One Night in Salem

by Amber Newberry

  Rebecca noticed the trauma on Richard’s and Charles’ faces. When she and Anne saw the blood all over the deck, they screamed. The pirates had dumped Jack’s body into the water.

  After Ned returned the bloody axe to his crewman, he smiled. “I believe I made me point?” The friends responded by keeping their hands in the air and looking down in a gesture of submission, which pleased Ned. “Plunder the ship, smartly there, men!”

  “Aye, aye,” the other pirates shouted. First, the friends were forced to surrender the valuables they had on them. After taking the items, the pirates began ransacking the ship, as Ned and a pirate with a pistol watched over their prisoners.

  Anne cried, “I wanna go home.”

  Charles whispered, “Where’s the Coast Guard?”

  Rebecca knew it was time for them to hear the truth. “There’s no Coast Guard…not yet anyway.” The others were baffled. “Don’t you all get it? They aren’t ghosts, they’re real! Look around you…the full moon…the shoreline. We’ve traveled back in time to October 31, 1723. The Maiden from the Sea story is about us.”

  Charles began to panic, “That means…it was me…my spirit…we communicated with on the board. I don’t wanna die like Jack!” He started to hyperventilate.

  Rebecca tried to calm him, “Keep your voice down. Let’s just keep our mouths shut and do what they want. No one else has to die.” To her, destiny wasn’t something that was written in stone, so she believed that if they were careful on how they proceeded, they could avoid the ending that awaited them.

  A young pirate came out from below deck. “Cap’n, look at this uncouthly thing I found.” He approached and handed the captain Richard’s tablet. When the captain looked at it, his facial expression displayed his perplexity over seeing this object. As he tapped and touched it, the screen turned on. In a state of shock, Ned tossed the tablet to the ground. The screen displayed the date for 2016 and the prompt to enter the password. Viewing such a thing alarmed both the pirate and the captain. With vigilance in mind, Ned picked the tablet back up.

  The other pirate became alarmed. “Cap’n, we be in Salem.” He pointed at the friends. “They be witches! This be the only explanation for that object!”

  Ned laughed, “Witches! Ye lubberwort! There be no such thing!"

  The remaining pirates gathered on deck with their plunder. Their facial expressions revealed their worry over seeing the various modern conveniences throughout the yacht.

  Ned sarcastically questioned his men, “Ye’ll think they be witches, too?”

  A pirate, whose voice was trembling, replied, “Cap’n Low, there be many odd things here. They may be witches!”

  Ned was skeptical, so he approached Rebecca and asked, “Ye be a witch?” The captain had a fascination with Rebecca from the moment he saw her, so anything she said he would take to heart. This made her afraid of doing the one thing that would fulfill the story’s destiny.

  Ned looked directly into her eyes. “Tell me, ye be a witch?”

  Her eyes moved rapidly from fear. “No…Sir.”

  He continued to look at her for several more seconds, then held the tablet up to her face. “These numbers, that be the date of where ye from?” Now she faced a dilemma on whether to lie or tell the truth. Her fear was that, if she told the truth on the year they were from, Ned may label the group as witches. Such a label would be deadly for them.

  As part of a strategy, she lied, “Sir…it isn’t.” Since he had expressed skepticism on witches, she hoped that he would easily believe her lie.

  After looking at her for several more moments, Ned smiled and placed the tablet on a nearby table. “They be no witches.” There was a sigh of relief for Rebecca, as she felt she had outsmarted the pirates.

  Ned pointed to Richard and ordered, “Take this swab, he be coming with us!” Though they were reluctant, two pirates went to Richard and forced him to the ground. As the pirates used rope to tie his hands behind his back, Richard didn’t resist because his mind was plagued by fear.

  Realizing her strategy was failing, Rebecca pleaded, “Captain Low, please don’t take him, he’s my brother.”

  He smiled at her. “Yer brother, aye?” He once again looked into her eyes, then said in a soft voice, “Ye both have the same eyes, I should have known…Ye look so much like her.” Rebecca was confused over the comment, but whoever “her” was, she was important to him.

  One pirate expressed his displeasure, “Cap’n, we can’t be bringing witches onboard!”

  Ned grew very angry and took out his cutlass. “I told ye, they be no witches!” He used the blade to point at Richard. “This lad be more valuable than any doubloons or shillings!”

  “But, we can’t Cap’n!” Ned was enraged and pointed the cutlass at the pirate’s face. The pirates were fearful; they knew what happened when the captain got angry.

  “If they be witches, would they allow this?” Ned swung the cutlass and sliced Charles’ throat. Charles gurgled and choked as a waterfall of red splashed over his body. He grabbed his throat as his life slowly exited. Anne ran over as he collapsed. When she cradled him, he tried to say something to her, but blood squirted out from the gaping wound that splashed all over Anne’s clothes. His final breath forced air through the laceration that caused him to choke on his own blood. When Anne screamed in despair, it matched the one Rebecca heard before the bright light. After Charles had died, Rebecca and Richard collectively cried over the loss of another friend.

  After placing the cutlass into the holster, Ned addressed his men. “Behold! Two be dead as a nit. Proving there be no witches here!” he gloated. He got pleasure from this death, but when he saw Rebecca’s expressions of terror and disgust, his mood transformed into guilt. This was not for killing Charles, but rather because he did it in front of Rebecca.

  Though the killings had convinced the crew that they weren’t witches, they were still uneasy, “How ye explain what we found?” questioned another pirate.

  “They be from a time many years hence!” Ned proved to be a lot smarter than Rebecca had thought.

  He grabbed Richard by his hair and lifted up his head, “This swab has three hundred years of knowledge. It be useful for our sweet trade.” The pirates became less scared and more fascinated by Richard. Now, Rebecca understood why he wanted her brother: his knowledge of the future was valuable. If something wasn’t done, he was going with the pirates just as the story told.

  Anne’s grief had turned into rage. She started looking around until she spotted a knife on a nearby table. Her thirst for revenge overtook any logic. Kissing Charles on the forehead, she gently placed the body on the floor. With hate providing the adrenaline, she grabbed the knife.

  Rebecca shouted, “Anne! No!” Anne lunged after the captain, but before she could stab him, one of the pirates on the bow fired his musketoon. The bullet entered her right eye and exited through the back of the head, causing an explosion of blood. Like a rag doll, Anne’s body flung backwards over the rail and into the ocean. Rebecca screamed and fell to her knees.

  “Batchelor’s Son! We never murder women!” Ned was enraged. He grabbed a flint pistol and aimed it at the pirate who fired the weapon.

  That pirate pleaded for his life. “Cap’n, please, she be ready to murder ye!” When Ned saw the knife on the floor, he put the pistol away.

  The captain, in a subdued voice, ordered, “All hands, prepare one of our boats for Miss Rebecca, we be setting her adrift. We be commandeering this vessel, and this lad be coming with us.”

  Rebecca had no time for grief, as she had to act fast to save Richard. “No! Captain Low, Sir, please listen.” Ned turned to look at her. “This boat and Richard will be useless to you. Our technologies won’t last…there’s nothing in this era that can keep them going. Within a day or so, these objects won’t work. My brother’s knowledge of things to come is limited, and what he does know won’t help you much. Please, just leave us be!”

  Her begging got his attention, and
he was able to tell what she said was the truth, but knew there was still value in capturing Richard. “Take what plunder we possess, then torch this vessel. But this lad still be sailing with us.” Rebecca cursed at the captain. She felt despair as she saw the pirates take her brother.

  She ran up to Ned and slapped him. “Why are you still taking him?”

  Ned didn’t get upset over the slap, but rather on seeing Rebecca’s pain. “A hundred apologies, Miss Rebecca, but we both know that while this vessel be useless, yer brother’s knowledge be valuable.” He took off his hat, and held it to his chest. “I vow, he shall not be harmed.” She ran up to Richard and hugged him, but with his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t return the gesture. The pirates forcefully separated the siblings, with Ned handling Rebecca.

  She again begged the captain, “At least take me with you. My knowledge will be just as useful as his!” Ned responded, “There be no place for a woman onboard. It be bad luck.” One of their boats was being prepared for Rebecca. Meanwhile, the three pirates with the loot took Richard with them into another boat. After a moment of preparation, they paddled that boat toward the schooner.

  “Don’t forget about the candles!” Richard shouted. Rebecca stood on the edge of the yacht and helplessly watched him being taken away. Tears fell from her eyes like rain. Richard was trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious to her he wanted to cry. It seemed like it took hours for the boat to reach the schooner, but when it did, Richard had faded into the background. She had lost him. Ned then took Rebecca by the hand and led her to an empty boat with a single paddle. She didn’t resist.

  After she was placed in the boat, she looked at Ned and asked, “You said I remind you of her…who’s her?”

  He took his hat off and bowed his head, “Me wife, Eliza, God rest her merry soul. Ye look like her, and I always could tell when she lied and told the truth…just like the way I could with ye.” Though Ned was a killer, he was a complex man.

  He pointed in the direction of Winter Island. “There be Fort Anne. Ye best to go there.” Fort Anne was once the name of Fort Pickering. She just sat there in the boat, unable to move or say a word. The captain looked at her with a sense of sadness at seeing her in such a state. Eventually, he pushed the boat toward the open sea.

  The boat drifted away from yacht, but she just sat there, floating aimlessly. Her mind was haunted with the violence against her friends and being helpless to save her brother. Once the boat had drifted sixty feet from the yacht, she gained enough mental strength to grab the paddle. The fight against destiny was a failure, but she had no choice but to embrace it. She started paddling towards her destination; her thoughts still focused on her friends and brother.

  After twenty minutes of rowing, she turned around one last time to see that the yacht was in flames. The fire got larger and brighter, to a point that it reminded Rebecca of the light that transported them to this time. This tragedy had become imprinted in a loop that connected the past and future.

  For her, Halloween was never going to be the same. This moment in her life would become folklore, to be passed down through the ages. She repeated the last words Richard had said to her: “Don’t forget about the candles!” This gave her hope that they might reunite someday, since much of her life after this tragedy wasn’t preserved in history. This freed her from the chains of destiny. That idea, alone, gave her the will to live. As she continued to paddle toward Winter Island, she knew she had become the Maiden from the Sea.

  1901

  dust

  Ellery D. Margay

  To say that the incident was the fault of the tonic would not be quite true, for while it served to frighten, it served also to free—and it is ultimately to that bitter brew that I owe my salvation. I had obtained it at short notice, for the simple alleviation of matrimonial nerves—not as may be supposed, from some quack or peddler of experimental potions, but from the esteemed Dr. Badger, Salem’s finest physician. Its compounds, I was told, were common enough; and I therefore expected no visions, no apparitions nor epiphanies, these being well outside its list of touted benefits. Why such a palliative should have proven necessary on the morning of my wedding I ought, perhaps, to have considered—ought to have considered many things, but I did not, for such is the folly of youth.

  “Take one dose upon rising,” the good doctor had said, “not a drop more.”

  On my honor, I’d met the day with every intention of heeding this prescription, but such was my anxiety, a restless dread of what was to come, that his words took on a mutable quality—one of suggestion, rather than rigid instruction. I imbibed the first drought upon waking, the second while straightening my fusty black necktie, the third as I stepped out my door—and the fourth in the coach on the way to the church, upon passing the harbor and thinking the thought that I could never go to sea. Ahead of me loomed the duties of age; I was to relinquish my wayward whims and boyhood fancies—for today I would marry the pastor’s daughter, her distinguished father presiding. Polymnia was beautiful, she was devout, and she was shrewd.

  “She’s the perfect woman,” my mother had praised, “and she’ll make the perfect wife. You’re to take over the factory as your father had wished—and it will be here in Salem that you’ll buy a fine house, and give me a score of healthy grandchildren.”

  Well, for over a year I’d evaded this fate, leading my betrothed on a merry chase.

  “Next month,” I would promise, “next month we’ll be wed,” and her saintly patience had at last worn thin.

  “Coward!” she’d cried. “You will marry me tomorrow or not at all.”

  “But tomorrow is Halloween,” I’d protested. “It would surely invite bad luck—”

  “Nonsense! All Hallows was once a holy day; we will reclaim it as such.”

  “And what of your father? Can he perform a ceremony so soon, with so very little warning?”

  “He would perform it this afternoon if it meant the happiness of his only daughter.”

  “But the weather! It’s been so dreary of late—”

  “It will be tomorrow, by God, or I’ll wed Josiah Summers; see if I don’t!”

  And so it was that at ten o’clock in the morning, on October the 31st, 1901, we were to be joined before the Almighty, and a handful of our nearest and dearest.

  When one dreads its proceedings, it is dizzying how quickly tomorrow becomes today. I’d seemed merely to blink, and there I was, staring up the lane toward Greenlawn Chapel, my heart sinking lower as we climbed the grassy rise. The little Gothic structure—still and forlorn beneath the gunmetal sky—exuded a funereal gloom wholly at odds with its present capacity. Its heavy doors had been propped open, but no wedding party graced its pews, and for a moment I stood and wondered if, in my agitated state, I had arrived at the wrong hour of the wrong day. Oh, what joy if I were too late, if family and friends had come and gone!—but my unfounded hopes were soon dashed by a peel of girlish laughter.

  I found them in the conservatory that adjoined the church, their voices magnified by the lofty enclosure of glass. They’d gathered on the benches near the entrance: uncles, aunts, cousins from Peabody and Collins Cove, my mother in her habitual mauve silks, and Reverend Phippen, my father-in-law-to-be, in ministerial black. Some paces away, between a fountain and a thicket of stunted palm trees, stood my three young sisters in gaudy Parisian sun hats, giggling raucously as they exchanged bits of gossip. My arrival was observed by few. The reverend rose and shook my hand, and my mother—austere and unsmiling—gave a curt nod in my direction, then bid me sit so that no one might notice my tardiness. I peered reluctantly at the benches, besieged, as they were, by ferns and flowers and creeping things, and made no move to acquiesce.

  “Where is Polymnia?” I asked, suddenly desirous to see the whole affair done with. The air was close and cloying, heavy with steam and the mingled scents of multitudinous exotic florae—and nowhere in that man-made jungle could I find the face of my bride. Evidently she, too
, had been tardy.

  “She’s at home with her ma,” said Reverend Phippen. “There was trouble with the dress, I’m told. They’re getting it pinned now.”

  “I’ll wait for them outside,” I said.

  “Don’t wander,” warned my mother. “You never stay where you ought, and on your wedding day, that simply won’t do.”

  I assured her that I’d remain within sight of the road, that I’d rush straight back at the approach of the carriage; then, expecting further objections, I hurried out the door. My reprieve would be a brief one. The Phippen residence was close by, after all—only a block away on Appleton Street, and they’d, no doubt, be along shortly…but I needed one last jaunt before my fetters were affixed.

  The sun had broken free of the clouds, and what minutes before had looked dismal and grey, was now lit by a pastel glow—not altogether earthly in its gentle radiance. The expanse of lawn shone emerald; the trees below beckoned, their leaves ablaze with autumnal glory, and I stalked off down the slope, away from the church, away from commanding tongues and prying eyes—and away from the winding track road from which I was not to stray. I meant to return, of course—I’d promised to marry Polymnia, and marry her I would—but a queer sensation had crept into my limbs, a delicious fatigue, warm and fluid, as though I lay afloat in some heavenly bath. I must find a place to rest, if only for moment.