Supernatural: One Year Gone (25 page)

“Judge Stoughton, the afflicted girls are describing what smoke looks like from where they are seated. And others are describing what smoke looks like from where they are. Both are correct, but perhaps that means that neither is more right than the other.”

“Are you wasting our time, Mr. Campbell?” Stoughton asked. His patience was clearly running out.

Nathaniel took a deep breath. He had to make the judges see what was clear as day to him.

“Perhaps what this woman did isn’t being perceived correctly by those young women over there,” he said, keeping his voice clear and steady. “Perhaps they are feeling hurt, but it isn’t coming from this woman.”

“Are you accusing these young girls of lying, Mr. Campbell?” the judge’s voice was steely.

“I’m not saying they are lying,” Nathaniel replied, “only that perhaps they are mistaken.”

Prudence stopped her hysterics for a second and stared at Nathaniel. She then started to scream and point at him.

“Stop! Stop, you evil man!” she yelled. “I’ve done nothing to you and you are pinching and scraping me!”

The judges looked at Prudence as she writhed in pain, red welts swelling on cheeks. Then they turned back toward Nathaniel.

“Mr. Campbell, why are you hurting this innocent girl?” Stoughton demanded.

“I’m not,” Nathaniel replied firmly. “I am but standing here.”

“But she says you are hurting her. Look how she writhes in pain.”

Prudence continued to scream and cry.

“Seize him!” Stoughton declared and gestured that the two men standing closest to Nathaniel should restrain him. The men immediately grasped hold of Nathaniel, holding him tightly so that he had no hope of escape. “Nathaniel Campbell you are charged with witchcraft. Take him to the jail.”

Nathaniel was marched forcefully through the crowd and out into the cold morning air.

Panicked, Caleb and Thomas pushed through the other onlookers to follow their father. They stumbled out of the building to see the men drag Nathaniel to a cart and throw him into the back. He recovered quickly and turned around, frantically scanning the crowd, searching for his children.

“Father!” the boys shouted, racing toward him.

“Boys! Go tell your mother. Don’t worry about me. Watch Prudence, she’s dangerous. Find out what she and Constance are doing!” Nathaniel called as the cart pulled away.

The two brothers looked at one another, realizing they were on their own. They stealthily returned to the packed meetinghouse. As they walked in, Thomas looked over at Prudence. She stared back at him with a small smirk on her face.

“You stay here,” Thomas whispered to Caleb. “I’m going to go tell Mother.”

Caleb nodded and Thomas crept out of the meetinghouse. He took his father’s horse from the post and rode home quickly over the same field where Prudence had attacked them.

When he reached the Campbell homestead, his mother was outside feeding the pigs. Thomas leapt from the horse and quickly explained what had happened.

Rose Mary called for Hannah. They would visit Nathaniel in jail.

The women quickly got ready. Hannah took a couple of silver pieces from an old box. She also packed a basket full of food, since many prisoners didn’t get fed at all in jail.

Back outside, the three said goodbye and agreed that they would meet back at home that evening to exchange news.

The snow and the freeze had melted in only a couple of weeks and the damp smell of spring was making the village all the more jumpy. Now that the weather was better, it had been decided that the hangings should begin. The crowd buzzed around the meetinghouse like angry bees waiting for the next victim. As soon as the last paper was signed the accused were taken out of the meetinghouse and loaded onto a wooden cart.

The entire village would then follow the creaking cart into Salem Town as it made its way off the main road and up the grassy hill. In each instance, Prudence Lewis followed behind the crowd, supported by her uncle and Reverend Parris. She among all the girls insisted on witnessing the deaths of those she had accused.

Bridget Bishop had been the first to be hanged. The entire village had come out to see her undoing.

After the first hanging it seemed as if the town could not wait for more. Another hanging was scheduled for two days later, and after that it seemed as if the hangings didn’t stop. Day after day, women and men were brought from the jail to the hill and hung until they were dead. Some protested their innocence even up to the last moment, as their heads were pushed through the noose. Others stayed silent.

Thomas and Caleb watched the proceedings from a grassy field, far from the eyes of the townspeople. Since Nathaniel’s arrest and imprisonment, they had kept out of sight. Their mother was the only one that went into town. The children stayed home. While Nathaniel was in jail, they didn’t want to provoke the witches.

Day after day they went over the question of what exactly the witches were up to. Accusations of witchcraft had become rampant in Salem, with any strange behavior leading to accusations between friends and neighbours. However, the Campbells’ only real concern was Constance and Prudence. Both were powerful, dangerous witches. But proving that to the judges seemed impossible. It was clear that Prudence was puppeting the trials, but why?

There were over a hundred accused people, many of them held in the same jail as Nathaniel. With each passing day, the family feared that Nathaniel would be the next to be called up by the magistrates and hanged.

After witnessing a particularly brutal hanging early one morning, Thomas and Caleb made their way home through the woods and fields. They followed their usual route which took them far from Salem Village, out of the range of the prying eyes of any hysterical villagers or vengeful witches. As they entered a clutch of trees, they came across a small hill they normally didn’t pay much attention to, hidden as it was from the view of the main path. Today, they both paused and stared as the knoll was dotted with dirt mounds. Someone had clearly tried to hide freshly dug earth under piles of branches spiked with furry new leaves. Curious, the boys cleared away the branches.

“You first,” Thomas said.

“Why me?” Caleb sighed.

“Because you’re the youngest,” Thomas insisted.

Caleb knew what he had to do. He knelt down and started scooping the earth away with both hands. The dirt came apart easily, and soon body parts started to appear like gruesome spring flowers. Thomas knelt down to help his brother.

They uncovered five bodies in all, each with their throat cut, just like they had seen on the dead bodies of Abigail Faulkner and the transient. They didn’t recognize any of the corpses. Clearly, the witches had got smart and decided that murdering travelers and hiding the bodies was a more efficient way of operating.

“What should we do?” Caleb asked.

“We need to tell Father,” Thomas said.

“How can we do that? They won’t let us in to see him,” Caleb pointed out.

“I guess we need to handle this by ourselves then,” Thomas said. The boys slid down the hill and headed toward home.

* * *

That night Caleb, Thomas, and Hannah dressed in dark clothing and stealthily rode toward the jail in Salem Town, Hannah on her mother’s horse and the boys riding their father’s. Unlike Salem Village, the town was heavily populated as it crowded around a couple of inlets with the bay stretching beyond to the sea.

The children dismounted a couple of blocks from the jail and tied the horses up behind an old barn. The jail was an imposing red stone building set on a grassy plain, which meant approaching would be difficult without the guards noticing. Pulling out his pocketknife, Thomas cut down branches and grass and draped them over himself and his siblings for camouflage.

Moving slowly and silently, they crawled toward the building.

Once they had reached the safety of its dark shadows, they shed the branches and Thomas took from his pack a long rope with an iron hook on the end. He whipped the rope up with practiced ease and caught the hook on the stone balustrade at the top of the building.

Caleb then grasped the rope and started walking up the wall. His goal was a narrow barred window some thirty feet up. Hannah had visited the jail with her mother on several occasions so she knew roughly where the cells were and which hallways led where. She was confident that this particular window led to a small hallway that should be deserted at night. Nathaniel was being kept two floors below.

Halfway up the side of the building, Caleb lost his footing and he smacked against the stone wall with a thud. Hannah gasped, and she and Thomas dived for cover under their discarded camouflage branches.

There was a loud clang as the guard opened the gate and peeked around the side of the building from which Caleb dangled. Fortunately, he didn’t look up, and in the faint moonlight failed to spot Thomas and Hannah holding their breath beneath the branches.

After a few moments, the guard went back to the front of the building, but it was clear he didn’t immediately go back inside. The smell of a pipe stuffed with English tobacco wafted around the corner.

Time was running short. Shaking off the branches, Hannah gestured frantically for Caleb to continue climbing. When he reached the window he slid one leg in, then the other, and disappeared from view.

Inside the building, Caleb dropped four feet to the ground, and there was a faint splash as his boots hit the wet stone floor. The inside of the jail was cold and dark, and the stench of human waste was almost overpowering. Caleb could hear someone groaning in one of the cells closest to him. He shivered, feeling a tingle of fear go down his spine.

Pushing the thought aside he got out the rough sketch Hannah had supplied him with. He examined the piece of paper by the faint light from the window, then inched forward into the darkness. A staircase in the back corner of the building should lead him down to his father’s cell.

“Who’s there?” a female voice whispered out of the darkness. “Please, sir. Please help me.”

Knowing he couldn’t afford a moment’s distraction, Caleb stopped and hoped that the woman would think he was gone.

“Please sir, come closer,” the voice said.

Caleb crept over to a small three-foot-by-two-foot cell. He could see the faint outline of a woman huddled in the corner.

“Sir, Dorcas Good, Sarah Good’s daughter, is over in the cell beyond. Please see if she’s well. Her mother was hanged and no one has spoken or seen to her in weeks.”

“I will,” Caleb whispered.

“Is that you, Caleb?” the woman crawled toward him. Caleb could now see it was Marium Teller. An old woman who used to sell apples on the street.

“Yes, ma’am. It is me,” Caleb replied.

“What a good boy you are. Are you helping your father this fine day in your fields?”

Caleb eyed the poor old woman, she had clearly lost her mind. In his jacket pocket he had stuffed a couple of loaves of bread. Caleb took one out and slid it between the bars for the old woman. He then continued down the hallway, moving as softly as he could.

In an even tinier, damper cell, chained to the wall, was four-year-old Dorcas Good. Her mother had been one of the first to be accused of witchcraft and she had been second to be hanged after Bridget Bishop. Dorcas was filthy and covered in dirt and her own feces, Caleb struggled not to recoil from the smell. The tiny girl looked at him with wild, untamed eyes. Caleb pushed his last loaf of bread toward her. She grabbed it and started to tear into it with her teeth like an animal. The sight tore at Caleb’s heartstrings. Despite her being such a tiny child, Dorcas had been accused of witchcraft. How the magistrates could think such a thing was impossible to know.

In the faint moonlight, Caleb found the staircase and made his way carefully down two flights of stairs and onto another corridor of cells. He passed Marshall Lewis, a man who was accused of witchcraft because his neighbor’s horse went lame after they had an argument.

“Hey you boy!” Marshall called out. “Whatcha doin’ here?”

“Shushh,” Caleb said.

“Hey guards. Guards! What’s this boy doin?”

Caleb frantically looked for a place to hide, he noticed two bars of one cell were a little more spread apart then the rest. He squeezed through them and found himself in a cell with a sleeping woman.

A minute or so later, he heard the guards march heavily along the corridor coming to investigate the commotion.

“There’s a boy in here. There’s a boy in here,” Marshall cried.

“Shut up, ye old coot,” a guard said, spitting on him.

“But he’s there, he’s over there!”

The guard undid the lock on the man’s cell and gave him a slap with a bully bat. Marshall huddled in the corner until the guard tired of beating him and left.

Caleb waited until the coast was clear and then climbed out from between the bars. He pitied the man, who was clearly crazy, but his second close encounter with the guards only made him want to escape this terrible place even more quickly.

He crept on and a few minutes later, to his relief, he found Nathaniel’s cell.