Sylvia Corey is not looking forward to meeting the man she blames for her father’s death two decades ago – can she hold it together?
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Exodus 22:18
He woke, and when he woke, as always, he woke hungry.
In the shadow of the yews he began to hunt – not as the wolf pads silently behind a traveler, or the shark follows the tang of blood for miles – but as an exquisitely patient spider. He made his trap beautiful, hospitable. He concocted the sweetest poisons.
And he waited.
The town of Nantwich was enjoying an unusual warm spell. The November sky arched blue overhead. The sun shone on the silver sands of the beach and the merry white caps in the bay. From the salt marshes a plover winged its way over the grid of streets and tidy, shingled homes. The campus of the Theological Seminary nested in the heart of town, an old-world labyrinth of stone, brick, and spire.
In a quiet courtyard between Evelith Library and the languages building, Sylvia Corey sat at a table typing on her new, portable Olivetti typewriter. The sun shone hot on her coppery hair and her slender white fingers. She enjoyed typing – the firm smack of the keys against the page – even when the paper was her fiancé’s midterm and the subject was Old Testament Civil Law. She lifted the sheet of notepaper, squinting to decipher Nick’s crabbed hand. It was her job to turn his scribbles into clean, parallel lines, to take jotted opinions and make them into incontrovertible facts.
After a while she sat back and pressed her fingers to her eyes. Her head ached, and she was thirsty. She had slept poorly the night before, waking at dawn to the sound of the seabirds crying like children.
After a brief internal debate, she tapped a cigarette out of its box and lit it.
She hated to admit it, but she felt the rumblings of an impending episode. She had not had such an episode since summer, and had hoped that she was cured. But deep inside she knew she was not. In the purse by her side resided the proof of that knowledge – a little bottle of hoarded yellow pills. Dr. Griggs only gave her thirty a month, telling her that she must learn to cope, that this drug was addictive. But if an episode came, one pill a day would be like throwing a pebble at a hurricane. So, while feeling well, she skipped doses, substituting whisky and cigarettes on the sly.
A bell rang distantly. She only had fifteen minutes to finish the paper and walk to meet Nick at the cafe. Her fingers flew, the cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth. She dragged on it occasionally, blowing the smoke into the breeze and flicking the ash onto the flagstones. Finished typing, she pulled the page out and tapped it together with the others, weighting them down with her purse. She zipped her Olivetti into its case. Then she crushed the cigarette and buried it in the dirt with the toe of her pump. She took a small bottle of perfume out and dabbed it on her wrists and neck. She adjusted the pearls round her neck, straightened her thin, white cardigan, and smoothed her hair back into a neat, girlish ponytail.
As she did so she felt something cold pass over her, like a shadow against the sun. She put her hand to the back of her neck and turned, suddenly convinced that she was being watched. She studied the high, gray walls that formed the courtyard, the mullioned windows of Sewall Library. The deciduous trees were nearly bare, and the flowerbeds black. But the grass was emerald green, and sun glistened on the ivy leaves, the white stone of the fountain, and the remaining red leaves that scattered like confetti. The only shadowy place was where the three yew trees clustered in the northern corner of the court. Even beneath the noon sun they hunched in darkness.
Shivering a little, she gathered up her things and left. The cafe was only a few blocks away, fortunately, because Nick did not like her to be late. Her heels clicked crisply on the pavement. At the street corner she waited to cross, adjusting the sheaf of papers beneath her arm. Her forehead throbbed.
“Poppy for remembrance?” asked a voice at her elbow. She jumped. An impossibly tiny old man, probably a survivor of the First World War, stood at her elbow, selling flowers for Armistice Day.
“Of course,” she said, handing over a few coins. She smiled and took the poppy by its fuzzy stem, tucking it through the buttonhole of her sweater, where it bloomed vivid as a wound at her breast.
The cafe was a study in chiaroscuro, cool and dim in the corners, glittering bright by the windows. Sunlight fell on white linen, silverware, and pitchers of icy water. Nick was already seated with his back to the door; Sylvia was glad this left her own chair in shade. She sat and slid the typewriter – a birthday present from Nick – beneath the table.
He glanced up only briefly. He was annoyed with her, although the clock had only struck noon a few seconds ago. His dark head remained bent over the newspaper. Sylvia looked at the photo of Joseph McCarthy, glaring beneath thick, black brows.
“Your midterm,” she said, sliding the pages across to Nick.
He took a moment, then folded the newspaper and picked up the typed pages.
“Thanks,” he said, finally looking at her. Nick Noyes was a solidly built, brown-eyed young man with olive skin and thick eyelashes. His name – she thought – made him sound like a superhero, and he self-consciously played that role in her life, having determined to save her from her past, her family, and, of course, herself. He frowned, and Sylvia fought the urge to apologize for something – anything – just to ease the tension.
The waiter arrived with glasses of water. Lemon circles floated with ice chips. Sylvia, by now agonizingly thirsty, drank so quickly the pain in her head temporarily worsened. She winced.
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
The waiter brought rolls and butter. Sylvia absentmindedly took one, and broke it apart while Nick ordered lunch for both of them, choosing one of her favorite dishes, which gave her pause. Was he not annoyed with her? Ah – perhaps he had something to say that she would not like and was wondering how to deal with her.
“You should take an aspirin,” he said.
“Already did.”
She eyed him, twisting the diamond ring on her finger. They had gotten engaged over the summer, in June, on the day the Rosenbergs were executed for treason. She was still a little angry with him for choosing that day to propose. It was only an unfortunate coincidence, and not an omen. But the two events were miserably linked in her mind, and along with them her first episode and extended stay in the Andover mental asylum.
Clam chowder arrived for Nick, and Sylvia was given an avocado resting on a bed of lettuce. On the side was a little cruet of warm ruby sauce. Pleased, she sprinkled the avocado with salt, then filled the circular hollows with the syrupy liquid. They ate in silence. Sylvia drank more water, feeling her headache ebb away. She cut into her avocado – where the green shaded to pollen yellow – and admired the way the crimson filled the cracks of the fruit’s flesh.
After the waiter refilled their glasses, Nick said, “I saw Reverend Hathorne yesterday.”
“Arthur Hathorne?” Sylvia’s fork rattled against the table.
“Yes. He’s in town. He asked after you.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. He congratulated me on our engagement. Said to give you his regards.”
Sylvia said nothing.
“I asked him to dinner with us on Friday.”
“Nick!”
“He is an old family friend. He just wants to meet the girl I’m going to marry.”
“He’s already met me. He murdered my father.”
“Sylvia, we’ve been over this – he presided over a church discipline case in which your father was found guilty of heresy and excommunicated. It was done by the book. They couldn’t know how… fragile your father was.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Well, we are having dinner, so…”
“No. I am not,” said Sylvia.
“Don’t contradict me in public,” said Nick calmly.
“But why?”
“I suppose he wants to assure himself that you will make a suitable wife.”
“What does that mean?”
Nick took her left hand in his, turning it over. The pink lines across her wrist had not faded. She took her hand back and pulled her cuff down. She knew what he was thinking: Because madness and suicides run in families. Because she was the same age her father had been –
The headache was thumping triumphantly, like the drum section in a marching band.
“I need to go,” she said, standing up.
A shuttered look came over his face; his lips compressed. “Syl,” he said.
“I have to go. I will talk to you later.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and hoisted the typewriter. “Please, my head hurts. I can’t be rational now.”
Out in the sunshine she turned towards home, breathing unevenly. Traffic buzzed, birds called, and the sea roared in the distance. She gulped air, finding it stiff with saltwater. Rounding the corner, she leaned against the wall. This was not something a cigarette could help. She would take half a yellow pill – just half – to calm her down.
The pills were gone.
With shaking hands she ransacked the contents of her purse, then knelt and spilled them onto the sidewalk. Lipstick, keys, notebook, compact, plus her wallet, a coin purse, and a pen which leaked red ink onto her fingertips. The pills must have fallen out. She never took them out of her purse, never went anywhere without them. Never.
“Be calm,” she told herself, clenching her fists and taking a breath. “Just retrace your steps.”
But they were nowhere on the sidewalk or the street, or the steps and tunnel leading to the courtyard. There she got on her hands and knees and peered under the table, between the iron chair legs. She crawled to and fro, praying to find the bottle lying on the flagstones or hiding in the grass. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she shivered, despite the warm air. Sitting on a bench, she rested her face in her hands, trying to slow her breathing.
Reverend Hathorne.
When she had met Nick as a handsome undergraduate, the discovery that he knew Reverend Hathorne – in fact remembered him fondly – had only given her temporary pause. His experience with the man had been all positive. She could allow that any person could be different things to different people. But she never expected to see Reverend Hathorne again, let alone dine with him! She could not believe that Nick expected it of her. But Nick had changed too, since her hospitalization so close on the heels of their engagement. He’d become suspicious and more demanding, citing all the pain that she had caused him. He believed that she owed him a great deal. But dinner with the devil?
It had been more than twenty years, and Reverend Hathorne’s name was still as loathsome to her as that of Beria or Torquemada. Her father’s discipline case had dragged on for months. She had only been seven, but she remembered him – her precious, only parent – turning gray and withering away before her eyes. Hearing him pace in his room, muttering to himself. Just confess, they told him. Ask forgiveness. But he would not plead guilty to something he had not done. In the end they excommunicated him for unrepentance, and a week later he had gone up into the attic…
She bit back tears.
…blue lips… the slow twisting rope… a horror dangling in the moonlight…
Was that a whisper? She turned and scanned the windows, imagining Reverend Hathorne watching her. She looked over her shoulder at the dark cluster of yews. Spiders, she thought, observing the webs that formed like white mold on the dark branches.
The bell rang two o’clock.
Then she saw him – a slender man, dressed in black with a white collar. His hair gleamed like spun gold. He smiled at her, and she felt a shock of recognition – but who was he? There was something familiar and yet foreign about him – not that he came from a far distance, but from a far time. Maybe the word was not foreign, but antique.
He held his hand out, cupped palm up, filled with yellow pills. The sun flashed off the silver ring he wore. She stood, arms wrapped over her middle, and took a step towards him, seeing that she had been mistaken – he held out a handful of red yew berries. Then he quirked his mouth, turned his hand over, made a fist. Scarlet juices ran through his fingers and onto his sleeve. All at once he disappeared – not fading away, but snapping out of sight instantly.
She walked cautiously over to the little group of yews. She saw spider webs and fallen brown needles and blue shadows and whole red berries. But no smiling man. No handful of pills. Turning on her heel she walked away quickly. She did not look back.
In her small apartment, she locked the door behind her. Then she set down the typewriter and purse, and rolled up her sleeves. Efficient and brutal as the Gestapo, she turned the place inside out. The pill bottle had to be here somewhere. But afterwards she collapsed on the sofa, viewing her scattered possessions, her plundered shelves. It looked like there had been a robbery.
Very well. She had lost her pills. She would simply call Dr. Griggs in the morning and ask to see him. He would write her another script and she would have them by this time tomorrow. And then she could worry about Nick, and Reverend Hathorne, and dinner on Friday night.
She drank a tumbler of whisky, and another. She was not hungry. The phone rang twice but she did not answer it. Pouring a third drink, she sat down at her table and opened the Olivetti. She began to type, because it made her feel calm – giving shape and form to a warped and surreal world. She began to type a lullaby, one her father used to sing to her.
There’s a web like a spider’s web,
Made of silk and light and shadows,
Spun by the moon in my room at night.
It’s a web made to catch a dream,
Hold me fast ’til I awaken,
As if to tell me, my dream is all right.
Dr. Griggs was a solid man with a tidy brown beard and polished round spectacles that often obscured his eyes. He had been her doctor in the hospital, and oversaw her recovery afterwards. Sylvia had never liked him and sensed that he did not like her either. He tapped his pen on his desk and listened to her describe how she had lost her pills, and how badly she needed medication right now. Things were stressful. It was a bad time of year.
“Any hallucinations?” he asked.
“No,” she lied.
“And how are things with your fiancé?”
“Fine. Just fine.” Her restless night had left her feeling bruised, sore.
He pursed his lips.
“It’s that I can’t eat or sleep and I have this awful headache,” she went on, choosing her words carefully. “I think I am experiencing a reemergence of symptoms from going off my medication too abruptly.”
“If you are feeling suicidal again we ought to consider a hospital stay.”
“I didn’t say -” she stopped. The asylum would be a good way to get out of seeing Rev. Hathorne. But she did not want to go back there, ever. “I’m not suicidal. I just want to be on my regular dose.”
“And when did you lose your pills?”
“Yesterday,” said Sylvia. Her eyes and mouth felt dry, and the din in her head was incredible.
“You shouldn’t be experiencing this much distress so quickly, unless you’ve become addicted. Were you taking more than prescribed?”
“I was not.”
Dr. Griggs looked skeptical.
“If you are in withdrawal from an unnecessarily high dose you ought to be in the hospital until you stabilize.”
“I am not in withdrawal! I – please, I just need my pills.”
Outside she leaned against the wall and stifled a scream. He did not believe her. Would he call Nick? She looked up into the sky at the seabirds circling. A bus trundled by and the exhaust made her sick. Her eyes burned. Was this what it was like to be injected with sodium pentothal? Fire in the veins, dreadful thirst, vision blurring – and all the while you talked in circles, condemning yourself.
She found herself drawn back towards the courtyard. There the noisy world fell away. Someone had turned the fountain on, and water splashed gently. She glanced at the cluster of yews, but saw no strange man, just the the uncanny darkness of the shadows. Sitting, she put her arms on the table and rested her head. She felt as if she were bound to the center of a wheel, the world twitching and jumping around her. Her mind spun. She began listing what she remembered about yews. People planted them in churchyards. They could live for hundreds of years. The ancient Celts poisoned themselves with yew berries, rather than surrender to Roman invaders.
Something – or someone – came up behind her. She held her breath.
A cool and gentle hand pressed to her forehead, another on the back of her neck. Someone kissed her hair and murmured, in strange accents, “Fear not, for I am with you.”
She straightened up, but he was gone. Or was it only the shadow from the clock tower that had fallen across her? But on the table at her elbow sat a yellow pill. She touched it, wondering, ran her finger over the grooved V. Tasting it, she found it was real. She tucked it beneath her tongue and closed her eyes, feeling the drug flood into her bloodstream. It felt like a rainstorm sweeping up, putting out the fires in her nerves. Like a soft cloth clearing her clouded mind. Like kind hands taking the iron vise off her chest.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Nothing answered.
Back on the street she felt the sun on her skin, the freshness of the air. It really was lovely out. The sun was butter yellow, the shadows long and purple. She bought a red apple from a fruit vendor and ate it, finding it crisp and tangy. It was the first food she had had in a full twenty-four hours. She strolled and counted the seeds in her hand with an old rhyme from childhood: “One I love, Two I love, Three I love I say, Four I love with all my heart, and Five I cast away…”
Nick was waiting for her on the front step when she got home. She stopped a little distance away.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. He had cut himself shaving; a little blood splotched his jaw.
“Walking.”
“All day?
“Yes.”
Nick observed her. “Have you changed your mind about dinner?”
Sylvia lounged against the iron railing. “Do I have a choice?” she asked.
Nick sighed heavily. “Sylvia,” he said. “Why can’t you just do what I ask you to? Don’t you trust me?”
It was easiest to comply, and in any case, the pill made her feel invincible.
“It’s fine.”
He looked relieved. “I knew you’d come round,” he said, putting his arm around her. She felt the tickle of breath in her ear, then he recoiled.
“You’ve been smoking,” he said.
She ducked away from him and walked up the steps. She did not feel like kissing him anyway. He was always so rough, and just now the contrast between the cool touch in the courtyard and the heat of her fiancé’s heavy hands revolted her.
“No I haven’t. Not today, anyway.”
“Well, you reek. I thought we agreed that smoking is a filthy habit.”
“Reverend Hathorne smokes cigars.”
“You know I mean it is a filthy habit for a woman. Well, aren’t you going to invite me up?”
Sylvia thought of her ransacked rooms, the lyrics typed on the page in the typewriter, the expensive bottle of whisky.
“No, I’m just going to lie down. I’m really tired.”
Nick breathed heavily through his nose as he did when hurt. “If you want to be that way,” he said. Receiving no response, he stalked away.
Relieved, Sylvia went upstairs and tidied for a while. She tried to eat and could not. She tried to read and found herself staring through the words. She poured herself a generous whisky, and then another. The sun set. The moon came up, a ghostly yellow galleon in the night sky.
She went over to her typewriter, ready to type a few more lines of of the lullaby, then leaned close, brow furrowed.
Someone had already typed the next verse:
Now if I return,
They will hang me,
By the old oak tree,
Down by the mission,
Down by the fountain,
Where my love told me…
Who had gotten into her apartment? Nick and the landlord had a key, but neither would do this. She thought of the man in the yews. Had he followed her home yesterday? Could he… type? No. Most likely she had written it, while drunk, and simply did not remember. Gaps in the memory were another sign of an episode, like headaches and loss of appetite. She felt the apple gurgling in her stomach. Already the drug seeped away.
After drinking more whisky and staring out the window at the moonlit street, she went back and typed:
I met a stranger,
His name was Danger,
We rode side by side.
Then she yanked the paper from the machine and crumpled it, throwing it into the wastebasket. She finished the whisky, took a hot bath, put on her softest nightclothes, and turned down the covers. But instead of sleeping she lay staring up at the ceiling, netted with shadows of branches. Her brain felt fried, all its synapses exposed. Perhaps, she thought, I should go to the courtyard. It was a warm night. She might see, or feel, or hear, her benefactor, and perhaps he would give her another pill.
A spider crossed the ceiling and she bolted up. Craning her neck, she saw that the spider was not in her room, but just outside her window. There it hung, a black and white monster, made to look extra large by the moonlight.
Don’t worry, her father said, when she woke afraid of the neighbor’s black dog. He can’t get in. He doesn’t have hands.
“Spiders don’t have hands,” she murmured, huddling beneath the covers. She did not sleep. The long hours of night stalked around her endlessly.
In the morning she brewed and forced herself to drink a little coffee. She nibbled at a piece of toast. It was another sunny day, the third of three. Tonight she was supposed to meet with Reverend Hathorne. Still she had no pills to help her.
She sallied out just before noon to buy some more whisky. It was Nick’s money she was using. Nick paid for her apartment, her groceries, her clothes. Her reeking cigarettes. After her father’s death she had been brought up by an array of disinterested aunts and uncles. They were only too glad to stop paying for things when she met Nick, and frankly it was nice to be taken care of. She only realized now that care and concern could become a trap.
She stood at the corner of Danvers and Evelith, waiting for the light to change. A bird landed on the street sign.
“Evelith,” she murmured to herself.
And at once she knew who the man in the courtyard was. Instead of the store, she went to Sewall Library.
The library was housed in the oldest building on campus – in all of Nantwich, actually. It was hushed, cold, and tortuously laid out. Sylvia found her way to the historical collection room and turned aside into a little alcove, presided over by a painting of a Puritan gentleman.
He wore the plain black clothes of his era, complete with tall hat, cape, and white collars. But it was his face that she recognized, the same expression she had seen in the courtyard. His golden hair was hidden by the hat, and without his cloak he had looked more imposing, less slender and quick. But there was the merest hint of a smile on his face.
Judge John Evelith read the brass plaque screwed to the wooden frame.
Sylvia felt weak. Why him? she wondered. If she hallucinated, why this long-dead villain from the 17th century? Was he a ghost? No – he was not so insubstantial. She had felt his fingers on her neck, his mouth in her hair. And there was the matter of the pill. No, he was something else, a revenant. Something that dwelled, pale and quiet in the shadows, and came forth at night to seek blood –
“Good old John Evelith,” said a voice beside her.
She jumped, hand pressed to her heart.
A man stood nearby, a paunchy man, baggy in every sense. His pant cuffs dragged on the floor and he wheezed. His once brown hair was gray, and considerably receded.
Reverend Hathorne.
He essayed a jowly smile. “How are you, Sylvia?”
Sylvia struggled to speak.
“You know his house once stood on this very spot,” the Reverend continued. “Before the mob burned it down with him inside.”
“He sentenced them to hang, but in the end he was the witch,” she said softly.
“Yes. That’s nonsense, of course. There are no such things as witches.”
“No. Just heretics.”
Revered Hathorne looked at Sylvia, bloodshot eyes brimming with compassion.
“I remember you, when you were seven. You were a bright little thing. Do you remember me?”
“Oh yes,” said Sylvia.
She looked past him at the portrait. Wicked Judge Evelith seemed interested.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“Goodness, I wasn’t looking for you. I was just enjoying the library and I saw you come in, and I thought ‘There goes Gilbert Corey’s daughter.’ And now you’re engaged to young Nicholas Noyes. Congratulations; he’s a fine young man.”
Her stare seemed to unsettle him.
“Sylvia, I have wanted to tell you that I was so sorry about your father. I simply could not get through to him – he would not listen to reason -“
“And you wouldn’t even give him a Christian burial because he was a suicide,” said Sylvia softly.
“That was the ruling of the elders. Errors were made.”
“Errors? It wasn’t an error, it was you – you, and your precious trial, and the others. You took him away from me.”
Reverend Hathorne looked troubled. “I know how much the whole affair hurt you.” He coughed, deep and phlegmy.
“No. You don’t.”
He spread his hands. “I’m here. Tell me anything. I will listen.”
But not apologize. Not confess wrongdoing. Never that.
She heaved a breath. “My father was not a heretic and God knows it and I know it. And you know it too, and I hope you choke to death.”
Though he called after her, she walked away.
The courtyard was empty, and beautifully quiet. Instead of sitting at her table, she walked straight up to the yews and pulled the branches aside. Yes – there was a slab of stained granite, half embedded in the ground, worn in the middle. The front step of the old house. The three yews alone had survived the fire.
She went back to sit on the bench that faced the fountain. What would happen when Nick found out about her outburst to Reverend Hathorne? When Dr. Griggs talked to her beleaguered fiancé? They would put her into the hospital. There she would be given cold baths, shocked, injected, and questioned until someone deemed her fit for society.
Sunlight sparkled on the water. The afternoon was summer warm, the air sweet and resinous. The day drew on. The sun went down and the moon came up, full and round. As night fell, she heard soft footsteps.
John Evelith approached, pale and graceful in the moonlight. With a gentle grasp, he helped her stand and led her over to the fountain.
“You are tired,” he observed, sitting beside her. He smelled like woodsmoke and old linen, and he had a beautiful mouth. “And you are frightened.”
“Yes.”
“But see here! I kept them safe for you.”
He spilled the pills into her lap. “They’re yours.”
“Yes, they are.”
He dipped his cupped hands into the water.
“Take one,” he said.
She obeyed, and drank from his hands.
“Have another.”
One by one, like a bird feeding her fledgling, he placed the pills on her tongue and gave her water to drink.
At long last she was sleepy. Her muscles relaxed. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he put his arms around her. Hummed a sweet tune. Kissed her on the forehead. The spiders came to watch.
“You are a witch, aren’t you?” she whispered, smiling.
Sated, he lifted his face to the moonlight.
Soon there would be flashing lights and frantic men, loud voices and panic. They would find the girl, who slept peacefully beneath the yews, and seeing her mouth stained with yew berries, would believe she had killed herself. And in a way she had, he mused. Sweet thing. Delicious, really.
In the corner where the yews huddled together, John Evelith – judge and witch and murderer – sat beside the girl and stroked her hair. He shut his eyes and sighed, content. He would sleep again, perhaps for years.
Until he woke again – hungry.
