"Mary Warren versus John Proctor: The deposition of Mary Warren aged twenty years here testifieth. I have seen the apparition of John Proctor Senior among the witches and he hath often tortured me by pinching me and biting me and choking me, and pressing on my stomach till the blood came out of my mouth and I also saw him torture Miss Pope and Mercy Lewis and John Indian upon the day of his examination and he hath also tempted me to write in his book and to eat bread which he brought me, which I refusing to do, John Proctor did most grievously torture me with a variety of tortures, almost ready to kill me."
Corwin turned back to Mary. "Are those your words, Mary Warren?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"And you swear to their veracity, upon your immortal soul?"
"Yes."
"And you are prepared to sign your name to this document in the presence of witnesses?"
She sighed. "Yes."
Corwin and Hathorne exchanged satisfied glances, and then Corwin said, "Marshal Cheever, give her the quill."
Mary watched with impassive dullness as Cheever dipped the tip of the feather in the inkwell and then handed it to her. She took it with a weak and trembling hand. A few droplets of ink dripped from the quill as she moved it toward the bottom of the page, but no one moved to blot it. Mary wrote her name on the bottom of the deposition, the irregular, uneven signature bearing mute testimony to her condition.
Judge Corwin released a contented sigh and said, "My friends, let us bow our heads in prayer." All heads in the room inclined and all hands folded piously, all save Mary's. She sat motionless, staring at the paper which she had just signed. "Oh Lord," Corwin intoned, "we thank Thee that in Thy mercy and Thy wisdom Thou hast enabled us to strike a blow against Thine enemy. We humbly beseech Thee that Thou mayest turn the curse of Thy wrath from this village, and grant unto Thy faithful servants the buttress of Thine arm in this grave struggle."
The prayer went on and on, but Mary paid no attention to it. She remained motionless and mute, as if her feelings had been cut from her.
And she dreamed on, remembering that black day in June of 1692.
Mary Warren walked slowly toward the solitary figure which stood motionless before the gibbet, the solitary figure which gazed silently upward at the body which dangled above it from the end of the rope. "Abigail?" she whispered.
"Aye," came the quiet reply.
"Abby, 'tis all over now. Come, let us go." She reached out and took Abigail Williams gently by the arm. She did not look up it the mortal remains of John Proctor.
"Let us go?" Abigail laughed bitterly. "Let us go where, Mary? Shall we return to the Proctor cabin? We cannot, for it is deserted. Perhaps we should go to the Corey home. Oh, mercy, I have forgot. Martha is hanged and Giles is pressed beneath stones." She turned and gazed at Mary with cold, emotionless eyes. "Perhaps we should go to the Parris house, to my uncle—oh, no, wait, he is gone, is he not, dismissed by the congregation? Dear, dear me. Where shall we go, Mary?"
"Abby, I’m sorry that—"
Abigail Williams swung her arm around and struck Mary in the face with a closed fist. "Damn you, Mary Warren! Damn you!"
Mary remained on the muddy ground where she had fallen under the impact of Abigail's blow. "Abby, please. I'm sorry for what has happened, truly I am."
"And does your sorrow give me back my John?" she wept. "Will your sorrow give me back my love?" She looked up at the body of John Proctor as it swung slowly from the rope in the summer breeze. "Look what you've done, Mary Warren, look what you've done!"
Mary pulled herself to her feet. "Abby, if there is anything I can do, anything—"
Abigail Williams grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her away from the gallows. "Aye, there is something you can do, Mary."
"Where—where are we going?" she asked.
"You shall see," Abigail muttered. She did not release her grip on Mary's arm. She dragged her down the muddy main street of Salem Village, out past the town boundaries, along the deserted road far from the farms and the houses. She left the road and, still dragging Mary behind her, went deep into the woods, walking with a steady determination until they came to a small clearing in the midst of the woods.
Abigail then released her grip and said, "Kneel down." Mary knelt obediently. Abigail stared at her hatefully. "You owe me, Mary Warren. You owe me more than you can ever pay me. Do you understand that?"
'Yes," she wept. "I'm sorry, Abby."
"I'm not interested in your sorrow. Just be quiet and do what I tell you to do." She reached into her bodice and pulled out a small wooden cross, obviously one hastily and crudely fashioned. She stuck it cross-end down into the soft earth. "Repeat what I say, Mary," she ordered.
"Yes—yes, Abby, I will. But what are you—?"
"I am going to make a pact with the Devil, Mary Warren, and so are you. We shall offer him our souls in exchange for my love. He will give me back my John and we shall be the Devil’s servants, in truth, not in pretense."
Mary stared at Abigail with shock and disbelief. She's taken leave of her senses, Mary thought. She is mad!
"You are in my debt, Mary!" Abigail said through trembling lips. "You will do this thing, do you hear?"
"Yes, yes, of course," Mary said nervously. Humor her, humor her. She is just upset today. John Proctor was hanged today. Give her time and she'll be right again.
"Very well," Abigail muttered. "Repeat the words which I say" She bowed her head reverently. "Hail, Satan, lord of the world."
"Hail, Satan, lord of the world," Mary repeated dutifully. "We come before you as supplicants, begging your aid and your friendship."
"We come before you as supplicants, begging your aid and your friendship." Mary glanced over at Abigail. The other girl was shaking with the intensity of her prayer.
"Come to us, Satan, make us your own."
"Come to us, Satan, make us your own."
"Come to us, Satan."
"Come to us, Satan."
"Come to us!"
"Come to us!"
Mary Warren looked with pity at her poor friend, and then turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps. She leapt to her feet and screamed, backing away from the unexpected visitor. The tall man was smiling, laughing, as he drew closer to them, and there was a madness, a cruelty in his face which terrified her.
But it was not the demonic visage which had caused Mary to scream. The man who was walking toward them did not have feet. He had hooves.
She screamed aloud in her sleep. Rowena, slumbering in the motel room next door, did not hear her. The torturous dream went on.
Nine and a half years, Mary Warren thought sadly. Nine and a half years living on the streets of Boston, selling her body to strangers, opening herself to disease and danger. Twice already had she been afflicted by the pox, and four times given birth to bastards, which she left on the steps of the foundling home in the wee hours of the morning. Abigail Williams had fared no better in the degrading trade into which she had forced Mary to join with her. Six times had she had the pox, and five times spawned bastards for the foundling home.
Mary was still chronologically a young woman, but she seemed old, tired, worn out. She was having an increasingly difficult time finding customers to partake of her fading charms down by the docks and warehouses. She was gaunt and emaciated, redolent of sweat and grease, radiating illness, disease. Her face might have been pretty still, might have held some attraction, but for the deep, ugly scar on her cheek and the unhealthy thinness of her lined and jaded countenance.
Now, in 1702, she was hard pressed to find a man who would throw her tuppence for some bizarre perversion. It had been easy—horrible but easy—back in 1693 when the two girls had first come to Boston, to find a man willing to give a few shillings for the privilege of spearing her beneath her skirts and fumbling awkwardly with her small breasts; but as the time passed she was drawn deeper and deeper into the morass of perversity, forced by the imperative of survival to do things which s
he as a child in the country had never even imagined people doing, things with her mouth, with her anus, even at times with Abigail, for the amusement of wealthy, cruel onlookers.
The years had passed without joy, without peace, without expectations. She and her friend—no, she and her creditor, she and her mistress, she and her owner—had spent the years living in broken-down, abandoned buildings, selling themselves to filthy strangers, hiding from the constables and the clergy. They spent each night seeking out ploughs for their furrows, and ended each night by praying to the Devil, often stealing an infant or a child and butchering it as a sacrifice to the Dark Lord.
"You shall serve me in this world and the next," Satan had told them that day in the forest. "You shall sin and sin greatly, for great sin pleases me. You shall burn with the souls of the damned for countless centuries, and then, at my pleasure, in the fullness of time, I shall return you to the earth and give you each yet another life to live. You, sweet Abigail, shall have your Proctor to love or destroy, and you, little Mary, shall be her servant. And when I have returned you to the world of living men, you shall have power, and pleasure, and wealth. . ."
That was nine and a half years ago, Mary thought sadly as she foraged through the garbage of the inn on the high street, looking for something edible. She found an apple core, brown and covered with bugs. She shooed away the bugs and brushed off the snow and bit into the rotting fruit.
"Mary" she heard Abigail say from behind her. "I have been thinking."
She turned to see Abigail Williams approaching her. Abigail's once beautiful black hair now hung down in matted clumps. Her once voluptuous figure had resolved itself into starchy obesity. Her once lovely face was now marked with pox scars and blackheads. "Thinking about what?" Mary asked. "Come with me." Abigail led her away from the garbage and walked briskly toward the stable directly across the street. Once inside she lighted a lantern and pointed up at the rafters. "See? What do you think?"
Mary gazed upward. Abigail had slung a rope over the sturdy central beam. The rope had been plaited on each end into nooses. "Abigail!" Mary said. "What means this hangman's rope?"
" 'Tis a simple thing," Abigail said. "The sooner we die, the sooner will come the day when we are given back new, fresh lives, the sooner I will have my John and the sooner we will both have wealth and power and pleasure."' She looked Mary steadily in the eye. "We must hang ourselves, Mary Warren."
Mary backed away from her. "Hang ourselves! Abby, don't speak nonsense!"
" 'Tis not nonsense," she replied earnestly. "Sin pleases the Master. Suicide will please him greatly!"
"But Abby, I don't want to die!" she began to weep. "I'm too young!"
"Oh, Mary," she laughed, an insane glow in her eyes, "are you indeed? How many years left before we both starve to death, or end up dying of the pox, or get caught sacrificing a child and end up on the end of a rope anyway? Does your life please you so much that you cherish it and fear to leave it? Are you looking forward to tonight's strangers spilling their seed in you? Did you enjoy your garbage supper so much?"
"But to take your own life, Abby!" she said, weeping still. "God damns suicides!"
"We're damned anyway, you silly ass!" A sudden look of comprehension flooded over Abigail's face. "Oh, I understand now, I see! You have some foolish hope of salvation, of confession on your deathbed, don't you!" She reached out and grabbed Mary by the hair. "Well, do not delude yourself, Mary Warren. You are damned, and that's the end of it. You have sold yourself to the Devil and you have signed his book, and that's the end of it! God has turned His back on you. The only hope either of us has is for the second life Satan will give us on earth, sometime in future years, at his pleasure. So stop all this wailing about damnation. Suicide or no suicide, be it that you die by starvation or disease or execution, you are damned, just as I am damned." She tried to straighten her ragged skirt. "You know that what I am saying is true."
Mary sobbed. It was true. It was undeniably true.
Abigail climbed up onto one of the two footstools which she had placed beneath the nooses. She had apparently measured the rope quite carefully, for when she slipped her end of it over her head the other end dangled just over five feet above the other stool. Mary approached the other stool slowly, weeping quietly. "You don't know for sure," she sobbed.
"What are you talking about?" Abigail demanded.
"He didn't love you, Abby. Maybe the next time will be the same."
"He will love me," she said emphatically. "And if he does not, then he will have more to fear than a hangman's rope!" She sniffed. "Now hurry up, Mary Warren! Let's be done with this!"
Mary stepped up onto the stool and placed the noose around her neck, her fingers trembling and her eyes pouring forth tears of sorrow and of fear. Both women were standing on tiptoe upon their self-designated gallows. "Good-bye, Abby," she sobbed.
"Oh, be quiet, Mary Warren," Abigail snapped. "We're both going to hell, aren't we? There is no need for good-byes!"
She pushed Mary backward and then an instant later jumped off the stool. Mary dangled at the end of the rope, watching as Abigail kicked and gasped and thrashed on the other end. She felt the rope cutting into her throat, tried to cry out through empty lungs and a broken windpipe, clutched impotently at the noose as it choked her to death.
Darkness swept over Mary Warren. Then, for an instant, there was nothing.
And then there was pain, unending pain, and the echoes of Satan's mad laughter wracking her tortured soul.
She shrieked in her sleep and did not awaken. As the deep, dark hours of night slowly moved onward toward daybreak, she lived her life over and over again in her tormenting dreams. There was no escape in wakefulness and no escape in sleep, for she knew what she was, she knew what she had been, she knew what she would be again. And the terrible memories paled into insignificance when she dreamed of the inevitable future, when she would once again return to the eternal darkness, when she would once again be the blind, shapeless thing floating in unending agony upon the burning lake of hell.
Chapter Fourteen
November 25
The next morning all the news wire services carried the story of the televised death of Ludwig Eisenmann. The videotape of the incident was shown on the local news broadcasts and was almost immediately released to the networks. CBS and NBC had reservations about showing it on the nightly news, but after ABC decided to air the footage, the other two networks followed suit.
The next day, the issue of witchcraft in popular culture was raised on three of the nationally televised morning talk shows, and the tape of Eisenmann's death was shown on two of them. The Christian Broadcasting Network devoted two full hours of programming to the problem of Satanism in America, and before evening a cry of outrage had been raised by clergymen, educators, and parents' organizations nationwide. That night the American Civil Liberties Union, fearful that this outburst of parochial fury might pose a threat to other small and eccentric religious groups, contacted Simon Proctor to inform him that their services were available to him should he need them.
The day after that, owners of record stores began to notice evidence of an unusual demand for the records of Simon Proctor and Witch's Sabbath. They promptly arranged to have more of the records shipped to them by the distributors.
By the end of the next day, advance sales for the upcoming concert tour of Witch's Sabbath had been sold out, and Harry Schroeder was busily engaged in arranging additional bookings in other cities throughout the nation. The original tour had been limited to bookings in cities east of the Mississippi, but Schroeder now expanded the itinerary to include the West as well.
The film which Simon Proctor had bankrolled, Satanists of Salem, was released the day after that. Lines of people were queuing up to see it in such great numbers that the film company rushed through the production of additional prints, and the film was sent off to additional theaters.
Two days after that, Simon Proctor was interviewed by Rolling S
tone magazine.
One day later, Gwendolyn Jenkins agreed to pose for a photo spread in Penthouse magazine. She agreed verbally in the presence of witnesses, but refused to sign a contract or a model's release.
"Many years ago I signed the Devil's book," she explained. "I have signed nothing since, nor shall I ever."
The next day, the concert tour began. Witch's Sabbath played to a standing-room-only crowd at Madison Square Garden.
And the money began rolling in.
WINTER SOLSTICE
The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire.
II PETER 2:22
Chapter Fifteen
December 2
"One road leads to your lover's room,
Your lover's room, your lover's room.
The other road leads to a cold hollow tomb,
Where Death's gonna dance on your grave. . . ."
The instrumental conclusion to Simon's old hit "Pathfinder" echoed through the vastness of Madison Square Garden, and the packed audience began cheering and whistling even before the last notes faded into silence. He stood motionless, drinking in the adulation, repressing his urge to jump up and down with glee as he surveyed the multitude before him. Not one empty seat, he thought. Standing Room Only Filled to capacity. And Harry says it's going to be the same in Philly, in Chicago, in St. Louis, everywhere, everywhere.
Almost everyone in the audience was going wild with applause. Rowena Proctor, who was sitting off in the wings with Jeremy, Lucas, and Karyn, was not. She sat uneasily upon the metal folding chair and watched with undisguised unhappiness as her father executed a formal bow to the cheering throng. Jeremy leaned over to her and said, "Come on, Row. Try to make the best of it."
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