Where Bluebirds Fly (5 page)

Two frightened faces peeked around the kitchen door, watching her every move.

Removing the cake, she called to the dog, which padded over, wagging its tail.

“Here,” she said, and its jaws engulfed the entire cake, devouring it with a single snap.

* * *

Verity

I slide closer till the hearth fire warms my back, hoping it will stop my shivering. The room feels too tight and close, as if Corwin’s accusation has sucked out the air.

I try glaring back at the Constable, but my cowardly eyes keep stealing to Mr. Putnam, beseeching him.

The tension in the Putnam house
hums
like the air before a storm. My whole body is shaking, as if I’ve been deboned.

My nerves feel raw, exposed, like a lamb flayed for slaughter.

I breathe deeply. “I tell you there is nothing wrong with John.”
 

My eyes sweep the room from Ann and John Putnam to Constable Corwin, whose unrelenting questions for the past quarter hour have beaten me to exhaustion.

Their faces remain stone. I try again.

“Nothing more than usual. You know he cannot speak his mind like others. He never has, since his birth—
this is nothing new
. Nothing to do with the Man in Black.”

Ann Putnam crosses the room in the space of a breath and shoves her face so close I smell her sweat.

She spits, “Verity, it was at considerable cost we relieved Reverend Burroughs of you, John and Mercy after you lost your parents in the raids. We have treated you fairly. After all we have lived through with Anne Jr., I would’ve thought you and John would have the sense to stay out of mischief! You have been meeting with Tituba, have you?”

“No, ma’am. I swear it!”

 
I struggle to swallow the lump choking my throat.

Anne’s shrill scream rents the house, awakening a chorus of wails from the younger Putnams upstairs.

 
Accusations momentarily forgotten, all present fly out of the kitchen, up the stairs. I trail after them with Mercy and John hurrying behind me.

Reaching Anne’s room, my stomach plummets to my boots.

My hands cover my mouth.

Her head
wrenches and contorts, wrenches and contorts
, cobra-like. Then stretches violently left, and
holds
.
 

Her blue eyes roll back in their sockets, revealing the whites, and she seizes in this posture-rigid. Her lips recoil in a painful grimace, revealing the pink flesh of her gums.

 
Her body flips from rigid to undulating; Anne’s limbs quake and flail like river-snakes against the coverlets. Her jaw snaps shut with a sickening pop. The pink tip of her tongue juts out between her gnashing teeth and she clamps down with a howl of pain.

 
Blood-tinged spittle drips from the side of her slanted mouth and sweat pours from her forehead in tiny rivulets that darken her nightdress.

I ball my dress in my hands and feel John’s frantic hand clutching the back of it.

“I can see her! I can see her!” Anne screams.

Her eyes stare past us.

“Who, who do you see?” prompts Anne Sr.

My mistress drops to her knees, clutching her daughter’s hand.

Mercy cries, “S-she’s looking into the spectral world!”
 

A gurgle bubbles in Anne’s throat, slowly cutting off. Her limbs collapse to the bed and her breath rattles in and out in quick bursts and her eyes rove wildly beneath her lids.

Mercy grabs my hand and sobs into the back of it, her tears wetting my dry skin.

Constable Corwin’s eyes find mine from across the room.

“Verity, you are sentenced to an hour in the stocks, for humiliating Goody Churchill in public. As for John—
we will be watching
. You best keep him in line.”

* * *

Chapter 3

The undersides of my legs prickle and sting as if the wasps from my sick mind have migrated, feasting on a new area of my body.
 

The heels of my ankles are rubbed raw from the stocks. I wrench around trying to find someone, anyone.

A sharp burning makes me cry out; my skin rips open and a tiny trickle of blood cuts through the grime on my leg.

I taste the salt as my tears pass my lips, en route to my filthy neck.
 

I am nothing, an empty shell.

As if my real self abandoned this body and hides somewhere, awaiting the return of better days.

The hornets rise in my head. My depression is a dark blanket, attached and hovering at a million different points, to their invisible buzzing voices. They drop it, and it covers me.

The streets are clearing as people return to their homes to sup. Ingersoll’s ordinary is within my sight and the sounds of eating and drinking fill the evening air.

My sentence was one hour, but I’ve been in the stocks since sun-up. Angry tears well again and itch as they cut down my cheeks. My hands writhe, useless in the stocks, as I struggle to wipe them away.
 

I hear footsteps approaching. I force my eyes up and my stomach roils. Goody Churchill approaches on the winding path in front of the stockade. I close my eyes on her delighted expression.

I think of John and pray fervently for his safety.

He depends on me to translate his thoughts, to decipher people’s facial expressions, which often hold no meaning for him. He needs me. I must get back.

The footsteps crunch to a halt before me.

My eyes squint a blurry slit, but a burning
crack
across my cheek opens them wide.

Goody Churchill’s bulk casts her shadow over me, hands on hips. Her fat face is a rumpled sneer and her laugh is rife with the unholy mixture of jealousy and condescension.

“Well, well, well. The tempest of your mouth finally landed you where you belong.”

She steps closer, leaning down to whisper in my ear. Her breath is hot, laden with whiskey.

I wrinkle my nose, lurching away, but the stocks hold me prisoner.

Each word is velvety, smoothly-breathed. “I think you are a witch, just like that Tituba. I will see you and that fool brother of yours, hanged.” Her lips peel back in a triumphant grin to reveal a line of rotted teeth.

She drags her finger beneath her chin as if an imaginary knife slits her throat.
 

I know Goody Churchill had been in the stocks only last fortnight for falling asleep in church…while drunk.

Something wet strikes the side of my head, snapping it backwards as the pain clangs inside my skull.

My bottom slides off the bench, wrenching my legs in a painful twist as the stocks grind into my ankle’s open wound.

The insects have control now. My mind hums, numb with their multitude. Swarming away with my sanity.

My stream of tears feels distant, as if belonging to someone else.
 

Silently, in my mind, I wail for my mother. This time, the pain won’t be contained.

“M-mother, please, help me.” Sobbing drowns my words.

Goody Churchill leers with pleasure; her cackle adds to the noise in my head.

A bright light fires in my dark mind-pushing back the swarm. It feels foreign; like a finger in my thoughts.

His green eyes.
The man from the corn. Something inside me startles and wakes—long cold and dead.

I hear his voice, pleading with me to stop. His voice pushes back the dark.

“Ah, you’re daft.” She waves a dismissive hand and turns.

Realizing the fight has gone out of me, Goody Churchill retreats.

The footsteps recede with an occasional drunken hiccup. The image of him is fading. I want to reach out to him, to beg him stay.

Fear lets the cold trickle back into my heart.
Surely, the corn is enchanted. And if I return to him—I shall hang. For wanting him.

I dare to open my eyes. A rotted corncob rolls on the ground beside me. My eyes flick across the fields.

The corn. The draw.

I laugh, and I hear the madness in it.

I shift my weight back and forth, trying to ease the searing pain on my legs.

The impossibility of my life presses on my chest, choking out my breath.

It is a vast void of repetition with no escape. Ever.

Rise. Chores. Eat. Chores. Teach John. Bed. Again.
 

With an occasional taunt or lashing thrown in, for good measure.

My vague memories of childhood are leaving me. My parents had not been wealthy, but they had been in love. And their love had sheltered us from hopelessness. They found joy in every task they undertook. I
need
those memories to stay. They are all I have.
 

“Please don’t forget me and leave me till morn,” I whisper. The thought of bears roaming in the nearby woods makes me sob harder.

More steps come into earshot. Squinting, I discern John’s lanky figure, steadily loping his way toward me. I hastily take deep breaths, trying to compose myself. I must be brave.

The footsteps halt in front of me and I open my eyes, knowing they’re bloodshot. My brother bestows a feeble smile, and I manage one in return.

My mother’s final words echo in my head, the ones I’d blocked out before. “Take care of one another. The two of you are all that remains of us.”

* * *

A screeching sound, which could only be one thing, met Truman’s ears. He bolted toward the hallway.

“The bus is here five minutes early! Run!” he screamed up the steps— simultaneously flinging open the front door and giving the bus driver a singular index finger of ‘wait’.

“Ram, we’re going to miss it! I’ll be late for patients and you for class!”

Ram skidded into the vestibule by the front door, brandishing five brown bag lunches and five coats. A stampede of footsteps thundered down the stairs.

Truman wrangled two blond boys into their coats. He bent, looking in their eyes. “Cade, you’ll do fine on your test, stop fretting. Connor, you’ll do fine with the music audition. Just take your time.”

Ram finished with another pack of unruly boys and the quintet sprinted down the bricked lane to the waiting bus, which honked as it pulled away.

Truman smiled at the Honda Civic pulling up in front of the turnaround. Sunshine opened the back door and hoisted a bag of toys over her shoulders.

“What’s she bought now? This clinic is already crawling with toys. I’m constantly stepping on them,” Truman said.

Ram rolled his eyes. “I’m late. You have to call the Mensa people back.”

Truman turned to look at him, his mind searching for recollection.
 

“The call, in the wee-hours of the morning? Remember?” Ram’s face was impatient as he donned his black pea coat.

“In all the fuss, I totally forgot about it. We’re going to catch it for that. We haven’t responded within the time frame.” Ram gave him a what-do-you-expect-me-to-do shrug, and took a step out the door.

“Never mind, I’ll handle it.”

Ram stepped off the porch and jogged toward his SUV, hopping over a stray ball. “Of course you will! That’s why I chose you! Responsible.”

He sighed.
Yes, if you only knew I’m trying to rearrange my afternoon so I can search the corn and stalk a figment of my cross-wired brain.

“Oh, yeah. Responsible all right.”

Sunshine crossed the yard and tripped. Her colossal bag banged off the sign, which read,
Johnstone/Usman Occupational Therapy Clinic, Specializing in Feeding and Sensory Integration Disorders
.

It rocked a little and she swayed, and accidentally smacked it again.

“Don’t worry ’bout the sign—I can just buy a new one,” Truman yelled as Sunshine trudged across the yard.

She lumbered up the steps, the heavy bag over her shoulders slumping her posture. Her red lips pursed.

“I don’t want to hear it. If
I’m
bored with the toys, the kids will be too.”

Truman ignored her. “We have precisely five minutes till the first one arrives.”

She dropped the heavy bag to the ground and began extracting toys.

Striding into the clinic, he picked up a pile of charts and deposited them into Sunshine’s already-full arms.

“Those are yours. See you at lunch.”
 

He entered the clinic and strode to the desk; his own tottering pile taunted him.

“Right.”

The redhead kept filling up his mind, distracting him.

He leaned on the stack of papers, closing his eyes. Her face appeared, perfectly clear, perfectly distraught, as he’d left her.

He licked his lips. He wanted to…smooth that expression away. And never see it mar her face again.