“You’re the real witch,” came Henry Carr’s ghostly reply like a whisper of smoke. Coils of his breath wended their way into her ear, just how she’d taught him to lick there. His breath and odor filled the corridors of her mind in search of a home.

“Get out of my head and my bed!” she screamed but somehow her scream came out dull and trapped in her throat.

“I starved myself near to death for her love, not for yours.” She felt him spooned against her body now. “Hung myself for our sins, sister.”

“It was for your own good I kept you from that witch, Henry. I never meant anything but good for you.”

“You mean for you.”

“I loved you.”

Then he was gone. It was all she ever needed to say to Henry’s spectral form to have him leave, to say three simple words—I love you.

Had Thomas been in bed beside her, Henry wouldn’t’ve come, and she’d’ve been safe from yet another visit, but her husband had that fool venture with Bray Wilkins going on again. So he’d taken his cane and bad ankle up that way tonight, despite her pleas. She’d long ago confessed her nightmares were more than mere dream, that her brother Henry paid her regular visits saying the same thing over and over.

Half awake and relieved with Henry’s departure, Mrs. Putnam tried to sleep on a bit more. However, she continued with some difficulty as her breath would catch, and her body would go stiff. So stiff that breathing came hard, and this would simulate death, and she’d find her mind and body inside a coffin, and from within she’d be screaming, “But I’m alive! I’m not dead! You can’t bury me!” She’d scream this at the top of her lungs with no result. No one could hear, and no one came to dig her out.

Then the odors would fill her lungs. Choking, pressing odors of earth and earth worms, spiders, centipedes, vermin, all coming into the coffin with her, sniffing her, and crawling all over, until she screamed even louder.

It was Henry’s doing. Whatever he posited in her ear with his breath brought on the night horrors, until her shakes and screams would finally awaken Thomas, who’d shake her into consciousness and raise her from the coffin and the abyss—but Thomas was tired of the night work, and he was not here now!

She sat bolt upright this time, stiff and sweating from her struggle to regain reality without Thomas’ help or Anne’s help or Mercy’s help. At one time or another all three had shoved, pulled, pushed, hit and screamed at her to awaken her from the night terrors.

Something always crawled into the coffin bed with her, something sitting on her chest, a succubae or incubi, some demon from Hades sure . . . sitting there and stealing her breath, and hoping it could take all of the breath of life she possessed. The creature of night had stayed over in the light. Damn fearless of Henry. Much more courageous as a spirit than he had been in this world. And now he was haunting her daughter as well.

Little Anne raced into the room, looking ever so much like her mother when she was Little Anne’s age where she lived in Salisbury, the last time Anne Carr Putnam had felt any happiness. She bundled her daughter into her, beside her, holding tight. Both were crying now. Mother Putnam shouted to the morning, “How long? How long do I endure this curse!”

# # # # #

Jeremy rode into Salem Town to take the pulse of the harbor people and to hopefully see Reverend Higginson. The town on the ocean bustled with activity and commerce, not unlike Boston. His immediate thought was: you’d never know there was a thing out of kilter or wrong beneath the surface here.

Jeremy stabled his Dancer as the horse needed grooming, and he walked among the people of Salem Town, cautiously listening to the idle conversation among workmen, fishermen, ladies at market, but no one here was talking about the awful business going on in nearby Salem Village—another similarity to Boston.

The only unseemly, untoward indication of the “village problems” appeared the jailhouse—filled beyond its capacity as with Boston and any other community that had so much as a holding pen.

He went across the common where children played at games and climbing trees. No longer wearing the black uniform of the clergy, he was seen as a mere stranger here by most. He crossed the street to Higginson’s church and nearby home, skipping over the trench at mid-street which carried sewage to the ocean.

Carriages and wagons of commerce passed him by, people waving at one another. There was an airy hospitality about Salem Town that he’d never felt in the village, not even years ago as a child. The village temperament had always been summed up in one word in his mind: somber.

That much hadn’t changed in all these years.

At the church, he ran into Reverend Nicholas Noyes, who treated him with cool diffidence, no doubt knowing Jeremiah’s true nature of deceit and deception as summed up by Mr. Parris. “I am in search of Mr. Higginson.”

“He is in meeting with important men of Boston, and I’m sure you were not invited,” replied Noyes, his eyes narrowing into slits that didn’t hide the fact they were rat’s eyes, beady and skulking.

“Where is this meeting?”

“At the Reverend’s home, gathering about his sickbed. The old gentleman is not long for this world.”

“More’s the pity,” replied Jeremy, thinking, More’s the pity that his passing will leave you in charge of the largest congregation in the area.

Jeremy left for Higginson’s residence, and once there, he was barred from entering. Inside the Boston visiting judges, Stoughton, Sewell, Addington, and Saltonstall had the old man cornered—not hard to do. No doubt attempting to have him sign something while in a weakened, perhaps delirious state, Jeremy feared. And most certainly hoping for his blessing on the court they intended to operate out of Salem Town and Village—a special session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer: to hear and determine.

No matter what story he gave, Jeremy could not get past the guard, Sheriff Williard. “Sorry, Mr. Wakely, but I have my orders.”

“Williard, how can you justify arresting Mother Nurse of all people?”

“I don’t make the warrants, Mr. Wakely, I only carry them out.”

“And the warrant against Mother Nurse? Sworn out by whom?”

“Putnam’s name was on it along with several others. Fiske for one as I recall.”

“It’s an evil injustice to have that woman sitting in that pigsty you call a jail.”

“”I agree with you there.”

“I’ve seen root cellars in better order than these jails in Salem Village and Town.”

“I’m not talking about the jails,” said Williard.

Jeremiah looked at the man’s dejected features. “You mean you agree that Mother Nurse is wrongly accused?”

“I do! From the beginning.”

“But you arrested her, and old Francis was struck down in the bargain.”

“I had me orders, and it was Herrick struck the old man.”

“So that absolves you?”

“Look you here, I’m not asking for absolution!”

“You were following orders, and it wasn’t your fault, eh?”

“I can tell you this, I don’t like any of it, and I fear it’s going to eat us all alive. One thing’s sure they’re right about.”

“What’s that?” Jeremy studied the man for any sign of guile but found none.

“That it’s the work of the Antichrist—all of this setting neighbor ’gainst neighbor.”

“And who among us is cause of that?”

“For my money?” He inched closer and whispered, “That blackhearted minister in the village and his lackeys.”

“My sentiments exactly, but he’s now gained the ear of the judges, and they’re now whispering in Mr. Higginson’s ear. I tell you, I must see the judges. I have evidence against Parris.”

“A bit late in the day. All right, Mr. Wakely, what have you?”

Jeremy mentioned the land squabbles, the map, and the Parris sermon.

“Is that it?” Williard was skeptical. “See here, sir, the climate is bad for any man who does not go along with the river that’s plunging forward now in the direction that the judges and—”

“So it is foul, the climate in Salem, don’t I know as does Francis and John Proctor.”

“John Proctor needs follow Nurse’s calm, else isn’t long he’ll lose his freedom.”

“You’ve taken the man’s wife in custody. What do you expect?”

Williard gritted his teeth and whispered, “I tell ya, Proctor’ll be next if he doesn’t stop talking against the ministers and the magistrates. You, too, if you don’t step lightly.”

“Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

“No, ‘’tis the nature of the beast at the moment. Take the advice or ignore it at your peril, sir. Now truly, you should leave these premises.”

“We’re all of us called freemen, citizens of the Crown,” persisted Jeremy, “yet we’re to hold our tongues and to watch where we step?”

“That is the way of it, sir, for now.”

“So you will go on serving warrants?”

Williard looked Jeremy in the eye. “I have little choice. Don’t judge me, Mr. Wakely.”

“I stand in judgment on no man, Mr. Williard. I have had great respect for the law all my days, but not what I see unfolding in Salem. Now as I am going nowhere, will you let me pass?” Jeremy could see movement at one window, which he guessed to be Higginson’s bedroom—else the old man had earlier employed men to remove his bed to a front room.

Williard stood straight and raised his withered arm. “You know I cannot allow you inside.”

“Yes, orders. I see.” Jeremy raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He turned on his heels and marched off, going for the stables to fetch Dancer. He’d gotten all the answers he expected in Salem Town. He wondered if he dared go into the village.