Triggers: Death, Blood/Gore

Chapter 1

In many ways, moonless nights in the village of Salem were much preferred to nights such as this. The moon dispelled obscurity, yes, but it was also quite a haunted thing. It left shadows in the places it could not reach; long, crooked fingers marking grooves over the land. An open palm that somehow fell just across the church steeple, as though to make clear the thing Satan most wanted to reach. Swollen and clothed in the sun’s skin as it was, the moon appeared a fearsome visage; basking its milky light over rooftops and within the veined lines of the road, tracing bony fingertips along the three figures below.

She must have poked one of them too sharply, for he halted suddenly, jerking up with a shudder.

“Abbott?” the tallest man asked, turning about upon finding one of his companions not beside him. “Abbott, we really must hurry. What can be the matter?”

“Are you quite well, sir?” the third and youngest man asked. He was but fourteen, and frightfully skinny. His overcoat hung loose and heavy over his frame, and he trembled beneath it. His eyes were like the eyes of a beggar-dog: starved, wild, and desperate.

Abbott, as his companions had named him, looked back, shaking his head. “I just feel like I’m being watched,” he admitted, bringing a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s the damned moon, I’ll warrant.”

The boy gasped, clapping a hand over his trembling lips. “You mustn’t speak that way, Mr. Abbott,” he warned, “Not where God can hear.”

The tall man laughed. A single belt, broad and sharp. “God can hear you anywhere,” he said, throwing his arms about and spinning in a half-circle. “It’s no use hiding sins behind closed doors.”

“I’ve always felt like God can see us better here though, somehow,” Abbott murmured, “Like His eyes are always around, always watching, no matter where I am in the village. But when we’re out of town, I don’t feel it so much. Something is definitely watching me now.”

“Ah, Abbott, look, it’s nothing but your wife come to see you off.” The tall man pointed upward, leaning down to wave despite Mrs. Abbott watching from the second-story window. Abbott whirled around to look, and indeed there she was; in nothing but a nightgown with her dark hair hanging down in ringlets past her shoulders. One pale hand held back the drape whilst the other balanced a candle in a brass holder. The little flame caught her eyes and Abbott almost thought he could see them sparkle. Mrs. Abbott’s eyes were black as ink pools, and if he held a light right up to them, he could see the thin line between iris and pupil. But most of the time, she looked like nothing but an elf leering back at him through a woman’s skin. Now, she looked like a wild animal, stalking him from the shadows.

“Let’s just go,” Abbott said gruffly. “You said he hadn’t much time, boy?”

“The physician said so,” the boy nodded.

“Then best we hurry,” the tall man said, striding forward once again. “Wouldn’t want to miss seeing the great Reverend Davis out the door, now would we?”

“I wish you wouldn’t speak like that,” Abbott said as they continued down the road. “Someone might think-”

“And wouldn’t that just be terrible,” the tall man said. His voice was still cheerful, his smile wide and shattering. “What would we do if someone starts to think?”

“She’s still watching you, sir,” the boy said, looking back, “Mrs. Abbott. I suppose she wants you to wave.”

Abbott turned back again, pausing. He gave a tentative brush of his palm. She only smiled, her bloodless lips pursed and taut to the edges of her jawbone. “I don’t like her,” Abbott said quietly. He dragged the words up like bile, spitting them out across the snow. They shone in the moonlight like drops of blood.

“Really?” the boy asked. “But she’s so pretty.”

“Mhmm,” the tall man acknowledged, a purr in the back of his throat. “But so are elves and fairies, boy. Never trust something that came from the wild. It follows a different God than us.”

“Did she come out of the wild?” the boy asked softly. In his curiosity, he had quite forgotten formalities.

Abbott didn’t seem to notice the boy’s lapse, his mind slipping farther away– as if he could retreat from the hairs standing at attention on his neck, the frothy light casting shadows where they oughtn’t be. “She did, the very day she was born, she did,” he murmured. “Her mother ran off when she started showing, and they found her when she was in labor. Do you remember, Davis?” he asked of the tall man, “When they brought that baby out of the woods, all covered in blood, and her mother screaming behind her. Most frightening damned thing I ever heard.”

“Sure, but you were but a boy,” Davis said matter-of-factly. “If men shuddered at that, women’s screams, where would we be today?”

“But, why did she run away?” the boy asked, “What of the father?”

“She ran away to the father,” Davis said, a soft smile creeping under his words, “To her master. In the forest.”

“You don’t mean....” the boy said, and now the chill he felt had none to do with the cold.

“Straight from the Devil’s loin,” Abbott whispered.

“God...” the boy said, the sound misshapen and bloody around the glass in his throat.

“They hanged the mother soon after,” Davis said. “The Reverend took the baby. Reverend Harrison, that is, not my father. And now, she’s Mrs. Abbott, and there’s nothing about her we can point to and say, ‘Now, there’s the problem,’ but there’s no denying she’s off.”

“She’s barren,” Abbott said. “Perhaps there’s something in that.”

“Maybe there’s a blessing in that,” Davis said. “What kind of children do you suppose she would have?”

The outlines of the men faded as they continued down the hill, past the blacksmith’s and the locksmith’s and the church, toward the house of the dying Reverend Davis and only two pairs of eyes watched them go. The ones with only a faint line between iris and pupil turned away, the curtain falling back over the pane as she turned back to the bed. “They’re gone,” she said to the figure lying there.

_________

The room was dark. The room was dark because Lisabeth had made sure of it, long before Jane had slipped under the bedclothes that evening. She had drawn the curtains, folding them over each other at the seam and examining them thoroughly until she was certain she could not see the pane. She had gone to the fireplace and coaxed the little flame there to its death; prodding it gently until it collapsed over its feet, still reaching for the log she had pried from its grasp. The little flame cried out, wicked! with a final hiss before it fell dead and Lisabeth took a long while to stand after that.

When she did stand up, she took off her shoes– because they always made the floor moan beneath her when she walked– and she set them carefully in the far corner in the shadow of the cradle. She went around to every pursed lip in the floor and the walls, and wiggled her eyes deep into them because she knew that eyes could reach where fingers could not, and once she was sure she could not see anything but a dark void between each plank, she took her candle up and watched the husbands go. Then, she suffocated this flame too. And again it whispered, wicked, but this was almost loving, like a mother’s hand stroking up her cheek, and the smoke made her eyes sting. Hours passed and the room was still dark, and now Jane was asleep, curled in toward her with one bronzed hand clutching at her pillow. Blond wisps stuck to her eyelashes like the soft fibers in maize and her breath was loud in Lisabeth’s ear, like church bells. But that only reminded her.

Lisabeth rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. The roof had been sorely abused over the last winter, and one of the planks still showed it; its neck broken and wavering as it clung to its brethren by the fingertips. It swung like something dead and suffering, like something that couldn’t let go because there were still heads it needed to lay over and storms it needed to catch and a wailing child it needed to soothe. The plank was oaken and had seen well over a hundred seasons when it was alive. It would last another winter, but some were not so lucky.

Fingers curling around her wrist made her breath catch, but she tempered the exhale upon seeing Jane’s pale eyes looking up at her. “What’s worrying you, Lissie?” she murmured.

“It’s nothing,” Lisabeth said softly. “Only...”

Jane propped herself up on one elbow, eyes blinking rapidly. “Only?”

“I worry we’ll be seen,” Lisabeth confessed.

“The husbands are away, though.”

“I know. I’m not worried about them.”

Jane’s lips parted, but no sound came out for a moment. Her unspoken thoughts beat upon the walls and shouted deliriously through the air, so loud and close to Lisabeth’s face that she felt their vile lips trace over the shell of her ear, carving the thought through the valves of her heart.She knew what Jane would say before her larynx found the courage. “Are you worried about God?” Jane asked.

“I fear it’s something of that nature,” Lisabeth said. “And yet it’s also entirely different.”

Jane sat up properly, crossing her legs and fumbling her hands in her lap. Jane was prone to fumbling and yet she was far from clumsy. “I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles,” she said. “Everyone else always speaks in riddles and it’s quite frustrating.”

“Who else speaks in riddles?” Lisabeth asked, the edges of her lips curling up.

“Mr. Davis, for one,” Jane said, tilting her head up, “He says all sorts of nonsense things and I never know what he means. I wish he would say what he wants to say for once, because all this guessing gets so tedious.”

“Mr. Davis is an odd man,” Lisabeth said, smiling properly now. “And I suspect he was dropped on his head as a child.”

“I’ve suspected that too,” Jane said solemnly. “Sometimes I think his brains got all loose and liquidy, and they might squelch out of his face at any moment. When he screws his eyes shut tight and rocks a little, I’m sure that some of it tried to snake out through his eyes and he just caught it in time. And when he kisses me, I can feel it against my tongue. It tastes like broken thoughts.”

“And now who’s speaking in riddles?” Lisabeth chided.

“It most certainly isn’t me,” Jane said, planting her hands on her hips. “I said exactly what I meant. My husband is a loose-brained fool who might drop dead at any minute from all the nonsense that pours out of his head.”

Lisabeth shivered. The room was dark and secure and no sniffing eyes could ever reach, and yet...

“You should be quieter,” Lisabeth hushed.

“More quiet, you mean,” Jane said, heedlessly.

“Well, then, you should do that too. You’re awfully loud, and you should be careful what you say about the husbands.”

“You know my mouth. It’s skittish of talking narrow. Bad things happen in narrow spaces, you know, and my tongue hates narrow spaces. That’s why it flaps so much.”

“So I gathered,” Lisabeth said.

“I think you ought to give it something to do, if it’s bothering you so much.”

“I think I oughtn’t to have woken you up, if you’re going to talk like this.”

Jane leaned forward, placing a hand on Lisabeth’s knee. “Stop worrying about God. Stop worrying about the husbands. And start worrying about your Jane and how cold her corner of the bed has gotten with you scrunched up all the way over here.” 

With that, Jane pulled her down and wrapped an arm around her. It was soft and easy and comforting and never once had Mr. Abbott’s arm felt like that in the five years of their marriage. Never once had Mr. Abbott seen Lisabeth’s tears in the entire span of it. They were the secret parts of her soul; the diamonds that no one had ever presented to her and that had to be crushed in her heart to shine on their own. She used them sparingly, because you only get so many in a lifetime and God hates the extravagance. But they rolled freely down her cheeks now, and Jane kissed them into sparkling sand on her skin, and everything ought to be better, and this ought to be happiness. This ought to be her future.

But the room did not feel dark enough, and there was still a God outside somewhere to contend with.

_________

The second pair of eyes watched the three men shuffle under the big shadow, and watched the last man look up, and the eyes glanced away because they knew they had been spotted. But, no. The man was looking at the pale woman standing at the window. The eyes were safe to look again and they watched the men leave. The ears were not as skilled as the eyes so they couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but they had heard earlier of poor Reverend Davis, God bless and keep him. And so the head nodded and the heart spoke prayer-sounding words because that is what God must do, and anything standing so high above everything and seeing everything must be God. This particular God had to stand on a stool to see out the church steeple’s window, but size never made any difference. It was all about the eyes.

The little God watched the pale woman, and when the curtain swished shut and the candle went out, the little feet stepped down from the stool and walked over the church threshold and into the shadow. The moon looked on and the little hand waved, and it was a curious thing when their eyes lined up because Gods often didn’t get to admire one another for so long, with all the sinners out there in the world. The little God twirled for inspection, and then it was time to poke about because most sinners waited for night and there was a just-soft-enough plum waiting on a table for after the voice finished condemning. The voice loved to condemn because the voice knew the tongue well, and the tongue loved just-sweet-enough plum juice curled up inside just-soft-enough skin. And if the face and the hands got soiled enough from the plum, then there would be a cloth that would draw up the skin until it was clean. The cloth couldn’t be warm, but it would be wetted, and the hand that held it would be gentle, and there would be a soft voice that whispered approval.

It is important for the little God to have approval. It warms the little God’s heart, and makes the eyes want to seek out more sinners to prove to the good that the evil is there. If the good didn’t believe in the evil anymore, then the good might not need the little God. And then there would be no more just-soft-enough plums and gentle cloths.

The little God went to the house the pale woman was in because the pale woman was someone to keep an eye on. The pale woman had eyes with no pupils, and she was a wild thing. Her mother was a witch and her father was The Bad One and she didn’t die when she was born, which is not a good sign. It could mean she has malicious intent. The little God needs to watch her and make sure she doesn’t say dangerous things. But the ears don’t work very well, and the pale woman was on the second floor.

The little God goes to the door and pushes it. The body strains, but the door is stubborn. The hands decide to pull instead, but still the door won’t budge. The eyes furrow and the lips draw taut. Perhaps the door is a God too. The little God circles the house, but there is no other way in and the moon falls over the roof, so perhaps the pale woman is being watched already anyway.

The little God darts up the road and hears a voice. Voices at night are not good. Voices at night mean sinners. The little feet stumble toward the noise and the ears can hear the sound well enough, but the words are hard to pick out because they move so fast together. The eyes are better at this. 

The little God creeps up to the little house’s wall. The little hands feel for the gaps in the wood, and the littlest finger finds a hole. The little God lowers onto little knees and the eye wiggles into the hole until it is nice and comfortable, and the eye sees a boy with a small straw person.

The boy is moving the straw person’s arms with his own fingers, and making the straw person walk like it is real. But it isn’t real. It is straw. The boy is laughing at what the woman is saying. The woman has her own straw person and she is speaking in a funny voice as she makes her straw person jump up and down. She has to use her hand too, because the straw person isn’t real.

It isn’t real. They are making it up. The boy and the woman are calling for things that aren’t there. It isn’t safe. It isn’t good. It is something that must be condemned. The eye starts to crawl its way out of its nest, but then the thus far diminished ear alights on a word and is so pleased with itself that the pulse flutters and the cheeks get hot.

Mother, the boy said.

Mother.

The little God had one of those, once. The little God can still remember the mother’s fingers in the hair.

The straw people look fun. It would be nice if there was a straw person, and someone called Mother waiting with the plum.

But the straw people aren’t real. And something that isn’t real oughtn’t pretend to be; that invites mischief. The eye retreated and the little God stood up, brushing off the knees. Straw people and mothers are not so real as plums.

About the Author

I have been writing fiction as long as I've known to write and have been telling stories since before that. I love the process of imagining different worlds and developing unique characters. I started this piece because I have a passion for studying history, and I have always been fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials, so I wanted to write something that took place in that era of fear and distrust. While this story is not strictly historically accurate and takes on many creative liberties, I really wanted to capture that fear that people had surrounding death and damnation and how it permeated throughout the community at the time. As a lover of both historical fiction and fantasy, writing within a historical setting where magic and monsters felt part of reality to the people of the time was very alluring to me. While this piece is part of a somewhat larger work, its progression is still very fluid and I myself am not entirely sure where it is going to go, which I think can be one of the most exciting things in the process of creating a piece of fiction. 

Instagram: @delaneyjazz

Cover design created using Canva design tools.