by A. W. Jantha
“Beautiful things have a way of obscuring danger, my dear girl. Don’t—” She stopped short as the smell of burning fruit filled the air and the sound of clumsy gurgling reached her ears. She hastened to remove the delicate preserve from the stove, but when she returned to the window a moment later, Emily was already gone.
SALEM, 1993
Max wasn’t sure why everyone filing into US History at the end of the day had grins on their faces. The classroom looked as it had for the past few weeks, with orange construction paper tacked to the pushpin boards that flanked the chalkboard at the front of the room. On one side was a silhouette of a frightened black cat, and on another a silhouette of a witch on her broom. Above the chalkboard, Miss Olin had replaced the framed portraits of her four favorite presidents with pen-and-ink drawings of four people involved in the Salem witch trials.
Miss Olin herself sat at her desk while the class filed in, scribbling notes to herself among an array of miniature pumpkins. There was a creepy little witch doll propped up at the front edge of her desk. It was dressed in a black-and-white Pilgrim’s costume and a pointed hat with an orange ribbon for decoration—exactly like the one Miss Olin herself wore that day.
Max took his seat in the third row, beside the girl in the red vest and just a few desks away from Allison Watts. After the bell rang, Miss Olin explained—for his benefit, he supposed—that Salem tradition dictated that on All Hallows’ Eve, each class’s history teacher recounted the town’s most popular Halloween story: one that had real witches and bubbling cauldrons and unbreakable spells. The way she said it made Max realize she was trying to express what a great honor this was for her, but he found himself concentrating on not rolling his eyes.
But when Miss Olin began to tell a story about the Sanderson sisters—who had lured a girl into the woods and killed her, then turned her brother into a cat—Max knew there was someone smiling down on him.
All he had to do was provoke Allison into an argument, which would give him an excuse to apologize and invite her to check out the Sanderson house. It wouldn’t be hard. This may have been only his second Friday at Jacob Bailey High, but he knew Allison couldn’t stand it when people fibbed their way through a class discussion. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d tried to impress her on Tuesday by swaggering through a devil’s advocate position about states’ rights—something he knew next to nothing about. He found that while Allison might be willing to help people with homework before class, she didn’t find it charming if she thought you were making a mockery of something she cared about. She’d taken no prisoners, and he’d gone straight home to actually read the chapter about the Continental Congress.
But now he would use one of his new talents—specifically, being publicly humiliated by Allison Watts—to his advantage.
“And so,” said Miss Olin, the very tip of her witch’s hat bobbing as she spoke, “the Sanderson sisters were hanged by the Salem townsfolk. Now, there are those who say that on Halloween night a black cat still guards the old Sanderson house, warning off any who might make the witches come back to life!” With a loud pop, a mess of streamers shot from her hand onto the nearest girl, making the whole class jump. Max had to admit it was a nice touch.
It was also his cue.
“Gimme a break,” he sighed.
Miss Olin turned an arched eyebrow on him. “Aha,” she said. “We seem to have a skeptic in our midst. Mr. Dennison, would you care to share your California, laid-back, tie-dyed point of view?”
The class howled with laughter and Max again had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at his US History teacher. She wasn’t the one whose feathers he needed to ruffle.
“Okay, granted that you guys in Salem are all into these black cats and witches and stuff—”
“Stuff?” gasped an affronted Miss Olin.
“Fine,” Max pressed on. “But everyone knows that Halloween was invented by the candy companies.”
The class groaned.
“It’s a conspiracy,” insisted Max.
“It just so happens,” said Allison, like clockwork, “that Halloween is based on the ancient feast called All Hallows’ Eve.” Max and the rest of the class turned to watch her take him apart. She leaned forward and spoke directly to him while she did it. Her expression was serious, and for a moment Max worried he’d really put his foot in it. “It’s the one night of the year where the spirits of the dead can return to earth.”
The class cheered and Allison smiled and accepted a high five from the pumpkin-sweatered girl who sat behind Max. At least she wasn’t actually that upset, he reasoned. Having the whole class turn against him was a little embarrassing, but ultimately Max didn’t care that they were celebrating his humiliation. He was already tearing a sheet of paper from his notebook and scribbling down his name. He’d pay Dani her weight in gummy pizzas to keep her away from this call.
He got up from his desk. “Well,” he said, crossing the narrow aisle. “In case Jimi Hendrix shows up tonight, here’s my number.” He handed Allison the folded sheet of paper.
The class whooped.
Allison raised her eyebrows at him but didn’t answer.
Max’s heart slammed against his ribcage, a rubber ball trying to escape this risk-taking madman.
The bell rang and the class swirled out, Allison with them. Max scrambled to pack up his books and catch her before he lost his courage. Maybe if she gave him a chance, he’d actually make friends in Salem, and then Jack wouldn’t have to lend Max his spare bunk after all.
SALEM, 1693
Thackery jolted awake to the sound of Mopsie whinnying like he’d been kicked.
He sat up straight, a layer of sweat sticking his pale linen shirt to his back, and let his ears adjust to the commotion outside the window. The sun was high—he must have slept through the cock crow, which meant his father would be angry because he hadn’t yet milked the cow. Thackery flopped back into bed, wondering whether he could plead sick. He glanced to his left, hoping he could ask Emily to cover for him, but her bed was empty and unmade. Her church dress still hung by the fire, as did her gabled cap.
Thackery hurried out of bed and looked about the small plain bedroom they shared at the back of the house. Emily’s shoes were by the door, which was very unlike her.
He sniffed the air but couldn’t catch the smell of woodsmoke that would mean his mother was preparing porridge in the main part of the house. Nor could he hear the good-natured sound of his father greeting neighbors as they passed on their way back from the harbor.
Something wasn’t right.
He dashed into the yard, where the chickens were scrambling as if they knew it was time for supper. Mopsie had torn himself from the tree, and his lead hung limp and ominous from an upper branch. A shiver crept down Thackery’s spine. From the gate of the sheep’s pen, Thackery spotted Elijah Morris, his best friend, who was rubbing his eyes as if he’d just risen, as well.
“Elijah!” he called, forgetting his own shoes as he crossed between their yards.
When Thackery grabbed Elijah’s forearm, his friend turned to him, blinking as if coming out of a dream. Elijah was only a hair’s width taller than Thackery—at least, that’s what Thackery said—and wore an identical linen shirt and long-locked hairstyle. The townsfolk called the two of them accidental twins.
“Has thee seen my sister, Emily?” asked Thackery.
“Nay,” said Elijah. “But look: they conjure.”
Thackery followed his friend’s gaze and saw, far past the fields that surrounded town and deep within the Salem Wood, a plume of heavy smoke crawling into the clear late-morning sky. It was an unnatural shade of pink—bright and conspicuous. It made his stomach turn.
“The woods,” Thackery managed, the half-dreamed ghost of witchy hands tightening around his neck. He grabbed Elijah by the shirtsleeve, and together they raced down the lane and to the field. There Thackery caught sight of his sister’s slight frame slipping into the shadow of the trees.<
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“Wake my father,” he told Elijah, keeping his eyes trained on where his sister had just been. “Summon the others. Go!”
Before Elijah could answer, Thackery was racing toward the witching wood, shouting his sister’s name. He leaped over one branch and ducked beneath another, and then lost his footing and tumbled down the steep embankment until he landed in a thick bed of browned leaves. He groaned, forcing himself up onto one arm and then farther up onto his hurting bare feet.
Before him stood the Sanderson house, a cottage that sat crookedly upon its haunches and sagged in its eaves despite being younger than many buildings in Salem proper. Intricate wooden shutters obscured its windows, and weeds grew in thick drifts around the house and even between some of the floorboards of the porch. A few sported bright blue flowers despite the chill of October’s last day. Thackery had no doubt that these blossoms smelled and tasted like honey but would kill a man within a few minutes.
On the house’s left side, a huge waterwheel caught the tiny creek and turned, groaning from the labor. Above it, the smoke hung thick and promised something as wicked as a snake in paradise.
Emily disappeared inside as Thackery watched, helpless—trapped by a memory of clambering down there with Elijah when both of them were twelve, of daring each other to throw pebbles at the door, of his heart knocking hard against his chest when the door opened and Winifred Sanderson stepped out with her wild red hair and threatened to roast them with chicken of the woods and worm snakes’ tongues.
Thackery pushed aside his memories and crossed the flat stepping stones to a low window that looked into the only room of the house. Inside, the sisters were doing the Devil’s work, each of them wearing a heavy cape with a pointed hood—one green as leaves before the fall, one red as clay, and one a purple deeper than an elderberry’s juice. Together, the women danced and rocked slowly around his poor sweet sister. They had seated Emily in a heavy-looking chair, and she looked patiently up at them as if she expected a present at the end of it all. Her eyes widened when she saw Thackery, and he hurried out of sight and shut the window.
He wasted no time clambering past the waterwheel and ducking into an alcove just as the creak of a rusted hinge pierced the air. The high haughty voice of Winifred Sanderson rang out above him.
“Oh, look,” she sighed. “Another glorious morning. Makes me sick!”
The window slammed shut again, and Thackery leaned into the stone of the old building.
He was relieved not to have been caught, but it didn’t help the feeling that his ribs were knotted tight with rope. Emily was trapped inside with the witches, and he had no idea what to do.
SALEM, 1993
Hundreds of students pressed through the halls of the high school and spilled out onto the street. In the anonymity of the crowd, a couple of students popped off black-and-orange streamers. A boy with a dancing skeleton knitted on his beanie shouted, “What do we want?”
“Ghosts!” shouted back the rest of the school.
“When do we want ’em?”
“Now!”
Max pushed his way through the celebrants, still baffled by their unselfconscious love of something meant for little kids.
He was grateful that Allison wore a bright red coat, because it helped him keep track of her in the outgoing tide of students.
He grabbed his bike and raced after her, slowing only because he was afraid of becoming a gross sweaty mess. His heart was beating hard enough for what he was about to do. He was going to speak with Allison, just the two of them, and he was going to invite her to visit the Sanderson house with him, and she was going to say yes, because if she didn’t, he really would have to hitchhike back to LA, since the embarrassment of seeing her in class every day would be too much when all his friends were three thousand miles away. Max’s parents and sister kept telling him to make the most of this move, and there he was, pedaling after his moon shot.
As he biked, he decided that he’d never seen so much Halloween decor in one place—not even in the holiday section of a department store. There were homemade ghosts and plastic zombies and giant googly eyes stuck in trees. People had even put up yellow and orange lights, and one man was testing the fog machine in his yard before the night’s main event.
Max swung past a honking car and into Salem Common, the big park that sat in the middle of town. “Allison!” he barked before he could stop himself. He startled himself even, his foot slipping and causing him to skid to a halt.
She turned and eyed him for a second before saying, “Hi.” She kept walking, but she slowed a little.
“Hi,” he said, toeing his way after her. “Look—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you in class.”
“You didn’t.” She stopped then, and Max did, too.
He took a deep breath and told himself to play it cool.
“My name is Max Dennison,” he said, extending a hand.
Allison softened. “Yeah, I know,” she said, accepting his handshake.
Her palm was soft and warm against his, and he thought of the intricate vases he’d seen her carrying out of the arts wing—enough to stock a mansion, because, he suspected, she’d keep working at it until one came out perfect. He wondered whether asking about her ceramics class would make him seem thoughtful or creepy.
“You just moved here, huh?” she asked, saving him the embarrassment.
“Yeah, two weeks ago.” He grabbed his handlebars so she wouldn’t notice his shaking hands.
“Must be a big change for you.”
“That’s for sure.”
She smiled. “You don’t like it here?”
With two questions, Max felt like this conversation was really on a roll. He shrugged. “Oh, the leaves are great,” he said, looking up at their fiery underbellies, “but...I dunno. Just all this Halloween stuff.”
“You don’t believe in it?”
“What do you mean, like the Sanderson sisters? No way.”
“Not even on Halloween?”
His heart soared. He wasn’t from Salem, but this was something he could work with: the universal teenage language of apathy. “Especially not on Halloween,” he said.
Allison seemed to hesitate, and Max wondered whether he’d misread something. No one his age could actually believe in witches and flying broomsticks and newt-eye potions. Could they?
But Allison just smiled and offered him a folded piece of paper, more suave than he could ever hope to be. “Trick or treat,” she said. The look she gave him made his bones melt.
She walked off then, pulling up her red hood against the October chill.
Max smiled to himself, and for a moment he wasn’t even upset that he’d forgotten to ask her about visiting the Sanderson house. He’d spoken to Allison one-on-one, and she hadn’t laughed at him or anything. Maybe this meant they could be friends. Maybe it even meant that one day, if he didn’t mess things up, they could be something more than that.
Max unfolded the note and saw his own name and phone number, and his stomach sank. He turned over the paper, but there wasn’t anything else written on any part of it.
He had misread her, though he wasn’t sure how. And then he’d blown it.
Max sighed and looked down at the sidewalk. At least he still had his sweet new shoes.
“My darling,” crooned Winifred Sanderson, and Thackery was sure the words were meant for Emily.
But then she added, equally lovingly, “My little book. We must continue with our spell now that our little guest of honor has arrived. Wake up,” she coaxed, like a mother to her child. “Wake up, darling. Yes—oh, come along. There you are.”
Thackery clambered up the waterwheel, which allowed him to enter the house through a thick-paned window on the second floor. It opened to a narrow loft that looked down into the large room, which made it the perfect hiding spot. Thackery slunk in and pressed himself as close to the floorboards as he could manage, peering down at his sister and the witches below.
“Ah,
there it is,” Winifred was saying. Her book was open on an angled table, and a massive iron pot was bubbling over an open fire beside her. She read from the book’s pages: “‘Bring to a full rolling bubble; add two drops of oil of boil. Mix blood of owl with the herb that’s red. Turn three times, pluck a hair from my head. Add a dash of pox and a dead man’s toe.’” She turned to Sarah, the narrowest sister, and perhaps the youngest, though no one in Salem seemed to remember. “Dead man’s toe,” Winifred ordered. “And make it a fresh one.”
Sarah Sanderson brightened then and began to dance around chorusing the command, and Thackery cringed. He thought of George Flamsteed, the kind old fisherman whose boat had capsized in late September. He’d washed ashore untouched—except that he’d been missing both of his big toes. For days after, the townsfolk had whispered about the Devil’s work.
Mary tossed a toe into the pot and then flung another one at Sarah for good measure.
When a wayward digit landed upon Winifred’s back, she rounded on them both. “Will you two stop that?” she demanded. “I need to concentrate.” She turned back to her book and then, satisfied, called her sisters to the pot. The surface of the bubbling liquid was obscured by a thick sheet of white smoke.
As Thackery spied, he chewed his bottom lip, tasting blood. Emily sat quietly off to the side, and he wondered what could possibly be going through her head. He’d seen a flash of recognition from her before, but now she sat as serenely as the doll he’d believed her to be when the midwife had first wrapped her in a clean blanket.
“‘One thing more and all is done,’” chanted Winifred, waving her hands over the surface of the pot, “‘add a bit of thine own tongue.’”
At once, all three sisters stuck out their tongues and bit down with a crunch, turning Thackery’s stomach. They spat into the pot and began to stir the vile liquid with a large wooden spoon.
“One drop of this,” breathed Winifred, “and her life will be mine.” She caught herself. “I mean, ours.”
Thackery looked over his shoulder, but there wasn’t a single sound outside. Where was Elijah? Where was his father? Surely they’d arrive at any moment.
