The Devil of Salem

This is a story about a young girl who gets caught up in the Salem Witch Trials and plays witness to the evils and atrocities during that time. ~Currently Unfinished~

 Young Mary Foster loved nature. Always had. From bitter chill of the river to the north, to the rolling hills to the east, it was her playmate, her childhood friend. And yet, there was one place in particular she loved above all else, a place in which Mother and Father had warned her was forbidden: that of the forests surrounding the village.

Now, their fears were far from absurd, for the forests surrounding the village held many dangers indeed. Anything from rogue Indians, wild animals, to even poisonous snares lay in wait among those foreboding towers. Also hidden within their minds was the belief that the forests contained any number of demons and evil spirits, ready to drag off any who dared venture too close. It was for this reason that little Mary Foster and her two sisters were strictly isolated to the house and the village.

Yet, Mary found the woods to be quite a fascinating place, both for her and her childhood friend Jenna. Quite playful those two, they would often run to the forest, pretending to be on some adventure, enacting fairy tales, only to be scolded by dinnertime for setting foot on the outskirts of the village. Her sisters oft sneered their noses at her, a mere mark of disgust for lawful disregard; in puritan society, respect of parents was not asked of you; it was was demanded. Disobedience and insubordination was the rod upon which the strictest admonition was given. However, Mary oft would fail to heed to the whims of respect, separating herself that which defined the upstanding citizen, and venture into the woods once more.

It was upon one brave venturing that our story begins, on the eve of autumn in 1692. On this particular evening, a shadow had cast itself like a thick blanket over the village, making the afternoon dark and gloomy; the clouds overcast and meanspirited in their lofty heavens. Candles were alighted much brighter than usual, and the whole of Salem took this as an omen: something dark was coming. And so,all were whisked inside for prayer; some hunched over tables and chairs, others full prostrate upon the floor, breathing in the dust upon the boards. However for little Mary Foster, such reverence could never be contained within her. She found that she could not sit still.

“Mama?” she pleaded. “Can’t I go outside? Tis much too tepid indoors.”

Stopping short of a silent prayer that had overtaken her, Mother turned with such a ferocity in her eyes that it gnawed at little Mary with such a carnal fear that she became rooted to the spot. “ Silence! Pray now, lest the evil find us!”

Mary bowed her head, and watched carefully as Mother returned to her prayer, uttering swiftly, her hands clenched tightly around her silver cross as if she would drop it. When she was sure she would not be seen, she crept behind Mother and Father and to the door, letting herself out.

Mary breathed a sigh of relief when the warm, moist autumn air hit her full, filling her nostrils. She was gladsome to be rid of the stifling room and her chanting parents, even more so to be out with the free air. Although she foresaw a scolding later, such was a sweet price to pay for the open world around her.

The village was immeasurably quiet, cheery as a graveyard; not a soul in sight. Every house along the street looked as if the shutters had been drawn, the candles removed from the windows. Mary soon felt as if she were the only one in Salem Village, and her contriteness worsened as she gazed into the sky. Thick, smoky clouds rolled overhead, hiding from view any trace of that orb of light father called the “Sun”. The deep blue of the sky Mary loved so deeply had been swallowed up by some unfathomable beast, and she suddenly wished she had stayed inside.

And yet, the sky had changed so quickly! First it was blue, marked by puffy white clouds, and then the incessant bark from father to close the shutters and light candles for prayer. Had he known the sky would be swallowed up by gray? Or was he as surprised as everyone else?

Mary suddenly felt as if she was not alone. Although she suspected it would have been mother or father scolding her for coming outside, she would have heard the door upon the eave, scraping as it does. Also, she knew, Jenna adored playing tricks on her, oft frightening her to mortification. However Jenna was nowhere in sight, and surely she was with Reverend Parris, whom would not have let her slip away so easily.

Mary abruptly heard voices from behind a nearby cottage and leapt out of sight, listening. Pray to God it wasn’t that insufferable Elizabeth Eldridge! A temperable lady she was, always hanging by her beloved Reverend. Mother favored her biscuits, and her stories. But as Mary listened, she realized it wasn’t Elizabeth, but someone else.

“M'rcy, bid us what hath happened yond night!”

“Hath found us in the dead of night, those savages didst! those. people from the f'rest. liketh demons from the pits of hell they w're, did steal inside and devour'd all they couldst findeth. Did drag mine own parents off to hell!”

Mary recognized the girl’s voice as one of Reverend Parris’ servants, but what would she be doing outside during mandatory prayer? Wasn’t she afraid of being flogged?

Another girl asked, “How didst thee receiveth hence?"

“I wast deliv'r'd by angels, i wast! god doest not suff'r his owneth to beest witched!” said Mercy.

Mary stood and walked away from the house, attempting to shake the damning thoughts from her mind. Every tree, every blade of grass brought Mercy’s grisly words back with a vengeance, and she tried to focus as she continued walking, watching the rolling clouds. She thought of Mother, turning to see that she was no longer there, running outside to shield her from some unseen force of evil. What nonsense, she thought. How could you be afraid of something you could not see?

As Mary turned west towards Long Bridge, she was abruptly startled by a sudden “Rawr!” from behind the bushes. Old Sarah Osborne would have a fit had she come out and witnessed such a debacle. This rawr jumped poor Mary, loosening her footing and sending her to the ground shrieking, followed by a cackling Jenna.

“Didst thee seeth thy face?” she exclaimed. “Waketh the whole village, thee shall!”

Mary stood and brushed the dirt from her blouse, glaring at Jenna. “Art thee mad? We shalt beest s'rely disciplin'd if 't be true we art out h're!”

“Oh cometh now,” said Jenna. “We art the only ones out h're. Uncle parris himself is inside, praying with moth'r and fath'r! Alloweth us venture off into the f'rest, and pretendeth we art on an adventure!”

And so they set off, down Long Bridge Road towards Fairmaid’s Hill, skipping rocks with their shoes and chatting amongst themselves. At a point halfway between Long Bridge and Farmaid’s hill there sat a gap in the trees by which a natural trail wound its way through the forest, cutting its way deeper and deeper till it found its way to a natural glade. It was here that they were bound. Mary often sensed that there were eyes upon her in the trees, though she never saw any; she suspected that if any natives were in the branches, they would have pounced her long ago. Jenna seemed nonchalant as she approached the gap, eyeing the growing clouds.

“The sky grows m're gloomy, milady! p'rhaps a st'rm is approaching!”
Mary donned the voice of a swashbuckler she had heard stories of from Tituba, an indian woman from Barbados. “Aye, th're beest a swelleth moving in! we shalt taketh refuge on this island f'r anon!”

Jenna laughed. “Migail's voice is much deep'r, mary! and that gent talks comical!”

Mary frowned at her friend. “Well, that gent consumed a que'r lemon even but now!”

Mary followed Jenna into the forest, where the tree branches hung low over the opening. All trivial racket had ceased, and it left the forest dark and gloomy. Mary’s eyes flitted along the trail to either side, where dark stalks of wood obscured the light in a carpet of deepest green, and she was soon awash in the familiar smells of the wood.

Jenna turned, running her fingers through the long grass along the trail, her faced cast in shadow. “Tis quiet in these woods, cap'n. Not a soundeth, not one; nothing stirs.”

Mary stopped short in her tracks. It had not occurred to her when they entered the wood, however such things were infeasible to overlook. The forests surrounding Danvers were alive with a myriad of creatures; both small and large roamed the trees, and they were even home to those most native to the land, peoples both strange and dangerous who moved with the shadows. And yet on this day, no sound flitted through the wood, no thing stirred in the boughs. As if an omen had settled over the land, the dark sky that had swallowed the day was to be the first of many evils of the evening.

““We shouldst not beest in h're”, said Mary. “Mother and father --”

“--art hath left praying brainsickly to some que'r god! i careth not if 't be true those gents findeth us h're, f'r t is 'mongst the trees i shalt stayeth!”

Mary thought this sort of peevish; Jenna was outside of herself. What accursed evil had bestruck her friend, turning her innerworkings as of the work of the devil himself? Something ominous had occurred in the few short hours of dark sky, and although Mary could not fathom what it might be, it had severely affected Jenna to the point that her persona had completely changed; even her voice was deeper and carried with it a hint of evil. A chill ran down Mary’s spine and she realized that even if she returned to the village, it would end badly for her and Jenna anyway. She thought back to a line from the Bible Mother recited only once: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live...She didn’t understand it’s meaning, nor did she know it would soon become all too clear.

Mary and Jenna proceeded deeper into the forest. The deeper they ventured, the light got dimmer and dimmer, to the point it was nearly impossible to see in front of them. Mary knew not where Jenna was leading her; for if she did, she would have ran for the safety of home, abandoning her friend to the gloom of the wood. All around them, the trees seemed to glare down upon them, and Mary could feel the invisible eyes of Natives, somewhere up in the branches, perhaps watching, waiting to lash out at them from some hidden, shadowy precipice.

Every now and then, Mary heard the soft crunch of grass underfoot, but felt no scurrying thing. Perhaps it was merely the darkness, but it was as if it had swallowed up even the very life of the forest floor, leaving the wood as dead as Mother’s kitchen floor in the dead of night. She cursed herself for not bringing a candle, for what good it would do in these woods! If only she knew of how to make fire? But such things were not forthcoming of a lady, as her Mother would say. She squinted into the dark, struggling to make out the familiar trail that wound deep into the wood and marking the place where the girls had formed their blood circle.

It had been two years ago. Jenna had slipped out of mass, only to be followed by a curious Mary and a little loudmouth Sarah. Reverend Parris, a acrimonious, domineering man, held his rapt audience in check with his dreadful sermon. The girls found such a thing to be quite irksome, and wished to escape from what they deemed to be “the devil in the room”. Mary and Sarah followed Jenna into the wood, closely watching their trail for fear of being followed or carried off by natives. The trio found themselves at the forest glade, which then saw no movement of life; no flight of birds, no chirp to mark their nest, no scurrying creatures underfoot.

It was here, at a stone table, that everything changed. Carved upon its surface were intricate symbols the likes of which the girls had never seen, surely placed there by Indians, or perhaps some devil come down from the sky. Blood was spilt that day, and upon the stone surface of the table the tree girls had splayed open their hands and formed a pact upon which could not be broken, lest one of them died; then the evil that had been sealed within the stone table would be unleashed, and all of Salem consumed. Or so saith the voices in their heads.

Mary and Jenna wound the bend in the trail, feeling their way through the underbrush, cursing as they did as thorns and blades of grass scraped at their ankles. She hardly remembered it being in this far. Had the woods somehow changed? It seemed uncanny. Woods cannot change, just as a door cannot swing open without a push. And yet here they walked, for more than an hour even, and yet the trail wound on, with no sight of the glade.

“Jenna, how far is't?”

Giggling playfully, Jenna turned to face her. “I am not Jenna! i am Hest'r, the wrong'd mistress! We art nearly th're, just beyond these trees!”
“Who is't is hest'r?”

“Some mistress fath'r madeth up. affair'd on h'r betroth'd. Madeth h'r standeth in the town square, with a big a on h'r chest. I bethought it wast comical.”

Mary thought back to a story her mother had shared with her, that of a woman named Hester Prynn, an adulteress who had committed a horrible act and was forced to stand in the town square, as an act of guilt of her sins. Though it was supposed to be a lesson for her later in life, she failed to see its meaning. It was obvious Jenna was talking about the same Hester.

“What didst thee doth to thy lov'r, hest'r?”

“I didst nothing to him, cap'n! They tooketh that gent hence. Moth'r sayeth they putteth that gent in the stockade.”

“And what didst thee doeth to ev'ryone watching thee?”
“Burn'd them! I hath called out to god and He did smite those folk!”

A sliver of ice ran down Mary’s spine. What sort of evil was this? Reverend Parris would often talk of “blasphemy”, whatever that was. Is this what he was referring to, ill-begotten talk about God and smiting people? Mother would have punished her good for speaking this way; a severe whipping would have been her remedy to such a foul utterance as the one had just streamed from her lips.

“Jenna, shame on thee! yond is h'rrid talketh. Wherefore thee doth thee speaketh such things?” said Mary.

But Jenna, now having reached the trailhead, where it split to find the clearing, turned with such vehement eyes that it tore to the fibers of Mary’s heart and filled her with a detestable darkness and overwhelming fear. When she spoke, it was indeed Jenna’s voice, but carried with it a hint of something else, something out of the depths of Mary’s darkest nightmares.

“Wherefore doth thee not beest quiet and just followeth me? or art thee afraid? thee has't been h're once bef're, lest thee has't f'rgotten already!”

Mary did not want to move. So frightened was she that the world around her seemed to have encased her in a shell, so that she was unable to even remember where she stood. Only could she continue to stare into the eyes of her friend, or who she thought was her friend, used to be even. But something had changed within Jenna, an evil unlike anything she had heard spoken about in church or from Mother and Father. It was a cold, supernatural feeling, and had she not been grounded, she would have run from the forest. However, Jenna’s catlike eyes stayed locked upon her, and she found herself entranced, despite her all-consuming fear.

When Mary was finally able to move, she grasped Jenna’s outstretched hand and together they stepped into the clearing. It was exactly how she remembered it. There were at least three other trails that led off from the clearing in the opposite and adjacent directions from where they stood. Here, no grass was agrow; the ground was but bare dirt, with twigs scattered here and there. Splotches of blackened earth marred the ground, as if a fire had once burned in the dirt. And that is when little Mary stopped short.

In the center, the stone table, the very table in which the girls cut open their palms and spilled their blood, was missing.

Chapter 2

Mary stood stock still. In the center of the clearing sat not a stone table but a stump of a tree, its surface blackened and carved with crude symbols. This was the wrong clearing. It had to be. The only thing out of place here was the stump, save the black marks in the dirt. Had the forest indeed changed, as she originally presumed? Or was this some trick of the devil, an evil machination of the devil, as Reverend Perry loved to quote. Had she merely just forgotten it was a stump?

No, she definitely remembered there being a stone table. This had to be a different clearing, no doubt about it. But why would Jenna bring her to a different clearing, and without Betty? It seemed about as strange as Jenna’s shift in moods, and that strange voice that seemed to vocalize with her whenever she spoke. Surely Jenna would have remembered what clearing to go to.

“Jenna, what is this clearing? tis not the same one from bef're. Wherefore has't we cometh h're?” asked Mary.

“What? Art thee dumb?” said Jenna. “Tis the same clearing as bef're. Behold, h're is the stump wh're we becameth friends.”

Jenna motioned to the stump, a clear hint of aggrivation in her voice.

“Wh're is the table? the table upon which our blood hath fallen”

“Wherefore doth thee speaketh of a table?”

“Th're wast a table h're, i knoweth t! t wast h're, right h're wh're this stump is!”

“Mary, th're is nay table! th're wast nay table then, th're wast nay table anon!”

“Aye, th're wast! t wast right h're! right wh're thee standeth anon! Tituba spill'd our blood and madeth us friends! The lady madeth thee drinketh something. doth thee not rememb'r?

But Jenna had had enough. So angry was she that she would not be calmed. Her bonnet had slipped from her head, her dark strands of hair fallen into her face. Her eyes had become puffy, as if she had just shed tears, and her cheeks were flush as of the color of tomatoes in bloom.

Mary was indeed not ready for what was next. Jenna rushed at her with such force that it knocked the wind out of her and sent her to the ground. Her dress caught on the stump and it tore, creating a sickening, ripping sound as they hit the dirt. One after the other, Jenna’s fists found their way into Mary’s stomach, and her vision swirled against the blackness of the sky.

Her mind suddenly raced, and she was reminded of a sermon she was forced to endure at the behest of Mother, although she would much rather have been outside playing pretend with Sarah and Jenna, both of which were aweary of sitting for a spell in a drafty, fetid meetinghouse. Reverend Parris was droning on about how something called damnation was our eternal reward should we continue down the path of selfishness and depravity, big words that Mary did not understand. The fear in his voice, the need to get his message out to a stagnant and droll audience, made him all the more terrifying as the utterances that left him caused Mary to cringe in such a way she wished she could disappear from the room forever. How could life be so sweet, how could there be any joy, when everything was so sinful, so evil? She could taste the blood in her mouth, that salty, coppery taste that she had tasted then; she had bitten too far into her lip, out of fear maybe? No, for what she had seen in the forest. An unforgettable thing, dark as the night it was, and Mother and Father never knew. But what if she was found out? If what Jenna said was true about witches"were they really the spawn of satan? And what was a witch, anyway? Why was everything around her that she thought was right a witch?

Mary looked into the eyes of her friend"Jenna, the only friend she really had, and wished she had never come out here. Jenna…she was there when no one else was. A broken leg in the field, and Jenna was there, was there to help her back home. A comfort to hurtful words spoken, when the evils of others were pushed upon her so that it was too much for her to bear. The only person that understood her, the only one who knew why she did not know of the things that Mother and Father believed in, why she could not see as they did. It was always Jenna, standing by her side, running into the unknown with her.

So who was this beast upon her? Who was this girl with the devil’s eyes who snarled and snapped at her, ripping at her and tearing at her skin? It was Jenna, but it was not Jenna. No, it was not Jenna at all. Jenna was lost somewhere, in a dark place that is devoid of any light at all. What kind of monstrous thing could do this? Where had they dragged Jenna off to? Was this some follower of the craft, impersonating her, looking like her, a snatcher of the soul, ready to do the same to her? Not Jenna, not sweet Jenna! This was too much. Far be it to run away now, not when caught in the beast’s snare. She could feel the demon over her now, ready to consume her, to punish her for ever coming out here.

And as Mary longed to find the reasons, to see past the damnation her friend had become, she began to cry.

Author's Note

I chose to do the dialogue in what is typical of how people communicated in the 17th century, what do you think?

Reviews

[Aishwarya Prem]

It was a lovely read!!! You have a picturesque way of describing..it helped me visualise clearly. It was difficult to read the 17th century dialogues but this piece is definitely worth the time and experience!!! Keep writing more dear..Lookibg forward to your works :)

[xXBlackRavenXx]

The way people talked in the 17th century was unique, and it is interesting to see how language has evolved over the centuries. Thanks for your support!

[Aishwarya Prem]

Yes truee!! Thanx for giving me this new experience!! And do u recommend any read to improve my apprehension for this language?

[xXBlackRavenXx]

The Scarlet Letter is a good one, as well as the works of Thomas Payne. You might also be interested in Diagramma Della Verita by Gallileo, as well as the works of Shakespeare.

[Aishwarya Prem]

Okay thanks dear :)