The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  Lean sat up at that news, his eyes shooting over to Grey, ready to give him a triumphant, just-as-I-suspected look. But Grey’s head was tilted back a bit, and he was staring at some point on the ceiling.

  Helen continued. “At some point their father would no longer tolerate his grieving. He said Geoffrey’s stubborn refusal to come to terms with the loss and accept the matter as final revealed a disturbing weakness of spirit. Trips away to relatives failed to cure him. He was always shuttled back, the relations being unable to deal with the boy’s morbid outbursts. He was sent to schools throughout the northeast, but never for long. There were incidents, more than one, the nature of which she wouldn’t say but grave enough that the boy was sent on rather quickly. He was enrolled in the army but discharged for medical reasons. Finally, at his wit’s end and thoroughly shamed by his son’s behavior, Colonel Blanchard had Geoffrey committed. He’s been in and out of asylums for the past ten years. The last three at the Danvers Lunatic Hospital, where he remains today.”

  “Amazing, she let all that out in a half hour,” Lean said.

  “Rather a sad and lonely person. I think she desperately wanted to tell it.”

  “But so much family history, and to a perfect stranger?”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger,” Dr. Steig noted. “They’re usually more polite and less likely to judge.”

  “We may need more details. Did you manage to leave it on terms that you might speak again?” Grey asked.

  Helen pursed her lips and shook her head. “She clearly needed to speak, but afterward she was a bit taken aback at her own openness. I think she’ll be relieved not to come across me again anytime soon. I must say, that’s my wish as well—I don’t think I could go on with the deception.”

  Grey looked at Lean. “What do you think?”

  “It’s possible that Geoffrey Blanchard knows something of Old Stitch. He was in a rage at his mother’s death. Perhaps he was there when the mob burned her out from Back Cove. He may have seen what happened.”

  “We won’t know until we question him,” Grey said.

  “Perhaps,” said Dr. Steig, “but if the fixation on his mother’s death is still so strong, after twenty years, and with so much time spent in asylums, who’s to say what state he’s in now?” He showed his palms and shrugged. “I have a few colleagues at Danvers. I’ll make some initial inquiries about this Geoffrey Blanchard.”

  53

  F. W. Meserve’s rooms on Oak Street occupied part of the third floor of a narrow brick building that appeared to be compressed skyward by the shorter, blocky neighbors attached on either side. The exterior façade of sturdiness was immediately betrayed by the sagging and tilting steps of the inside staircase. Meserve clutched onto a handrail that gleamed from the steady polishing under his palms, always sweaty from the climb up in the summer heat. The historian ascended the stairs, with his nose peeking over a load of books carried in his free arm. Atop the stack was a thin packet that Mrs. Prescott had asked him to review. He took every step with patience, double-stepping, one foot before the other onto each tread, like a toddler still learning to trust the length of his own legs. A bell tinkled as he pushed the door open and let himself in. The alarm was redundant, as any hypothetical visitor would be heralded well in advance by the tortured creaking of the staircase, each step like another turn of the wheel, stretching the wood’s very fiber almost to its breaking point.

  The layout of the apartment was haphazard at best, a series of halls and small rooms meandering through the building at improbable angles. It was as if some mad builder had broken through a side wall and then snaked his way along, repartitioning the closets, storerooms, and hallways of other tenants. All in all, the result was an act of architectural gerrymandering that would have made any old-time politician proud. Meserve had selected these accommodations because the various spaces allowed him to catalog and store all his diverse texts and documents according to an indecipherable system of his own design.

  He heated up some leftover soup and found a stale heel of bread for his dinner, which he ate sitting behind his broad desk, glancing at research notes. The unpolished oak desktop was obscured by piles of books and papers that formed a protective phalanx around the man. He felt most at home there, temporarily shielded from the endless barbaric forces of all those things yet to be studied and learned. A few minutes later, he set the remains of his supper on the floor beside him, to let his cat, Herodotus, lick the bowl clean. Meserve was a lifelong bachelor, somewhat by choice, and now approaching fifty years. This placed him comfortably past the age when his slovenly habits concerned him in the slightest.

  He took out his pocketwatch and angled his head back to peer over the tip of his nose, where his reading glasses perched: two smudged, rotund lovers clasping wire hands and contemplating a united plunge over the edge, to end it all in one grand gesture. It was twenty minutes until eight o’clock. He would allot that much time to Mrs. Prescott’s request. She had given him the packet days earlier, but he’d set it aside while he finished an ongoing project. Her appeal was made with urgent tones, but Meserve was always loath to alter his existing work schedule. Upon standing to get a better view of his various piles, he spotted the large envelope and searched about for his letter opener.

  He was very much regretting his inability to reject the request that Mrs. Prescott had put to him days ago. The problem was that Meserve was not quick on his feet when it came to unexpected situations. While not as problematic and unknowable as the future, the present was still something of a treacherous crossing for Meserve. This was the true reason he had devoted himself to historical studies. The past was set and never changing. There were no awkward shifts in conversations or people’s actions. Caesar always crossed the Rubicon, Washington always crossed the Delaware. With careful examination, events could be wholly understood. New sources could be found that altered the context of one’s understanding, but rarely was there any truly surprising development.

  He slit the envelope and let the paper slip out onto his desk. Much to his surprise, his interest was immediately piqued. It was a picture of what appeared to be an old paper damaged by fire. The handwritten words were faint, but still legible, in the photographic image. Holding the page close to his lamp, Meserve read through as quickly as his eyes would let him. He read it a second and a third time as his mouth hung open and his throat went dry.

  After retrieving his magnifying glass from a drawer, he settled into his chair and began to inspect the page in earnest. So engrossed was he by the text, Meserve failed to even notice that Herodotus had leaped into his lap and curled up after a vigorous bout of kneading. Several minutes later Meserve let out an astonished gasp. In the margin, near where the page mentioned “the ascension of my Master, James,” a faint note had been scribbled. It was almost impossible to make out, but staring at the faded lines, he deciphered a name: James Arrelan.

  Meserve bolted to his feet, sending Herodotus crashing against the desk front, then onto the floor. “My God,” he announced his victory to the empty room, “this is it! This is from the Black Book!”

  54

  The cab was open, exposing the three passengers to the midday August sun but also offering an unobstructed view of the multiple buildings of the Danvers Lunatic Hospital. Dr. Steig was intent upon the scene before them during the short ride up from Asylum Station. Grey stared off at the side of the road, evidently engrossed in some internal meanderings that he had no interest in sharing, until he suddenly turned to his companions and announced, “You know, the asylum rests atop Hathorne Hill. Named for its former owner, John Hathorne. Who just happens to have been the chief examining magistrate during the Salem witch trials.”

  Lean turned his attention to the asylum, with its massive, turreted buildings, rising up like brick mountaintops from a sea of green lawns. He wondered about the thoughts of those who saw this sight for the first time when being committed against their will. He hoped such arrivals were schedu
led for daylight hours. The sight of those dark spires against a night sky would have been unnerving. “Imposing” was not a sufficient description of the place. It was like some sprawling, late-medieval fortress built to withstand a hundred-year siege. Only these walls were built to protect the outside world from the horde of mentally deranged barbarians huddled within the keep.

  As they drew up to the front of the administration building, Lean decided it wasn’t really so much a fortress. Instead he was put more in mind of a painting he’d seen of an immense alpine monastery tucked away in a remote corner of Europe. A half hour later, their shoes clanging on the tiled hallways as they passed rows of closed cell doors, the idea of a monastery remained in Lean’s mind, refusing to be thrown aside. The image kept twisting itself into a grotesque mockery of its origins. Cloisters replaced by barred windows on cell doors. Gregorian chants supplanted by a cacophony of low, tortured groans and calls. Monks replaced in the night by lunatic doppelgängers. For these men, either God had vanished into the abyss of each one’s uniquely fractured mind or else he towered over them at an incomprehensible distance, speaking in words they could no longer gather.

  The hospital administrator guided them through the halls as he described for his old colleague Dr. Steig, the details of the building’s layout and the principles upon which the patients were categorized and located. Lean initially attempted to follow the conversation, but his mind soon wandered as he contemplated the sheer scope of the hospital. Unlike a prison, meant to confine the bodies of criminals, this place contained the suffering, damaged minds of the inmates. He struggled with the thought: brick walls intended to rein in the delusions, as if the physical barriers could somehow keep the insanity from leaking out into the world. He wondered how much had really changed in the two hundred years since little Dorcas Good had been chained to a prison wall, in the belief that the heavy manacles would keep her witch’s specter from leaving the jail to torment the afflicted girls of Salem.

  “Just through here,” the administrator said as he unlocked a steel door that led to a windowless hall. “He’s refused to speak to me in a month, so I won’t let him see me accompanying you in there.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Steig said.

  Lean, Grey, and Dr. Steig entered the hallway and closed the door behind them. There were four rooms in this short corridor. Only one other was occupied, and that by a withered old man who lay in a fetal position on his cot. In the last cell, Geoffrey Blanchard sat at a small wooden table pushed up against a side wall. Before him was an arrangement of small colorful feathers, some twine, and several inch-long hooks. There was a narrow bed against the other wall. In the middle of the stone floor was the faint chalk outline of a circle with miniature designs lining the outside perimeter.

  Geoffrey Blanchard turned the chair to face his visitors. He was a scrawny man with dark brown hair, a long, angled nose, and deep, still eyes like murky pools of fouled water.

  “What does the colonel want now?”

  “We wouldn’t know about that,” Dr Steig said. “We have nothing to do with your father.”

  “He’s no father of mine.”

  “Funny, we were led to believe you’re the son of Colonel Ambrose Blanchard,” Lean said.

  The man gave a slight shake of his head. “I believe in one secret and unnamable Lord, and in one star in the vastness of the universe in whose consuming fire we are forged and to which we shall return, one Father of Life and Death eternal, Mystery of all Mystery, whose name shall be Chaos. One Earth, the Suckling Mother of us all, and in one womb wherein all men are begotten and formed and wherein they shall rest formless, Mystery of Mystery, and Her name shall be Babel.”

  “I’ll take that to mean that Agnes Blanchard was not your mother.” Grey continued with a casual wave of his hands. “That is, before she was murdered by that witch. The one who lived down near the flats of Back Cove.”

  Geoffrey’s eyes bored into Grey, his expression a thin veil that could not mask his contempt. “You speak of mere fragments of experience. They hold no true meaning.”

  “No meaning?” Grey said. “The death of your own mother. I find that hard to believe.”

  “Your beliefs bind you as hard as manacles. The Innermost is one with the Innermost, yet the form of the One is not the form of the Other; unity requires its opposite. You must release the faith of belief and instead adopt the faith of understanding. When you free yourself of the beliefs that the weak-minded have imposed upon you, the death of your earthly mother, whether by murder or even her own hand, ceases to be of any real concern, Mr. Grey.” A grin escaped from the inmate. “Awaken. Know thyself. And take solace in that knowledge.”

  Lean felt the hairs on his neck stiffen in alarm; they hadn’t introduced themselves by name to Geoffrey Blanchard. He glanced at Dr. Steig, who frowned, clearly surprised.

  Grey just smiled in response. “And I suppose you have convinced yourself that your own actions there at Back Cove are also without meaning. Burning down that hag’s cottage. The murder of her son. All of that, your own crimes that day. Your sins against the lives of others.”

  Geoffrey Blanchard released a long, slow chuckle but finally regained his composure. “Sins? You wallow in the mud of social constraints. Mastery of understanding comes by small measures to one who, with dedication, courage, and wisdom, gives over the purpose of his life to understand the universe and to surrender to it and thus prevail. So shall his understanding increase until he has attained completion. ‘Restriction’ is the only word that is sin.”

  “Are we to understand that you have turned your soul away from God?” Dr. Steig said.

  “My soul was in the throes of death, and all through the night I saw God and Satan fighting for my soul. When the dawn came, I felt that God had overcome, but I had only one question left that I could not answer.” A feral, catlike grin spread across Geoffrey’s face. “Which of the two was God?”

  Grey held out his hand palm down, urging the doctor to desist. “Have you been leaving the grounds of the institution, Mr. Blanchard?”

  “Of course.”

  “How often?”

  “Nightly. Why would I ever remain here?”

  “And by what means?” Lean asked.

  “You will never understand. You are blinded by what you think you see: the obstacles and deceptions of the material plane and physical existence.”

  “So you travel free of this cell spiritually,” Grey said.

  “On the astral plane.”

  “And when you are traveling in that aspect,” Grey asked, “you can have an effect, interact with people who are themselves confined to the material plane?”

  “In a manner, though it would be rather difficult for someone with your fettered perceptions to comprehend.”

  “What about her?” Grey drew a photograph from the inside pocket of his coat. Lean saw that it was the close-up of Maggie Keene’s face after her death inside the Portland Company. Grey slid his hands through the bars, holding the picture facedown. “Have you ever had contact with the woman in this picture? In this plane or another?”

  Geoffrey Blanchard’s eyes darted back and forth between Grey’s face and the hidden picture. After a minute, curiosity bested his apparent disinterest in the lives of those restricted to the material plane. He walked across the floor of the cell. He took the photograph in his hand, but as he did, Grey refused to release it for a moment. Geoffrey’s arm straightened out as he stepped back. Another moment and Grey released his own hold on the photograph. He apologized and asked Geoffrey to take a close look at the dead woman’s face.

  Lean saw Geoffrey’s mouth curl up a bit at one corner. Finally the man said, “One is so much like another; who can say about this woman? But I do not think I have ever had the need to address her.”

  “Too bad. Not too late, though,” Grey said. “Won’t you join me in prayer for her soul?”

  Lean shot a glance at Grey, wondering whether he was at all serious. Grey’s head was s
lightly bowed, but his eyes were looking up, locked on Geoffrey Blanchard’s pale face. “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done even in earth as it is in heaven.”

  Geoffrey Blanchard dropped the photograph back through the bars and strode over to his table. As Grey continued the prayer, Geoffrey snatched up a fishhook, then moved to the center of the chalk circle drawn on the concrete floor. He crouched down in the circle, jabbed his left thumb with the hook, and then traced a thin, smudged line of blood along the outline of the circle.

  “What are you doing, Geoffrey?” Dr. Steig asked.

  The inmate grinned at them, a self-satisfied look on his face. “You have truly wandered into the dark with no candle to guide you.” His tone switched from condescension to that used by a teacher of young children. “The first rule of any invocation ritual is, of course, for the Mage to make his circle completely impervious.”

  Grey finished his recitation: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever. Amen.”

  Geoffrey Blanchard was kneeling on the floor, arms out wide, his palms upward, head titled back slightly, and eyes closed. “I invoke thee, the Bornless One. I invoke thee, the Deathless One. I invoke thee, the Formless One. The One who was always, the One who will ever be, that in Chaos did create the Heavens and the Earth, that did from the ether shape all space and time. From the Immortal Fire drew breath that was the Bornless Spirit, did seize the spear and pierce the veil of the universe, from the blood of the creation did form the shape of Woman and Man.”

  The man’s hands fell forward onto his lap, and his voice slowed into a hushed, steady droning. “I become thee who art truth. I become thee who art love. I become thee who art hate. I am he that is the Grace of the Universe. I am he that holds the fire. I am he that brings the night. The Heart Consumed by the Serpent is my name; I am the Bornless One.”