine manners, and I smiled. My son walked with a gentleman’s posture, so befitting a nineteenth-century man of wealth, with his legs always neatly crossed and his hands folded; he spoke in low tones with a slightly affected lisp. I laughed to myself and thought how out of place he must appear in a town surrounded by Indians and inhabited by Puritans.
“Now that we are all together,” I told Philippe, “let us leave this time and go back to Brooklyn.” Philippe sat up and looked at me sadly. “You don’t understand?”
I returned a pensive frown and shook my head from side to side. He continued.
“Your son Matthew will never leave Elizabeth’s side. If you want to remain with your son, then you must remain in Salem. Elizabeth has sight, but not power. She cannot move her soul, as we can, in this dimension.”
I realized in that moment, in a state of horror, that I was to be held prisoner in Ann Putnam’s flesh until my new daughter-in-law’s natural death.
“And what does the devil gain from this, I wonder?”
“Your son was about to be accused. The day you appeared in Salem, Governor Phips declared that none would be tried on spectral evidence and he disbanded the witch hangings.”
“Then why does Urbain call me back? What possible plan could the devil have for me now that the children have lost their power to destroy anyone else?”
“He has lured you back to Salem. He knows that you will not leave your son.”
“But why? What foul trick does he play with me?” I questioned Philippe.
Philippe remained silent and looked back toward the house. I tried to read his thoughts, but I could not.
Satan loves to tease our sense of responsibility. This I knew. You must see that in your own world with all the lies you live with. You do know that you are one of his greatest triumphs, do you not? He rejoices in your century. If you look for the devil with the right intention, you will find his thumbprint on your heart every time you turn in the wrong direction. But his objectives are often senseless. I pondered the devil’s plan for me in the chronological year 1693, and I was to search long before I learned of it.
“Unfortunately,” Philippe sighed as he turned in my direction, “we must follow the devil’s lead if we are to alter it.”
Chapter Twelve
My son was overjoyed to see me. Meredith Mae held on to my dress and would not let go. Poor Elizabeth smiled at me tentatively, but without recognition, as I sat by her bedside and stroked her hair.
“Do you blame me now, Mother? Now that you see how sweet my bride is?”
My son knelt by Elizabeth’s side and brought both her hands to his lips.
I recognized that there was some physical similarity between the girl and myself. With great relief, I also realized that my son had always looked upon the face of dear Elizabeth, not my own. His ghostly form in my life must have been nothing more than a genetic memory that had haunted my waking dreams. Somehow, when I took the poor child from the clutches of my oldest brother, Jeremiah, I had exchanged my experiences with hers. In return, I had become a figment in time, and my identity as a human being was lost. I was nothing more than spirit condemned to shadow. My image in the glass was a painful reminder. The great love I felt for my father was a bond I could never again enfold.
* * * *
I left my family before my father returned from the fields. I walked slowly back to the Putnam farm. The tears in my eyes obscured my vision, and I found myself wandering on the old Meeting House Road. I took the shortcut back. It was a trail I had taken many times as a child, but it did not seem to lead me to the hill that bordered on the Putnam’s land. I grew tired and lay under a large tree with towering branches that shielded me from the afternoon sun. On the ground under me the grass was covered in leaves, luteous and dry, that broke and cracked in my hand.
I felt an ache that I could not soothe. It was as if I had never been born. Yet, I remembered myself as a girl chased by my brothers and scolded by my father for petting the pigs and bringing baby chickens into the house. The memory of my mother returned to me in perspicuous images. She had died so young. They say I look just like her. My father could not speak of her without weeping. On our land there is a marker, and she is buried there in the ground under it. Once, as a child, I lay my face on the earth over her grave and her whisper touched my ears and startled me. I was so frightened that I never went back. She had whispered to me what sounded like the name Annascha. If only I had listened. I might have raised my hand to the devil sooner. But my mother was pious and never spoke to me of witchcraft. Perhaps, if she had lived to see me mature, she might have.
* * * *
I must have fallen asleep recalling the way my mother would tilt her head to one side and scold me with a teasing smile. My longing for her lay heavy on my soul as it had the day Papa told me her spirit was with God. The air was sweet with a cool, crisp breeze, and I nestled back on the ground and let sleep take me. I had not slept so deeply since I inhabited my own flesh. It seemed that my senses were as alive to me in this borrowed form as they had been when I walked the earth as the real Annabel Horton, days when my step was light with youth and my face could be captured in eidetic reflections that rippled in the waters of our brook.
I must have slept for hours, because it was almost dark when I awoke to th
e sound of loud maniacal laughter. I put my hands over my ears and looked above me. Black clouds were moving quickly over a gray and unwelcoming sky. From the light of the stars, I thought I saw the form of a man and a woman. I stood and called out. The moon rose and covered the couple in a shower of light. I froze in fear. Surely, it was the girl, Abigail Williams! Yes, surely it was she that stood naked and scowling before me like a rabid beast of the field. She threw back her wild hair and screamed.
“Witch! You afflict me! You torment me!” She then fell to the ground and laughed in hysterical fits. “Begone, bitch!” She pointed at me with one hand and threw dirt at my dress with the other.
Then the demon laughed loudly. There he stood, naked beside the girl, the malevolent and fallacious Urbain Grandier. His chiseled face turned to me. His smooth, massive body stood tall and imposing. I could see the scepter in his hand pointed toward the girl’s open mouth. It appeared like a large, thick whip that he brandished proudly. I shielded my eyes and fell back. The demon smiled.
“Annabel, come to me.”
I instinctively held my right hand up before me, and instantly the great Urbain flew back several feet, as if he had been thrown.
“Never, bastard!”
I stood, and believing I now held some power from God in my fingers, I put my hand up before me once more, and lo and behold, the devil jolted so far back that I could not see him. I saw only the demented Abigail on the ground.
“Begone, demon!” I screamed and held out both my hands.
But his laughter invaded my hearing with such force that I fell to my knees. In an instant, I felt his grip on my hair. He pulled me up until my feet were several inches from the ground. Then he dangled me like a dead pheasant. His laughter was so loud it caused a sharp pain in my head.
The naked Abigail sat on the ground smiling. I saw her eyes as I remembered them, the one turned in toward the other. Urbain dragged me now by my hair and forced my body upon the naked girl. I screamed and spit in her face.
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