Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  She is taunted, yelled at, manhandled, chained. Driven to the dungeon, yelled at, manhandled some more. She is bodily searched, for witches markings and whatever else they want to see. Her head is shaved. She is chained to the wall. When their coercions and threats do not sway her, she is no witch and will not confess, she is forced between the walls, caught in the limbo agony of screaming muscles and traumatized bones. It will never end, she thought. We are caught in limbo forever.

  She sees him coming, his weighty, snake-like chains slithering alongside his feet, inch-by-inch toward her, each step a nail in her coffin. He grabs her arm, drags her to the wagon, chains her on, and drives her away. She looks back, sees her husband on his knees on the ground, her dear and loving husband, his hands outstretched toward her as though if he could reach her he could pull her back and keep her with him where she belonged. Where else in the world could she belong but with James? But he couldn’t reach her, and then he was gone…

  James heard the moaning from deep in Sarah’s gut, a guttural moan that began in anguish and ended in horror. Olivia and Theresa rushed to Sarah’s side, brushing her hair from her face, stroking her back, saying sweet motherly nothings to soothe her. When she settled some James cradled her head against his chest.

  “Sarah, please. It’s going to be all right. We’re all going to be all right.” He brushed her matted curls from her eyes and wiped her tears away with the tips of his fingers. “I know you’re thinking this is like 1692, but it’s not the same. Then, they accused you of something you weren’t, but I am what they say I am. Which is why I’m going to be all right. I’m immortal and I’m strong. Don’t ever forget that, Sarah. I’m immortal and I’m strong.”

  “No, no, no,” Sarah said, her tears flowing freely down her face and onto James’s chest, soaking his shirt through. “No, no, no.”

  “Sarah…”

  “No, no, no….”

  James tried to calm her, to convince her that everything would be all right, but she was too far gone to hear him. As he sat on the bed, still trying to soothe her, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Doctor Masters. The doctor was on his way.

  James watched nervously as Doctor Masters added some medication to Sarah’s IV and she was sleeping in a matter of moments. James slumped over, the anguish everywhere within him. He turned to Theresa, and Olivia took his hand.

  “You need to take care of Sarah while I’m gone,” he said. “While I’m gone…” The words echoed in his head and he felt hollow suddenly. His voice sounded strange to his ears and he wondered what language he was speaking.

  “You are my family,” Olivia said. “I will take care of them. I will take care of them until you come home because you will come home.” Olivia was so overcome with emotion she turned away. She walked into Theresa’s open arms, and Theresa hugged her.

  After the doctor left and Olivia and Theresa retired for the night, James sat on the bed next to Sarah. He sat there for hours, unstirring, holding her hand, watching her in her drug-induced sleep. He didn’t need to memorize her face. He did that years before. Years before. He knew her wide, full smile. The luscious rosebud lips he needed to kiss whenever he looked at her. He knew the silky softness of her dark curls, the wondering curiosity behind her dark eyes. He knew the warm softness of her touch. He had had her in his mind every night for three hundred and nineteen years, and he thought he would have more time before he had to rely again on his memory of her.

  When dawn would soon shine through, James went into the bedroom and emptied his frantic packing from earlier. He filled the duffle bag with a few items for himself, a change of clothes, two photographs—one of Sarah and one of Sarah, Grace, and him, the triumvirate of Wentworths laughing, holding hands. Joyful. It was a shock to realize that photo had been taken only three months before. Grace had grown so much. He packed some composition notebooks he had bought from the general store and a handful of ballpoint pens, and he dropped in his cell phone with the unlisted number though he suspected he wouldn’t be able to keep it. He had seen these round-ups before. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small antique-looking key, turning it over in his hands, remembering the touch of it, as though he were reacquainting himself with an old friend. He stared at the key, through it to the memories on the other side, and he dropped it into the bag and zippered the bag closed.

  As he walked around the quiet little carriage house, looking at the whitewashed kitchen, the living room with the red gingham curtains and the red overstuffed sofa and chairs, he thought of his wooden gabled house sitting lonely in Salem. He pictured the great room with his seventeenth century wooden desk—to which the antique key belonged—the flat screen television mounted onto the wall, the bookcases overflowing with books, and the bedroom where Sarah and he slept. He was surprised at his numbness. He thought he should be reduced to tears or fuming with red-blood anger. He thought he should be raging, or at least feeling sad. He looked again at Sarah, and though she was unconscious from the drugs the doctor had given her he could see the strain in her tight eyes and pulled lips. She was sleeping, but she wasn’t resting. He kissed her forehead and stroked her arm, then walked away, afraid of waking her. He had to stay strong. He would be the strength for all of them. He had decided.

  His resolve nearly broke when he heard his daughter’s voice.

  “Dadda,” she said.

  James looked in Grace’s crib and smiled. She was nearly eleven months old, and she had been babbling for a while now. But this was the first time he heard something that sounded like an actual word. His name. He wanted to cry, but he refused. She wouldn’t see him bleed from his eyes, not now.

  He took a moment to compose his voice. “Hi, Grace,” he said. He lifted her from her crib and he sat with her on the rocking chair in the bedroom. He rocked them slowly, gently, needing to soothe himself as much as his daughter.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said, his voice a whisper. “I have to go away for a little while. It’s just a little while, but I’m going to miss you very much. I love you, Grace. I’m so glad you found your way home. You make me so happy. Now I’m going to be fine, and your mother and you are going to be fine. Olivia and Jennifer, and Theresa and Francine will all be here to help you. We’re all going to stay strong, and then we’ll see each other again very soon and everything will be fine. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Dadda,” Grace said.

  “I love you, Grace.”

  James heard footsteps down the hall. He smelled the familiar sandalwood scent and turned to see Olivia standing in the open doorway. In the deepened lines in her motherly face he saw his own fears reflected back to him. Looking at Olivia, he felt numb, nothing, like when your body is injured and at first there’s great pain to alert you that something is wrong, but then the body becomes kinder and shuts down. That was where James was. He was experiencing the greatest pain he could imagine, and now he was shutting down.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Olivia said. “I’ll take care of them. But you need to stay strong too, James.” Olivia stuttered as she spoke, and though she struggled to hold her face tight she couldn’t stop the emotion from cracking through. “You need to come back because we all need you. Your wife and your daughter need you.”

  “Don’t worry, Olivia. I’m coming home. I’ve decided.”

  Olivia kissed the top of Grace’s head and smiled.

  “I believe you,” she said.

  Chapter 23

  When Sarah awoke the next day everything was hazy. She opened her swollen eyes to a darkened room and blurred vision, gradations of gray blanketing everywhere she looked. She expected to see the dark brown wood of her gabled house, her husband asleep beside her in their bed, her daughter asleep in the room next door. She threw her legs over the side of the bed to go to Grace and moaned aloud at the sharp pain in her stomach, like she was stabbed by newly sharpened knives. Suddenly, the gray blanket cleared away, leaving a clear view of the hospital
bed, the IV tubes connected to her arm, the white walls and red furniture of Theresa’s house. She saw a shadow and started, but recognized James in the lightless room, asleep in the overstuffed recliner by her side. She looked at the windows at the heavy black curtains blocking out any semblance of sunlight and sighed. The sharp, butchering pain returned, only this wasn’t in her stomach where her stitches healed. This was in her heart, which wouldn’t heal nearly as well.

  “How are you feeling? You look better.”

  Olivia stood by the side of the bed, a tray with medication in her hands. She had that detective seeking clues look as she studied Sarah’s careworn face. But Sarah was too consumed by watching James, still lost in his catatonic sleep, and she looked at the window again, wondering how bright the sun was and how much longer until it was dark.

  “Doctor Masters said you can have some broth,” Olivia said.

  Sarah nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes from James. She had a vague recollection of the night before and she knew he was leaving. She remembered seeing the pock-faced constable, the chains, the walls, but the rest of it was a blank.

  Olivia put the tray on the end table near the bed, then sat next to Sarah and took her hands. “I’ve been wanting to do a reading on you for some time now, Sarah,” she said.

  “Jennifer said you’ve been wanting to do one since we went to the exhibition at the college.”

  “That’s right. May I do one now?”

  “What if you learn something I don’t want to know?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather know what you’re dealing with?”

  Sarah nodded. “All right,” she said.

  “Good girl.” Olivia gripped Sarah’s hands tighter, closed her eyes and began rocking back and forth, the same bobbing Sarah remembered from her psychic reading when she first arrived in Salem. Olivia said nothing, squeezing her eyes tighter, shaking her head from side to side like she was saying no to a voice inside her head. She turned her face down toward her shoulder as though she needed to concentrate. Sarah held her breath, waiting for the static she felt in the air during her past-life regression, like shocks of light touching her everywhere, waiting for the strange electric connection she felt to everyone and everything whenever she was confronted by the supernatural. She turned her ear toward Olivia so she could catch her Wiccan friend’s wise predictions for her future, James’s future, their future together. Finally, Olivia opened her eyes and shook her head, her mouth opened like she wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say.

  “What do you see?” Sarah asked.

  “Nothing,” Olivia said. “I can’t fall into a trance. I can’t get a read on you right now.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s nothing to worry about, dear. It happens sometimes.”

  “Olivia, if you know something you need to tell me. Good or bad, I need to know.”

  Olivia kissed her cheek. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Sarah grasped Olivia’s hand and held it to her heart. “There’s nothing to tell about my future?”

  “It doesn’t mean you don’t have a future. It just means I can’t connect to it right now.”

  “Is it true what you said when we brought Grace home? That there’s no such thing as coincidence? It’s not a coincidence that James and I are being torn apart again for reasons beyond our control? Is this our destiny?”

  Olivia put her arms around Sarah. “Do you remember what Martha said to you at the past-life regression last year? About your soul, and James’s?”

  “She said our souls were intertwined. She said we’d be together whenever, wherever because it’s our destiny.”

  “She was right, Sarah. No matter what comes between you, you will always find your way back to each other. That I’m sure of.”

  Sarah sighed. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the feather pillows Theresa bought to make her more comfortable in the narrow stretch of the hospital cot. She exhaled deeply, trying to release the nail-biting worry she felt everywhere inside her, in her stitches, in her injuries, in her heart. She tried to let herself drift away, float upwards to the clouds, float away from that hospital bed, away from her wounds, away from the accident that debilitated her for who knows how much longer. She didn’t have time to be weak now. Suddenly an influx of questions flooded her tired mind and she tapped her temples trying to make the unwanted thoughts go away.

  Olivia took Sarah’s hands in hers. “What is it, Sarah?”

  Everything else filtered away and there was one nagging question left. And Olivia was the one who could answer it.

  “Why did I come back? Why am I here?”

  “You came back because you had to. Neither you nor James could have found peace if you hadn’t.”

  “I came back to be separated from him again? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “We don’t always understand what’s happening when it’s happening,” Olivia said. “Patience, dear. All in good time.”

  Sarah struggled to sit up. She still had such scratching pains in her stomach from the littlest movement, and she still felt dizzy whenever she turned her head too quickly. Olivia fluffed the pillows, propped them against the back of the bed, then helped Sarah straighten into a half-sitting, half-laying position.

  Sarah grimaced as a wave of sharp-knife pain slashed across her abdomen, and Olivia wiped her brow with a cool, damp cloth.

  “I’m all right,” Sarah said. Olivia sat beside her and took her hand. “When we were in Salem, Jennifer told me how Chandresh didn’t believe his wife would come back, and she believed that too. She said Chandresh loved his wife, but he said that was his past and his present was with Jennifer in Salem. How can they be so sure Chandresh’s wife won’t come back when I came back to James?”

  “Chandresh said good-bye to his wife. He made peace with her death. She was taken from him cruelly, as you were taken from James in 1692, and Chandresh suffered himself while they were on the trail to Oklahoma. It doesn’t mean he loved his wife less than James loves you. It means he was able to accept their fate and he moved on. James never said good-bye to you, Sarah. He couldn’t. His life in this world didn’t matter to him if he didn’t feel connected to you somehow. Everything he did, everything he thought, was about finding some bond to you. In a way, you could say he called you back to him. He never let you go, and now here you are. You see? It’s all part of the master plan.”

  “Can’t you try again to get a reading on me?” Sarah asked. “Jennifer said you’re a powerful witch and witches all over the world come to you for advice. Use your powers, Olivia. Tell me what’s going to happen.” She managed a weak smile. “That’s how desperate I am—I’m begging you for a reading now when you scared me out of my wits last time.”

  “You weren’t familiar with the supernatural world yet,” Olivia said. “You’re more open to what I have to say now. Besides, I wouldn’t say I’m so powerful. I do my best, that’s all.”

  “When I was at the Witches Lair you had no problem falling into a trance.”

  “There are many reasons for disturbances in the energy. It might be because you’re injured, or because of the difficult circumstances and your mind is too anxious and your body is too tight to let your energy flow, or it might be because things aren’t clear yet. Not everything is decided for us, Sarah. Often it’s our own choices that guide our future.” Olivia looked around and shrugged. “I wish Theresa were here now, or Martha. They’re so much better at explaining this than I am.”

  “I understand what you’re saying.”

  “Good. If there’s one thing I want you to remember it’s that there’s something larger, something benevolent in your life guiding you, there for you, giving you the strength you need whenever you need it if only you’ll allow yourself to depend on it. It’s there now.”

  “I don’t feel anything benevolent now,” Sarah said. “All I feel is anger and pain and fear.”

  Olivia nodded. “Trust i
n it, Sarah. It will carry you through the worst of the worst and help you understand when you’re standing on the other side.”

  “I need it now,” Sarah said.

  “Yes,” Olivia said, “you do.”

  “You need what now, Sarah?” James sat upright as he reached for Sarah’s hand, his eyes fixed on Olivia. “What does she need, Olivia?”

  “It’s nothing,” Olivia said. “I tried a reading on her, but I wasn’t able to focus on anything. Her energy wasn’t clear.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry.” She pointed at the tray on the side table. “Eat your broth, Sarah,” she said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  James sat in the bed next to his wife. He put his arm around her shoulders and held her close. He kissed the top of her hair and breathed in deeply.

  “Do I still smell like strawberries and cream?” she asked.

  “Always.”

  “What does Grace smell like?”

  “Cinnamon.”

  Sarah nodded. “I like cinnamon.”

  “Me too. Strawberries and cream and cinnamon go well together.”

  She pressed herself into his side, trying again to meld into him and again finding they were all too separate.

  “I want to go with you,” she said.

  “They’ll see soon enough how human you are.”

  “I should have let you turn me.”

  “No, Sarah. You were right to say no. You need to stay exactly as you are. You’re perfect exactly as you are. Besides, you need to stay with Grace.”

  “I know,” she said.

  James kissed her tears away, and Sarah savored each moment his flesh touched hers. He sat in the overstuffed chair so he could look into her face, they had just a few more hours to see each other, able to reach out and touch each other before they parted until who-knows-when. James kissed her forehead, then stroked her face from her curls to her chin.

  “I never finished telling you about the Trail of Tears,” he said.