'Yes, sir.'
'Oh, and Quamus — '
'Yes, sir?'
'These gentlemen are here to discuss the David Dark. Their visit may prove to be of considerable importance to us.'
'Yes, sir. I understand, sir.'
Quamus left us, and old man Evelith dragged over one of the upright chairs, and sat himself down. 'Please, sit,' he asked us. 'The rest of Judge Saltonstall's diary is fascinating, but disorganized, and it would better if I told you the story of what happened myself. You are welcome to make copies of any pages that particularly interest you; but if you tried to work out for yourselves what Judge Saltonstall was actually saying, I'm afraid that it would take you some considerable time, as it did me.'
We all drew up chairs, and Duglass Evelith leaned on the table before us, looking from one to the other as he spoke. I shall never forget that hour in the Evelith library, listening to the secret history of the David Dark. I felt as if I was closed off from the real world altogether, as if I was back in the 17th century, when witches and demons and goblins were all considered to be credible realities. Outside, the rain began to die away, and a kind of strangled sunlight came through the stained-glass window and illuminated our discussions in a radiance that looked as old as the story itself.
'What occurred in Salem in the summer of 1692 began not with Mr Parris, as the modern history-books suggest, but much earlier, with David Ittai Dark, who was a fire-and-brimstone preacher who lived first at New Dunwich, and then nearer Salem Village at Mill Pond.
'By all accounts, David Dark was a tall, saturnine man, with long black hair which reached down to his shoulders. He was so convinced that every man, woman and child had to live a life completely beyond reproach before they would even be considered for a place in heaven that he taught his congregation to prepare themselves for the almost certain prospect of spending all eternity in hell. In March of 1682, David Dark announced to his flock that in a field outside of Dean's Corners he had actually met with Satan, and that Satan had given him a scroll on which were scorched the names of all those Salem Villagers who were already condemned to burn. This, of course, had a remarkable effect on the behaviour of all those listed, and Judge Saltonstall records that 1682 and 1683 were "highly moral years" in Salem and its surrounding communities.'
'Do you think he had met with Satan? Or anything similar?' asked Edward.
'Judge Saltonstall investigated this claim,' said Duglass Evelith. 'All that he could discover was that David Dark had become friends during the previous year with some Narragansett Indians, and one Indian in particular who was claimed by his tribe to be the greatest worker of magical wonders who had ever lived. The judge wasn't a man to leap to conclusions; he liked his evidence to be cut and dried. But he did cautiously express the opinion that it was conceivable that David Dark and this Indian magician could have summoned up between them one of the ancient and evil Indian deities, and that Dark could have taken this manifestation to be Satan, or one of his cohorts.'
The dark-haired girl called Enid came into the library with a crystal decanter on her silver tray, and asked us if we would care for another glass of sherry. Personally, I was dying for a large whisky, but I took the sherry and was grateful for it.
Duglass Evelith said, 'Very little was heard about David Dark between 1683 and 1689. Apparently he gave up preaching for several years, and devoted himself to study. Quite what he was studying, nobody could ever discover, but Judge Saltonstall says that at night there were lights in the sky above his cottage; and that the local people wouldn't go near the woods where he lived because they had heard the howling of strange beasts.
'In 1689, however, David Dark reappeared and began to preach once more; often in church in the centre of Salem. After a particularly fiery sermon, he was approached by the merchant Esau Hasket, who was much impressed with what Dark had been saying, and Hasket, who was something of a religious zealot himself, suggested that between them they should begin a campaign to improve the morals and the minds of everyone in Salem.
This is where the testimony of Micah Burrough comes into its own. Micah Burrough had worked for Esau Hasket for fifteen years, and was one of his most trusted employees. That was why, when David Dark suggested to Hasket that he should send a ship to Mexico on a very special errand, Micah Burrough was there to record what was said.'
'Mexico?' asked Edward. 'Where does Mexico come into it?'
'Mexico is crucial and central to the whole story of the David Dark,' said Duglass Evelith. 'For whatever spirits or creatures David Dark had been raising at his cottage at Mill Pond, all of them were subservient to the grimmest of demons on the entire American continent. I am speaking of the living skeleton who was worshipped by the Aztecs on the island of Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City. How David Dark came to know of this demon, Judge Saltonstall does not say; but it is quite likely that the Narragansett wonder-worker told him about it. In any case, David Dark persuaded Esau Hasket that he should mount an expedition to Mexico City, discover the remains of this demon, and bring it back to Salem in order to frighten and discipline the local people. That, after all, was how the Aztecs had used it — as a way of encouraging any religious back-sliders to renew their worship of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl.'
'Surely the Spanish were in control of Mexico City in those days,' said Forrest. 'When did Cortes overthrow the Aztecs? Fifteen-twenty?'
'Fifteen-nineteen,' Duglass Evelith corrected him. 'But remember that the Aztecs were a remarkably organized people. Long before Cortes had reached the island of Tenochtitlan, the living skeleton had been carried away from the city on one of the causeways which joined it to the mainland, and secreted on the slopes of the volcano of Ixtacihuatl. Again, it was impossible for Judge Saltonstall to establish how David Dark had discovered this, but Dark had travelled away from Salem several times during the six years between 1683 and 1689, and it is quite conceivable that he went to Mexico. He may well have contacted some of the surviving Aztec magicians whose hereditary task it was to guard the demon from the Spanish invaders, and made an arrangement with them for the demon to be shipped secretly out of Mexico to Massachusetts. On the other hand, rather than bothering to make an arrangement with them, he may have had them killed. Judge Saltonstall thinks so.'
'So Esau Hasket sent a ship to bring this demon back to Salem?' asked Edward.
That's exactly what happened. The ship was called the Arabella, and it was generally considered to be one of the finest vessels in Salem. David Dark went on the voyage as commander, and the ship was captained by Charles Fisk, the older brother of Thomas Fisk, who was later to be a juror at the witch-trials.
The Arabella was away for nearly a year, and when she returned the crew refused to speak about their expedition, and even David Dark himself seemed like a different man. They had aged, every one of them, Judge Saltonstall reported; and out of a crew of 70 men, 31 of them were dead within the year, either of disease, or of heart failure, or of brainstorms. The Arabella's mysterious cargo was unloaded by six men who had been specially hired from Boston to do the work, and paid three times the going rate. Then it was carried by wagon to David Dark’s cottage at Mill Pond.