The big glittering diamond rolled out from under Lucifer’s paw, around Michelle’s shoulder, down her arm, and landed under her open palm lying on the sheet. Lucifer hissed all the while the giant diamond moved, but he didn’t stop or interfere with it.
Michelle’s body jerked when the diamond made contact with her hand, her eyelids moving in a dream.
The dream lasted only a few minutes in real time. In Michelle’s mind, though, she spent a lifetime as another person. A short lifetime, because the women, named Abigail, was sixteen when she died.
It was a quick kaleidoscope, that dream. The young girl’s year of birth was 1676 in colonial Massachusetts. It was a time of extreme religious beliefs and holidays like Christmas and Easter were forbidden, as was music and dancing. Michelle, as Abigail, attended a school that emphasized strict piety and bible study to prevent eternal damnation.
The first ninety-nine percent of Abigail’s life, in Michelle’s dream, moved rapidly, like a fast-motion movie. She saw her parents celebrating her birthday when she was three. The puppy she adored. The boredom of hours of daily school in a tiny classroom, and especially the boredom of seemingly eternal worship services she had to attend. Running and playing in the woods around the village. Getting in serious trouble when she questioned the elders and ministers about the rigid religious doctrine.
As punishment for her imprudence they cut off her long brown hair, so it was only jagged wisps around her face. Looking in the mirror, seeing herself mutilated and humiliated for all the village to observe, Abigail ran away into the forest. Soon she was lost and alone, crying for hours. A young Indian boy she called Nate, because she couldn’t pronounce his real Indian name, led her back home to Salem Village after they hid in the woods for a few hours. He was a member of a friendly tribe and knew a little English, so they could communicate. Abigail was fascinated by his black eyes and hair, his beautiful golden skin.
Abigail knew she shouldn’t keep sneaking out to meet Nate. Indians from other tribes had attacked their small village, but she was in love. She had a compulsion, an addiction to the Indian boy with the extreme emotions and raging hormones of a teen in puberty.
Meeting Nate at night in the woods was a secret she held in her heart, until her father followed her one night, saw them together, and shot Nate dead.
At this time, in Europe, there was a kind of mass hysteria that crossed the ocean and infected the new American colonies. It was the time of the Papule Bull, and the hunt for suspected witches.
When Abigail’s parents went to the magistrates to ask for guidance with their daughter, the witch hunts were in full force.
Ultimately, charges were brought against Abigail. She had dared to question sacred religious beliefs. Her beauty was abnormal, as was her height for a girl of that time. She was seen crossing paths the previous week with a woman who later gave birth to a deformed child with six fingers. But most damning of all, she lost her virginity to a heathen.
The suspicion turned to certainty. Abigail was again lost and alone, almost starved in jail while she awaited her trial. In court the charges were damning. It was proclaimed that she had made a pact with the devil. She was indeed a witch. The explanation accounted for her unusual beauty, her strange gift for healing small animals, and her uncanny precognitive ability. She was hanged to death a few days later.
Michelle’s eyes snapped open, shocked. She was awake and furious, experiencing the strong adolescent emotions of a teenager raging against her world’s prejudices, injustice and hypocrisy. Michelle knew she witnessed a life that actually happened long ago in the past.
Omar is right, Michelle thought, surprised. Paranormal abilities do run in families. In Michelle’s dream, when Abigail had looked in the mirror to see her shorn hair, there was no doubt the young girl was a distant relative. Abigail may have had light brown hair and blue eyes, and Michelle’s hair was black, her eyes light green, but the facial resemblance was remarkable and striking. Michelle recognized her own bone structure; the eyes were the same shape, as was the mouth and nose.
Having experienced another person’s whole existence, it was like dueling personalities inhabited Michelle’s mind. The extraordinary anger she felt bottled inside needed an outlet. She wanted to scream when she remembered Abigail’s last thought, before she was hanged: I wish I’d slept with Nate.
Michelle could look at what happened to Abigail with some objectivity, but it didn’t erase the anger. From her perspective, she knew Abigail had just been asking for religious clarification from the village minister. But being an arrogant ass, puffed up with pride and superiority, he used his authority to order her punished, which ultimately led to her death. Questioning religion was not tolerated during that puritanical era in America. Abigail was a victim of her time.
What Michelle also abhorred about her dream, was that once Abigail was declared a witch, she became a living abomination, like someone with the plague. When she was in jail, not one member of her family or any of her friends came to give sustenance or comfort. She climbed the gallows to her death alone and frightened.
Besides the dream, another war was erupting inside Michelle’s physical body. Into her right arm flowed chemicals, toxic drugs, sedatives, antibiotics, and pain medication. The drugs caused lethargy, drowsiness, and made her feel sick.
Zipping up her left arm, power and energy, furious in its strength, flowed from the diamond beneath her hand.
The choice was simple. Michelle removed the needle from her arm and curled her fingers around the big diamond.
