repercussion.
Rebecca Nurse, however, most probably would not tarry in the graveyard. She had been a wife and mother.
Jenna turned back to the house and paused. Made of mist now, and yet clearly there before her, stood the spirit of an old woman. Her dress was severe, fastened to her throat, with only a white collar against the dark blue of her bodice. A cap covered her graying hair; she was wrinkled and withered, but she had beautiful blue-gray eyes that carried centuries of wisdom. She made a hand motion and started toward the graveyard, so Jenna followed.
Certainly, there was no telling where Rebecca Nurse was really buried. In later times, the family had erected a stone to her memory. The remains of George Jacobs, Sr., another victim of the trials, had been unearthed on the Jacobs property in the 1950s and laid to rest here with great ceremony during the tercentennial. Jenna wondered if the spirit of Rebecca wanted her to honor him here as well, but she didn’t head toward the memorial. She walked instead toward a patch of ground that was devoid of memorial markers, even the fieldstones that denoted the resting places of so many family members.
Fog swelled through the pines that surrounded the graveyard, and for a moment, Jenna felt as if she’d been whisked back in time and that she and the old woman who had met such a cruel demise stood in a place entirely removed from all others.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Jenna whispered.
“Look to the young, and those who would be innocent, for they only learn from the voices around them,” the woman said, her voice like the rattling of tree limbs stripped bare of their leaves. “Babes so quickly learn that lies often serve to please, and so they learn to lie. They know not the tragedy of their words. John Proctor whipped his girl, and she had no fits. She found the others, and those who would watch and applaud, and she began again, and yet, I think, I believe, not with malice, yet with fear that what she began to believe was what she must.”
“Even now, you forgive,” Jenna said. She felt like crying for all those wronged. She didn’t believe that she could have ever known such courage. She reached out toward the specter.
But the old woman seemed impatient. “Children! They know not what they say. They know not what they say.”
The trees seemed to shake with the sudden burst of an autumn wind. The fog stirred and rolled and seemed to lift, and when it did, the image of the old woman was gone.
Jenna stood alone in the graveyard, wondering if she was indeed sane and gifted, or if she created what she saw in her mind. It was always so real, and then so completely
She realized then that either the spirit of the long-deceased woman-or the spirit she created in her mind-hadn’t been talking about the past.
They had yet to interview the boys.
And, she believed, especially after the words of the ghost, the boys were the key.
Angela and Sandy emerged from the house, talking animatedly. Jenna realized that Angela would want to see the graveyard, and she was suddenly eager to leave it herself. She wanted to get to the cliff-side spit of land where kids-old and young-hung out. She told herself that they might not come at all-not David and Joshua, anyway-but she was anxious to try there.
“Sandy is an amazing tour guide,” Angela said. “I’ve so enjoyed discussing the history with her. We’re going to tour the graveyard-”
Jenna quickly stepped forward to take Sandy’s hand and pump it. “Perhaps another day! Sandy, you were so kind, so wonderful! I know we’ll be back. Soon. Angela, I just realized that we might miss that appointment. We’ve got to go…quickly. Now.”
“Appointment?” Angela said. “Oh, yes, of course, how could I forget? Sandy, thank you very much.”
“There’s really so much more to see here. They built what must be an almost perfect reproduction of the Old Meeting House in Salem Village. This is really where it all began. There are other houses-”
“Thank you! We will see them!” Jenna assured her. Grabbing Angela’s hand, she dragged her back across the property to her car.
“All right,” Angela said, once they were seated. “What’s going on?”
“We have to get to the cliff side by the Lexington House.”
“Yes, we were planning that, but school’s not even out yet.”
“It will be.”
“So…”
“I saw Rebecca Nurse.”
“I see.”
“She was a victim of injustice, Angela. I thought I was just listening to her talk about the past-about the girls. But she was trying to help me now. I think an old man from the era was trying to help me at the graveyard in Salem the other night…someone who saw the injustice, and saw that lies created more lies, and people began to believe them, even those who weren’t really involved. Angela, good people were involved all those years ago. This is totally different, we’re living in a different world, and yet, it can all play out the same. People believe what seems to be obvious. And kids are all too easily caught up in playacting. And if you do it long enough, in your mind, it becomes the truth!”
It cost more than three hundred dollars to get his car back, and though he’d given himself a few stern lectures on being materialistic, Sam was grateful that his beloved Jaguar hadn’t been scratched or dented.
“Nice ride,” Jackson commented.
“I do a lot of driving,” Sam said. He saw that Jackson was grinning. “Okay, hell, yeah, I like my car!”
He told Jackson about his previous meeting with the elder, Goodman Wilson. Jackson listened and said, “He really called himself
“Yeah.”
“Reverting to Pilgrim days, so it seems.”
“He’s very honest about the fact that they’re a fundamentalist church. No singing, drinking, dancing…and certainly no worship of false idols. But I believed him when he said that their teachings were about peace and that they were strictly nonviolent.”
“So why did everyone hate Abraham Smith and his family so much?” Jackson asked.
“I think it is human nature to hate what you don’t understand. I think that the church tends to be isolated, and that the members keep to themselves. And, probably, what the people knew came from Malachi, who was in the school system. Oh, and Abraham did rail a lot, apparently, about the people who deserved to go to hell-Peter Andres among them. But, since Abraham and Peter are both dead, I don’t think that Abraham killed Peter.” He hesitated, glancing over at Jackson. “Jenna is convinced that the killer dresses up as the Celtic horned god and goes in while in costume and then kills. Says she’s
“What do you think?” Jackson asked him.
Sam shrugged. He had just met the man beside him, but he knew that Jackson Crow had acquired an exceptional reputation with the bureau before joining Adam Harrison’s special unit.
“I can’t say that she’s wrong. I don’t know. It would be an easy way to come and go during Halloween- apparently, it’s a popular costume-but Peter Andres was murdered six months ago. Back then they had no more reason to go after Malachi Smith than anyone else.”
“I thought you said that Abraham Smith hated Peter Andres-wouldn’t the police have questioned Abraham?”
“I’m sure they would have gone after him if they could have,” Sam said. “Eyewitnesses put him on his own property in Salem while Peter Andres was killed in Andover. Malachi loved to go to the cliff by his house, but he had no corroborating witnesses to vouch he was there when his family was killed. Even if he’d been seen there by any of the other youths in town, I sincerely doubt they would have spoken up for him.”
They reached the Old Meeting House in Beverly.
As they exited the car, Jackson said, “Thank God.”
“Thank God?”
Jackson looked at him. “That I wasn’t born a Puritan!”
Sam smiled as they headed toward the door of the church. As it had been before, it was open. They stepped in,
