The Necromancer (31 page)
Authors: Kevin
away to Hell,” he said.
Ambrose laughed, his head lolling from one side to the other, his eyes half-lidded with intoxication.
“Only the beginning,” he murmured.
“Behold!” he announced, raising his gaze heavenward.
“They come.”
The dark clouds hung lower now, as if they would sink down at any time and smother Salem in their moist shrouds.
Everything took on an ochre tint.
Ambrose raised all the power he could employ and whispered:
Mezinthan. Choronzon. Baaliffer. Anavrin.
Thunder rumbled in the sky. At once hail plummeted and pummeled the Common. Men, women, and children fl ed screaming, stampeding over each other to get to safety.
Hailstones the size of plums pelted the fl eeing people. Several of them fell with bloodied heads and were crushed underfoot by their friends and neighbors.
Mercy Williams—the grandmother of Abigail,
Elizabeth Parris’s cousin—plodded her way fearfully through 282
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the spooked crowd when a ball of ice slammed into the side of her head, tearing through her bonnet and ripping a large gash in her scalp, sending her toppling to the ground. She attempted to stand up, but her hands and back kept getting stomped on, and her face continually suffered batterings and kicks. Her ribs and spine snapped as the townspeople ran over her and stamped her into the earth. Her breath was stolen from her as her broken ribs punctured her lungs, her neck broken, her windpipe crushed.
And then the demons came.
They swooped down at the Common with fury,
squawking and cackling, and picked at the hooded, hatted, and bonneted heads, cutting into their victims with their blood-stained talons.
Mezinthan was the fi rst of the four to take a life.
Peter Hubbard sensed the demon’s attack only too late when he whipped around with his upturned face and stared into the two faces of his murderer: the fi rst, a corrupt, black maw beneath a pair of blazing red eyes and seething nostrils, a pair of tarnished horns adorning its brow; the second, an alligator’s head protruding from its groin.
In the moment it took him to recognize his doom and voice his terror, the alligator head had engulfed his and stifl ed the scream that never came. A moment later, Mr. Hubbard was a blood-spouting headless corpse staggering from side to side in his last death throes and Mezinthan was aloft again and searching for new prey, the alligator head at its crotch still crunching down on its victim’s skull.
The demons reveled and feasted, tearing fl esh, spilling blood, devouring prey amongst the chaos of the hailstorm and the screams and shrieks and the gunfi re the musketeers now directed at them.
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The fl ames of the pyre guttered but continued to grow. They licked at Ambrose’s legs. He laughed, barely coherent now, as he looked on blearily at the mayhem he had incited.
“Have you not one repentant bone in your wretched body?” Hathorne shouted, turning back to him. “Have you no remorse?”
Ambrose’s face fell sullen and contemptuous for a moment, then he spat at the judge and laughed again.
“The fi res may consume me, but I shall never die,” he hollered raggedly. “You may crush my bones to dust, yet I shall never yield. In death, as in life, I will always be your master.”
“Never.” Hathorne said. “Never!”
Ambrose closed his eyes and whispered incantations.
*****
“Father!” she cried with her arms over her head to block the hailstones, not knowing what to do, not wanting to leave him and Edward, not wanting to leave without seeing Ambrose consumed and knowing he was truly gone.
The demons continued their attack, diving at their victims, digging their claws into them and carrying them up into the sky as they fed on them, only to drop their limp corpses callously into the rushing mass below.
“Listen to your father, Susanna,” Edward said. “Please.
Take yourself and Mother away from here.”
She looked at him for a long, sad moment, then turned and placed her arm around Thea, and the two women trudged 284
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away with their heads hung low to shield their faces as the hail beat down on their backs, shoulders, and heads.
“I will kill you, witch!” Milton continued, never letting up, having seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy.
He still held the dagger. Edward had sustained several small stabs in the shoulder as he reached for the knife and attempted to pry it away from the madman, but Milton was too strong and wouldn’t let go.
Edward held the knife-wielding arm by the wrist
at arm’s length and punched Milton in the stomach, further damaging his broken and healing ribs. Milton was hurt, but refused to give up.
Edward slugged him again. This time the ribs gave way all together and Edward’s tightly clenched fi st sank into Milton’s chest. Milton let out a gurgling groan as the blow stole away his breath. He slumped over, dropped the dagger, and belched up gouts of blood, splattering Roger’s coat dark red.
Edward drew back his fi st quickly, revulsion adorning his face. He never wanted to harm the man, but he had no choice. Milton wouldn’t let up. Now, he very well could die.
Edward never wanted that. He never wanted to be responsible for taking another man’s life.
For all Edward knew, Milton might have survived the blows he had given him, but that was one possibility forever relegated to the realm of speculation. Fate had decided to take charge and leave Edward in doubt. In the next moment Anavrin had come from nowhere and snatched Milton up from Roger and Edward with a speed and ease that left them both startled and astonished. Milton howled one last, garbled gasp, then the demon ripped out his throat with its fangs and silenced him permanently, showering the unwilling spectators below with muddy red liquid.
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Anavrin fed itself well on Milton, then discarded him like the others. The body fell on the head of a small blond boy who became separated from his parents in all the chaos and was crying as he sought them out. His neck snapped when Milton landed on him. The boy was dead before he hit the ground.
Anavrin cackled at the boy’s misfortune, but it was the last cackle the demon would ever voice. Half a dozen shots pealed out one after the other from the direction of the pyre where the musketeers stood, and most of them found their mark. In seconds, the demon’s belly split open and its innards spilled out and dangled down to its feet. A chunk of meat was blown off one of its arms. Its face exploded into a thousand bits and pieces. Holes appeared in the webbing of its wings. It spiraled downward, twitching and rasping to its death.
More shots rang out from other men armed with
pistols and muskets. Demon blood was spilled, and the creatures began to fall.
*****
Indeed, he felt certain he would die the painless death of an opium overdose before the fi re overtook him. But the fl ames were stronger, and his constitution was too strong to allow a fatal poisoning. The pain reached him, beginning to disturb his incantations and corrupt his concentration.
He opened his eyes and screamed.
The dead were in the fl ames with him. The dead
were
the fl ames. They were the dead of Gallows Hill, his victims, moaning in torment, clamoring for justice, howling for his 286
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death. They were searing tongues of vengeance tearing at his blackened soul.
Their faces glared at him from the guttering yellow fringes of fi re. Here was Bridget Bishop and Rebecca Nurse, Giles Corey and the Reverend George Burroughs. And here were the Cranley brothers and George Eames. All his victims—even to the Scotland days—were here in the end to aid in his destruction, broiling his skin till it bubbled and blackened, biting into his throat, his eyes, his testicles. No part of him would be denied. He was food for the dead, compensation for the innumerable sufferings and infamies he perpetrated. This was his lot.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight and wished away his tormentors, trying to dismiss them as opiate hallucinations, but knowing they were not. He resumed the incantations, the pain driving him to shout them out in suffered ramblings. Certainly now, more than ever before, he needed to pray.
The fl ames gushed up over him, and the dead
consumed him.
At that moment, the blaze caught Susanna’s eye and she turned to get one last look at Ambrose. All she saw was a faint fi gure in the fl ames sagging down against the stake.
Her arm fell away from Thea, and she doubled over in pain, collapsing at the old woman’s feet, hail raining all about her.
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288
Susanna’s Condition
Roger, Edward, and Thea stood in the dark, candlelit hallway outside Susanna’s room waiting for Dr. Griggs to emerge and inform them of her condition.
“I cannot understand it,” Roger muttered, shaking his head. “She had recuperated from her injuries so quickly. She had since seemed so well.”
Edward placed a hand on Roger’s shoulder.
“I am sure she is well, Roger,” he said. “What
happened at the Common was madness. I fi nd it remarkable that we are not equally as strained.”
“Yes,” Thea added. “The poor child has had more
than her lot of anguish. When she is well-rested she will be fi t again. I am most certain of that.”
Of course, Roger thought, the insanity that took place at the Common would be enough to induce strain, but what if she didn’t suffer from strain? What if it was something more insidious and hurtful? What if it was the fi rst symptoms of the smallpox that had claimed the lives of Martha and Phoebe? It still lingered in New England, that much he knew. What if she 289
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had contracted the disease? Life would be unbearable with her gone. He would be utterly, dreadfully alone.
The door opened and the doctor appeared. Everyone looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to speak.
Griggs reached into his physician’s bag and pulled out a small leather satchel. He handed it to Roger.
“Brew this slowly for no less than half of an hour and give her the tea to drink: once upon rising, once during the day, and once again before bedtime.”
“What is it?” Roger asked, opening the satchel and sniffi ng at its earthy-smelling contents.
“An herb from the Orient. It has proved to be quite effi cacious in matters of exhaustion such as these.”
“So she has not been stricken with the smallpox?”
Roger asked anxiously.
“Lord no,” Griggs replied confi dently. “You needn’t fret about that. Suffi cient food and rest, and the tea, will be all that is required to bring her to full health again. She has been suffering from much anxiety of late. I am surprised this hasn’t happened earlier. In any case, she should be well in a few days.”
“Well, that is a great relief,” Thea said.
“Certainly,” Roger added.
“I must be away now,” Griggs said. “There are still more severe cases I must tend to since this morning’s calamity.”
“You have my eternal gratitude,” Roger said, shaking the doctor’s hand. “I could not bear to see any further harm befall my dear daughter.”
“I should think there will be little chance of that now that that beast, Blayne, has been justly dealt with.”
“Indeed,” Thea said. “He was a most wretched man.”
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Susanna’s Condition
*****
feeling well again, as the doctor had predicted. But she had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. The sense of completeness she had expected, which would come with Ambrose’s death, never did. It was as if he had never died.
Every time there was a knock at the front door, she expected to see him: dark, lean, and bearded, those ice-blue eyes staring intently at her from their pits, freezing the blood in her veins.
But it was never him.
Of course it wasn’t. He was dead. She had seen him consumed in the fi re herself.
Maybe so, she thought. But he was with her still.
She didn’t know how or where, but he was. She knew he was.
Watching her. Whispering to her. Caressing her in the night...
and in her dreams.
Was she going mad? She wondered. She hoped
not. But she would still much rather be mad than have him haunting her from the hell he no doubt resided in now.
Anything but that.
*****
than one month now has passed since the day when he was executed, and I feel him with me still. It is most straining upon me, and the strain has made me weak. Often times I cannot leave the comfort of my bed in the morning to perform my daily chores, such is my condition. Kind Doctor Griggs has said it is but the lingering on of that exhaustion I suffered following the execution and the chaos that accompanied it, but I am not so certain as he. I do not feel well at all. I awake many times each night from dreams I cannot remember yet which disturb me so profoundly I cannot fall back to sleep. O, 291
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how I wish Mother and Phoebe were here. It would be such a comfort to see them again, living and well. Often I think of them, and I weep, and I cannot stop the weeping. Father and Edward and Thea have tried to comfort me in such times—
God bless them—but the tears will not be stopped. I cannot fi nd the comfort I need in any face or fancy. I want to die.
*****