Her Loving Husband's Curse (34 page)

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Authors: Meredith Allard

BOOK: Her Loving Husband's Curse
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“Of course that’s true, James,” Theresa said. “They can live here with me.”

“Or with me if they want to move back to Salem,” Olivia said. “We’ll take care of them.”

James pulled his hands free. He stood and towered over Geoffrey, who was still on his knees, his eyes still begging James to understand. James pointed at Geoffrey like he was calling the attention of the heavens onto that horrid vampire man.

“You’re telling me to go along with it?” James laughed a wicked laugh. “The way you wanted me to go along with it when you said you could help me when I was sitting outside the jail where they held my wife? The way you wanted me to go along with it when you bit me and turned me into this? You’re the reason I’m in this hell in the first place.” James turned the entire force of his fury onto Geoffrey. “Damn you, Geoffrey! This is all your fault! If you just left me alone, if I wasn’t this unhuman, cursed atrocity! You cursed me, Geoffrey, and now my wife and daughter have to suffer for it and I will never forgive you. You’re not going to leave me alone again? What’s so special about this time? Why are you going to help me now when you abandoned me when I needed you most?”

Geoffrey sighed. He walked to the window, unlatched the lock, and slid it open. He looked toward the blackness of the bay, invisible in the night. He breathed in deeply though he didn’t need to.

“I deserve all your wrath, James, I know I do. You don’t know how I’ve suffered knowing what I know. I reproach myself nightly because of it. You and I are connected, James, and though I made mistakes in the past, I’m here now. I won’t abandon you again.”

James was stunned into silence. Geoffrey—loving and considerate? The world must be coming to an end. He would have laughed if he wasn’t so sad. Finally, he asked, “Is there no other way?”

Geoffrey shook his head. “I’m so very sorry, James.”

Olivia covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders shuddered with her sobs. She sobbed the way James wished he could have but he was numb suddenly, unable to feel anything. Someone might have staked him right then and he wouldn’t have known the difference and kept going as though nothing had happened until he disintegrated into a splat of blood on the floor. Finally, when her tremors slowed enough so she could gather her voice and speak, she said, “I think Geoffrey is right, James. It breaks my heart to say it, but I don’t see a way around it. You need to go.”

“But what’s going to happen to you after you’re rounded up?” Theresa asked.

Geoffrey shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

 

When Sarah awoke Geoffrey was gone and James sat with Olivia and Theresa around the dining room table. Olivia was weeping, keeping a white linen handkerchief to her cheek while she wrote whatever James told her into a spiral notebook. Theresa dropped her head onto her arms on the table. Sarah pushed herself onto her elbows, straining to hear what they were saying but they whispered closely to each other and their words were muffled. She watched her husband, his stillness, his blank stare at the red-checkered tablecloth under his clenched fists, his inability to look at either Olivia or Theresa, the way his mouth hardly moved while he spoke.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” James said. He left the table, sat on the bed beside her, and brushed a few stray curls from her eyes. “Everything is going to be all right, Sarah, I promise.”

When they heard the angry banging on the door they froze. Theresa peeked around the red gingham curtains and gasped when she saw the two grim-faced army officers outside her house. Her hand shook as she opened the door.

“We’re looking for James Wentworth,” said the dark-haired officer.

James stood from the bed, still gripping Sarah’s hand. “I’m here,” he said.

The soldier held an envelope in James’s direction, which James took. Theresa gave the soldiers a glaring stare which made little impression on them. James turned the envelope over in his hands, stared at his neatly typed name, then ripped the top, pulled out the letter, and scanned the contents inside. Sarah saw his jaw tighten and his eyes narrow, and she could see in his straining muscles how he struggled to keep his expression still. But she didn’t need him to speak in words to understand that something was wrong. She knew him so well. She struggled into a sitting position to try to see what the letter said, but she felt dizzy suddenly, caught up in the tornado, the house and everyone in it spiraling through the wind-swept sky, higher and higher, then lower and lower until they crash landed somewhere through the rainbow and over the woods, from to the full life of color to the limited shadows of black and white on the other side.

“James Wentworth, as a resident of the state of Massachusetts you’re ordered to report to the Boston South Station at 10 p.m. on Friday, May the fourth. You can pack one bag to take with you. Anyone not following the directive will be subject to immediate arrest.”

“But I’m already being arrested,” James said. “Isn’t that what this is?”

“You’re not being arrested, sir,” the second officer said. “You’ll be detained awhile.”

“And the difference is?”

“Make sure you’re on time. That’s all.”

The soldiers turned away, and Sarah heard the marching cadence to their heavy steps as they disappeared through the front yard. They had handed James his notice, given him his directions, and now they were gone, their work done. James stood by the door, his head to the side, listening. Even Sarah from where she sat on the bed could hear loud crunching of the jeep’s accelerator as they drove away. James turned to the anxious faces watching him.

“Well, there it is,” he said.

Suddenly, without reading the letter, Sarah understood. Her breath came in short, strained bursts and she struggled to breathe.

“Are they taking you away?” she asked.

James took her into his arms. “Yes,” he said, “but don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right. I promise you, Sarah. We’ll be all right.”

“Friday the fourth,” Sarah said. She had been sleeping so much she realized she had no idea what day it was. “What is today?” she asked.

“It’s Wednesday the second,” Olivia said.

Sarah looked at James. “Two days? You’re leaving in two days?”

Her hands went to her cheeks, first squeezing, then slapping, trying to awaken herself from this nightmare. James took her hands from her face and held them to his chest.

“Sarah, please…”

Please what, she wondered? Please go? Please stay? She wanted to scream, cry, run, anything other than stare helplessly in the direction the army officers had gone. Suddenly, she felt herself chained to the walls, the pock-faced monster—that ghoul who had haunted her night after night, year after year as he stood tall in the shadows—triumphant after all. I have caught you again, my pretty, she heard him say, and I will catch you again and again until you understand you will never truly get away. I will hold you in my night-dark dungeon forever.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Sarah started. What was that? Knocking on the door? A gun going off? She couldn’t tell. Her shaking shoulders betrayed her terror at the living nightmare she saw acted out everywhere around her. But she couldn’t move her hands to hide her eyes from the horror, weighted down by the chains as she was.

“What is it?” she cried. “James, what is it?”

James looked at the door. He listened, intent, his head tilted, his extra senses alert, but he shook his head. “I don’t hear anything, Sarah,” he said. He looked at Olivia and Theresa, and they both shrugged.

“I didn’t hear anything, either,” said Olivia.

Theresa peeked around the curtains. “There’s no one there, Sarah,” she said. “The soldiers are gone.”

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“No, he’s there.” Sarah cringed in terror, trying to hide behind James, trying to disappear. If you can’t see me, I’m not here, she thought, like a two-year-old playing peek-a-boo.

“He’s here!”

“Who’s here?” Theresa asked. She opened the front door, afraid she missed the intruder through the window, but all was still outside, the bay flat, the trees bent in the breeze, bowing in reverence at the sad scene before them. “Sarah, I promise you, there’s no one here.”

“Oh my God,” James said. He knelt beside his wife and kissed the top of her hair, her forehead, her cheeks, her hands. “Sarah, he’s not here. That was a very, very long time ago, honey, and he’s not here now. He won’t be here for you ever again. They were here for me, Sarah, for me. You’re safe. No one is going to take you away.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Sarah shook her head and waved her hands faster with each sound, trying to brush the pock-faced man away. “He’s here, James. He followed me here. He’s coming with his chains. He’s going to drag me away. We’re going to die again. Grace! We’re going to die again.”

“Oh, Sarah…”

“Ssh. Listen.” Sarah strained her head toward the window, and she cringed when she heard the wagon stop, the horses bay, the thud as the constable jumped to the ground, the rattle of the chains. “He’s here. He’s coming. Hide me, James. You have to hide me!”

And then it all began again. Bang! Bang! Bang! Knock! Knock! Knock! The door opens and he’s there, the pock-faced constable, talking nonsense about witches and confessions and warrants of arrest. But I’m innocent, Sarah screamed in the silence of her mind. How can you take me away? Her hands went to her stomach where she knew her baby waited, the baby she knew was a girl, the baby she named Grace, and she wept because they would die all over again.

She is taunted, yelled at, manhandled, chained. Driven to the dungeon, yelled at, manhandled some more. She is bodily searched, for witches markings and whatever else they want to see. Her head is shaved. She is chained to the wall. When their coercions and threats do not sway her, she is no witch and will not confess, she is forced between the walls, caught in the limbo agony of screaming muscles and traumatized bones. It will never end, she thought. We are caught in limbo forever.

She sees him coming, his weighty, snake-like chains slithering alongside his feet, inch-by-inch toward her, each step a nail in her coffin. He grabs her arm, drags her to the wagon, chains her on, and drives her away. She looks back, sees her husband on his knees on the ground, her dear and loving husband, his hands outstretched toward her as though if he could reach her he could pull her back and keep her with him where she belonged. Where else in the world could she belong but with James? But he couldn’t reach her, and then he was gone…

 

James heard the moaning from deep in Sarah’s gut, a guttural moan that began in anguish and ended in horror. Olivia and Theresa rushed to Sarah’s side, brushing her hair from her face, stroking her back, saying sweet motherly nothings to soothe her. When she settled some James cradled her head against his chest.

“Sarah, please. It’s going to be all right. We’re all going to be all right.” He brushed her matted curls from her eyes and wiped her tears away with the tips of his fingers. “I know you’re thinking this is like 1692, but it’s not the same. Then, they accused you of something you weren’t, but I am what they say I am. Which is why I’m going to be all right. I’m immortal and I’m strong. Don’t ever forget that, Sarah. I’m immortal and I’m strong.”

“No, no, no,” Sarah said, her tears flowing freely down her face and onto James’s chest, soaking his shirt through. “No, no, no.”

“Sarah…”

“No, no, no….”

James tried to calm her, to convince her that everything would be all right, but she was too far gone to hear him. As he sat on the bed, still trying to soothe her, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Doctor Masters. The doctor was on his way.

James watched nervously as Doctor Masters added some medication to Sarah’s IV and she was sleeping in a matter of moments. James slumped over, the anguish everywhere within him. He turned to Theresa, and Olivia took his hand.

“You need to take care of Sarah while I’m gone,” he said. “While I’m gone…” The words echoed in his head and he felt hollow suddenly. His voice sounded strange to his ears and he wondered what language he was speaking.

“You are my family,” Olivia said. “I will take care of them. I will take care of them until you come home because you will come home.” Olivia was so overcome with emotion she turned away. She walked into Theresa’s open arms, and Theresa hugged her.

After the doctor left and Olivia and Theresa retired for the night, James sat on the bed next to Sarah. He sat there for hours, unstirring, holding her hand, watching her in her drug-induced sleep. He didn’t need to memorize her face. He did that years before. Years before. He knew her wide, full smile. The luscious rosebud lips he needed to kiss whenever he looked at her. He knew the silky softness of her dark curls, the wondering curiosity behind her dark eyes. He knew the warm softness of her touch. He had had her in his mind every night for three hundred and nineteen years, and he thought he would have more time before he had to rely again on his memory of her.

When dawn would soon shine through, James went into the bedroom and emptied his frantic packing from earlier. He filled the duffle bag with a few items for himself, a change of clothes, two photographs—one of Sarah and one of Sarah, Grace, and him, the triumvirate of Wentworths laughing, holding hands. Joyful. It was a shock to realize that photo had been taken only three months before. Grace had grown so much. He packed some composition notebooks he had bought from the general store and a handful of ballpoint pens, and he dropped in his cell phone with the unlisted number though he suspected he wouldn’t be able to keep it. He had seen these round-ups before. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small antique-looking key, turning it over in his hands, remembering the touch of it, as though he were reacquainting himself with an old friend. He stared at the key, through it to the memories on the other side, and he dropped it into the bag and zippered the bag closed.

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