Winds of Salem (12 page)

Detective Noble

Matt had called Ingrid to invite her over for a Saturday-night movie. He was all by himself, he told her, missed her something crazy, and thought he could tempt her away from her books by watching Hitchcock’s
To Catch a Thief.

“I’ll come right over,” she said, and could hear him grinning on the other end of the line.

She was down in Joanna’s study, wading through more books for the answers, but she needed to unwind. She missed Matt something crazy, too. Mother and Father were out there looking for Uncle Art—surely she could take a break. Save for meeting with Matt and Maggie last weekend, she had been going nonstop, and they hadn’t spent any time alone in what seemed eons. What kind of relationship was that? Not a relationship at all—which he had been frequently reminding her lately.

Now Matt sat on his side of the king-size bed, while Ingrid sat on the other, her shoes kicked off, arms looped around her knees, a bowl of popcorn between them. It was like having to start from scratch all over again to break through the barrier of mutual shyness.

Matt pointed the remote at the flat screen across from the bed. A swell of music rose, and “VistaVision Motion Picture High-Fidelity” came on the screen superimposed over a snowy
peak. Technicolor. Exterior day: the shop window of a travel agency festooned with posters of France, behind the glass a cruise ship model, then a mock Eiffel Tower farther inside. Cars rolling past reflected in the window. The camera zoomed in on a poster: IF YOU LOVE LIFE, YOU’LL LOVE FRANCE. Cut: a woman screams at the discovery of her missing jewels.

Matt turned to Ingrid and put a hand on her thigh. “You had quite a captive audience the other night,” he told her. “Maggie can’t stop talking about those Puritan girls and what they did.”

Ingrid smiled. “I’ve been obsessing about them, too.”

“So how’s the work going? Find anything useful?”

“A little. I think I’ve figured out how the girls got the idea.” Ingrid unfolded her knees, reached for the remote, and turned off the television. Matt grabbed the bowl of popcorn between them and moved it to his bedside table, then he rolled over, closer to her, lying on his side, head propped up on his pillows, his hand still on her body.

Ingrid was very conscious of the feel of his hand on her thigh, its weight and the tingling sensation that sent a flush to her cheeks. The slightest touch from him and her entire body grew weak. It felt like it had been ages since they had last made out. She carefully placed a hand on his as she told him about that document she had found in the archives. Continence Hooker’s essay.

“Reverend Hooker?” Matt chuckled. He scooted up to her to rest the back of his head on her lap.

Ingrid laughed nervously. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where to place her hands. Matt had closed his eyes. She stared down at his head, his wide, creased forehead, the freckles splashed across his nose, the fetching cleft in his chin. He was really so handsome. “Yep, that was really his name,” she said, running her fingers through his soft red hair. There. That felt
natural. Why was she being so self-conscious? Could he tell? He looked like a sleepy, very contented cat. “Continence Hooker, can you imagine!”

“Better than Incontinent Hooker, I suppose, that would be a real problem,” he said, opening his eyes to look at her while she told him a little more about the atmosphere of the times.

Apparently, in late seventeenth-century New England, individuals who were struck by strange fits entailing severe physical contortions and nonsensical babbling were not completely out of the ordinary. Sensational cases of bewitchment were documented by leading Boston clergymen, and these essays were published as pamphlets that became widely popular. Ingrid rattled on excitedly, “You know, they were kind of like cheapie bestsellers, like today’s self-published e-books about the afterlife or alien abductions or paranormal activity.”

Matt whistled the theme song from
The X-Files
.

Ingrid giggled, then went on. “The thing you need to know about these essays is that they were written for a purpose, which was to encourage a belief in the supernatural. Read, the devil.” She went on to explain what she meant more specifically.

Around this time, in the last decades of the seventeenth century, figureheads of colonial society—both in the church and political office, the two going hand in hand—had grown to fear the effects of commercialism, scientific thought, and individualism on the old Puritan ideals. They believed that these insidious new ways were deleterious to morality. Ingrid concluded, “These pamphlets were designed to show what would happen if one let the devil of modernism through one’s door.”

Matt’s eyes were closed again, and she suddenly feared that all her dry academic talk might have put him to sleep. But then his eyes popped open, bright and alert. “So you’re saying these things were designed to keep the masses in line?”

Ingrid laughed. “I’ve certainly hooked a smart one!”

Matt smiled and brought up a hand to play with her hair.

Ingrid wasn’t finished. Someone like Reverend Parris, she explained, would have subscribed to such a belief system and purchased these kinds of pamphlets in Boston, keeping them as well as a Bible in his upstairs study. “Here’s the thing that gave me the chills when I put it all together. Hooker’s descriptions of one young woman’s fits in a household on the outskirts of Boston were nearly identical to the ones recorded by various witnesses of Abby and Betty. Not just nearly identical, but word for word, action for action, almost the same thing. The girls used the same words, same combinations, phrases, even sentences, to describe the tortures they endured and the specters and familiars they saw, as in Hooker’s account.”

“Could it be a coincidence?” asked Matt.

Ingrid shook her head. “If anything, these girls were lacking in originality.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“They got the idea from a book.
This
pamphlet.”

“Okay.” Matt nodded. He sat up. “But remember these are rural girls in seventeenth-century Salem…”

Ingrid nodded, impressed that Matt saw the problem so quickly. “I know. How could they get the idea from a book? They couldn’t read. They couldn’t even sign their names on their testimonies. They used
X
’s instead. So there goes that theory…”

“Hold on, don’t give up yet…”

Ingrid stared at him.

“The girls couldn’t read… so someone read it to them. Someone who wanted them to know about it, or someone who didn’t know what they would do…” said Matt.

She felt her skin tingle in excitement. “Matt, I could kiss you—of course! Someone read Hooker’s pamphlet to them! But who?”

Matt smiled. “We’ll figure that out later,” he said. “Now about that kiss…”

chapter fourteen

Cavern in the Woods

By early afternoon, Joanna and Norman had arrived at the cave. Up a path through a craggy cliff, there was a wooden door set into the mouth of the entrance. They found it unlocked and it creaked open as they set foot inside.

This was no ordinary cave. The walls were indeed made of the same craggy black stone as the cliff, but it wasn’t what Joanna had envisioned hearing the word
cave.
There were linoleum floors, a kitchen in the back, and a couch and bookshelves in front. To their dismay the place was ransacked—papers scattered everywhere, a computer lying on the floor, pillows sliced open, gutted, eiderdown stuffing everywhere. The fridge as well as the stove had been left open. It was a mess. They exchanged a troubled look. “What happened?” Joanna asked. They began to search the place, calling Arthur’s name.

“He’s not here,” Norman yelled from the kitchen.

“Not here either,” she reported from the bathroom, whose tub was carved into the rock.

Norm came around a counter, and they both took a seat in the dining area.

“Now what?” said Joanna in tears, her emotions having gotten the best of her. Arthur had seemed like their best bet at getting to Freya, and now he was gone.

Norman reached out for her hands. His brother had either been taken or he had moved to his next hiding spot. And someone had been here looking for something. Whatever it was, their hopes of Art leading them through the passages of time were dashed. Perhaps it had something to do with the young wolves Arthur was always talking about, some old favor that he had to do for a friend. In any event, that was another story.

Joanna looked up at him, and he wiped her tears. “Don’t despair yet, Jo. There is one last resort.”

She knew what he was going to say but hoped he wouldn’t.

“The Oracle.”

She shook her head. The Oracle was best left alone.

Norman insisted. “It might be the only way to save our daughter.”

chapter fifteen

Fighting Fire with Fire

Snow was melting on the sidewalks of New Haven. The little cul-de-sac was full of the scent of wet leaves and grass, along with a darker, acrid smell. The house on the end of the street was on fire. Flames licked the upstairs windows. A girl on the sidewalk was screaming that one of her roommates was trapped inside. “I know Sadie’s in there. She was asleep when we left for the party. Get her! Please!”

Red, white, and blue lights flashed over the houses. Neighbors in pajamas had come outside to watch. A cluster of frat boys in flannel shirts, hoodies, and jeans commented on the action. “You think chucking that keg of beer at it would help?” one said.

“Why would you do that, dude?”

Another giggled. “The flames are awesome, man! God, I’m high.”

“Me, too. You mean this is real?”

The girl, raccoon eyed and looking rumpled in a puffy jacket over a short dress, explained to the first responders that when she had returned home from the party two fire trucks, an ambulance, and three police cars were already on the scene. The truck ladders were extended and several firefighters had climbed onto the roof and were hacking away. One of the firemen sought to
calm the girl down, instructing her to sit on the curb out of the way. The EMTs came over and gave her a blanket. “My other roommates are still at the party, but Sadie—she stayed home. She’s in there,” the girl sobbed to a pair of police officers taking notes.