The Hexed

  They were both quiet in tacit understanding.

  “How did you explain that to the others?” she asked him.

  “It wasn’t easy, and as you saw last night, they didn’t exactly believe me.”

  “I noticed.”

  He shrugged. “I said pretty much the same thing you said to me—that I’d heard something coming from the woods. Everyone assumed that the killer had hung around and then when Jack, Vince and I burst into the woods, he ran away. We were only seventeen, but the three of us were pretty big. He wouldn’t have wanted to take on all of us.”

  “No one ever suspected you?”

  “Yes, actually, the police grilled me for hours,” he admitted. “Helped me get an edge on interrogation techniques before I even started in criminology.”

  Her eyes were on his, and he knew she understood exactly how he had felt.

  “I bet it was rough,” she murmured.

  “Explaining that I thought I had heard a dead girl? ‘Rough’ doesn’t begin to cover it.” He smiled dryly. “That’s what’s so great about the Krewe. You don’t have to go through a song and dance, don’t have to lie. You don’t have to pretend that trees were rustling when you really heard a voice. But...back to the point. We need to figure out if the past really does have anything to do with the present.”

  “Well,” Devin said, “there’s a way to do almost anything. We just have to figure out what it is.”

  His tone was far harsher than he had intended when he said, “You don’t really have to do anything, you know. Except keep your doors and windows locked, don’t go wandering off alone if you’re out...and be careful as all hell.”

  She smiled grimly. “Really? I don’t think so. If I’m in danger, I’m in danger wherever I am and whoever I’m with. I found the body. I introduced you to Beth, Theo, Gayle and Brent. And I went with you to Jack’s house, so...I’m in. Now, are we going to check out Perley’s theory on Gallows Hill? Because whether you’re coming or not, I’m going. Oh, and since you’re so worried about me, what about that pepper spray? I’d ask for a gun, but I don’t know how to use one.”

  “Guns are easy at point-blank range,” he told her. “Point and shoot.”

  “You’re giving me a gun?”

  “No, but I do have pepper spray in the car for you. And I’ll be damned if you’re going off investigating anything alone.”

  She smiled in satisfaction, and he realized that she’d been waiting for him to say exactly that.

  Her smile was a killer. She wasn’t just unusually beautiful, with her vivid coloring. It was her energy, her life and her passion that were so arresting.

  He knew he needed to take an emotional and physical step back—again.

  Somehow he took a step forward instead. And she didn’t move away. It was as if she waited, both hesitant and anxious. And if he touched her...

  “Ah, Agent Rockwell,” Mina said suddenly.

  And there she was, peeking out through the kitchen doorway.

  There went that moment, Rocky thought ruefully.

  “I feel so much better when you’re here. I can watch the house, of course, and warn Devin if I see someone, but I can’t always be here, and I can’t actually do anything to an intruder. I’m not really much of a protector, all in all.”

  “You do a fine job,” Rocky said reassuringly. “But actually, Devin and I were just on our way out, so we really should get going.”

  “Where are you headed?” Mina asked.

  “To check out Sydney Perley’s theory on the location of Gallows Hill,” he said, turning to Devin. “Shall we?”

  * * *

  Before they got in the car, he showed her how to use the pepper spray, which didn’t take long.

  He’d brought her three containers: one normal spray can to keep in the house—particularly by her bed at night—one small enough to go on a key chain and one disguised as a lipstick tube. Same basic principle as a gun, he explained. Point and shoot, but aim for the eyes.

  “Don’t forget, this doesn’t bring down an opponent, it just blinds him and gives you time—up to half an hour or forty-five minutes—to get away.”

  “I got it,” she told him. “Point, spray, aim for the eyes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Pink,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Pink. The other two are black, but the one for my key ring is pink.”

  “You don’t like pink?”

  “I just didn’t see it as a color you would choose, Mr. Man in Black,” she said, smiling.

  Devin found herself near him during his pepper-spray demo, and she couldn’t help noticing all kinds of ridiculous little things. The soft feel of his corduroy jacket, the crisp look of the shirt he wore beneath, his clean-shaven cheeks and, of course, his eyes. He smelled clean—soap and shampoo and some kind of masculine shaving cream or cologne. There was something intriguingly intimate about the way they stood so close.

  “Actually, I don’t use lipstick, either,” he told her, humor in his eyes.

  “They’ll have to come up with lip balm pepper spray,” she said.

  “I’m sure they already have.”

  His fingers brushed hers as he warned her to spray in the right direction—nothing worse than blinding yourself when you were already under attack.

  “Got it,” she assured him. Their faces were inches apart. She thought he was going to lean forward just another inch and...

  But his eyes were on the house, and he backed away.

  Nothing like having a chaperone at her age, Devin thought—and a dead one, at that.

  But she didn’t speak and neither did he. Instead, they got in the car and she dug her copy of Perley’s map out of her shoulder bag.

  “Okay, in 1692 Peter Street was Prison Lane. And Essex Street led to Bridge Street and on to Boston Street—and the only way in or out of town was over the bridge the street was named for. We know from many sources that the condemned were taken by cart to the execution site. Most historians think it’s unlikely that Magistrate Corwin would have chosen a site too far outside the town limit. Which leads us right here.”

  “There’s a drugstore on the corner,” Rocky said.

  “And houses all around, yes, but all of that development, even the houses, is from the past hundred years or so. I’ve read some blogs by people who were doing the same research. There’s still a patch of woods here, though, on a rocky little rise behind someone’s backyard. I wonder why...”

  “Why it hasn’t been developed?” Rocky asked. He cast her a glance and a grin. “Imagine a house built on a killing field like that. I see horror movie written all over it.”

  She gave him a warning stare. “I haven’t had a chance to look up the county records yet, but Perley had a letter written by a Dr. Holyoke in 1791. Holyoke talked to a man who had lived to be a hundred and whose mother had often spoken about the hangings. She said she could see Gallows Hill from her house and had hated the days of the executions. She’d stood at her window with her baby in her arms and prayed that they wouldn’t come for her. What I need to do is see if I can find genealogical records to figure out who the woman was and a deed of ownership to tell me what house she lived in. Obviously it won’t be easy or someone would have done it by now, but if I can track down that information, I bet we’ll have proof that her house was right around here somewhere.”

  A few minutes later he parked along the street and they got out of the car. After a bit of walking around they spotted the little hill with its patch of trees.

  The terrain had probably changed a bit, of course. Three-hundred-plus years of snow and rain led to erosion and reshaping.

  But she could still see it.

  She could narrow her eyes and see the hill rising higher than it did now, could imagine that the pond still existed, and she could even visualize the well-known story of Benjamin Nurse, his mother’s youngest son, though a man of twenty-six, rowing his boat silently in the night to find his mother’s body whe
re it had been discarded and take it away for burial.

  The air stirred, but it was a warm breeze. The world around Devin seemed to grow distant, and she saw the lonely hill higher and scattered with rocks, along with a few strong trees. Someone whispered about the heat in July, and soon she heard the sound of horses, footsteps and a cart being trundled down the rocky path.

  She wanted to cry out that they were wrong. That fear led only to hatred and prejudice, and that one day they would regret what they had done.

  There were half a dozen women in the cart, and it was surrounded by others who had come on foot to watch the hangings, as well as those who were required by law to witness the executions.

  Some were there only because they were afraid to stay away, as if refusing to watch as the ungodly were removed from the world might brand them as ungodly themselves.

  She watched as the rope was thrown over the tree branch. She heard it rasp over the limb.

  And she heard sobbing...

  From the victims, from the crowd—maybe from both.

  Suddenly she felt a presence beside her. She looked and saw that it was Margaret Nottingham.

  “Walk with me,” Margaret said softly.

  Together they started toward the hill. The women huddled in the cart, eyes turned away from the ropes dangling from the tree, nooses tied and at the ready. The Reverend Stoughton began to speak to the condemned, demanding that they confess and save their immortal souls.

  The cart was drawn up beneath the hanging tree and the condemned women were made to stand. A noose was slipped over each woman’s head, and together they began to pray, finally fading into silence. All but one. Someone in the crowd demanded that Rebecca Nurse be allowed to finish her prayer.

  And next to Devin, the specter of Margaret spoke. “It was all a mockery. A mockery of all that is just and good. Rebecca...how could any fault her? She lived a life of piety. The others...poor, often begging, or perhaps of different beliefs.” She turned to look at Devin. “You must understand. When even such a woman as Rebecca can be brought to the gallows, people are terrified. When one member of a family is taken, more follow. If you give testimony on behalf of one you love, you risk the hangman’s noose yourself. A four-year-old child resides in prison and did give testimony against her mother. And yet how do these confessions come to be heard? The weak are tortured, oppressed by fear and the demands of their oppressors and the examinations. They are so afraid they will say anything. When Governor Phipps demanded corroboration, goodwoman Rebecca Nurse was stripped before the crowd to find her witch’s teat, and she suffered humiliation beyond bearing. The prison itself is rank with disease and sickness, and food is scarce, and several died there with no hope. And so―”

  There was a gasp and a cry from the crowd as the horse was whipped and the cart was dragged from beneath the women. They struggled, kicking and jerking as they slowly strangled to death. Devin had to look away, and she turned to the specter at her side.

  Would she have died in this same way had she lived to be accused?

  As if she read Devin’s mind, Margaret turned to her with a soft smile. “They saw suffering, and they were terrified of the woods and the Indians, and so they saw the devil’s work in anything bad that happened around them. Fear made them believe in the devil, and I think they did indeed become demented. The sins of hatred and greed within their elders—one group wanting Salem to stay is it was, and another desiring separate villages—festered in their hearts. The children cried out against those they heard their parents ridicule, until it went wild and no one was safe anymore.”

  Margaret’s expression was sorrowful, her face marked by the pain and guilt of everything that had happened here so long ago.

  Devin could hear the ropes still swinging from the tree.

  Then a storm rushed in and the sky turned dark. But it wasn’t dark from the black clouds of a common storm; it was covered in a wash of red, like blood sweeping across the sky and covering the world. Or was it only in her mind that the world was changing? The red began to deepen to black. The darkness overwhelmed her, until there was no past or present, only a blackness deeper than any night.

  * * *

  Rocky caught her just as she began to fall.

  He’d seen the apparition, but the ghost had ignored him and walked straight to Devin. Together they had walked forward toward a rise with a little stand of trees, but as he followed, he knew from Devin’s eyes that she was seeing something more than the small deserted hill.

  He didn’t know how much time passed, but certainly no more than a few seconds. He had eyes only for Devin, who seemed hypnotized by something only she could see.

  Only his well-honed reflexes allowed him to catch her before she hit the ground.

  She blinked and looked up at him. “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Is what over?” he asked. And then he knew. She had indeed witnessed something he’d been unable to see, and he was suddenly certain that it had been a scene from the past. An execution. “It’s over,” he told her gently.

  She didn’t struggle to get out of his arms but let him help her to stand, and she didn’t object when he kept an arm around her for support. She looked around at their surroundings, looked to the trees, the rocky slope and the small crevice at the base of the hill.

  “That’s where they threw them,” she said, pointing. “They threw them into that crevice and covered them with dirt, burying them in unhallowed ground.” Once again, she seemed to be looking at something only she could see.

  “Let’s go,” he said, worried. He felt as if he was losing her. He understood seeing the dead, listening to the dead, learning from the dead. But something more was going on here. This place did not seem to be good for her. “Devin?” he asked.

  She straightened, clearly able to stand on her own, and he dropped his arm as she looked at him. “She’s here somewhere.”

  “Who? Our apparition?”

  “Yes—and no. I’m certain Margaret is our ghost, and I believe her killer buried her somewhere around here. She seemed so sad. But I don’t think she blamed her killer, because she didn’t even talk about her own death. All her concern was for the condemned. She said if Rebecca Nurse, who was pretty much considered a saint in the community, could be condemned and executed, anyone could be. Everyone, especially the families of the condemned, was in danger of being accused and tortured into confessing. I was sure her family murdered her to avoid being accused themselves, but maybe it was a mercy killing to save her from hanging. I don’t know―yet. But she’s here. I know it. And we have to find her.”

  “We can’t just start digging. For all we know this is private property,” he said.

  “I don’t know where to start, anyway.” She looked at him, disheartened.

  Despite her words, he knew this mission to help Margaret meant something to her. After all, she’d found one dead woman. Why not another?

  And yet, what good was it going to do—digging up a long-dead woman?

  “Even if we did find bones, they might not be hers,” he pointed out.

  “I know. People believe that Benjamin Nurse wasn’t the only one to recover the body of a loved one by night,” Devin said. “But I don’t think she’s buried with the others. I don’t know exactly where she is, I just feel I need to find her.”

  “It’s too bad she didn’t show you where to look,” he said dryly.

  “Are you mocking me?” Devin asked him, frowning.

  “No,” he assured her. “I meant what I said. It’s too bad that Margaret isn’t just a little bit more straightforward.” He smiled. She was so...possessed by her determination to find the dead woman’s body. “We can use portable ground penetrating radar. If there are bones here, we’ll find them.” He hesitated. “I just have to get Jack’s approval, so I need to figure out what to say.”

  She threw her arms around him. “Thank you!” She held her breath for a moment, looking at him as if she was searching for words to explain her feelings
. Finally she said, “She deserves to be found, and her story should be known. And she should receive a real burial—a Christian burial.”

  Her body was pressed to his, and he couldn’t stop himself from holding her in return as they stood there on that windswept rise. Once again he felt the heated urge to hold her, to kiss her at last, to...

  Yep. A house with a resident ghost and a public hill. His timing sucked.

  Then Devin pulled away, and he realized that in her mind, they stood upon sacred ground.

  “I’ll call Jack,” he told her.

  “What are you going to say?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it.”

  In the end he told Jack that he’d been looking deeper into local history and stumbled across Perley’s theories, and he had a hunch the man was right and they might find something if they did some digging. Whether it would relate to the witch trials or to their current killer, he didn’t know, but he felt strongly they needed to find out.

  Jack thought he was crazy, but—since the feds would cover the expense—said they were welcome to dig, and he would take care of any paperwork.

  Rocky asked Jack to keep things to himself so the dig site didn’t become a media circus, then made a call to Angela. She promised to locate the necessary equipment and the Krewe, and be there in two hours.

  “Happy?” he asked Devin when he got off the phone.

  “Relieved,” she said. “I don’t think any of this can actually make me happy.”

  They headed off to grab lunch at a small local café while they waited for the others. Once their food had been served, he started talking. “Let’s try to figure this out. Why would someone now—say, a descendant of Margaret Nottingham or one of the condemned—kill other innocent women to avenge her death? Wouldn’t they go after law enforcement or judges?”

  She smiled. “Yes, well, some think the condemned already had their revenge.” She quoted, “‘I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink.’”

  “Sarah Good to Nicholas Noyes, her last words before her execution,” Rocky said. “Of course, it was twenty-five years later, but Noyes did die of a hemorrhage—choking on his own blood.”