Gallows Hill

  “Then how did you know they were in a bus terminal?”

  “I didn’t know,” Sarah repeated. “It’s pure coincidence. I just popped out with that to be saying something. Get off my back, Debbie. If I knew, I’d tell you, but I don’t.”

  The final bell rang as she slammed the locker door shut and clicked the lock back in place. When she got to her feet, she was relieved to find Debbie was gone—so relieved that she didn’t even mind being late to class.

  Chapter

  NINE

  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, thrashing 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 Tituba.”

  The other girls quickly agreed, and added, “Tituba 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 surpassed 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 God’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 God, 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 button. “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 porno, 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 a
re!”

  “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 balls 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.

  Sarah was intrigued despite herself. “What kind of a dream?”

  “I felt like there were weights on my chest and I was suffocating. What did you dream about?”

  “Nothing as bad as that,” Sarah said, although she wasn’t sure that she meant it. Her nightmare had been about as bad as they come.

  “Look, before you take off, there’s something I need to say to you,” Charlie said. “I’m probably going to make you mad like I did the other day, but I feel like I’ve got to say it anyway.”

  “Okay, say it,” Sarah said.

  “I hear you had a run-in with Debbie Rice.”

  “Word does get around fast!”

  “Well, it took place out in the hall, so it wasn’t exactly private. Sarah, you can’t do that, not with Debbie.”

  “She’s the one who started it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who started it, you just can’t do it. Not with one of the cheerleaders. That cheerleader bunch may bicker among themselves, but they’re a tight-knit group; actually it’s kind of unnatural, like they have a bond of some sort that goes back to another lifetime. And except for Eric Garrett, who’s in a league of his own, the cheerleaders and the guys on the football team pretty well run the school. Cindy Morris—”

  “She seems nice enough,” Sarah broke in. “There’s no reason for Cindy not to like me.”

  “She’s the minister’s daughter,” Charlie said. “And Kyra’s mom is church secretary. That’s reason enough right there.”

  “Does that mean it’s impossible for me to make a friend in Pine Crest? I’m only here because my mother lost her senses. If anybody’s guilty of bewitchment, it’s Ted who bewitched my mother!”

  “I knew you were going to be mad.”

  “I’m not mad, I’m just … confused,” Sarah said. “What did you mean about Eric being ‘in a league of his own’?”

  “I just meant he’s not a jock, even though he hangs out with them,” Charlie said. “His dad doesn’t want him to ‘waste his time’ on athletics, so he’s on the edge of that crowd, but not really one of them. He goes to their parties, and a lot of the girls have crushes on him, but he’s got his own agenda. I wouldn’t trust Eric Garrett as far as I could throw him—which wouldn’t be far, even if I didn’t have this cast on.”

  “So what exactly are you trying to tell me?” Sarah asked him.

  “Don’t do anything to irritate the cheerleaders, and cut out the fortune-telling.”

  “Anything else while you’re handing out advice?”

  “I think that’s enough for one morning,” Charlie said tonelessly.

  It was a strange conversation, and Sarah tried her best not to dwell on it, but as the day went on, it kept clawing at the corners of her mind. Charlie’s round face had been so earnest, and his voice had held a disturbing note of somberness that seemed totally out of character. At the end of the morning, when Eric intercepted her at her locker to tell her about the next week’s appointments, she found that she had serious reservations.

  “I’ve set you up with four clients for next Friday,” he told her, obviously expecting her to be pleased.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said hesitantly. “There was one that didn’t go so well last time. I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t think twice about going on with this.”

  “What do you mean, one didn’t go well?” Eric asked her. “As far as I know, they were terrific! Jennifer and Danny have talked you up to the point where kids are standing in line to make appointments. I’m thinking of raising the price so that we can all get rich on this.”

  “But Debbie was so angry—”

  “That’s the greatest promotion she could give you. She’s spread it around to everybody that you can really see the future. What you told her about her sister running off with that bodybuilder—how did you ever come up with a gem like that?”

  “There was information about Buzz Tyson in Kyra’s Cliffs Notes,” Sarah said, skirting the question. “How does she know so much about so many people?”

  “She’s a wannabe,” Eric said. “Wannabes are like that.”

  “A ‘wannabe’?” Sarah repeated blankly. “What sort of ‘wannabe’?”

  “A wanna-be-all-of-the-things-that-she-isn’t,” Eric said. “Cheerleader; star of the Drama Club; big-busted sex symbol; a beautiful, mysterious crystal-gazer who tells heart-stopping fortunes. Wannabes soak up information about the people they envy, and now Kyra’s got the chance to spout it all out again. The poor kid takes after her mom, who’s a wannabe career woman, though now, I guess, she’s switched back to being a wannabe housewife.”

  “Everybody’s a wannabe something,” Sarah said.

  “But some of us make things happen, while others just sit there. You and I are among the movers of mountains, and that, my lovely soothsayer, is why you can’t back down on me for Friday. All your clients have paid in advance, and, like I said, you’re going to have one more than last time. Actually I could have scheduled triple that number, but I didn’t want to wear you out. Besides, if people can’t get what they want immediately, it makes them a lot more eager, don’t you agree?”

  Without waiting for a response, he proceeded to take her books from her hands and walk her down the hall to her next class, just like Jon used to do at her school back in Ventura. Eric even walked like Jon, with super-long strides, so Sarah had to do a double-time trot to keep up with him. She was acutely conscious of the curious glances they were getting, glances that asked, “Is there something romantic going on here?” Despite her irritation that he had taken her agreement for granted, it was an ego trip to be escorted to class by the Sun God. And to be honest, she had to admit that her enjoyment was intensified by the sight of Kyra, who was trudging past them in the opposite direction, carrying her own books and glaring.

  “So, what’s with you and Sarah?” Kyra demanded as she scrambled into the passenger seat of Eric’s car. “I saw you trotting down the hall like her pet puppy dog. The two of you looked like you were headed for the altar.”

  “Don’t
be silly,” Eric said. “I’m just doing my job. The goose that lays the golden eggs has got to be pacified. I may even take her to a movie or something to keep her happy. Do you know how much we’re going to be charging on Friday? Twenty-five dollars per reading!”

  “You’re kidding!” Kyra exclaimed.

  “Nope. And nobody’s complaining. Four people at twenty-five bucks per head is one hundred dollars. That’s fifty for Sarah and twenty-five for each of us. That’s not bad for an hour’s not-so-hard labor.”

  “Why does Sarah get more than we do?” Kyra demanded.

  “Because she won’t do it for less, and it won’t work without her. Don’t bring it up to her, okay? It’ll piss her off, and we don’t want her bailing out on us. She’s already starting to get edgy, and that’s not good.”

  “I work as hard as she does,” Kyra complained. “Digging up all that information isn’t easy.”

  “You’re a miracle girl, Carrot Top,” Eric told her, ruffling her hair. “I loved that stuff you got on Debbie’s sister and the bodybuilder. Where did you come up with that anyway?”

  “I overheard it in the school rest room,” Kyra said. “I was in one of the stalls, and Misty and Leanne were gossiping while they combed their hair.”

  “The more personal stuff like that you get, the better,” Eric said. “Nobody will ever guess it’s coming from you. It’s common knowledge that you and Sarah can’t stand each other. For this Friday night I want stuff that is really intimate, stuff that nobody knows, and I mean nobody. Think you can manage that?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyra said doubtfully. “There’s just so much you can get by eavesdropping on conversations. I don’t want to look suspicious. And the really hot stuff doesn’t get talked about in public.”

  “You’re right,” Eric said. “That’s the stuff people talk about to shrinks. Or to doctors. Or to religious counselors, like Reverend Morris. He probably keeps notes on the people who come to him for counseling. Is there any chance those might be on file at the church?”

  “Possibly,” Kyra said uncomfortably. “But I wouldn’t have access to it.”