Winds of Salem (33 page)

Lights buzzed, flickering off and on. Water trickled along the puckering orange-and-yellow trompe l’oeil print of the 1970s wallpaper. Between levels, the stairways changed decor, sometimes lavish but always with a faded kind of splendor—broken chandeliers, dusty candelabras, peeling velvet-flocked wallpaper—suggesting not only a prolonged period of neglect but hardship, even ruination. Most likely, Freddie guessed, this dilapidation had resulted from the destruction of the Bofrir bridge.

He stopped on a landing, turning to the pixies behind him. “Why did you say I wasn’t supposed to make eye contact with Fenja and Menja when we were in the waiting station?”

Kelda grabbed the rusty chrome banister beaded with moisture. She took a breath. “You know what, Freddie, I really think we should go back. Maybe your trident isn’t down there.”

“Yeah,” agreed Nyph. “Let’s go back, you don’t need it anyway.” She hugged her tattered dress, her teeth clattering in an exaggerated way. “We aren’t properly dressed. It’s freezing. We really should go back.”

Irdick swiftly slid down the banister while Sven hopped onto the landing. “Stop your kvetching! We’re almost there. It’s just a few more levels down,” Sven said.

“We’ve come this far,” said Freddie. “They’re right.” He looked at the girls empathetically and shrugged.

The girls glowered at Sven and Irdick, then turned to each other, sighing helplessly. Kelda took off her jacket, offering it to Nyph, who donned it.

“I still want to know why we aren’t supposed to make eye contact,” Freddie said.

Sven gave Freddie a little shove toward the steps. “Cui bono? It’s nothing. Keep going.”

“Excuse me?” Freddie was ready to smack Sven right then.

Irdick righted the hat on his head. “If Fenja and Menja made eye contact with you, they would have fallen in love. That’s all. You’d have two sister snow giants at each other’s throats, fighting for your attention.”

“Not fun, not good,” concluded Sven. “Now let’s go!”

They continued downward, and it became even colder and darker.

chapter forty-seven

Appointment with Death

So this was death. It wasn’t terrible really, just sort of gray and dim, like she had stepped into an old black-and-white movie. She had died in mid-world and had awoken in the twilight of the glom. A fan whirred noisily, barely stirring the stagnant air. It had taken Joanna hours to get to this particular waiting room, one of many inside her sister Helda’s byzantine offices, housed in an unremarkable gray skyscraper in Tartarus, the capital of Hell. Helda’s trolls had ostensibly sent Joanna on a wild-goose chase throughout the building. But this time, having arrived on the top floor, Joanna glimpsed the plaque on the receptionist’s desk and believed she had finally gotten much closer to finding her sister.

The plaque read MRS. DELILAH DELAY. Joanna was familiar with the name. She was looking at Helda’s personal messenger of death, but scarcely had she begun addressing the woman, when she found herself in a heated argument. Mrs. Delay now glared at her from behind thick, bleary cat-eyed glasses with dull rhinestones. Joanna glared wordlessly back. A staring contest had
begun during which Joanna became all too aware of an unpleasant odor.

When she had first approached Mrs. Delay, she had gleaned from her desk that the receptionist was on a strange mono-food diet. Among the towers of folders and papers sat stacks of cans, each with a plain white label that said all of two words in black: TUNA FISH.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Delay, continuing to leer at her from above her glasses.

“I said, ‘I am Joanna Beauchamp!’ ”

Mrs. Delay harrumphed vociferously. “I know.”

“Otherwise known as Skadi… Helda’s sister?”

“Name-dropping isn’t going to help you, ma’am.” Mrs. Delay ploddingly grabbed a folder, opened it, then began running a pudgy finger along its lines.

“I want an appointment with my sister!”

It was clear Mrs. Delay was losing her patience because she then spoke as slowly as one could: “I’ve already told you, I can only give you an appointment with Helda’s receptionist.”

Now they were going in circles. “But
you
are Helda’s receptionist!”

Mrs. Delay took a deep breath, then a long exhale. “I am the receptionist to the receptionist of Helda.”

“No, you’re not!” said Joanna.

Here Mrs. Delay glared at her, but Joanna could tell the woman was laughing on the inside. It wasn’t funny. The receptionist searched for something on her cluttered desk. “Just have a seat. Someone will be with you shortly.”

Joanna knew what
shortly
meant in the eternal dwelling place, and it certainly did not mean soon. She glowered at the woman.

“We have a lot of work here, ma’am, and believe it or not,
we’re understaffed.” With her long, glossy black Goth nails, Mrs. Delay excavated a grimy can opener from beneath a pile of magazines.

Joanna thought it best to try another tack—perhaps some friendly conversation might loosen up this Mrs. Delay. “I just have one more question… well, a rather silly one if you don’t mind?”

The matronly emissary of death peered up at her without expression. “Yes?” she droned.

Joanna playfully looked at her sideways with a smile. “On my way over, in the square, I couldn’t help but notice that some festive preparations were under way. Could you possibly tell me about the upcoming fete?” She didn’t want to insult this woman’s city, but it would have been more apropos to say
gloomy
preparations, because everything in the glom, the twilight world, had a glum air. It would, however, be impolite to suggest this. In the square, trolls were stringing up garlands of desiccated flowers and dim twinkling lights in the black trees around the wading pond, where a lone black swan floated sullenly on the water. Pavilions as well as a fancy gazebo were also being erected.

Mrs. Delay gave another tuna-scented sigh. “This isn’t the tourism office. For that, you’ll have to go downstairs to the sixth floor, but then you’ll have to go through whatever rigmarole you went through to get here again. And I’m being kind by even telling you that.” She worked on opening a can of tuna, a challenge with her long nails.

“Yes, you are,” Joanna acknowledged. “I certainly don’t want to go through all that. Very nice of you!” She gave a languid smile. “Oh, come on, Mrs. Delay… Can’t you tell me?”

She gave another sigh. “Will you leave me alone if I do?”

Joanna promised she would. She could tell the woman just wanted to eat her tuna fish lunch in peace.

Mrs. Delay swiveled around in her squeaky chair. Everyone in the cubicles behind her seemed to be minding their own business, clacking away on keyboards. She leaned forward, her large bosom pressing into the papers on her desk as she whispered, “Those preparations are for the arrival of the goddess of love.”

It took a little while for this to sink in. Then Joanna could see it dawn on Mrs. Delay that she realized she had just made a gross blunder. No, Mrs. Delay shouldn’t have told Joanna that the upcoming fete was for welcoming her daughter Freya to the underworld.

Joanna’s face turned scarlet. “I want to speak with my sister
now
!”

chapter forty-eight

Alpha Girls

At the crack of dawn on the Monday following Bridget Bishop’s hanging, a small horse-drawn carriage carried Ingrid and Troy from the port of Salem Town to Salem Village. They bumped along the road, Troy at the reins, their chestnut stallion, Courage, moving headlong at a gallop. Ingrid’s cape flew in the wind. The light grew brighter, the sky bluer as the sun rose higher.

It had taken too long to get a fair price for Troy’s gold and buy Courage and the carriage. The townspeople had sent them from one shady person to the next. Finally they had come across an honest man, a spice merchant with a gold tooth, who had warned them to stay as far away from the backward village as they could.

Ingrid glanced at Troy, who was still pale looking. Bridget’s hanging had shaken them to the core, had brought back their recollections of this terrible time—and now Freya was cursed to endure the same fate at the noose’s end unless they could find her. The horse unexpectedly drew to a halt.

Troy shook the reins but Courage let out a sigh, refusing to go any farther.

The noise of cicadas began to swell in the trees as it grew warmer. There were three types of mating calls, Ingrid knew.
One resembled the sound of a ghost, another a caterwaul, a third a death rattle. This was a strident death rattle. “Come on, boy,” she said to the horse. “Let’s not be scared of a few bugs.”

Troy jumped down from the wagon and pulled the reins until he finally conceded to trudge along.

A few farms appeared along the way among the lush meadows and trees. Cows, sheep, goats, and horses grazed in the fields. When they saw houses clustered together, they knew they were closer to the village proper. There were girls everywhere—standing in the fields, grouped along the road, peeking out the windows—girls as young as five and as old as seventeen. Some stared at them blankly, while others hissed like angry monkeys. In the practice field by Ingersoll’s Inn, a few girls crawled and flailed about in the grass. Girls walked desultorily in the square, their arms outstretched, their gaits contorted.

A few villagers tried to help, while others only watched. Ingrid saw three men wearing tall hats holding one girl down and caressing her chest and limbs to calm her. Ingrid shuddered and looked away.

Hysteria. Madness. Evil.

She remembered it all too well.

But Ingrid noticed most of the villagers carried on with their lives, paying little mind to the girls around them. They fed their chickens and corralled the hogs, inured to it all. They looked up to glimpse at Ingrid and Troy as they passed, but returned their attention back to their chores.

The hinterland folk had grown used to strangers arriving for the proceedings at the meetinghouse. The sessions had become increasingly crowded, the band of afflicted girls growing so large that only its most famous members—the stars of the show so to speak—the original accusers, Abby, Mercy, and Ann—were admitted inside to take part in the examinations and
eventually the oyer and terminer trials. Little Betty Parris had been sent away to stay with relatives in the hopes her fits might abate: her father believed she was too sensitive a child to remain in the mayhem. The other afflicted girls waited outside the meetinghouse during proceedings, mimicking the cries and laments of the girls allowed to testify inside.

Queen bees and wannabes,
Ingrid thought as she observed the girls pulling their faces and spinning in circles. The witch hunt had become a craze, a fad, a teenage trend, and they were all hankering to be victims. Certainly having fits was easier than washing soiled laundry in the cold river.

A girl of about sixteen years of age, dressed in a vivid green bodice and yellow blouse, stepped in front of the carriage. Troy tugged hard on Courage’s reins. The girl faced them, pulled off her cap, and flung her head to and fro. Her bun came loose and her hair whipped around her face. She stared at them, eyes glinting. “She tells me I must rip off my cap and twirl my head or the devil will cut my throat!” she screamed. After, she skipped away toward the field by the watch house, dangling her cap, looking perfectly merry.