Death Trance

'I was only watching you,' she said. 'Just to make sure that no harm befell you. Just to make sure that you were safe. Of course, you have always been fairly safe, because of your unborn son; but you might have unwittingly put yourself into a dangerous situation without knowing it.'

'You were watching me?' I asked her. 'Who are you? And what were you watching me for? You don't have any right to watch people.'

'These days,' said the girl, not at all upset by my aggressiveness, 'everybody has a right to watch everybody else. You never know, after all, who your very best friend might be.'

'I want to know who you are,' I insisted.

'You have already met some of us,' she said. 'Mercy Lewis you met on Salem Common; Enid Lynch you met at Mr Evelith's house. My name is Anne Putnam.'

'Mercy Lewis? Anne Putnam?' I asked. 'Aren't those the names of — '

The girl smiled even more broadly, and held out her hand. Hesitantly, I took it, I'm not sure why. It just seemed impolite to refuse. Her fingers were long and cool, and there was a silver ring on every one of them, including her thumb.

'You're right,' she said. 'They are the names of witches. Not our real names, of course; but names we have adopted. They have power, those names; and besides, they remind us of the days when Salem was in the grip of the Fleshless One.'

'You mean Mictantecutli? From what I've seen, Salem is still in his grip, and Granitehead, too. But you're not seriously telling me that you're a witch?’

'You can call us what you like,' said Anne. 'Listen — take me back with you to your cottage, and then I can explain everything to you. Now that you have found me out, I think it is better that you know.'

I looked down at our joined hands. 'All right,' I said, at last. 'I've always wanted to meet a witch. In actual fact, I always wanted to marry one. When I was twelve, I was in love with Elizabeth Montgomery.'

We walked out of Village Place and into Granitehead Square, hand-in-hand; and, just my luck, Laura was stepping out of the Crumblin' Cookie on the far side of the square, and she stopped and stared at us with her hands planted firmly on her hips to indicate to me that she had seen us, and that she thought I was more than a pig. In fact, she thought I was a don't know what.

As we descended the winding hill to Granitehead Harbour, Anne said, 'You are troubled today. I can feel it. Why are you so troubled?'

'You know about Mrs Edgar Simons? The way she died?'

'I saw you with her that night, when I was out on the road.'

'Well, I just witnessed another death; Charlie Manzi, the guy who owns the Granitehead Market.'

'Where did it happen?'

'Where? Down at the Waterside Cemetery. He was crushed, somehow — I can't even describe it. But it seemed like the tombstones came together and crushed the life out of him.'

Anne gave my hand a conciliatory squeeze. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But there is great power here. The Fleshless One is about to be free; and all the energy he has been storing for 300 years is about to strike us.'

We reached my car, and I opened the door for Anne and then climbed in myself. 'I'm amazed you know so much about this,' I told her, as I started the engine. I twisted around in my seat as I backed out into the roadway. 'Edward and I and the rest of us, we were all in the dark until we went to talk to Mr Evelith.'

'You forget that all of Salem's witches can trace their ancestry directly back to David Dark,' she said. 'It was David Dark who brought the power of the Fleshless One to Salem, in his attempts to impose some kind of hellfire morality on the people of Essex County; and the first witches were girls and women whom the Fleshless One had killed and then reincarnated as its handmaidens, to entice their own relatives and friends to one grisly death after another, in order that the Fleshless One could have their hearts.'

That's what old man Evelith told us,' I said, turning left on West Shore Drive.

'Not all of the witches were named and caught, though,' said Anne. 'And many of those who were caught were released from jail when Esau Hasket disposed of the Fleshless One. They were very much weakened, because the Fleshless One was trapped in its copper vessel underneath the sea; but they survived for long enough to be able to educate their daughters in the ways of witchcraft, and to pass on the knowledge of what had happened, if not the power.'

'And you're one of those to whom the knowledge was passed down?'

Anne nodded. 'Seven Salem families were witch families — the Putnams, the Lewises, the Lynches, the Billing-tons, the Eveliths, the Coreys, and the Proctors. During the 18th and 19th centuries, their descendants met at various times and performed the rituals of homage to Mictantecutli, the Fleshless One, and sacrificed pigs and sheep to him; and, once, they killed a girl who was found wandering at Swampscott suffering from loss of memory. The witch-groups were illegal, and so was the banner of David Dark under which they met; but there is no question that they kept the Fleshless One somnolent for 300 years, and protected Salem from terrors which you can only imagine.'

'So the witches — who started off as Mictantecutli's minions — have actually become our protectors against it?'

‘That's right. As much as we are able. We still meet from time to time, but there are only five of us left now; and many of the older rituals have been lost to us. That is why Enid lives and works with Duglass Evelith, not only to serve him and to look after him, but to research as much as she can into the ancient magic, in order that the Salem witches can be strong again.' I cleared my throat. 'I thought Enid was old man Evelith's grand-daughter.'

'Well, she is, after a fashion.'

'After a fashion? What does that mean?'

That means that they are related, in a curious way; but nobody quite knows how. You mustn't say that I mentioned it, but I believe there was rather a lot of incest in the Evelith family, back in the early part of the century, when the roads were bad.'

'I see,' I said, although I didn't quite.

We drove past Granitehead Market, and I saw that there were two police cars parked outside, with their lights flashing.

'That's Charlie Manzi's place,' I told Anne. 'Somebody must have found him.'

'Aren't you going to stop?'

'Are you kidding? Do you think they'd believe me about the tombstones? I'm already under suspicion for two other deaths. This time, they'd be sure to lock me up. I won't be any good to anybody if I'm shut up in a cell.'

Anne looked across at me carefully. She was very attractive, in a thin, poetic kind of way, with long dark hair that had been gathered on each side of her face into three or four narrow braids. Not actually my type: too ethereal and well-educated and inclined to speak as if she were reading from an encyclopedia, but nice to have around, all the same. It was hard to believe that she was actually a witch.

'What does a witch find to do these days?' I asked her. 'Can you work spells, stuff like that?'

'I hope you're not laughing at me.'

'I'm not, actually. I've seen too much that's unreal in the past few days to laugh at a witch. Do you call yourselves witches?'

'No. We call ourselves by the old name, wonderworkers.'

'And what wonders can you work?'

'Do you want me to show you?'

'I'd be delighted.'

I drove back up Quaker Lane, and parked outside the cottage. Anne got out of the car and stood staring at the cottage in silence. When I walked towards the front door she made no immediate move to follow me.

'Something wrong?' I asked her.

'There is a very strong and evil influence here.'

I stayed where I was, halfway down the garden path, jingling my keys in my hand. I looked up at the bedroom windows, shuttered and blind; at the dead fingers of creeper which tapped so persistently against the weatherboard; and at the dank, distressed garden. There was green scum all over the surface of the ornamental pool, unnaturally bright in the leaden afternoon light.