Chapter 18
The blood-curdling scream tore Liam from a deep slumber and had him staggering around his room looking for the door. His heart pounded, his breath was short, and somewhere in the back of his mind he was preparing himself to fight off the danger.
When he reached the hallway, he realized the screams were coming from Adela’s room. As he burst into the bedroom, he fully expected to see her fighting off an attacker, but instead she was fighting the demons that held her hostage in her dreams.
She thrashed around the bed, her fists flailing, her face contorted in fear.
“No!” she screamed.
Liam knew he had to wake her. He had to break the grasp of the nightmare.
“Adela!” he yelled, walking over to the bed and flipping on the bedside lamp. Grabbing one of her wrists, he took a foot to the gut and let out a curse. He grabbed her other hand and put his leg over the top of her thighs, noticing that she was wearing the purple nightgown again. When a knee came dangerously close to his groin, he decided he needed to concentrate on getting her thrashing under control and waking her from her torture instead of admiring those long legs.
Settling his weight on top of her, her head flailed, almost connecting with his chin. He pinned her hands between their bodies. “Dammit, Adela, wake up!”
Her movement slowed and her eyes fluttered open. “What are you doing?” she yelled as her eyes widened. He could feel her breath on his face as she spoke, and it was then he realized the intimacy of the situation.
“You were screaming like a wounded ‘roo, bucking and kicking like one, too.”
He rolled off her and settled on his back on the bed. “Good God, woman, you can sure put up a fight.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her scrambling to get under the covers and allowed her to do so without his eyes roaming her body. Look at him being all respectful of her modesty. What a gentleman.
Once she had the sheet pulled up to her breasts, he turned to her and asked, “So what were you dreaming about?”
She ran her fingers through her hair, not meeting his gaze. “My death,” she mumbled. Her eyes frantically scanned the room, as if she was making sure her surroundings were real.
“Hmm . . . based on those screams, it must have been pretty awful.”
“Is there a pleasant death?”
Liam shrugged. “I don’t know. I think the ones who go quickly, like from a massive heart attack, or the ones who never knew it was coming are lucky. It’s the ones who suffer that I feel bad for.”
Adela stared at her hands for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“So, I take it your death was pretty awful.”
She looked at him. “Yes, it was. I saw it coming.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “Well, since we’re both up, why don’t you tell me about it?” Liam asked.
Adela picked at her finger and shrugged. “You already know. I was hanged. They thought I was a witch.”
Liam rolled to his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “Yeah, I know that, but what happened? Why did they think you were a witch? What did you do?”
After a moment, Adela sighed and met his gaze. She sunk down into the pillows, pulled the sheet up further, and started talking.
She didn’t tell Liam about her marriage or her miscarriages. Her lost babies were a very private matter, one she didn’t feel comfortable sharing with him. Besides, he had asked about her death, not her life.
“Word spread quickly of my little hobby of working with herbs,” she said. “My parents weren’t happy, as I should have been concentrating on finding a husband—something I had no interest in doing—but they relented and allowed me to follow my passions.”
“The church elders burst into my house one night while my parents were visiting. It was so frightening—they were screaming and carrying torches,” she mumbled with a faraway look in her eye.
They accused her of witchcraft because a woman who had died after drinking some tea Adela had made. “They took me from my home and put me in a cell, like I was no better than a dog,” she said.
Liam tried to put himself in her position, but it was difficult. He knew nothing of being a twenty-year-old woman, and absolutely zero about being alive during the Puritan age.
The trial happened three days later. “There were a few tests that they performed that confirmed in their minds that I was a witch.”
“Like what?”
Adela turned her head and pulled back her hair, revealing a three-inch red birthmark that sat at her hairline behind her ear and ran a short distance down her neck. “They said this represented that I had been in communication with the devil and he had branded me.”
Liam scoffed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Adela gave him a small smile. “It gets better.”
They took a knife and pricked her finger, the reasoning being that if she didn’t scream or bleed, she was a witch. “The blade was dull. They might as well have tried to make me bleed with a spoon.”
“So you didn’t bleed or scream.”
Adela shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
Liam couldn’t believe the utter stupidity or the barbarism involved in Adela’s trial. Her work with herbs, which were lessons from the Naumkeag tribe, also pointed in the direction of witchcraft, as the town leaders deemed anyone who did not believe in God as they did a follower of Satan.
“From my understanding, the Naumkeag people were very peaceful. We never had any trouble with them, anyway.”
Liam just shook his head, not knowing what to say.
“They performed one last test on me to confirm I was a witch.”
“And that was?”
They brought in a large scale and set a stack of Bibles on one side, and Adela was to lie on the other. “If I was heavier or lighter than the Bibles, I was a witch. If I weighed the same amount as the Bibles, I wasn’t.”
“What are the chances of that happening?”
“Slim to none. Needless to say, I obviously weighed more than the stack of Bibles. To put the icing on the cake, they also told me that my freakish height was also a sign that I had been in communication with Satan.”
“Your height?”
“Yes. There were very few men who stood at almost six feet tall, and no women.”
“Incredible.”
She was sentenced to hang, and that was when the anger overtook the fear. She had so much more living to do, and she was innocent. She went to church every day and prayed. She watched her actions and her tongue so that she didn’t sin. There wasn’t an evil bone in her body.
“I became . . . belligerent—yes, that’s a good word—when I found out that I had been deemed guilty. I found out that sarcasm and being mouthy were also signs of witchcraft.”
“What did your parents think?” Liam asked.
“They attended the trial, but not the hanging. They told me they loved me and believed in the goodness within me after I was convicted.”
While waiting for her punishment, there were three other women imprisoned who died in her cell. “The men were afraid to remove the bodies of the so-call witches, and the stench . . .”
Adela shivered, and Liam couldn’t help but reach out and take her hand. She looked surprised at the contact, but then gave him a small smile, as if she appreciated the gesture.
“When I was hanged, I wished more than anything that I was a witch, because I wanted to put a curse on everyone who watched me go to my death. I lashed out against God, screaming at the top of my lungs that I disavowed Him and His teachings, despising Him for letting this happen to me. I died with such great hate in my soul that I was almost sent to Hell.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair. I mean, you had been a good girl up until you were wrongly accused and tried as a witch.”
Adela nodded. “My heart was black, Liam. It was only because of the way I lived my life that I was allowed into Heaven. To make up for my i
ndiscretions against the Creator, I was put in the role of Angel of Death until He deemed my heart was once again pure. It’s never gotten there.”
Liam thought of her as an Angel of Death: the nasty looks she gave him, her quiet, haughty nature, how she looked like she wanted to rip his heart out when he harassed her, not to mention her less-than-friendly approach to the souls that she delivered.
However, he didn’t blame her for being angry at her death. Being accused, tried, and punished for something you didn’t do was a hard pill to swallow.
Adela eyed him warily, as if she were waiting for him to say something about her story but really didn’t have much to contribute.
“What about your death, Liam? What happened?”
Liam rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. “There’s not much to tell, really. I was a firefighter who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unless you want me to describe what burning flesh smells like and how it feels when your skin burn down to your bones.”
Adela inhaled sharply.
“I didn’t think so.”
Liam stood and stretched. “Death can be ugly. We both know that. We both experienced it, and we both have seen it—you obviously more than me.”
“Yes, it can be.”
Liam walked to the door. “G’night, Adela. I hope the rest of your sleep is peaceful.”
“Thank you, Liam. For waking me and for this . . . chat.”
She sat in the bed with the sheet pulled up to her breasts, her hair tangled around her shoulders. The nightlight cast a soft glow on her creamy, porcelain skin, and Liam decided at that second that she was the prettiest thing he had seen, and the blood in his body made a mad dash for his groin. However, he reminded himself, even though she had been around for over three hundred years delivering souls to their resting place, for all intents and purposes, she was a twenty-year-old virgin. And on that note, she was a twenty-year-old virgin from the Puritan era. Did twenty-year-old virgins even exist in this day and age? He didn’t know, but he guessed there weren’t too many.
Adela was off limits.
He smiled and shut the door.