The witching hours, p.15
The Witching Hours, page 15
“Sure, sweetie, a ghost tour of Salem. I’m going to love it.” Skye laughed softly, looking at Gavin. “You know, we were both here many, many times during our growing-up years. Not together! We just had families who loved Salem or lived here at one time or another.”
“Then you’ll know when the lies and exaggerations come in,” Gavin told her.
“True. I’m not so sure tour guides like it when you correct them,” Zach noted.
“Don’t correct them; you’ll just know,” Gavin said.
He’d been busy pressing buttons as he spoke. He looked up, smiling at them. “You’re all set, Mr. and Mrs. Elijah Smith.”
“Smith? You could have just made us John and Jane Doe,” Skye said, groaning softly.
“Sorry. Smith just occurred to me. I thought Elijah would mix it up a bit”
Mix it up a bit? A name from Skye’s past?
“And, Skye, you’re Sheila.”
“Sheila Smith. Okay, then,” Skye said. She frowned suddenly. They’d started at nine, but there had been the drive out, the time at the convention center, and then visiting both sets of parents. She looked at her phone at the same time Zach looked at his.
“Four o’clock already. And—” Zach began.
“He needs to be fed. Mr. Smith needs fuel,” Skye told Gavin.
“Yeah, and I know you’ve already eaten in town, but there’s a great place near here with New England scrod, which is delicious, with buttery breadcrumbs on top, and there are crab dishes, ribs, chicken, even Maine lobster,” Gavin said. “And guest what, Mrs. Smith? I rather like having some fuel during the day at some point, too.”
Skye chuckled softly.
“I think she’s a camel,” Zach told Gavin.
“A camel?” Skye protested.
“You know, a camel can go for miles and miles without water.”
“We had omelets this morning and then home-baked muffins!” Skye protested.
“Hey, I only ate one,” Zach said.
“And I didn’t even have one muffin, I was busy … listening,” Gavin said.
Skye laughed. “Guys! I have nothing against a meal. And I guess we couldn’t get too deep into any woods with the time we have before the tour.”
“It’s a trolley tour,” Gavin told them. “You won’t need to do too much walking. From what I understand reading about the six o’clock tour, there’s some walking on Essex Street and near the Witch Museum and walking at each of the stops. The tour doesn’t include entry to the attractions, which are naturally closed at night, but it does give the attendees coupons for discounts on many attractions. But you’ll go by a lot of major sites, and you’ll hear whatever the tour guide has to say.”
Skye looked at Zach and shrugged. “Well, we can get our bearings refreshed on what is where, while getting a nice ride on what will be a nicely temperate evening.”
“Let’s eat; then you two need to change! You look like Feds!” Gavin told them. He turned and started the car. “Look the menu up on your phones so we can go right in and order—no! We can call ahead.”
Zach didn’t care what they ate. He was still holding the shirt. He didn’t close his eyes; he’d seen what he needed to see for the moment. The strange feelings were still with him.
While he drove, Gavin called the police department, saying he needed to keep people in all the surrounding forests. He believed there had to be something like a compound hidden somewhere deep within the woods. They needed to find it.
When he finished his call, Skye asked what they wanted.
“Make it easy. We’ll all get the scrod,” Zach suggested.
“Sure, fine!” Skye said. She made the call, saying it wasn’t for pickup, and that they’d be there in a few minutes.
They were.
And the food was served as soon as they were seated.
“Good planning,” Zach told Gavin.
“I try.”
“All right, I have Beau’s shirt. I told you what I got,” Zach said, looking at Gavin. “Were they telling the truth—were they telling us everything they knew?”
Gavin nodded, pursing his lips grimly. “That’s just it. Both sets of parents were telling us the truth, as they knew it, of course. And it’s natural they’d want to blame one another’s child.”
“Such a … shame! They didn’t have that far to go,” Skye said.
“I was thinking at first that they were idiots,” Zach told her. “But here’s the thing. This person who talked to them seriously convinced them that he—or she—could make everything come up roses for them. Give them a place to live together, let them both get a good education, whether Allie’s parents disowned her or not.”
“I guess that does make sense. They knew they were both about to be of legal age to do what they wanted, but neither of them wanted to alienate their parents if they didn’t have to, so … yeah, I get it.” She was sitting next to Zach and looked across the table at Gavin. “That puts us back to this—someone local must be involved!”
“Please don’t tell me that it’s the area witches,” Gavin moaned.
“Never. We’ve both known true wiccans by having been here a number of times ourselves, and that’s not it. The costume might be that of a horrible witch, but that’s not the game,” Zach said.
“You sound certain,” Gavin said.
“I am certain. This is Salem and someone thinks it’s fun to twist history and legend; and as we all know, it really goes crazy at Halloween. I think that if anyone with this tour group is involved, it’s to rub right in our noses the ease with which they’re getting away with everything. But you still need to be licensed to be a guide, right?”
“You do,” Gavin said. “And the company, naturally, employs several guides. So we can’t be sure which guide you’re going to get, but that doesn’t matter, because we don’t know which guide you’d want to get.”
“Well, I can work on that a bit as we drive,” Zach said. “And,” he added, “I think this may be the best scrod I’ve ever had.”
“Delicious,” Skye agreed.
Back in the car, he held on to Beau Carter’s T-shirt.
He closed his eyes and wished he could combine his strange sixth sense with what Skye possessed.
He needed to see the night that Beau and Allie had gone on the tour, but he knew he couldn’t do that. But he could see Beau.
Beau was sitting on a log as dusk began to fall. There were others around him, but they seemed to be forms in a mist. Zach couldn’t tell how many people there were, what their ages might be, nor could he begin to see their faces. There was something off about Beau, and Zach quickly realized what it was.
He had been drugged.
And he was staring at a man who was speaking to them, but the words he heard were jumbled.
The speaker was there, in front of Beau.
But his face was as much of a haze as everything else Beau saw.
Then …
The man was gone and someone else was moving in, ushering those who had been watching and listening along.
Then … nothing.
* * *
“Zach?” Skye asked softly.
“They are drugging the older kids and the adults they’ve taken. I don’t know what they’re giving them, but it makes them pliant. And I imagine, it sinks into their psyches so that they believe anything that they’re told.”
“Some personalities will resist that,” Gavin noted.
“They will. I was in Patricia’s head last night, and she was very afraid that someone was going to die.”
“I so desperately hope you learn something on the tour,” Gavin said. “I’ll drop you at the Old Burying Point, or Charter Street Cemetery. They start there, then head down Essex Street, where they point out the Peabody Essex Museum and some of the other shops and attractions there. Next they move on over to the Salem Witch Museum and talk about Salem Common, and then point out the Hawthorne Hotel and a bit of history regarding Nathaniel Hawthorne, before heading into the trolley to drive out by the House of the Seven Gables. I think they drive out to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead and the Witch House—sorry—”
“Yeah, yeah, the Jonathan Corwin place, it’s one of only a few structures still standing that had to do with the trials, since Corwin was one of the judges,” Skye said. “We got it, Gavin, honest.”
“Well, good, then. I’m going to drop you where Essex Street becomes strictly pedestrian. I don’t want to chance being seen. I mean, I don’t want to take a chance of being seen with you.”
“You know, we’ve been around here, too, talking to Fin and just doing a few things on the street,” Skye reminded him. “We’ve probably been seen—”
“But not with a police lieutenant,” Gavin reminded her.
“True,” Skye agreed.
“So we’re going to hope you don’t run into anyone who might have seen you as anything other than tourists,” Gavin said. He grinned. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, dropping you off here. You can give me a ring when the tour is over, and I’ll pick you up—”
“Gavin, if they drop us off where they pick us up, we can walk with no problem—”
“Except that I’ll want to know what happened,” Gavin told them.
“All right, all right. We’ll call you!” Zach groaned.
Gavin had pulled over on Hawthorne, leaving them near the entrance to the pedestrian area of Essex Street.
Zach and Skye exited the car, with Zach handing Skye Beau’s T-shirt. She gave him a nod and slid it into her shoulder bag.
And as Gavin drove away, Zach looked around them. He had always loved the city so much. From history to the present.
“What is it?” Skye asked.
“Salem. This is such an amazing place; what’s happening is making it so that …” He shrugged, his words trailing.
“That you’re infuriated by what’s going on, anything that hurts the city like this?” Skye asked.
He laughed softly. “One of those old sayings I got from my mom. ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ In my mind, Salem has rather managed to do that. ‘Witch City.’ But what always impressed me most was that the events had such a strong influence on the legal system created by our Founding Fathers. I mean, think about it! Anyone could get on a witness stand and say that they were tormented by the spirit of a person—when that person was right there in the courtroom. No spectral evidence! Innocent until proven guilty, instead of guilty just because you were accused. Freedom of religion. Laws came into being that kept mass hysteria from causing the deaths of innocents. Anyway …”
Skye set a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to stop this! So let’s walk through the pedestrian mall and cut back over to the graveyard. We have a few minutes. There are shops here that I love! Starting right there around the corner. Crow Haven Corner! I love that shop. Laurie Cabot used to own it, and she had another shop on Pickering Wharf—the Cat, the Crow & the Crown—but she closed it more than a decade ago. Laurie has done such amazing things that fall right in line with what you’re saying. After the movie version of John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick came out, she established the Witches’ League for Public Awareness. I mean, that’s just it—we get things in our heads. Ideas that we don’t know about or agree with and we turn them into something evil!”
“Such passion. Are you a wiccan?” Zach asked.
She laughed softly. “No, I just respect the beliefs of anyone who intends goodness and no harm to others!”
“And what’s going on has no relation to any religion—unless someone’s religion is to create grandeur for themselves!”
Skye nodded, taking his hand. “Come on, Mr. Smith. Now we are running out of time! We can run in and out of shops and get to the graveyard.”
Zach smiled and opted to stay on the pedestrian way as he watched Skye do an amazing job of flying in and out of shops.
“Hey! Deciding what I might want to go back and see! There’s a great place on movie monsters—”
“But nothing as elaborate or as complete as the Howells’ shop, right?”
Skye shrugged. “Rents right here on the pedestrian area of Essex Street must be high; it’s central, easy access … but Swampscott is a bit off the main, but it gives them tons of space and allows them to cater to the locals and those in the know when it comes to the best selections around Halloween. Somewhere along the line—though I’m not sure why—I’d like to get back to that shop and see if I can’t get a better view of whoever it is dressing up as witches.”
“More than one. And they’re keeping protestors quiet and pliant with drugs,” Zach said wearily. “Which I hope is working on whoever it is that Patricia is so worried about.”
“You know, we could solve this easily,” Skye said.
“How?”
“Have the entire population and all visitors speak one-on-one with Gavin—and he can tell us if they’re telling the truth or not!”
Zach groaned. “Did you learn nothing in the academy?” he demanded.
She laughed as they came to the Old Burying Point, or Charter Street Cemetery. They had spent more time on the street than either one had realized.
By the time they reached their meeting point, the tour guide was there collecting names of those on the tour and checking them off on his tablet.
“Hey!”
It was a young man in his early twenties who was leading the tour. Unruly light-brown hair fell over his forehead. Medium in height and build, he appeared to be the least-threatening human being possible, especially when he smiled. His hazel eyes lit up; his face appeared to be a mask of friendship.
“We’re the Smith couple on there,” Zach told him. “I’m Elijah and—”
“Your lovely wife, Sheila! Welcome. First trip to Salem?”
“First trip when we’ve had a chance to enjoy it!” Skye told him, catching Zach’s arm and holding close to him in an affectionate gesture. “And we’re together, just in case it gets a little too spooky for me!”
“I’m Nick, Nick Sandoval,” the guide told them. “And,” he said, “this is mostly a history tour. But it is night, and things can get a little creepy! We’ll be getting started in one more minute!”
He was true to his word. He pointed out the oldest gravestone remaining in the cemetery, the Cromwell Stone, placed there when Doraty Cromwell had passed away in 1673. The graveyard had been laid out in 1637, but Doraty’s was the oldest remaining stone. No, those executed for witchcraft were not in the Old Burying Point; their bodies had been treated like rubbish. It was assumed, though, that in some cases, the families of the deceased had gone by cover of night to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones.
They spent time looking at the memorial at the graveyard, stone benches that commemorated each of the accused. Then it was time to move on. He took them along Essex Street, speaking about the growth of commercialism in the city.
He talked about the Hawthorne Hotel, opened in 1925 and named after Salem’s son, the great Nathaniel Hawthorne. The site was near Hawthorne’s birthplace on Union Street, and not far from the House of the Seven Gables.
They learned about events on Salem Common and were given a glowing review of the Salem Witch Museum. Then it was time to hop aboard the trolley and head out to see the Witch House, once the property of Judge Corwin, and then onward to the House of the Seven Gables, and, for the finale, a drive out to the Pioneer Village.
As they moved from site to site, Zach and Skye split up to stare with awe at different things, chatting with the guide when they could, studying the others on the tour. There was a trio of teenage girls on the tour, and it seemed the guide was spending most of his time with them whenever possible.
Natural? He was a young, good-looking guy. And the girls were young, too, cute and giggly, and ready to flirt.
But it seemed that at times Nick was leaning in a little bit too close to the girls to simply be answering a question one of them might have asked at a particular moment.
And at one point, he thought he saw the young man brush the hand of one of the girls.
“Giving her something?” Skye whispered to him.
“Drugs, maybe,” Zach whispered back. “We need to keep watch. He seems to be getting especially close to that one girl. The thin girl, with the reddish-blond hair. I think one of her friends called her Cathy.”
“Should we—”
“We can’t just bust him on drugs,” Zach said.
“We need to see where it goes from here, follow them when the tour is over,” Skye said.
“Maybe it’s natural. A boy flirting with a girl, supplying her with a bit of encouragement so that they get together after?”
“Hm. Natural,” Skye murmured.
And then maybe not. Maybe a possibility, while others were culled as well.
Their guide was also spending time with a woman on the tour who was with a little boy of about seven or eight.
Zach’s instincts, and all that they had learned, came to credence when they were on a remote road by the Pioneer Village.
The driver, a man of about sixty, suddenly seemed to have a heart attack, driving the trolley a bit off the road, sliding into the embankment.
“Oh, no! Hank, Hank!” Nick Sandoval cried.
There were screams and chatter coming from the rows of seats on the trolley.
Of course, Nick immediately began to apologize and worry, asking everyone to sit still or call for a pickup if they could; he’d be getting an ambulance out himself.
“I can solve this!” Zach told Skye, hurrying forward with her at his heels.
“What if it’s real?” she murmured.
“It’s not!” he assured her. “But we’ll find out.”
“Nick, Nick,” he said, rushing forward. “I’m a doctor. I can—”
“What?” the guide demanded.
“Let me get to him,” Zach said, reaching over to touch the driver’s face.
The man’s eyes immediately opened wide. As he stared at Zach, they could hear those on the trolley speaking with concerned anguish.
“My cell is saying there’s no service,” a woman cried.
“Mine too!” a man replied.
“You’re a liar!” Zach told the driver.
