Gallows Hill (22 page)

"That makes two of us," Sarah said. "You don't have to worry about my being late to school, because I'm going to stay home today. I don't feel good. I think I may be coming down with something."

Leaving her mother to the television and doughnuts, she went down the hall to her room. She had not lied. She did feel nauseated. But most of all she was filled with shame at the way she had treated Charlie. He was entitled to his own ideas, weird though they might be, and she should have felt honored rather than angered by the fact that he had chosen to share them with her. She had also been hypocritical in not openly admitting that she had found the books he had given her intriguing. It was only when Charlie had tried to make the concept personal that she had been stricken with horror and panic. The theory of reincarnation was not unacceptable in itself—but it couldn't apply to Charlie, and certainly not to her!

It hadn't been fair of her to take her reaction out on Charlie. There was no way he had deliberately set out to frighten her. He had not known about the vision she had seen in the crystal of the black-haired girl with the noose around her neck. Or about her vivid dream of being witness to a hanging. Nor did he know about the hallucination she had experienced when Kyra had phoned to persuade her to take part in the carnival. She had shoved that memory from her mind, but now it returned, crashing into her consciousness with terrifying clarity, the voice shouting, "Guilty as charged! Away to Gallows Hill!" at a time when she had not even heard of such a place. And then, more softly, "Poor little Betty. The Mid is too frightened to remember," and her own reaction, "Betty does remember, and she's sorry!"

And now in her bedroom, the haven where she so often fled to escape from her problems, she had no alternative but to confront the chilling possibility that Charlie might be right. If she had indeed played a part in the Salem witch-hunt, the terrifying nightmares, filled with so much historical detail, could be flashbacks to her own conviction and execution. And if Pine Crest was a reconstructed stage set, filled with a cast of players, reassembled en masse from that traumatic period, it would explain why the town had seemed so familiar from the instant she first caught sight of it and why her immediate reaction had been so vehement—This is a frightening place, and I don't want to live here!

Having started the process, she found that she couldn't break away from it. So she took that supposition one step farther. If both she and Charlie had past-life memories buried in the depths of their subconscious, wasn't it possible that the other former victims might also?

"I can't be thinking like this!" Sarah told herself. "It's crazy!"

Despite her efforts to stop, she found herself being drawn like a fleck of metal to some gigantic invisible magnet, across the room to her desk, where the research she had done on the witchcraft trials lay neatly stacked beneath the paperweight.

She lifted the crystal ball without glancing into it and set it carefully aside. Then she picked up the papers and began to leaf through them.

At the bottom of the pile, in her last set of notes, she found what she was searching for—a list of names of the people who had been convicted of witchcraft. Over a five-month period more than two hundred victims had been imprisoned, but as a result of the courageous protest by Giles Corey, only nineteen had been executed.

Against her will, yet compelled by the same eerie force that had drawn her to the desk, Sarah read aloud the names of the "witches" who had been hanged on Gallows Hill:

Sarah Wildes, Bridget Bishop, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin, Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willare, Martha Carrier, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Reed, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Martha Corey, Sarah Good.

Sarah Good's five-year-old daughter, who had been questioned for only five minutes, had also been convicted of witchcraft. Torn from the arms of her mother, she had spent six months in a dungeon, where terror and isolation had driven the child insane.

As she read the little girl's name, Sarah started to shake uncontrollably.

The child had been named Dorcas.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Thanksgiving was dreadful. Not that Sarah had expected it to be anything wonderful, but at least she had thought that it might bear some resemblance to the holiday she had known and enjoyed in the past. Instead it was a new holiday, celebrated according to Ted's dictation.

Instead of the Cornish game hens that were Rosemary's Thanksgiving specialty, Ted requested a turkey stuffed with homemade cornbread dressing. And instead of a side dish of Sarah's favorite artichoke hearts, he wanted a sweet potato casserole. Neither Rosemary nor Sarah could stand the sugary taste of sweet potatoes, and the cloying marshmallow crust that Ted wanted on top made the dish even less appetizing. Besides that, he insisted on eating at two in the afternoon, instead of at their regular dinnertime. Sarah could not imagine wanting to load her stomach with heavy food in the middle of the day, but she did so for Rosemary's sake, even though she felt like the Goodyear blimp. Her mother had put so much effort into preparing the meal that anyone would have thought they were entertaining royalty.

"If Ted wanted the same Thanksgiving he had with Sheik, maybe he should have eaten over at her place," Sarah grumbled as she scraped leftover food on the plates into the garbage disposal. "We're going to be eating turkey from now until Christmas, and then I imagine he'll want another one."

Rosemary surprised her by saying, "My sentiments exactly," and then immediately softened the statement by adding, "It's a shame that Kyra and Brian couldn't have been here, but of course I can understand why their mother would want them to be with her."

For the rest of the day Ted had the television tuned to a football game, and Rosemary sat beside him on the sofa, thumbing through magazines. Sarah considered going to a movie, if only to get out of the house, and even went so far as to put on her jacket and pick up her purse, but when she opened the door, she was struck by a wave of panic that forced her quickly to close it. By the time the movie was over, it would be dark, and what if she came home to find the Watchers waiting for her? She thought about calling Charlie to ask him to go with her, but couldn't make herself do it. How could she ask a favor when she had been so rude to him? It would be amazing if Charlie ever spoke to her again, other than to give her directions when she pitched his papers. Besides, Thanksgiving was a family day. Charlie and his "disturbed" parents were probably doing something Ted would consider sick and sordid, such as sitting together in the living room listening to music or reading "evil books."

If this was their Thanksgiving, what would Christmas be like? she asked herself miserably. Ted was sure to want Kyra and Brian to help decorate the tree and be with them when they opened his presents to them. He would insist that she and Kyra exchange gifts, and would be right there looking over her shoulder to make sure that his daughter got something nice. She would give Kyra rhinestone earrings, in memory of the pair she pretended to have lost, and Kyra would probably give her a book about crows.

She spent the rest of the day in her room listening to tapes, although several of her favorites seemed to be missing. Could Kyra have taken them? she wondered. Although Kyra wasn't above that, it didn't seem likely, since she detested all music that wasn't country. It seemed more likely that Sarah had loaned the tapes to Charlie and forgotten about it. Which brought her mind back to Charlie yet again. It was painful to realize that she had neatly disposed of her one friend in Pine Crest in a burst of irrational anger. One of her few friends anywhere, she corrected herself miserably. She still heard occasionally from Gillian, but seldom from Lindsay, and Jon had evaporated into nothingness after his third postcard.

The afternoon dragged by, and late in the evening her mother served turkey sandwiches, which Rosemary and Ted consumed in front of the television screen. Sarah took her own supper to her room, relieved to be able to declare the day officially over.

Friday wasn't much better. There was no school, which meant that Ted was at home all day, and since he hadn't seen Kyra and Brian on Turkey Day, he insisted on having both of them over for lunch. Brian, as usual, jabbered nonstop as he gobbled turkey salad. Rosemary did her best to keep up the other end of the conversation, while Sarah and Kyra ate in stony silence.

"Rosie, I'd like you to take Brian outside for a while," Ted said when lunch was over. "I want to have a little private talk with our girls."

"I'd like to be here for that," Rosemary told him, with her eyes on Sarah.

"I'd prefer that you not be," Ted said.

"I see no reason—" Rosemary began.

"Rosie, do as I ask, please," Ted insisted. "Why don't you and Brian take a walk uptown and browse through some stores? This is the day they start putting up Christmas decorations. You might want to look for a wreath or something for our front door."

"It's almost a month until Christmas," Rosemary protested.

"It's not a bit too early to make out a wish list," Ted said. "I bet Brian would like that, wouldn't you, son?"

"Could we go to Radio Shack?" Brian asked eagerly.

"I'm sure Rosemary would be glad to take you to Radio Shack," Ted assured him. "She's probably never taken a boy shopping before. She's going to have to start learning about the kinds of things guys like us like."

"It's okay," Sarah said to her mother, and meant it. It would be easier to deal with what was coming if Rosemary wasn't there. There was nothing worse than being lectured by Ted when, her mother was either supporting him like an echo machine or making weak, ineffectual whimpers of meaningless protest.

"Are you sure?" Rosemary asked, looking worried. "I don't want to leave you if there's going to be some sort of—confrontation. It would be so much easier for everybody if you girls could be friends."

"That's exactly what we're going to talk about," Ted said. "Don't worry, Rosie, we're going to get everything ironed out. By the time you come home, we're going to be a working family unit."

That will be the day! Sarah thought, but she decided for once to keep her mouth shut No matter what Ted had to say, it wouldn't change anything as far as she was concerned. She was equally sure that nothing would change for Kyra.

Once Rosemary and Brian were gone, Ted leaned forward with his elbows on the table and proceeded to deliver the expected sermon.

"The time has come for the two of you to call a truce," he said. "We can't continue living like this. You're making all of us miserable, including yourselves. The world can't always be exactly the way you want it, and you have to adjust to the reality of my commitment to Rosemary."

"Mom can't adjust," Kyra protested.

"That's your mother's problem," Ted told her. "Sheila's a grown woman, and she needs to start behaving like one."

"She doesn't know how," Kyra said, with the first show of belligerence that Sarah had ever seen her exhibit toward her father. "You never gave her a chance to act like a grown-up when you were living at home with us. You always made all the decisions and took care of everything. Mom never had a life of her own—her whole life was you, and now that you're gone, she doesn't know what to do with herself. I'm scared that maybe she's going to turn into an alcoholic!"

"I'm not going to sit here and listen to you blame me for your mother's emotional problems," Ted said. "People have to accept responsibility for their own behavior. My marriage to your mother wasn't working. Neither of us was happy. We were separated on several occasions prior to this one."

"Those times before when you moved out, you always came back," Kyra said, her voice shaking. Sarah actually found herself beginning to feel sorry for her. "Mom thinks that you'll do that again. She's just sitting there waiting for that to happen. Every time the phone rings, she thinks it's you calling to say you're coming home."

"Well, she'd better stop waiting, because this time that isn't going to happen," Ted said emphatically. "You and Brian will always be my children, and I will always love you and support you. If things work out as I hope, I'll be granted joint custody. But I'm extremely happy with Rosemary, and I don't intend to renew my relationship with your mother."

"What if Rosemary walked out on you?" Kyra asked. "What if she took Sarah and went back to California?"

"She's not going to do that," Ted said. "Rosemary has burned all her bridges. Her life is here now, and the two of you are going to have to accept that. One of these days you're going to be stepsisters, and you have to put an end to this senseless feuding and start getting along. Sarah, that means no more lying and troublemaking. It's natural for you to be envious of Kyra's popularity, but you have to remember that she's lived here all her life, so of course she has friends. Kyra, it means that you need to make more of an effort to see that Sarah is included in things. It isn't easy to enter a new high school in your senior year, and this competition over Eric certainly hasn't helped matters. If you help Sarah meet some other nice boys, she won't feel any need to chase after another girl's boyfriend."

"So that's how it is?" Kyra asked softly.

"Yes, that's how it is," Ted answered. "Both of you have to accept it."

Sarah stared down at the table, too disgusted even to look at him. She had not spoken one word, and here he was, issuing proclamations as if he were governor of Pine Crest. It had surprised her to hear Kyra stand up to him, and she now understood the true reason for the girl's hostility. Kyra's determination to drive her and Rosemary out of Pine Crest was rooted less in personal dislike than in concern for her own mother. But that didn't make Kyra's actions any more palatable—rooting through Sarah's bureau, lying to Ted about the fortune-telling business, and possibly even depositing the crow in Sarah's locker.