Malice (14 page)

From Governor John Winthrop’s Journal:

An Account of the Execution of Rebecca Goodman of Millingham, 1648.

At this Court one Rebecca Goodman of Millingham was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft and burned for it. The evidence against her was: 1. that she was found to have such a malignant touch as many persons (men, women, and children) whom she stroked or touched were taken with deafness, or vomiting; 2. some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly; other things she could tell of (as secret speeches, etc.) which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of; 3. she had (upon search) an apparent teat in her secret parts as fresh as if it had been newly sucked; 4. in the prison in the clear daylight there was seen in her arms a little child which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it said it had vanished. Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died.

Apparently Rebecca Goodman had been absolved and reburied here in 1712 when the practice of murdering women for being different had lost its appeal.

“Don’t you see?” Lysander had whispered back in the shadowy confines of the Millingham library. “Those eyes tacked all over his journal. McMurphy wasn’t going crazy. He was using them. Maybe he came to the library, just like us and found what we found.”

“Using them?” she had asked. “But for what?”

“Protection.”

Her body had stiffened involuntarily.

“I still don’t see what good going to the cemetery will do,” she said at last.

“I’m not sure either,” Lysander answered truthfully, “but everything we’ve found so far has led us here. If those sessions with Avery are real, then there’s a connection between me and these murders. McMurphy, your mother, Hume. And who knows, maybe even Rebecca Goodman.”

Sam stopped to check the layout of the grounds she’d found at the library. Behind them was the stone wall they’d scaled. Past that, the small grove of birch trees and beyond that still a grouping of freshly dug graves. That meant they were approaching a part of the cemetery that was as old as Millingham itself.

Lysander swallowed hard.

Several weather-beaten tombstones stood in a crooked row. Lysander scanned each one: Mather Pell, Drake Butler, Deborah Lockwood, Samuel Tyler, Elizabeth Cabel. He had never seen graves this old before. What were the bodies like? he wondered. Had they turned to dust?

Did anything of them remain—bits of clothing, strands of hair, a grisly skeleton? Or had the cold harshness of time worn them away as it had the very stones that marked their graves? Samantha checked the map one final time and then pointed at the stone marker on the ground.

“There she is.”

It was hard to see in the dim light. She noticed Lysander struggling to read the inscription and pulled a small flashlight from her bag. She bathed the inscription in warm light.

Here lies Rebecca Goodman

Died November 2nd, 1648
.

The words on the inscription were difficult to make out.

Burned as a witch, absolved and reburied 1712
.

His breath felt suddenly labored, as though heavy stones had been stacked on his chest.

“I thought all the witches killed in America were hung,” Lysander said.

“Apparently not all of them.”

He looked at her skeptically.

“Most witches were hung, you’re right. But maybe this one was especially mean. It was the blood they were afraid of. It had to be burned and boiled away to negate the threat.”

He reached down and drew his hand across the weathered surface, smooth after all these years. He flinched at the jolt as his fingers felt the gravestone. Immediately, he was gripped by a horrible image. A woman pleading for her life, professing her innocence. Her face twisted with desperation. Something about that face was strange, deformed. Her thoughts were frantic, wanting only of escape. A terrible mistake had been made. But it was too late, her hands were bound behind her, pulled painfully tight around a thick wooden stake. But her locket was still with her. She couldn’t see it of course, but she could feel it. Thank God. A gift from her husband, Henry. It was so precious that a part of her was happy it would go with her. Then something struck her in the face. The crowd below pitched insults and raw vegetables at her. She could not see but she heard them yelling. She was hit in the face again. A face already damaged from torture. The pain in her face was unbearable. Below her, heaped in great bundles were stacks of wood and twigs, soaked in some foul smelling liquid, making every breath nearly impossible. She did not sense the flames yet, but her hands burned as though they were on fire. She was blind, but nevertheless she sensed that the men in black were near. She knew they were watching her with self-righteousness, and their contempt only fed her hatred for them. None of these simple people ever understood her, they knew nothing about her. They knew nothing of how she had cared for that child stricken with fever day and night, nursed him until he was well. His parents were so happy, saying “How can we ever repay you?” Now they were in the crowd with the others, throwing rotten vegetables. She screamed at the judges, “How dare you pass judgment upon me! How dare you steal my life with such ease of conscience?” One judge sat at the head of the others and it was he she hated most. It was he who ordered the torture. He was the one responsible.

Tiny wisps of orange flame flickered beneath her feet. Thick black smoke was rising around her, becoming hard to breath. The heat grew more intense. The flesh on her feet and legs began to sear with pain. Her mouth too was filled with black suffocating soot. She tried to wiggle her hands but they were bound. There was no escape. The pain was so unbearable. She could feel herself cooking. She waited for death…waited for peace. But there was no peace. Only more pain, shooting through her body, a thousand knives stabbing her at once. Her nightgown had caught on fire. She screamed. The crowd was silent. Some cried out for mercy.

The pain had become intolerable, but it was miniscule compared to the anger she now felt. Her anger consumed her entire being in blackness. It embraced her and as it did, the physical pain began to fade. Her flesh was falling away in great clumps, her feet crisp and blackened beyond repair and yet she felt no pain. She had found her deliverance. She was one with the hatred.

A voice far away was screaming Lysander’s name. Samantha was shaking him. He looked up at her dreamily and then back down at what he was doing. Clamped tightly in both hands was the shovel, his right foot pushing the hilt into Rebecca Goodman’s grave.

Samantha’s voice was frantic. “What are you doing?”

The words were coming so quick, tumbling over one another. He could barely think straight. “I saw it happen,” he said hoarsely.

“You saw what happen?”

“I don’t know. A woman…burned alive. It felt so real.”

“Lysander, you’re scaring me.” Samantha sighed. She had thought maybe they were coming here and that he would kiss her and who knows what else. But to dig up bodies, especially Rebecca Goodman…this was crazy.

Her flashlight illuminated Lysander’s face. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks and neck. His eyes were dull and protruding.

“Samantha, don’t you understand?” he shouted. “I saw it happening. I was there. I was her—” Lysander stopped shoveling for a moment and touched his forehead.

Samantha’s legs felt suddenly heavy. A cold fear seemed to have crawled up from the ground and grabbed a hold of her. She searched around frantically, not knowing what to do. She had seen him pass out cold before. Derek had lit that old lantern and bam Lysander had gone crashing to the floor. Now he was behaving so unlike himself, she was frightened. He was digging again. She shined the light on the ground for him. Part of her wanted to leave, to run away and abandon him, but she couldn’t. It was the story of her life. Yet what frightened her most was the way he kept talking to himself, repeating that same thing over and over. That he had to know. That he had to be sure it was real. He was possessed.

“Lysander, her body’s gone. You know, turned to bug shit.”

“Yeah, but maybe not everything.”

Four feet down, Lysander’s shovel clanked against something hard. He reached in and wiped it off with his hands. A large rock. He looked up with a desperate smile.

“They couldn’t have buried her deeper than this. We must have missed it.” He examined the pile of dirt heaped beside the grave. He hopped over the hole and began running his hands through the blackened earth. Most of it was muddy, thickened from a recent bout of rain.

The hairs on Samantha’s arm stood on end as she shined the light.

“There’s nothing there,” she pleaded. “Just dirt.”

Lysander didn’t answer. The beam from the flashlight flickered and then went out. She smacked it against the palm of her hand, and it came back.

“The battery’s running low. If we don’t leave soon, we won’t be able to see a thing.”

Something in the distance drew her attention. A flashlight beam was bobbing toward them. For a moment she stood paralyzed. Then she knew. It was the groundskeeper.

“Someone’s coming, Lysander!”

Lysander didn’t even look up. “Okay, just another minute.”

Samantha hunkered low to the ground, dampening the beam of light with the palm of her hand.

Her heart was beating wildly. It was one thing to be caught walking through the graveyard after hours and another thing entirely to be digging up a three-hundred-fifty-year-old grave. Lysander was still fumbling through the mud, pushing back into the hole what he had already examined. There was no sign that a body had ever been here: no clothing, no bones, nothing. The earth had reclaimed every last bit. As he thrust his hand into the pile one more time, one of his knuckles scraped against something hard. Another rock, he thought at first. He groped around some more. At last he emerged with a small black object. Samantha leaned closer and lit it with the flashlight. From here, through the thin beam of yellow light, it didn’t look like much.

“What is it?” she asked.

Lysander wiped it carefully with his hands. Before their eyes hundreds of years of gunk and grime was melting away. Slowly it was looking more and more like a worn piece of jewelry. Lysander’s heart was in his throat. Could it be the locket he had seen around her neck? He had but touched the gravestone and the vision…no, the memory…had come.

Samantha saw that the groundskeeper’s beam was much closer now. In the distance she could hear the sound of dogs barking. It began to dawn on Samantha that neither of them had worked out an escape plan. And she knew, as the only one of them still in their right mind, that if the groundskeeper let loose those dogs, they would be in a whole world of trouble.

Almost as if in answer to her fear, the barking became frenzied. Samantha’s eyes grew wide. “Lysander, get up! He’s let the dogs loose on us.”

She grabbed his arm and yanked him with everything she had. He stumbled backward, still examining the object in his hands.

“Come on!” she said, slapping the side of his head.

Finally emerging from his trance, he tucked the jewelry into his pocket, rose to his feet and staggered into a full run. They charged down the opposite side of the hill, leaping over the gravestones a second after they came into the short outstretched beam cast by the flashlight. As they clamored across the graveyard, the whooshing wind deafened them to the clumsiness of their footfalls. The uneven terrain and gravestones might delay the dogs’ progress; Sam hoped that it might buy them enough time.

Ahead, they could just make out the stone wall.

Lysander cried breathlessly to Sam: “Get on my shoulders and I’ll boost you up.”

Through the gloom, Samantha could see the silhouette of two tiny forms cresting the hill and racing toward them.

“Sam, get on my shoulders, quickly.”

He bent down and when her feet where planted on either shoulder, he straightened himself shakily. He felt a sharp pain in his lower back, but he gathered all of his strength to boost her up. Samantha scrambled to the top and draped one leg over each end. He could hear the dogs yelping. They would be on him any second now. Samantha leaned over with her hand out, but Lysander backed away and took a run at the wall. He sprinted, leaping into the air at the last moment. He swung for her hand and missed it, snagging the bottom of her leather jacket instead. Samantha reeled back and nearly lost her balance. She repositioned herself and on the next pass managed to hold him. Grabbing his arm, she strained to pull him up. Just then a misplaced thought crossed her mind: For a short guy he was heavy as hell. Lysander’s left leg was pumping like a giant piston. His right leg however, was caught. There was a sharp pain as something pierced his calf. Terrified, he looked down, certain that one of the dogs had snatched his leg in its powerful jaws. He saw then that his pant leg was caught on a rusted bolt protruding from the wall.

Below him, the dogs had arrived and were leaping for his trapped leg, snapping at the air with their jaws. Any moment now and they would have him. They could hear the groundskeeper huffing as he tried to catch up. Samantha saw that in one hand he had a rifle. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the flashlight. She turned it on and whipped it at one of the dogs. The animal reeled away, shaking its head. The reprieve gave Lysander the second he needed to free his leg and scramble to the top. They swung over the edge and climbed down the tree. They could hear the groundskeeper on the other side of the wall panting furiously, trying to calm his dogs. He was swearing at them through the thick slab of stone. “You little shits ever come back, I’ll blow your fuckin’ heads clear off. Mark my words.”