by John Saul
“You been lookin’ at the clock all through dinner,” Marty challenged. “And eatin’ even faster than usual. You got plans I don’t know about?”
Angel bit her lip and willed herself not to flush. Her father’s brow was knit into a deep scowl, and the look in his eyes told her she wasn’t going to be able to escape the kitchen—let alone the house—without giving him an answer. “I’m going to the library,” she finally said. “I’ve got some homework.” Again, the truth that wasn’t quite the answer.
“What kinda homework?”
“History,” Angel replied. “It’s a project about Roundtree.”
“You meetin’ that boy there?” Marty demanded, and this time there was nothing Angel could do to keep herself from reddening.
“What boy?” Myra asked.
“That kid I found in her room the other day. What’s his name?”
“Seth,” Angel breathed. “Seth Baker.”
“Oh, I met his mother at lunch,” Myra said. “Jane Baker.”
Marty swung around to focus on his wife. “Lunch? What lunch?”
“At the country club,” Myra explained. “Joni invited me to meet some of her friends.”
“They invite you to the big blowout they’re havin’ this weekend?” Marty asked.
“You mean the Family Day barbecue?” Myra said. “I don’t think you could call it a ‘big blowout,’ really. It’s just more like a—”
“I know what it is,” Marty interrupted. “I heard your high-and-mighty brother-in-law talkin’ about it.” He saw Myra’s lips purse in that disapproving way again, but so what? “They invite you?” Marty pressed.
“As a matter of fact, they did,” Myra said, immediately regretting her words as she saw her husband pull his lips into a mocking imitation of her own expression.
“As a matter of fact, they did,” Marty parroted in an intonation close enough to Myra’s to make her wince. “And what did you tell them?”
“I didn’t really say anything,” Myra said, choosing her words carefully, and silently praying that Marty wouldn’t lose his temper. “I’m not sure it’s our kind of thing—”
“Not our kind of thing,” Marty parroted. Then he dropped both his wife’s expression and her tone. “How the hell would you know?”
“Don’t swear, Marty,” Myra said, and once again wished she could snatch back her words. Too late—Marty’s face was already reddening with anger.
“Don’t you tell me how to talk. And don’t tell me what’s my kind of thing and what’s not either. You know what, Myra? We’re goin’ to that party!” He saw Myra’s eyes widen and a look of something like panic come over his daughter’s face. “What’s the matter? Neither of you think we belong there?”
“I—I don’t have anything to wear,” Myra began.
“You can wear any damned thing you want,” Marty roared. “It’s a fuckin’ barbecue, isn’t it? What’s so fuckin’ fancy about a fuckin’ barbecue?”
“Marty—” Myra began, but Marty was on his feet now. “Go to the library, Angel,” she said quickly.
“But Mom—” Angel began, but her mother didn’t let her finish.
“Just go. It’ll be all right.”
Her father was trembling with anger now, and Angel hurried out of the kitchen, pausing only long enough to pull a jacket off the hook by the front door before slipping out of the house.
“We’re goin’ to that party,” she heard her father bellow as she pulled the door closed behind her. “You call your goddamn sister right now and tell her we’re goin’!”
As Angel hurried away from the house, she told herself that the yelp of pain that came right after her father’s last words couldn’t possibly have come from her mother. Her father yelled a lot, but he never hit her mother.
The same feeling that she was not alone, which she’d felt last night on the way home from the hidden cabin, came over Angel again as she started toward the library. But now, in the darkness of the autumn evening, the feeling was more frightening than it had been yesterday afternoon when she was with Seth, or in the house, where the lights were on and her parents were downstairs. Now she was by herself, night had fallen, and there was no one else around.
Twice, she looked back over her shoulder as she hurried along Black Creek Road, but saw nothing. Because there’s nothing to see, she told herself. But the feeling didn’t go away, and only when the library was little more than a block away and the glow of the old-fashioned streetlights around the square began to bolster her courage did she slow her pace to a walk. As she passed the drugstore, she saw her cousin sprawled in a booth with Chad Jackson and Jared Woods. Though she was sure he saw her, he pretended he didn’t. By the time she reached the foot of the broad sweep of granite steps that led to the fieldstone building’s great oaken doors, her heart had finally stopped pounding and her breath was no longer threatening to catch in her throat.
She mounted the steps, pushed open the door, and stepped through the vestibule, then into the library itself. Straight ahead was the front desk, and off to both sides were immense library tables. Unlike the new library in Eastbury, which was lit by bright fluorescent fixtures suspended from the high ceiling with ugly steel cables, here the old milk-white globes still hung from brass rods. The only concessions to technology were the scanner the librarian used to check books in and out, and the three tables on the right that had been divided into carrels equipped with computer monitors. Scanning the tables to the left for Seth, Angel recognized only Heather Dunne and a dark-haired girl whose name she didn’t know. She was about to turn away before Heather saw her when she spotted Seth emerging from one of the aisles that led into the long rows of bookcases that filled the back of the building. Seeing her, Seth waved, and Angel started toward the table where he’d already piled a dozen books, threading her way circuitously around the table where Heather and her friends were giggling among themselves, ignoring the glares of the librarian as completely as they were snubbing Angel.
Pulling off her jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair next to Seth’s, Angel gazed at the books he’d found on the shelf. One was a slim volume bound in green cloth, the title embossed in flaking gilt that had all but vanished over the years: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROUNDTREE. Beneath the title there was a stylized image of a tree that was, indeed, perfectly round, supported by an absolutely straight trunk. Two more books had titles that told Angel they weren’t going to make her want to use her flashlight under the covers to read them: THE WYNTONS OF ROUNDTREE: A GENEALOGY, and THE PREACHING PARSONS: FOUR GENERATIONS OF PURITAN MINISTERS.
Then she saw the fourth book, and the same kind of chill passed over Angel as when she and Seth stood at the head of the cellar stairs. It was bound in dark red cloth that looked as if it was the same shade as the leather of the book they’d found hidden in the stair. Though it was smaller than the rest of the books on the table, it appeared as close in size to the hidden volume as it was in color. Was it possible that Seth had found another copy of the book, right here in the library?
As she lowered herself into the chair, she reached out and pulled the book over so it was in front of her. Gingerly, as if it might somehow have the capacity to hurt her, she opened it.
The flyleaf was gone, and she found herself looking at the title page, which was printed in the same ornate type she’d seen in the book hidden in the stair:
Beneath the title the author’s name was inscribed in the same ornate typeface:
Angel gazed at the words for a long time; somehow, when Seth spoke about witchcraft in the cafeteria, it had been easy for her to dismiss the whole idea. But now, with the old book lying open before her as she sat at a table in the library in the very town about which the book had been written . . .
Her heart quickened again, and her breath caught in her throat, just as it had as she’d walked through the lonely darkness to the library.
But now she was in a brightly lit room and there were people all around her.
Sh
e was safe.
Then why did she feel so strange?
She tore her eyes away from the title page and looked at Seth. “I—I don’t believe in this kind of stuff,” she said, but even as she uttered the words, she heard the doubt in her own voice, and memories began churning through her mind.
The girl in the closet, engulfed in flames.
The smell of smoke still there the next morning.
The strange reflections in her mirror, of another girl’s face peering over her own shoulder.
But none of it was real—none of it could have been real! Either she’d dreamed it, or was sleepwalking, or there was some other explanation!
The markings scrawled on the mirror that had led them to the book hidden in the stair.
That had been real—as had the stains she washed out of her sheets herself.
And finding the book was real, and finding the cabin was real. The cat had led them directly to both the book and the cabin.
The black cat.
The kind of cat that every witch had in every fairy tale she’d ever read.
They all had black cats, just like Houdini.
Was it possible that . . . ?
Then, through her confusion, she heard Seth’s voice.
“. . . it wasn’t an inscription,” he was saying. “It was a name.”
Angel blinked, trying to make sense of his words. “What?”
“ ‘Forbearance,’ ” Seth said. Glancing around, he lowered his voice. “I think that’s who the book belonged to. Look.” He opened one of the books stacked in front of him—the history of the Wynton family—and turned several pages. “Here,” he said, holding his finger under a line in the middle of the page and turning the book so Angel could read it, though the type was so small she could barely make it out:
3. Forbearance—b. 1678 d. 1693.
“She was the daughter of Josiah and Margaret Wynton,” she heard Seth saying. “And I found out all kinds of weird stuff about her and her mother.”
A ripple of excitement flowed over Angel. “What kind of stuff?”
“They were accused of being witches,” Seth told her. “It’s all in that book.” He nodded to the red volume that lay in front of Angel. “The guy that wrote that? He was her cousin.”
“But what did they do?” Angel pressed.
“This book says they put hexes on people. Someone swore Margaret made him fall off a horse, and someone else said the girl made lightning burn their house down.”
Angel’s eyes widened. “You mean like she made it strike the house?”
Seth nodded. “Wouldn’t that be cool? Can you imagine the look on Chad Jackson’s face if the next time he started in on me, I could just hit him with a bolt of lightning?” He grinned at Angel and stabbed at the air using a forefinger as a bolt of lightning. “Zap! Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“What did they do to them?” Angel asked. “I mean, was it like what they did in Salem?”
Seth nodded. “Oh, yeah! And when they went after Margaret and Forbearance Wynton, guess where they were living?” The look on his face was enough to tell Angel the answer. “The house at Black Creek Crossing,” he said. “Your house.”
“You mean it’s all true?” Angel asked, her voice louder than she’d intended it. “All the stories everyone tells really happened?” She saw Heather Dunne turn and look at her, then smirk as she turned to whisper to the dark-haired girl.
“It’s all here,” Seth said. “Look!”
For the next hour and a half, Angel and Seth went through the books, reading and rereading every passage that made any reference to either Forbearance Wynton, her mother, or the house at Black Creek Crossing. Finally, at ten minutes of nine, they gathered up the books and put them on the table for the assistant librarian to return to the stacks.
“Do you think anything really happened?” Angel asked as they walked down the front steps. “I mean, everyone always says the witch hunts were crazy—that those people hadn’t done anything at all!”
“That didn’t keep them from getting burned at the stake, or drowned, or all the other things they did to them,” Seth replied. “And it sure explains why nobody ever stays in your house for very long.”
Angel stopped at the bottom of the steps leading to the sidewalk. “You mean you believe the witches were real?”
Seth hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just interesting, that’s all.”
“But do you believe it?” Angel repeated, her voice rising.
Seth looked at her, his head cocked. “Do you?” he countered.
“I asked you first.”
“I don’t know,” Seth said. “I guess—” His eyes shifted away from her and his voice dropped. “I guess I just think it might be kind of neat if it was real, you know?”
Angel hesitated, then nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too.”
There was a hoot of laughter from the top of the stairs, and then they heard Heather Dunne’s mocking voice. “You already look like a witch,” she said, her eyes fixed on Angel. “So now are you going to actually be one?”
Heather and Sarah Harmon were peering down at them. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?” Angel demanded. With Heather’s words still burning in her ears, she turned away and ran across the street.
A moment later Seth followed.
Neither of them saw Heather and Sarah leave the library, hurry down the sidewalk, and go into the drugstore.
Chapter 25
EATHER’S WORDS WERE STILL RINGING IN HER HEAD as Angel began the walk back home. Seth had come with her as far as the corner of Black Creek Road, but when he asked if she wanted him to walk her all the way out to the Crossing, she shook her head, afraid of what might happen if her father saw her with him.
But as she left the streetlights behind and the darkness of the night began to close around her, Angel once more had the feeling that she was being watched, and wished she’d let Seth come with her. It was too late to change her mind—when she looked back, he’d vanished into the darkness.
She tried to ignore it, to pretend that she felt nothing, but as a cloud passed over the half moon hanging low in the sky, and the blackness seemed to wrap around her like a shroud, she felt her pulse quicken along with her stride.
Then, from somewhere off to the right, she heard a sound.
Angel froze, listening.
Silence.
She resumed walking, but hadn’t taken more than three steps when she heard the sound again. It was closer this time, and more distinct, a rustling sound from somewhere toward the creek.
“Houdini?” she called out softly. “Is that you?”
The rustling stopped.
“Come on, Houdini,” Angel called again. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on!”
More silence.
Angel stood still, listening, but the night had gone deathly silent.
In the terrible stillness her heart pounded so hard it seemed it would drown out anything else.
But there isn’t anything else, she told herself. It wasn’t anything but a mouse or something, poking around in the leaves. But when she began walking again, she crossed the road to the other side.
Now another sound came out of the darkness—a low, faint hooting. An owl, she told herself. But still, she stopped to listen.
The sound came again, closer now.
But there had been no fluttering of wings.
The hooting changed, becoming a moaning sound, and Angel shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around her throat. Then, hearing the sound again, she felt an awful crawly feeling on the back of her neck.
Something was behind her.
Something dangerous.
Crack!
A twig snapped, so close that Angel jumped, and she whirled around to peer into the darkness behind her.
There was a flicker of movement, gone in an instant, swallowed by the darkness so quickly that Angel wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all. She backed away, turned, and began to run.
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br /> A scream burst out of the night, so loud it stopped Angel in her tracks, but it died abruptly, cut off at almost the instant it began. Now she stood trembling in the darkness. All around her the night had fallen eerily silent after the scream, the silence almost as terrifying as the scream had been.
If it had really been a scream.
It was the owl, Angel told herself. It was a screech owl.
Yet even as she reassured herself and headed toward home again, the sounds returned.
Leaves rustling.
Twigs cracking.
She heard a low whistle off to one side, and crossed the road once more, but a moment later there was a moan from the forest—as if someone were in pain. Her heart raced as tendrils of panic slithered out of the darkness, creeping toward her. Then she heard a whimpering sound, and a moment later realized it had come from her own lips.
Another moan, this time from somewhere behind her, and she whirled once more, only to see another shadow vanish into the black depths of the forest.
She turned again, and caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye. Her breath catching in her throat, she felt the tendrils of panic tightening around her, and now she tried to look in every direction at once, frantically searching for the shapes whose shadows seemed always on the periphery of her vision.
There was nothing but darkness. The lights of the village had disappeared behind her, and the lights of the house at the Crossing weren’t yet visible. She looked up into the sky, but it too was darkening as the layer of cloud over the moon grew denser.
Home, Angel thought. I’ve got to get home before I can’t see anything at all.
She started running, but the toe of her left foot caught on something and she plunged forward. She threw out her hands to protect her face, and a moment later felt a terrible stinging as the asphalt of the road tore the skin from her palms.
This time there was no mistaking the cry of pain as coming from anywhere but her own throat, but she managed to choke it into silence almost as quickly as the scream she’d heard moments before had died. She scrambled back to her feet, brushing the dirt from her jacket and jeans. Her eyes blurring with tears, she stumbled on through the darkness. Now there were sounds all around her—leaves rustling and twigs breaking as if some beast hidden in the darkness and the trees were keeping pace with her, preparing to launch itself at her. She veered across the road still another time, but there was no longer any escaping the terrifying cacophony.
