Chain of Souls (Salem VI)

by Heath, Jack

  "And what was that?" Faust asked.

  "That I was the weapon"

  Faust nodded, and John could feel the man's intensity rising, almost like heat from a fireplace. "Okay," Faust prodded. "What happened next?"

  "I felt Rebecca flow into me, but then I felt something else, and I looked to my left and saw this other spirit, and I knew who she was."

  Faust's eyes went a little wider. "Yes, go on."

  "It was a local girl named Melissa Blake who'd disappeared, and I felt her flow into me."

  Faust was looking at him much more intently all of a sudden. "Say that again. Think back, and try to be very clear. You felt invested by a second presence?"

  John nodded. "Yes."

  Faust nodded, squinting slightly as if he was suddenly skeptical. "And then what happened."

  "I had been shackled to the wall, like I said, but when both spirits came into me, the shackles exploded."

  "You're quite sure of that."

  "I know what an explosion looks like."

  "Sorry, it's just that details are important."

  "I'm not sure why that detail is any more important that the rest. If I told these things to anybody else they'd put me on Thorazine."

  Faust folded his hands on the table and gave John a look that made him fall silent. "I fully expected you to tell me you were invested by the spirit of Rebecca Nurse, but I did not expect you to tell me about the second spirit. You should not have been able to break out of those shackles, even with one spirit investing you, and maybe not even with two."

  "There's more. There's one thing I forgot."

  Faust's eyebrows went up again. "Yes?"

  "When Melissa Blake held my left hand, it wasn't just her. I could see a whole chain of other spirits linking their hands to hers. The line went on and on. I couldn't count them all, but I knew who they were. They were other people who had been killed by the Coven over the years."

  "You actually saw this?"

  John nodded. "How did you feel?"

  "Incredibly powerful, like I had power inside me that, if I'd just let it go at once, would have blown up the whole city block above us."

  "Dear God," Faust said, almost to himself.

  "What?" Amy asked.

  "Astounding. This explains so much."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE TABLE WAS LARGE AND THE MOST UNUSUAL shape she had ever seen. It seemed to be a hexagon, but instead of having points, each spoke of the hexagon ended in an inward curve so that someone could pull up a chair and nestle into the curve. The table was covered with a tablecloth. Six candelabras burned, one at the base of each spoke, each one holding six candles.

  Seven other people sat at the table along with Sarah, each of them at the end of one of the spokes, except for the one spoke where Jessica Lodge sat beside another person, a man. Sarah sat along the side of the spoke nearest Jessica Lodge. She was dressed in a white dress with long sleeves and a high collar. Her hair had been put up in a fancy coil that she would never have chosen herself.

  The others at the table were dressed in similar formal clothing, only theirs was all black. They were all quite a bit older than Sarah, probably in their sixties or seventies, and several in their eighties, she guessed. Jessica Lodge wore a long black dress with a swirl of black sequins that went from her shoulder to her hip. At her throat she wore a necklace with a ruby pendant the size of a thumbnail. She looked as regal as a visiting queen. Beside her sat a man with wavy white hair, a prominent nose as straight as a ruler, a chin that jutted like the prow of a ship, and steely eyes that made him look like someone who had been in command of others all his life.

  The other women, of whom there were two, had neatly coiffed gray hair, equally expensive jewelry, and long gowns. The rest of the men were also distinguished with the kind of features typified by tight skin over good bones, pampered faces that suggested they were accustomed to a certain amount of wealth, power, and control, and they wore tuxedos and starched shirts.

  The aura around the table was so stilted and formal that Sarah felt like a little girl going through some sort of church confirmation ceremony. The part of her brain that was capable of having that thought also told her that this whole thing was ridiculous and that she ought to get up and excuse herself, but the other part of her found it so easy just to go along.

  They were sitting in a dining room of some sort, but it wasn't the formal dining room on the first floor of the large country house where Jessica and Sarah were staying. This dining room was in the basement, down a narrow staircase and then at the end of long passageway. It seemed like a room that few visitors to the house would ever get to see, and Sarah wondered why anyone would have such a lovely dining room so far underground and so far from a kitchen. Sarah didn't even know if Jessica owned the house, but for some reason she thought she did, which was odd because she had always been under the impression that Jessica lived in Salem.

  The well-honed TV-news-journalist part of Sarah's mind came up with those kinds of thoughts and asked those kinds of questions, but it had to work so hard because the larger part of her mind felt like a dry sponge and it just accepted all of this as normal. Sarah felt the same sluggishness she'd felt for days, as if pushing thoughts through her brain was like sucking molasses through a straw.

  At times the TV-news-journalist part of her brain would become alarmed and try to tell her that she ought to be frightened because things were happening to her that were out of her control. But those thoughts were so hard to maintain. They seemed to get buried very quickly beneath the steady blizzard of other sensations: heaviness, comfort, a feeling of wellbeing. It was so much easier to simply take everything in and not fight it, but to let it accumulate.

  Sometimes she imagined she was lying in the sand at the edge of a very warm ocean where the things Jessica Lodge had been telling her were like waves surging onto a beach and washing over her like the gentlest intrusion, and then receding back and heading out to sea again. The part of her brain that accepted Jessica's idea also accepted the strange symbols inlaid in the dining room's mahogany paneled walls, and it didn't wonder if they were weird or even sinister, which the other part of her mind tried to suggest. The accepting part of her brain listened and absorbed the rite that had been performed by the man sitting beside Jessica Lodge. He was Lord somebody or other, she couldn't recall the name, which she had heard when they first sat down. The man had mumbled a lot of words in the stilted cadence of a prayer, but it hadn't really been a prayer, at least not the kind of prayer she had ever heard before.

  The same man had been addressing her for some time now, his voice dull and oddly monotone, so that it made her feel even heavier than she'd felt before. He seemed to be telling her about the beliefs these people shared and their "congregation," as he called it. He said their membership was small and very select, and that the "one they worshipped," as he put it, had rewarded them richly over the centuries with power, wealth, and long and healthy lives.

  Sarah wasn't listening to what he said, at least not the way she would listen to some news account if she were at work, where she would question and evaluate and weigh the facts. Instead, she seemed to be absorbing what the man said to her, as if it were coming into her brain at some totally uncritical level beneath the purely rational. The questioning part of her brain wondered what that meant, what it was doing to her. The larger part of her brain sensed it coming in and didn't care.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "I'M GLAD IT EXPLAINS SO MUCH TO YOU," JOHN exclaimed sarcastically before his tone turned to ice. "Now tell me what you know about my daughter."

  "I understand your impatience, but I beg your forbearance. There are reasons we need to cover this information."

  John closed his eyes. They'd had a late dinner to start with, and now it was getting very late. He wanted information about Sarah and he wanted it now; only the fact that this man had saved his life induced him to be patient. "Go on."

  "You said the Coven leaders seemed very
confident," Faust said.

  John nodded.

  "That's because you never should have been able to break the shackles."

  "But Rebecca Nurse—"

  "Not you and Rebecca Nurse, and not even you both and Melissa Blake. I'm certain those shackles had been reinforced specifically to hold you."

  "How does any of this relate to Sarah?" John asked.

  "Do you remember that when we started talking I asked if either of you were deeply religious. I asked because I wanted to know if you were doubters and skeptics, and apparently you are. It makes much of what I need to tell you easier to accept than it might if you identified closely with a particular theology."

  Faust looked back and forth between John and Amy. "Would it surprise you to know I am a Catholic priest, but I work with people from every other major religion; moreover if what I do were to be made known the public, the Pope would completely repudiate me?"

  John shook his head. "I have no idea what you're getting at. The only thing that matters, at least to me, is my daughter!"

  Faust's eyes became hard and for the first time they sparked with anger. "I'm sorry to tell you that this is much bigger than your daughter, or you or Amy or me or any of us. This is about the ultimate battle of good versus evil. God versus Satan. That battle is real, and it's been enjoined by all the world's major religions. Fighting Satan is the core of our mission. The battle is being fought today all around us. No religion acknowledges it, but we are all engaged in the fight, and you more than almost anyone else has personal experience to understand what I'm talking about. As painful as it may be, you need to understand that while I am dedicated to helping you get your daughter back, her abduction is part of something much larger. And under no circumstances will I do anything that weakens our ability to win the larger battle."

  "You expect us to believe that you, along with—what—a bunch of rabbis and imams and Buddhist monks, are part of some secret organization that unites all the religions to fight Satan?"

  Faust nodded. "Exactly."

  "You're supposed to be, like, religious commandos, huh?"

  "Exactly."

  "What about all the fundamentalists out there, the Muslims who believe in jihad; the fundamental Christians who believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God and Jesus is the only possible path to salvation? What do they think of you?"

  "We've worked very hard to keep our existence secret."

  "Even from people within your own religion?"

  Faust nodded. "Some of the people who claim to be fundamentalists are actually undercover operators for the Coven. Their secret mission is to destabilize all the forces of good, and what better way to achieve their ends than by tearing religions apart and dividing people under the guise that they're holier than everyone else?"

  John shook his head.

  "You doubt what I'm telling you?"

  "Well, you say the Coven worships evil, which means they worship destruction, right?"

  Faust nodded.

  "What happens when they win? Everything blows up, right, including them?"

  Faust smiled. "The leaders of the Coven are the ultimate cynics. They worship the forces of destruction, but they believe the battle between God and Satan is eternal, and that neither one will win. They also believe that Satan will reward them richly for their loyalty, and he has. The forces of evil are powerful and extremely wealthy, and they're located all around the globe."

  "Amy and I are just a couple of newspaper editors in a small city in Massachusetts. I don't see how we figure into this global struggle you describe."

  Faust's expression became hard again. "You know very well how you figure in. You, who have the blood of the Nurses and the Putnams flowing in your veins, are descended from both sides in this struggle. You have an innate sensitivity to evil as well as to good. That's why you got into the coven's catacombs in the first place. It was no accident that Rebecca Nurse chose you."

  "Are you saying my ancestry makes it possible that I could have chosen to join the Coven?"

  Faust nodded. "Almost certainly. As a boy, if you had shown the right characteristics, you might have been approached. The Coven is very careful whom they actually approach. Just having the right blood is not enough; a candidate has to display the right attitude."

  John felt a flush of guilt at Faust's insistence that he could have chosen evil over good, and for a moment he had to look away from the priest's frank blue eyes. It was something he wanted to deny, but at the same time he had always known the pull was there. He recalled events in his youth when he had shoplifted or engaged in vandalism or gotten into fights. Something like a siren song had sounded in his blood, and even at the time it had frightened him because he'd recognized it as a lust for more risk, bigger thrills, more violence. The same song had been there again when his wife had been killed and its lure had whispered strongly to him during the times he'd been in the worst grip of alcohol abuse and depression. Then, like a call to come to the edge of the cliff, to put the barrel of the gun into his mouth, it had lured him toward the darkness, promised him that his pain would all disappear if he would just end things.

  Even now, as he looked back at those times, he wondered what small thing had made him reject the siren song and turn away from the darkness. Each time whatever had allowed him to be strong had, at the time, seemed so small and insignificant. Each time it had been one ephemeral factor in an unconscious decision tree, but whatever it was had kept him going in the right direction, a badly flawed man somehow making the right choice.

  He was staring down at the table when he felt a strong grip on his wrist. He looked up in surprise to see that Father Faust had grabbed him. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," Faust said. "We all feel it, and we need to acknowledge it. All of us who have the ability to be soldiers in this war have to feel it. We understand the pull of darkness; we feel the desire to give into it, but we don't. We find the strength to resist, and that is the first step. It is a huge first step.

  "The second step is to learn to use our strength to fight back. When you became invested by the spirit of Rebecca Nurse, you were learning to use your innate strength."

  John shook his head. "I was out of my mind with rage and fear. Rebecca Nurse did all the work."

  "However it happened, it happened. You were also able to invest yourself with the spirit of Melissa Blake and with the spirits of many other victims."

  John kept shaking his head. "You don't understand. I didn't do anything. I just let it happen." He looked away, intimidated by the fact that Faust seemed to understand things about him he had never admitted to any other human being. It gave him a sense that he was being put under a microscope, and it made him uncomfortable "What about Amy?" he asked, wanting to change the subject.

  Faust turned toward her. "Through your ancestors, each of you has a hereditary attachment to this age-old battle, but Amy's is different. John holds a strong linkage to both evil and good. Amy has a strong linkage to good. She is descended from Giles Corey, the only man who resisted the urging of the Salem judges to confess or give a plea. As you both know, a person accused of witchcraft could only be tried for their supposed crime when they made a plea—either guilty or innocent, it didn't matter. Upon making a plea and then being tried, a person who was found guilty had all of their property seized. If they did not make a plea, they could not be tried, and their property could not be seized. It was no accident that the sheriff and the judges ended up with almost all of that seized property. In order to induce people to make their pleas, they were threatened with being "pressed," which meant being slowly crushed beneath a suffocating mass of heavy stones until they made their plea.

  "Amy's ancestor was the only person who had the strength of character to resist making a plea, and thus he died after several days of being crushed beneath a load of stones. Amy possesses aspects of his strength. It is a very powerful asset in this fight, and the fact that the two of you have been drawn together makes the combination of her strength and
your unique talents a potent alliance."

  John shook his head, wanting to reject all of this. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to make a strong drink, sit by the fire, and read a book until he fell asleep. He wanted no part of this struggle. He just wanted to get Sarah back.

  As if she was sensing his weakness, Amy reached across the table and took his hand. The moment he felt her touch something flowed into him, and he recognized that she was sharing her strength with him.

  "Father Faust is right, John. Remember, I was the only other one who could see the names scarred into your arm. We are together for a reason, and we're stronger together than we are apart."

  Feeling the truth of her words, John closed his eyes and nodded.

  "Remember what Rebecca Nurse told you, John," Amy went on. "You are the weapon"

  "Yes," Faust said, "and now that brings us to your daughter."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JOHN REACHED FOR AMY'S HAND LIKE A MAN bracing for bad news.

  "As I said before," Faust said quickly, "I'm quite certain she is alive. The Coven needs her alive so they have a source of control over you. It makes no strategic sense to kill her."

  "You said she may be in England."

  Faust nodded. "We think Jessica Lodge flew her there."

  "Where in England?"

  "Almost certainly in Cornwall."

  "Why Cornwall?"

  "Because it's as important to the Coven as Salem."

  "Why is Salem so important? History?"

  "The House of the Seven Gables is here."

  John actually laughed. "So what? It's a house Nathaniel Hawthorne used in a novel. That's the only reason anybody cares about it."

  Faust shook his head. "That's what the Coven would like you to think. The House of the Seven Gables has a fundamental importance to them."

  Amy had been very quiet almost the entire time, but now she sat forward. "Why?"

  Faust grimaced helplessly. "We're not certain. It could simply be symbolic value, but we believe it's more than that." He shook his head. "We believe the presence of the house has some meaning. Maybe it's the shape of the house. Maybe there's something inside the house we don't know about."