Sisters of Misery (5 page)

ICE

SEPTEMBER

O
n the first day of school at Hawthorne Academy, Maddie and Cordelia left early, as the sun was barely rising over the ocean. Maddie wanted Cordelia to register for classes, but Cordelia had other, less practical things on her agenda. As they passed the sun-dappled forest, Cordelia gushed, “It’s so beautiful here, so surreal! Let’s come back later tonight and look for forest elves and nymphs. I’ll bet there are fairy trees in there.”

Maddie laughed. “There’s no such thing as fairies. I stopped believing in that stuff when I was five.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cordelia sniffed. “Considering where you grew up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. Let’s come back here later, and I’ll prove to you that there are fairies. I’ve seen them. I visited Ireland when I was a little girl, and I came across a real live fairy circle. I watched them as they drank elderberry wine from crystal goblets and wore dresses made of gossamer thread and velvet. They danced until their snapdragon shoes fell apart.”

Cordelia danced down the street, doing pirouettes and making silly faces. Cordelia’s wild imagination melted Maddie’s cynical side, and for a moment, she almost entertained the idea that something magical like fairies could, in fact, exist. Maddie laughed, but then looked past Cordelia into the grove, feeling a chill creep through her skin. Something felt wrong—it felt like they were being watched, studied.

“They’re haunted. The woods, I mean.”

Cordelia stopped dancing, and her eyes widened. “Then let’s go! Why should that stop us?” She spun around once, twirling her floral skirt, and then sprinted into the woods. She wove in between the trees, expertly avoiding fallen branches, as if she’d run through there hundreds of times. Maddie tried desperately to keep up with her, but she kept losing sight of her cousin. The deeper they went into the wood, the more intense Maddie’s sense of foreboding became.

“Who are they haunted by?” Cordelia called.

“Cordelia!” Maddie yelled. “Come on! We don’t have time for this. You’re going to make us late for school.”

“Who cares.” Her voice sounded miles away, echoing through the trees.

Maddie stopped to catch her breath in a dim clearing. The branches overhead were so thick that no sunlight filtered through. Maddie felt the chill again. The last place she wanted to be was deep inside Potter’s Grove searching for Cordelia. With all the creepy stories she’d heard over the years, Maddie had sworn that she’d never enter the place. “Where are you?”

Cordelia’s voice came in a whisper from behind her. “Right here.
Boo!”

Maddie jumped, and Cordelia laughed uncontrollably.

“Don’t do that,” Maddie snapped. “Not here. Not in these woods.”

“So, who are these ghosts you’re scared of?” Her eyes twinkled despite the few weak rays of sunlight that made it through the canopy of trees.

“I don’t know. This place is supposed to be filled with all sorts of spirits, according to local legends,” Maddie whispered, suddenly aware of the growing silence around them. But she liked having Cordelia’s undivided attention, so she pushed aside her fears and continued.

“The site of Old Captain Potter’s Tavern is somewhere around here. We’re probably standing on top of it, for all I know. Anyway, the townspeople hated the tavern. They were sick of all the creeps from neighboring towns coming here, so they decided to burn the place down. To get revenge, Captain Potter had one of his slaves, who also happened to be a voodoo priestess, put some kind of a curse on the woods and the entire town of Hawthorne.”

Cordelia’s eyes grew wider with every word. “So that’s where the rumors of witchcraft came in?”

Shaking her head, Maddie explained that the infamous witchcraft trials took place in the neighboring town of Salem, but that Hawthorne had its own witch scandal of sorts. When the beautiful Pickering sisters—Honor, Constance, and Patience—moved into the small town of Hawthorne, they were quickly accused of practicing witchcraft.

“Back in those days, anything you did could be reason enough to get you called a witch,” Maddie explained. “You could cook with a strange spice or wear bright clothes and get called a witch. Some women were even called witches if they were really pretty and the men in town had dreams about them—they were accused of ‘bewitching’ the men and forcing them to have ‘impure thoughts.’”

Cordelia surmised, “So basically, it’s the same as being called a slut today, right?”

“Only now, you can’t burn sluts at the stake,” Maddie said.

The two girls giggled.

As they picked their way along the meandering, overgrown path through the grove, Maddie filled Cordelia in on the legend of the Pickering sisters. As soon as the women had moved into town, they became well-known for their fiery tempers and were often credited with having “fits of hysteria”—something that was a sure sign of a practicing witch. Then people started saying they had “spectral evidence” of the beautiful sisters’ powers of witchcraft: curdling milk with a single glance, ruining entire crops with a harsh word, and even luring married men into adulterous situations in their dreams.

Cordelia almost fell over, hysterically laughing when she heard that.

The woods were eerily quiet, and Maddie wanted to finish the story quickly. They were on the verge of being late to school, and Maddie knew Cordelia wouldn’t leave Potter’s Grove until she heard every detail. Maddie told her how the women ran and hid in that very forest in order to escape their trials, hoping they could stay until the witchcraft rumors ended. What few friends and family they had, used to sneak into the woods, bringing the women supplies and food to help them survive. Many were too afraid to go in after the sisters because of Old Man Potter’s curse. Plus, town officials tortured, imprisoned, or killed anyone caught helping the three women. The official town documents contained severe punishments for those they called “The Witches’ Brethren.”

“Tess told me once that people born within the town lines have the power to hear the cries of the Pickering sisters on certain nights,” Maddie said quietly. “The sounds are like low, mournful wails and high-pitched hysterical shrieks. Tess swears that on some nights, she gets woken up by those cries.”

“Have you ever heard them?” Cordelia asked excitedly.

“Lucky for me, I was born in Boston,” Maddie laughed.

They stopped walking, and Cordelia stared into the depths of the woods. A stiff wind picked up, swirling dead leaves around the forest floor.

“So, then what happened?”

“Well, then the witchcraft hysteria ended, but not for the Pickering sisters,” she continued. “They thought it was safe to return to town, but the people of Hawthorne weren’t done with them just yet. They were put into the jail at Fort Glover and tortured for days and days. The town officials seized all of their belongings as payment for their incarceration—they basically had to pay for their own torture. And then they were labeled lunatics by the town doctors, so they were put into Ravenswood State Asylum, or at the time, what they called The Witches’ Castle.”

“The Witches’ Castle,” Cordelia spoke slowly, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Did they ever get out?”

Maddie nodded. “Legend has it they escaped. But no one knows how they managed it. Many people thought they would come back seeking revenge for what happened to them. But they never did. There were other rumors that they were sold into slavery and prostitution or that they were murdered. Some people think that they were forced out onto Misery Island and that they died out there, either froze or starved to death. People think that the Pickering sisters haunt both the island and these woods.” Maddie hugged herself as a chill came over her.

“Ooooh, spooky,” Cordelia said. “Why is it called Misery Island?”

Maddie explained that a shipbuilder named Robert Moulton got stuck out on the island while harvesting timber in the 1620s. He was stranded out in a terrible December storm for three “miserable” days, hence the name Misery Island.

“So does he haunt the island, too?” Cordelia asked, clearly amused.

“I don’t know; I never stayed there by myself.”

“What’s out there besides ghosts and witches?”

Maddie laughed. “We go out there to party sometimes. It’s pretty secluded. It used to be this big resort and casino with all these beautiful summer homes back at the turn of the nineteenth century, but a big fire destroyed everything. It’s just a bunch of ruins now.” Maddie paused for a moment, thinking about all of the nights that the Sisters of Misery had gone out there and what had taken place. “The ruins of the casino look like a castle. It’s actually a really beautiful place.”

“When you’re not being attacked by witches and ghosts, right?” Cordelia asked. “Well, on your next trip out there, bring me along. I’d love to see an old castle. Maybe I can find some fairy circles inside.”

They finally emerged from the forest across the street from the ocean. Maddie smiled, nodding in the direction of the island so that Cordelia would follow her gaze.

“Anyway,” Maddie continued, “there’s also a creepy stone wall on Ravenswood hospital with these faces that keep showing up year after year. Supposedly, they’re the faces of the Pickering sisters put there as a reminder that one day, they’ll return seeking revenge.” Maddie felt like she was now a tour guide for the witch trials. She then added with a smile, “So now you know why nobody here likes outsiders.”

“I wish I was a descendant of one of those sisters. Maybe,” Cordelia said with a cluck of her tongue, “maybe I am, and I was destined to return here.”

Maddie laughed. “Revenge is sweet, right?”

“‘And sweet revenge grows harsh,’” Cordelia quoted. “Shakespeare.
Othello
.” This was a game that Cordelia and Rebecca played often in the store. They’d spend hours going back and forth with quotes, trying to one up each other.

“Oh, okay. Let me think. Hmm…‘Sweet is revenge…especially to women.’ Lord Byron,” Maddie said, loving the feeling of being a part of Rebecca and Cordelia’s private game.

Cordelia closed her eyes, the tree branches shifting behind her in the owl-light of the forest. “Mmmm…Oh, I’ve got a good one. ‘In revenge and in love, woman is more barbaric than man is.’ Nietzsche.”

Her eyes fluttered open, startling Maddie. Cordelia glared at her, her brilliant smile fading, her eyes clouding over, and for a moment, Maddie thought her cousin was going to hit her. Then Cordelia peered into the woods, so dark and impenetrable in the early morning light, almost as if she saw someone or something. Maddie’s entire body hummed with tension, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention.

Then Cordelia’s smile returned, her eyes cleared, and she broke the moment that enveloped them by yelling, “Race ya!”

Cordelia squealed with laughter as they ran all the way past Town Hall, Fort Glover, and Old Burial Hill. As they ran, Maddie glanced at Ravenswood and the wall that somehow had become a monument to the Pickering sisters. Headlights often threw gruesome shadows on the towering stone wall of the red Gothic monstrosity of Ravenswood, illuminating the ghostly faces that appeared to come alive in the dark. Don’t look directly at them, or you’ll catch your death, people would say. Some believed the faces carved into the stone were a reminder of the terrible fate of those three girls. A warning, a way of making sure that the people of Hawthorne would never let it happen again.

Not ever again.

When driving past Ravenswood, people averted their eyes from the faces for fear of bad luck, much like children holding their breath while passing graveyards. The aging building had been erected on the site of a fort that once defended Hawthorne Harbor during the Revolutionary War. It was once a prison, a part of the town’s history that no one liked to talk about. And nearly a century ago, it had been reborn to accommodate a different cast of inmates, those imprisoned by their own minds. Its formal name was Ravenswood State Asylum, and it was a hospital for the mentally ill.

No one knew how or when the faces were carved into the towering stone wall. They just always remembered them being there.

Again and again, people tried to cover up the faces, squeezing gray plaster and mortar into the gaping grimaces and empty eye sockets. But days later, never longer than a week, the girls’ faces rose to the surface once again. For the cement, no matter how thick or strong, just disappeared. The faces stared out defiantly. There for an eternity. There to tell their story, to be a reminder of the past.

Maddie never paid much attention to the faces on the wall or the horrible stories of the torture that the Pickering sisters, wrongly accused of witchcraft and ostracized by an entire community, had to endure. And she didn’t want to show Cordelia the wall that immortalized the fate of those three girls. Not yet, not now. Because recently she’d been having terrible dreams.

And in Maddie’s recent nightmares, she saw the appearance of a fourth face.

The face of another young girl.

The face of Cordelia.

“I’m so excited for you to meet everyone,” Maddie said as she and Cordelia slowed to a walk, heading up the narrow pathway to the school.

Ever since she and Cordelia had become closer friends, Maddie felt like she was growing out of her awkward, self-conscious behavior and tapping into Cordelia’s unwavering confidence. It was hard to believe that they were related. Cordelia just exuded this natural poise and self-assurance, whereas Maddie had pretty much always been a wallflower. Maddie could just imagine her friends falling all over themselves to try to befriend this mysterious, yet very cool girl from California.

“There they are,” Maddie said as she waved over to the group of girls. They were gathered in an unapproachable knot, tight as a tourniquet. Kate turned and waved them over, as if they were opening their exclusive doors for a brief moment. Maddie watched as their eyes drifted from Cordelia’s espadrilles, which crisscrossed up her legs, to her bright, floral skirt, and then finally up to meet her eyes with arrogant indifference.