Part 7 (1/2)
WHEN SARAH WENT TO bed that night, she picked up the book that Charlie had loaned her and continued reading at the place where she had left off, making notes as she read: The Reverend Parris invited ministers from neighboring parishes to gather in his home to pray for his daughter's release from the powers of the unknown witch who had enchanted her. While the prayer fest was in session, Betty Parris and her cousin, Abigail, raced into the room screaming that they were being chased by evil spirits. The other girls were summoned to explain this behavior, and convinced the ministers that they, too, were affected by demons.
The Reverend Parris asked desperately, ”Tell us, if you can, who has afflicted you thus?”
At that the leader of the group, Ann Putnam, responded, ”I am not afflicted. I am very well, Minister.” Then, in immediate contradiction, she hurled herself to the floor, thras.h.i.+ng as though in agony and shrieking, ”Please, Minister, tell them to leave me alone! I will never put my name to the devil's book, no matter how they hurt me!”
Stunned by this statement, Parris asked the other girls if they knew who was directing demons to torment poor Ann.
Betty, who had dozed off in a corner of the room, stirred in her sleep and murmured as if from a dream, ”It's t.i.tuba.”
The other girls quickly agreed, and added, ”t.i.tuba is not alone!” They then named two other women from the village-Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn-and identified them as witches also.
Sarah fell asleep with the book in her hands, and soon was swept into a dream so vivid that it surpa.s.sed everyday reality. However, this dream was not a replay of what she had just read. Rather than a kitchen or a parlor, the setting was a church-a church that seemed so familiar that she could not believe she had not attended it many times. It was filled with dark benches, and she was seated in the front row. She knew there were girls on either side of her, but she was smaller than they were and could not see their faces. In a line in front of the girls stood three frightened-looking women. Behind these women there was a long table lined with solemn-faced men, and behind the table was the pulpit.
One of the men leaned forward and addressed himself to Sarah.
”What do you have to say of these women?” he demanded.
”Nothing,” Sarah whispered, averting her eyes.
”Don't look away when I ask you a question,” the man said irritably. ”It makes it appear as if you have something to be ashamed of.”
Sarah gazed up into eyes that were bulging with intensity, as if the pressure of all G.o.d's angels were shoving them outward so that they could more closely inspect evil. For one horrible moment she feared that they might burst from their sockets and come rolling across the table to land in her lap.
”Nothing,” she said more loudly. ”I have nothing to say about them.”
But the instant the words left her lips, the girl on her left began shrieking, ”Judge Hathorne, they are scratching me and biting me! I feel their teeth in my legs! Dear G.o.d, they are going to kill me!”
Then the rest of the girls on either side of Sarah began to scream.
The faces of the three women immediately became distorted, swirling and swimming like the images in the crystal paperweight, but just before they lost all resemblance to humans, they became recognizable as faces Sarah knew and recognized.
That was the point at which she herself began screaming, and she was screaming still when her mother shook her awake.
”Sarah, honey, wake up!” Rosemary was her mother again, the same dear mother who had held and rocked her as a child. ”Everything's all right! It's just a bad dream.”
”A dream?” Sarah murmured. A dream? But it had seemed so real! She reached for her mother's hand and grasped it tightly, like a lifeline leading back to sanity.
”Do you want me to stay here with you for a while?” Rosemary asked her.
”Rosie, no.” Ted's voice came from behind her. ”You don't spend the night sitting by the bed of a seventeen-year-old. Sarah's a little bit old to be afraid of the dark, don't you think?”
”Ted ... if she's frightened-”
”I'm fine,” Sarah said stiffly. ”I'm certainly not afraid of the dark. It was just a nightmare based on something I was reading. Go on back to bed, Rosemary.”
”You're sure you're all right?” her mother asked doubtfully.
”Totally sure,” Sarah told her, aware of Ted still hovering disdainfully in the doorway. ”And you can go back to bed too, Ted. I don't go plunging into your bedroom without an invitation, so I'll thank you not to come barging into mine.”
The truth was, however, that she wasn't ”totally sure” she was all right. After her mother's comforting presence was gone, the strands of the terrifying dream still held her ensnared. She thought about Betty Parris's dreams, the ones that had led to the behavior that had caused her to be diagnosed as bewitched. Sarah had a sense that she knew what the little girl's dreams had been, but refused to allow herself to dwell upon them. It was bad enough to have dreamed about the child who had experienced them.
Reluctant to fall back to sleep for fear she might dream again, she lay tensely awake until dawn, when she finally allowed herself to doze. Jolted awake minutes later by the blast of the alarm clock, she dragged on her clothes and stumbled out into the yard to wait for Charlie, so heavy-brained and groggy that she hardly knew what she was doing.
Charlie, when he arrived, seemed equally uncommunicative. After ten minutes of silence, broken only by occasional admonishments about where to throw papers, he switched on the radio. To Sarah's surprise, instead of the country music that most of the stations carried, she heard the soothing sounds of woodwinds accompanied by a harp.
”What station is that?” she asked him.
”It's a CD,” Charlie said, reaching quickly for the eject b.u.t.ton. ”I was playing it on my way over. I'll get something else.”
”No, leave it on,” Sarah said. ”That's my kind of music. The kids I ran with back home used to listen to it all the time. Where did you buy it, anyway? I wasn't aware of a store here that sells New Age music.”
”Don't bother looking, because there isn't one,” Charlie said. ”All you're going to find is country, gospel, and Golden Oldies.”
”But wouldn't you think there would be a market for something a little different? I mean, not everybody is drawn to exactly the same thing when it comes to entertainment.”
”Bite your tongue,” Charlie said. ”We don't talk like that in Pine Crest. On the surface at least, *entertainment' around here means church suppers and G-rated movies. The last time somebody here had the gall to open a store that sold anything controversial, it was burned down.”
”You're kidding!” Sarah exclaimed. ”What kind of store was it?”
”A little mom-and-pop bookstore that carried some books that people didn't approve of. Mind you, I'm not talking p.o.r.no, I'm talking philosophy. Along with the Bibles and dictionaries and mysteries and romances, they carried books about things like reincarnation and feminism and Eastern religions. In the middle of the night a fire broke out in the store. The owner, who lived next door, woke up and saw the flames. He called the fire department, but they never showed up. Later they blamed the owner for not giving the right address. The owner tried to put out the flames on his own and caught fire himself.”
”The poor man!” Sarah exclaimed. ”I know now how painful burns are!”
”This was worse than with your mother,” Charlie said. ”Both his legs had to be amputated. The store was burned to the ground.”
”That's a horrible story,” Sarah said. ”But how did they know it was arson? Couldn't it have been an accident, like maybe the wiring was defective or-”
”The owner had received some sketches of a burning cross in the mail,” Charlie said. ”At the time he didn't know what to make of them. Afterward he figured they'd been meant as a warning.”
”Did he show the pictures to the police?”
”The police weren't interested. There's nothing illegal about mailing a picture.”
”Where do you get your CDs if you can't buy them here?” Sarah asked.
”I go to this specialty web site. They sell CDs and books and a lot of other interesting stuff. They even sell crystal b.a.l.l.s that look like your paperweight.”
”I suppose they advertise them as magic,” Sarah said derisively.
”No, just as tools for people to use when they're meditating.” He reached over and turned off the CD. ”The music must be hypnotizing you. You missed two houses. We'll have to go around the block and hit them again.”
They finished the route in the same silence in which they had begun it. As they pulled up in front of Sarah's house, Charlie said, ”You can borrow the CD if you want it.”
”Thanks, I'd like that,” Sarah said, ”and I don't like MP3s. I don't want music feeding into my ears, I want it to surround me.”
”Speaking of borrowing, how are you doing on that witch-hunt book?”
”I'm only partway through it,” Sarah admitted. ”I'm sorry to be so slow, but the subject gives me nightmares. Last night I woke up screaming, which didn't go over well with ... other people in our house.”
”I'm not reacting to it any too well myself,” Charlie said. ”I had a dream ...” He let the sentence trail off.