Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem

by Vera Jane Cook

  I learned that Martha Corey had been hanged only a month following my own misfortune. Poor Giles had been pressed to death. I was told that it took him three days to die. His strength of will did not surprise me. Though the town was now ready to offer apology to the families of those who had been victimized by the accusations and wrongful deaths, the mentality of the witch trials was still intact. My son was looked upon by the town as a man very much like the arrogant Giles Corey, who had cursed them all to hell as he lay under a multitude of rocks that were crushing his bones. Here was another man who would not humble himself, who would die before he would plead for mercy. I knew that this town would never accept my son’s innocence, even if it could be proven. There was only one way for my son to save himself. I prayed he would listen to me that day Philippe brought him my note. I had written:

  Darling boy, please beckon the powers of your soul and fly from heaven onward. We will meet at Montague Street. Make haste! I fear the worse. Please! Do not linger. Elizabeth would want your safety. Your loving mother.

  I waited for my son’s answer, but it did not come to me. I begged Philippe to go by the prison and demand that Matthew move his soul to safety, but Philippe came back distraught and angry. It seems that he could not see him or get close enough to catch his eye. I walked up and down Essex Street trying to sneak into the jail, but the doors were closed to me, and those passing by stared at me as if I were mad. I feared they would report my behavior to Thomas Putnam, so I was forced to wait at home for word.

  * * * *

  My son’s trial began two weeks following his arrest. Women could not enter the court as spectators, but my brothers told Elizabeth everything. She met me on Birch Plain near the labyrinth each day to inform me of the progress. She wept bitterly because the evidence seemed insurmountable. The most damaging of all was that they had found his pistol next to Peter’s body. “Oh, Annie,” she cried. “Matthew told us that he had misplaced the gun. This was only a few weeks ago. Father said it was probably in the barn. He told Matthew not to worry, that it would show up soon enough. Father told this to the courts but they do not believe him. Oh, what are we to do, Annie? What are we to do?”

  “What other evidence have they?” I asked her.

  She wiped her eyes and continued. “The money that the court had ordered Peter Cloyce to pay Father was never paid. They know that Father had two letters sent requesting the sum. Father told the court that the letters were not answered, and his next intention would have been to have a jail sentence imposed if arrangements were not made to pay the money owed. Then Ezra Cloyce told the court that Matthew trespassed on the land and threatened his brother if cash were not received in a fortnight. Ezra said that Matthew had intimated that his family was in dire need of the money and he would kill for it if he had to.”

  She then took my hand and held on to it tightly before she continued.

  “On the afternoon of his brother’s death, Ezra testified that he saw Matthew leaving Peter Cloyce’s house and asked him what business he had there, to which he said Matthew had replied, ‘You know what business, Brother.’ Oh, Annie. I fear for him.”

  She put her head on my shoulder and cried.

  “What else is there?” I asked once I was able to soothe her.

  “Ezra then said he thought nothing more about it until his wife told him that she had heard a shot several minutes before Ezra arrived home. It was then he thought it best to check on his brother. When he entered the house and called out to him, he received no reply. He called again. Still, there was no reply. He then climbed the stairs to his brother’s room. Again, he called out but only silence was returned to him. He opened the door of the bedroom and found his brother lying in a pool of blood.”

  “Good God!”

  “What are we to do now, Annie? What are we to do?” she asked tearfully.

  I took her hand and brushed the hair from her face.

  “Can you master the soul’s flight?” I asked her.

  She shook her head sadly and wiped her eyes. “My soul remains fixed. I beg God to release it, but my soul does not rise. I am sorry.”

  “Do not stop trying,” I whispered and kissed her brow.

  * * * *

  My son was found guilty of the murder of Peter Cloyce based on the evidence against him. No one questioned why he would have been in Peter Cloyce’s bedroom or why he would have left his pistol behind. I prayed all during the trial for Matthew’s freedom, his soul’s freedom. I waited desperately to hear from him, but his answer did not come until after the verdict was received. I had prayed he would use his power to escape. Surely that was the only protection God offered him. But that was not to be.

  Elizabeth found me in the chapel the day following his sentence. She held out a small piece of parchment. I immediately recognized my son’s hand.

  Mother, I cannot leave Elizabeth to bear the ramifications for my actions. How will it look to the town if I vanish from my cell? How will she hold up her head under the hocus-pocus of my disappearance? Or worse yet, will she and her brothers be blamed for my escape and brought to a trial of their own? No. I cannot subject them to any more misfortune. Oh, that Elizabeth could move her soul so that I could find her in the safety of our Brooklyn home, but that is not to be. Let her then live out her life in peace and let my soul find solace in the kingdom of God. Bless you, dear mother. May God protect those I have loved.

  Forever your son, Matthew.

  * * * *

  His hanging was scheduled for the twenty-ninth of June. I now had only ten days to change my son’s mind and give him the will to live on. I had to remove any more excuses to choose this absurdity over life. I had to cause a despair so compelling that it would drive my son to flee this arrogant, pompous world of blind inhumanity, and I had to act quickly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I knew that Ezra Cloyce had killed his brother. I also knew why, but it would never matter to the town of Salem, and I was not out to prove my son’s innocence. I was out to keep him from Gallows Hill. If he would only believe me, I would tell him that Elizabeth had found her freedom, had mastered the soul’s flight and waited for him in the safety of the nineteenth century. Then, surely, he would follow. But how was I to convince him that she had vanished from this dimension and found her way in the great, vast eternal space of time? I knew that he would never believe a lie. Matthew only humored our efforts to train Elizabeth to move her soul.

  “Mother,” he had said to Philippe and me. “I shall love Elizabeth in this time, in this century. I shall grow old beside her. But her only real power is this spell of eternal affection that she has cast upon me.”

  Philippe and I disagreed adamantly. We insisted that she was a dormant witch that feared a release of her power because her Puritan mind was filled with the nonsense that the witch is not of God—that the witch is of the devil. But Matthew only laughed at that and told us that she had been levitating her body three times a day to please us, but only a miracle from God would levitate her soul.

  So what was I to do? I had to save my son. His tender decency broke my heart but decency would not save his life. I knew what was best, as a mother always knows, always, even when the child matures. I knew that I had to take control of Matthew’s destiny. I was driven by love’s madness to do so, for certainly he would not save himself.

  Ezra Cloyce was responsible for my grief. That much I knew. I had watched that wench of a wife of his with brother Peter Cloyce. I had seen her eyes follow the man as he loaded his cart with grain. I had watched the blush of her skin when he stood near. I knew desire when I saw it. I watched her breasts rise and her mouth dry up and need the stroke of her tongue when Peter Cloyce was passing. It was she that stayed on the farm while Ezra worked as a blacksmith in Salem Town. She and Peter were alone on the farm, except for the youngest children, and they were often up in the fields with their older brothers. There was time that could have been found together. Maybe Brother Cloyce was only murdered for his thought
s. But I think it could have been proven that they were warming the bed together when Ezra confronted them. But there was no one to prove the truth in Salem Village. Truth was a long tale of shallow conclusions in Salem.

  Any fool at all could have observed the changes in Ruth Cloyce since Peter’s death. I heard she testified without a tear shed. But there was a rage in her eyes where there was once only tenderness. The pretty, sweet features of her face had been replaced with a stern and frightened mask. I can assure you, Ruth Cloyce wanted Ezra’s neck in a rope on Gallows Hill as much as I did, but in the long run, his death would not matter to me, would not force my son to flee his flesh. In only a matter of days, my Matthew would be killed. His soul would be contained by time. No, not lost to shadow like mine, but discovered in ubiquity with his gracious decency still gleaming in his eyes. Perhaps lost to me forever. Eternally lost to me. This is what I believed. I had no other knowledge that would prove otherwise.

  * * * *

  Poor Father would have to sell land to pay off Matthew’s jailer fees. How sorry I felt for Father, but I could not help him. And I knew that more sorrow would follow. I knew that Elizabeth would die by the age of twenty-nine. This is what I believed; I thought it was her fate to die at that age. Hadn’t I lived out her life for twenty-nine years? But I was proven wrong, and it would be centuries before I would discover just how long my precious Elizabeth would inhabit flesh. The spirit, when not contaminated by circumstances, always controls fate, and Elizabeth’s spirit sought life…a long and fruitful one. In 1704 my knowledge was still limited. I knew that my oldest brother Jeremiah and his wife would have their third child the following year. I knew it would be a girl they would name Elizabeth. I also knew her soul would inhabit flesh until the age of ten years and then her flesh would become the first victim of Annabel Horton, witch of Salem. What I did not know was that it was I that gave her spirit flight and shattered her destiny, through the magic of my darkness. But now, if I were to tell my son that Elizabeth would be dead in less than a year, he would think that I was trying to trick him. He would not move in time unless he knew for certain of Elizabeth’s death.

  * * * *

  Elizabeth was twenty-eight. In just four months she would be twenty-nine. She would never see that day, or so I thought. I was convinced that the fate of her flesh would not permit it. Philippe and I would return to our lost dimension in Brooklyn, saddened but yet blessed by having had her presence, however briefly. Matthew would feel the same and gladly flee his fate to join us.

  Why is it that life is far crueler than it is kind? I knew what I had to do to save my child, though God forgive me for it.

  * * * *

  I begged Elizabeth to meet me at the labyrinth each morning, and together we spent as much time as we could steal meditating and walking. My father needed Philippe to help in the fields so we were often alone, Elizabeth and I, humming and praying. By the fifth day, just four days before Matthew’s sentence was to be carried out, I had her lie in the field and concentrate only on the twenty-third psalm.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

  I could see that she had finally mastered a very deep meditation. She was lying on her back and her hands lay loosely at her sides. Her eyes were closed. It seemed as if she were hardly breathing. I carefully brought my hands above her body and levitated her from the earth. I then gently turned her around three times before I returned her to the ground. She never stopped humming and praying.

  On the day before my son was to be hanged, I clapped my hands over her levitated body. She did not stir. I knew that it was time to carry out my plan. When the deed was done, nothing would prevent my Matthew from returning to his life in Brooklyn. It was only Elizabeth that kept him here, and it was only she that could release him from this fate, this horrible fate that awaited him.

  I slowly removed Thomas Putnam’s pistol from my apron and took aim. It took both my hands to hold the gun steady. I pointed at her heart. Beads of sweat fell down my brow. Tears of grief nearly blinded my sight. My fingers held fast to the trigger. I cocked it back and heard the click. I took steady aim. Elizabeth remained in deep meditation, barely breathing.

  Could I really do this? Could I kill this girl I loved to save my son? Could I live with the lie I would tell him? My heart raced, and I dropped the gun to my side.

  “She was so distraught. She has taken her life,” I would tell Philippe and Matthew. But would they believe me? My breath was heavy, and my mouth dry. I would make them believe me. This murder must be swift. There must be purpose to it. Blind purpose.

  I took aim again. I could not look at the sweetly sleeping face. I pointed the pistol at her heart once more, and was about to fire, when I heard the call.

  “Mother! Mother! No!”

  I looked around frantically searching for the voice. I saw Philippe as he came running across the field, his eyes wide with terror. He slid to his knees before me. His chest heaved with sobs. “Find God now, Mother,” he cried. “This is where you find God. Choose God, Mother!”

  I froze and stared at Philippe. My hands still aimed the gun at Elizabeth’s heart. My fingers burned against the metal. A great shadow loomed across the field and darkened the sky over us. In the distance I heard laughter, Urbain Grandier’s laughter.

  I turned toward the great darkness and screamed as I have never screamed before.

  “Bastard! This is why you lure me to Salem, to make of me a murderer? What sickness there is in your soul, you demon bastard,” I cried.

  “Drop the gun, Mother!” Philippe ordered. “Let there be God, not Satan.”

  “No!”

  “Please, Mother. Do not do this.”

  I let the gun fall to the ground. Philippe reached out and held me in his arms. The darkness deepened like a sudden summer storm, descending down upon us, and the wind ripped through the trees with a fierce cry. I closed my eyes and wondered. Will I ever be forgiven for what I might have done?

  Then, as fiercely as it came, the darkness vanished. The great roar of laughter faded in the lost wind. We only turned to the west for a moment, as the brilliant sun began to set. When we turned back, Elizabeth was gone.

  “My God, she has mastered it.” I turned to Philippe. “Quick. Make haste.”

  He dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross.

  “I pray she is safe,” he said.

  “Do you think she is really gone?”

  I looked about me.

  “Yes. She is gone. But God only knows where.”

  “We have very little time. Take the cart and go to Matthew. Tell him of Elizabeth’s journey. Demand that he take action quickly. Then return to me and tell me what he says.”

  Philippe ran to go and I stopped him. I reached out and held him close to me for a moment and then I searched his eyes. “Make him believe you, Philippe.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Philippe ran swiftly down the hill. I fell to my knees and prayed. I prayed until the darkness became alive with stars and all the distant houses were warmed with the unity of evening.

  * * * *

  I was still lost in prayer when the dawn found me. I knew the Putnam family would be frantically searching for me, but I did not care. If God saw fit to answer my prayers, I would never look upon the face of Thomas Putnam again.

  Finally, I could hear the old cart as it wobbled along the path. I watched anxiously as Philippe left it on the side of the road and ran to me as I sat huddled under a large, towering sycamore tree. His eyes were wet with tears. My heart stopped its beat, and I held my breath.

  “I have told him. He seemed startled by the news. But they don’t leave him alone for an instant. We could not talk,” Philippe told me as he breathed heavily and quickly.

  “Did he believe you?” I asked him.

  “Yes. I think he did.”

  “Then he will find a way.”

  “Let’s ride to the hill. We must go quickly. The cart that takes the
prisoners will pass the town bridge. We can see from the north fields if he is in it. Pray that he is not.”

  Philippe and I made great haste toward Orchard farm and over the great north fields. The people we passed stared at me curiously, for I must have worn a wretched expression as I clung to Philippe’s arm. Once we were just on the other side of the river, we saw that a crowd had gathered on Gallows Hill. We did not wait more than ten minutes before the prisoner’s cart approached the bridge. We could see that there were several men in the wagon. I strained to see if Matthew was among them but it was Philippe that saw him first and let out a cry.

  “Oh God, what is it?”

  “Matthew is with them,” Philippe said sadly. “Oh God. He is in the cart.”

  “Quick,” I said. “Let us take the bridge.”

  Philippe rode the horses swiftly until we were not far behind the prisoners. I could see that their wagon was not moving as fast as ours. I had Philippe stop our wagon so that I could reach it on foot. I ran toward the road. I could see Matthew sitting on the right hand side of the cart. I was able to run beside him. I heard one man call out that Ann Putnam was running beside the prisoners. They yelled at me to get back. But I did not listen. I saw Matthew. He tried to reach for my hand. People yelled at me from the road and I was ordered to stand back. I was grabbed away from the cart and pushed into a crowd of people. Dirt covered my face and my body was soaked in perspiration.

  “Sister Putnam,” said a woman I knew from the Parris congregation. “Do stay back from the cart. You could get hurt.”