“I’ll bargain with you, lost witch.”
“Anything,” I whispered.
“The woman in the chamber upstairs? The mad philosophic witch I take when I am too tired to bother with the stupid ones; your whore, Julian? She can live. She will mother Annabel Horton’s soul the way you have fathered it, and she will be born the beautiful Annabel Horton in the new land, to English parents, and a fate that is only hers to will.”
“Yes. Yes, that is the way it turned out. My mother, Caylus, was beautiful.”
“Claudette, aunt of Caylus, great-aunt of Annabel Horton. From one witch to another your blood passes like the piss of that dog of hers.”
“I begin with Claudette. He told me that. Claudette’s avenging angel he called me,” I said and pointed to Urbain.
“Yes. So he did. But he sees you as Julian for the moment, you fool.” The demon grinned. “Come here, Urbain.”
Urbain reluctantly left my side and stood up as straight as he could before the hideous Lucifer that still bore my own dear face behind his cloak. He took Urbain in his arms and looked at me.
“Well, is it you, or the magnificent Urbain Grandier that I cloak in my greatness?”
“What?”
“Simple, bitch. Follow what I’m saying. I will take his flesh or yours. Claudette lives if you let me have him. If not, well, your soul is mine and he will live to sprinkle holy water on the whore’s dead ass.”
I heard the boy gasp.
“No!” I called.
“No? All right.”
He put the boy down and came toward me. He stood over me and lifted me in his arms. He was moving me toward the big, dark hole behind his cloak. I was shaking with fear, and then, all of a sudden, the beast dropped me. I fell to the floor. Urbain had kicked this thing that held me and now he kissed the cross I clutched as he lay on the floor beside me.
“In the name of Almighty God,” he whispered. “Almighty God,” he said again. “I love you, Julian. I love Claudette. I love my faith, my despondent Jesus. Forgive that which I command my soul to do. Bless me, Julian. Bless me always.”
I reached out for him. I wanted him to know that I returned his love, when suddenly, he let out a wild scream and ran furiously again toward the cursed Lucifer. The thing grasped him in some dark hold, while Urbain shook the cloak that covered him until it fell to the ground. Then, this thing, this dark empty hole, swallowed Urbain entirely. The light Claudette had spoken of, the sweet, white light glowed quickly in the fury of this consumption, and I heard the demon’s howl, so much despair was in that cry that I could hardly stand it, and I held my hands up over my ears.
When I raised my eyes, after several minutes, I saw nothing but a large, imposing shadow. As I stared at this dark and menacing form, the shadow took on flesh and blood. Finally, he stood before me, Urbain Grandier, as I had always known him: evil, heinous and calculating. The demon smiled into my eyes, as the empty cloak lay crumbled in my arms, and Julian’s cross turned to rust in my hand.
* * * *
I knew that a simple act of love had saved my soul from the demon’s grasp. A simple trick of fate had written my journey outside of the devil’s hold. They came for Urbain Grandier before he could raise his hand against me. It took ten or twenty men to hold him down.
“No!” I called as they led him away. “Wait!”
“What is it, Father Julian?” One of the priests asked as I tried to prevent their exit.
“Where are you taking him?”
“He is sentenced to die.”
“What? Shouldn’t there be a trial?”
“We have had it.”
“Shouldn’t we have an exorcism?”
“Father, none will come to lay hands on this evil.”
As they led him away, I could hear his laughter.
“Urbain!” I called.
“Eternity can have you now, Annabel,” the demon shouted out.
“No!” I screamed but they did not listen and took him away.
“Julian. Julian, please help me. Julian,” I called, but I called in vain.
* * * *
I lay there and cried for a long time. I knew they were placing Urbain Grandier beneath the stones. I knew I had to witness it. I thought, perhaps, I could do something to prevent it, to call upon the devil’s mercy. But alas, the devil has not mercy.
I walked to the hill behind the church. The graves were nearby. It was under the bright white sky that they placed one stone upon the other, covering his body. He bore the weight of so many stones before his eyes showed tears. He sought my face among the many and cursed me, calling me now, Annabel. He cursed all of us who stood there watching him die, and he cursed the descendants that would follow us. I gazed at Claudette as she wept. I stood on the sidelines and watched Urbain in his suffering. I prayed to God for intervention.
Urbain refused to die quickly, and the priests panicked. They called him a demon, a son of Lucifer and held a brief meeting in which they decided he should burn. They ran out calling for ropes. They tied him up to a large cross in the cemetery behind the Huguenot St. Pierre-du-March church, and they set him afire. He was weak but alive as the flames leaped up and consumed him. They laughed as his screams rang out over the bells, and the imbeciles ran in the streets below and stuck their hands in each other’s mouths, mimicking what the handsome priest had done to the nuns.
I fell to my knees and whispered his name. I watched as the body burned and saw as the soul fled, the great heart of humanity that had once been Urbain Grandier, beating in the devil’s hand.
I went back to the dungeon that had housed the demon and stayed there in prayer, on my knees, for what seemed like forever.
* * * *
I saw daylight again when I heard the shouts. The nuns were to die. They were murdered, all of them, one by one, burned behind the church like leaves, except for Claudette, spared for turning Urbain over to Cardinal Richelieu. They believed they were saving Loudon from the devil’s children, and perhaps, they were.
Annascha had escaped her room and had found Claudette’s side. She would not leave her, though I tried to take her away.
“She stays with me,” Claudette commanded. “I must have something to love.”
“All right,” I said.
“Xorgnot, Julian. Xorgnot!” she said sadly and looked toward the sky.
I knew she was damning me.
“What will you do now?” I asked her.
“Some man will have me. Certainly, I cannot stay at the convent.”
I knelt before her.
“I can help you get to England,” I said.
She turned toward me and laughed.
“You do not know, do you?” She laughed again. “I am afraid you can help me with nothing.”
I longed to save her from any more grief, but of course, I could not. My heart was filled with sorrow.
“You failed to save Urbain,” she said it and did not look at me, but up toward the hill where the body lay. “Now, love is dead, as the devil would have it be.”
“I tried,” I said. “Urbain saved us both by sacrificing his soul to the devil. You would have died if he chose to let the demon take Julian’s flesh. He must have loved you. We were given an ultimatum.”
“So be it.”
“You must forgive Julian.”
“What becomes of his soul?” she asked me.
“You do not know? You never see him again?”
“No. Julian has died by his own hand. His body lies there, by Urbain’s.”
“What?”
I stood up quickly and ran to the hill. Claudette followed me. The bodies lay together, unburied in a shallow grave. Urbain was barely recognizable. Julian’s body was covered in blood. I wept softly. I felt Claudette’s hand on my shoulder.
“Return,” she whispered. “Return to whatever dimension claims you.”
“And you, Claudette? I promised Julian I would find you.”
“You have found me. Annascha, witch.”
I
sought to see her face but it appeared to be fading from my sight. I brought my hand up to my eyes to see if it was the sun that blinded me, but I saw nothing. I stood and looked for my robe, but nothing clothed me.
“Return, great witch,” she said, and with that, she and the beautiful white shepherd, vanished.
I looked everywhere for her. I roamed the streets calling her name, but it was as if she had never existed. Soon, I could not see the road before me and I began to fade back into the opacity of my destiny. I allowed it. I had had enough of Loudon.
* * * *
I awoke, as if from a deep sleep. Julian was at my side. The church surrounded us and the beautiful white bird was perched on the shoulder of Christ.
“Thank you,” he said.
He led me to the altar. The colors of the glass in the windows was so bright it would have caused me to squint had I eyes to do so. The reds were abundant and the green glass robes of the apostles so brilliant I wondered if they were etched in emeralds.
“You used me,” I uttered.
“No. The moment was yours, not mine.”
“You used me.”
“He chose his own destiny, Annabel.”
“What became of Claudette?”
“She followed him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I thought the dog would take us, but both are gone now.”
“You raped her. It was you who brought Lucifer to Loudon.”
“It was my right to take her.”
“Your right?”
“I am a man.”
“You are a coward,” I said and spit on the ground near his feet. I felt his pain.
“My loss is punishment enough. I loved her.”
“I am sorry for you.”
“Suffering is endless, isn’t it?”
“I must return. Can I?”
“To what?”
“To my husband, my children.”
“You would leave me as well?”
“I am sorry.”
“I owe God. I have sinned.”
“I need form, Julian. I am lost again, without a body.”
“So be it.”
He kissed the air I filled, and I immediately took on flesh. It was so sudden, and a tingling sensation filled my entire being.
“My God!” I exclaimed. “I can feel blood in my veins.”
“She had a child, you know.”
“What?”
“A girl.”
I looked at him, now that I had eyes to do so.
“What are you saying?”
With that he stood up and brought me a mirror. I took the glass from him and brought it to my face.
I was amazed at how much I resembled them both. Her dark clear eyes, and his rich, thick hair. Why, I was almost as beautiful as my original form.
“But what happened to the girl?”
“Nothing.”
“How can that be? If I wear her flesh, she must then be dead.”
“No.”
“Explain that to me, Julian. I do not understand.”
“Claudette is a witch. A witch can choose to prevent the entry of a human soul to be born in her body.”
“So this child was born without a soul?”
“I am afraid so.”
“You give this body to me now?”
He nodded and took my hand.
“This body will not die as the others have. You can move through the dimensions in this form and never kill again. Please, no more killing.”
“How did she grow without a soul?”
“I willed her to age. I wanted it so.”
I cried in his arms while he stroked my hair.
“She would not have my child,” he said. “But I kept the child’s body with me.”
“Will I ever see you again, Julian?” I asked.
“In the eye of God,” he answered. “We will all be found.”
And with that, he disappeared entirely, and I was left standing in the old church alone. I called out his name but he did not answer me. The white bird flew toward the ceiling, which opened its high peaked roof to reveal soft puffs of clouds in a light blue sky. As I stared above me, I began to lose my balance, and before I knew it, the sky faded from sight and I returned to an enveloping darkness. I drifted inside this darkness. For a long time, I heard nothing, and then, a voice appeared out of nowhere. Soon I recognized it as my own.
* * * *
I finally began to see light; I looked toward it, and there, beyond its shadows, Philippe’s precious face peered into my eyes. And there was my darling daughter, Emie, holding my hand so very tightly in her own.
“Welcome home, Mother,” they said in unison.
“Philippe, Emie!” I exclaimed as I reached out my arms to enfold them. “Where am I?”
Philippe smiled. “Brooklyn, Mother.”
“What chronology?” I asked as I looked around the familiar room.
Emie nestled her head in the crook of my shoulder.
“2010,” she told me.
It seems I had simply walked through the chamber and had appeared in the library, as if out of nowhere. I now wore the face of Julian and Claudette’s child, and it startled my children a bit. My, my, but I had so much to tell them. It took several days to catch them up and they questioned me incessantly, as you can imagine.
Epilogue
You might wonder why I chose your century to call home when I have cursed it so often. Well, I have my endearing memories with Michele and the hope that he will one day return to his family. I have always loved this house, and my children, Philippe and Emie, prefer these modern times into which they were born. I think they are most comfortable with it. Besides, it matters little, for we cross the dimensions so often. Time and space are irrelevant to us. There are chronologies that you would refer to as “future” that are somewhat more appealing than the twenty-first century, but my house is lost to me by 2100, demolished for a five-city-block shopping development, and the city of Brooklyn becomes so thick with people that I find it overbearing.
So, 2010 will do. Yes, I remain in your dimension for the most part, though much about it annoys me: your crowds, your crimes, your bang-bang music. I avoid those horrible underground things you travel through in your harried chronology, those dirty and thoroughly inhuman tunnels, “subways” I believe you call them. I have a driver take me from one point to another, even though I detest the speed of your automobiles. I miss the horse and buggy, but so be it, I must make some sacrifice. Modern life, as you would claim it to be, is not altogether distasteful. There are benefits. I enjoy wearing slacks, or smoking an occasional cigar—a leftover addiction, I would assume, from my time in Malcolm’s body.
I know that you wonder if I am ever to find Michele again. Well, I am searching through every inch of space imaginable looking for my husband, but I am unable to call upon his soul, to keep him in one place long enough to wait for my presence. I am sure that being the historian that he is, he is thrilled to search the dimensions and find all those significant “historical eruptions,” as he referred to them. But I do not give up; no certainly, I never shall. How I miss him! I often receive music boxes when I awake from sleep. I must have thousands of them by now, and they play music from every period of what you call “time.” They make me so sad though. Are they Michele’s gifts to me, I often wonder, or was my husband nothing more than a trick of perception, an illusion living so very briefly in an imagination ripped from my soul by the evil Lucifer. One can put nothing past the devil.
Still, Philippe and I search the chambers for Michele, but we seem just to arrive somewhere after he has left, which assures me that he still exists. We are so often told that a tall, dark man fitting his description has mysteriously vanished. There is fear, of course, that the evil Urbain is holding him captive just to torment us both. But I will find the answer soon enough. I must find the answer.
* * * *
“Father has gone to look for you,” Philippe exclaimed after I r
eturned from Loudon in the body of Claudette and Julian’s daughter. “We split up in Rome in 5 BC. I willed myself to return here in search of you, but Father stayed. He told me he just wanted to await the birth of Jesus and he would join us.”
But he has not joined us, and even Emie’s attempts to contact him telepathically are not fruitful. But we continue to search and to call out to him. Philippe and I went immediately to trace his last encounter, believing him to be in existence during the first century of Christ, but when we entered that chronology, he was not there. So we stayed and followed Jesus until his crucifixion, but Michele did not appear in that dimension again.
Ah, how proud I am of my son Philippe. He has altered so many lives with his magic in centuries past, as you call them, and he continues to pursue with a passion what you refer to as the future.
For the most part, my daughter, Emie, also remains in the twenty-first century, and we always find her as we leave her, deep in study. She travels as a witch quite frequently now and moves from one dimension to the next, looking, I suppose, for as much knowledge as her soul can hold. She tells me often that everything she learns is necessary for the discovery of the new transition.
Matthew never left Elizabeth’s side again. The family split our vast fortune, and Matthew and Elizabeth took theirs to early twentieth-century Rome. They have a beautiful home not far from Via Giulia, and there they remain, safe from the warrant against Luther Guyon. Elizabeth often joins me in my quests into other dimensions and has truly mastered the joy of being a witch. I am so proud of her. She moves her soul with such speed that it rivals my own. But my son, Matthew, refuses to join us in your year of chronology, the century I now call home. He refers to it as a terrible disappointment, a loud, vile hell in which too many poorly clothed, unenlightened people run amuck. He says it depresses him.
I still find my dear, sweet Meredith Mae with that horrid woman, Ursula, though they are constantly on the run. I learn from Emie’s psychic communications with my granddaughter that they must stay one step ahead of Urbain. They fear he will retaliate against Ursula for taking Jeanne’s flesh. I can only hope neither one of them will age, for poor Ursula cannot cross time, and my Meredith Mae will not leave her side.
Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem Page 41