Page 38 of Wildwood

“Yes,” I whisper. “I feel the woods. They are alive.”

“Of course they are alive,” my husband says softly.

“That’s not what I mean.”

Tears leak down my face, so I walk farther back toward the unmarked graves, wiping my cheek angrily. I almost want something to happen, now, so Topher can see it. Come and get me, I want to shout. But nothing happens. The stones sit, dark and unmoving. In front of them, I can see the ground is soft and covered in mushrooms. Thin white ones, flat, brown rubbery ones. A patch that looks like coral. The rain has created the perfect damp habitat.

“You are an empathetic person, Elinor. You’ve always been. I think these graves are just making you sad. Wistful.”

Wistful. I give a bitter laugh. I’m not wistful. The woods aren’t making me wistful. That word feels far too gentle. No, these woods are angry. They are hungry. There’s a wrong that needs to be righted. I feel this with a certainty I’ve never known before.

I don’t know why I do it, but I reach out a tentative hand and touch the first of the unmarked graves. I am half expecting lightning to strike, or for grappling arms to reach up through the earth to pull me down. But instead, I feel that same aching sadness that I felt in my last dream flow through my veins. The feeling doesn’t make me recoil; instead, it draws my other hand to the stone as well. I’m feeling the stone as though I were feeling a pregnant woman’s belly. A strange realization washes over me. I initially thought that whoever lay here did something unthinkable. But perhaps I had it wrong. Perhaps something unthinkable was done to them.

I don’t look back at Topher, though I can feel him watching as I gather some small rocks and stack them one on top of the other, making a little cairn. As I work, I notice a black bird in my periphery, watching with its head cocked. Almost like it’s assessing me.

I see you, I telepath, not wanting to say the words out loud, in front of my husband who does not see what I see. Does not feel what I feel. Does not know what I know.

As I walk away, I send a message to the stones. You are not forgotten. And I swear I hear them whisper back. Find us.

Chapter 31

The driveway is empty. This fact is so gutting, I kick at the gravel and let out a muffled roar. Hugo looks at me with worried eyes and whines.

Alice’s driveway has been empty each time I’ve walked by since my visit to the historical society. This fact surprises me. I had imagined her as a homebody. Someone who spent her days perpetually tending to her goats. I feel a wave of shame at this realization. That I couldn’t conceive of her as a fully formed human. A person with a job, a social life, normal things that would keep her busy and out of the house.

“What do we do now?” I ask Hugo and he pulls on the leash, leading us back home. Topher’s car is in the driveway, but the sight brings me a pang of annoyance. At moments like these, I wish he worked normal hours so I could have the house to myself during the day. He’s worried about me, and knowing he’s in the house, even if he’s asleep, it makes me feel as though he’s watching over my shoulder.

He’s asleep, I tell myself, as I hang Hugo’s leash in the mudroom. No one is watching you, Elinor. And so I begin to wander the halls of Wildwood, almost trying to commune with the house. As I walk over creaking floorboards, I drag my fingers lightly along the walls. Sometimes I close my eyes, trying to breathe in the scent of the house. Talk to me, I think. Talk to me . . . Lydia?

I’ve been hesitant to let myself think that the woman in my dreams is Lydia. I’ve created some arbitrary line in my head, of what constitutes rational thought or not. The visions are concrete. I’ve felt them in a visceral way. But the Ouija board? That’s a game. A childish game. Anna probably moved the planchette, whispered the word witch. It would be like her, to have done it and never confessed. But I feel desperate now, desperate to make contact with the woman in my dreams. I’m not scared of her, I’ve realized. I don’t think she’s angry with me. I think she’s trying to show me something important. Maybe show me what happened to her. The serpent, on the other hand, he scares the shit out of me.

I need to find a way to communicate with the woman in my dreams. I’m down in the library now, dragging my fingers along the spines of the books. Talk to me, Lydia, I try again, shaking my head as I do so. Do something so I don’t feel like a fool right now. This thought, this request, fills me with dread and hilarity. Because I desperately want something to happen and nothing to happen. And I’m probably losing my mind.

What do you want from me? Do I need to find you? But don’t you lie in one of the unmarked graves?

So many questions swirl in my brain, which feels like a web of a thousand tangled threads. Lydia doesn’t answer. I’m about to leave the room, when a groaning crack sounds behind me, followed by a crash and the dull sound of objects hitting the ground. I whip my head around, heart instantly racing in my chest. The shelf, the one that was bowing in the middle, has split in the middle and sags sadly, its contents gathering in the crevice and spilling onto the floor. One book has landed upright and stands in front of the pile. The cover is bloodred. I take a cautious step toward it. Then another. I reach down and pick it up, hardly breathing. Toward the top, there are almost childlike illustrations of the lower halves of three women. Long skirts, hands bound in front, toes pointed, pulled down by the weight of their bodies. The Mark of the Witch, by Nicole Goodreich.

Find us. The words echo in my head. Witch.

For almost an hour, I sit on the large leather armchair, chewing my nail, staring at the book, which I’ve laid on Ezra’s desk. I know that I’ll read the book. That I’ll venture down the shadowy road of believing that Lydia is who is haunting me. And that her death was in some ways connected to witchcraft. But I want to stay in this space for a moment longer. This place in time when I’m not running down a crazy-sounding theory. When I do not believe I’m being haunted by a ghost who contacted me via Ouija board who was tried as a witch or, God help me, was killed by a witch. I am pretending, for a short while longer, that I am sane.

But then, I stand up, walk determinedly over to the desk, and pick up the book. It feels weighty in my hands. I sit back on the leather chair. Hugo sits at my feet and looks up at me quizzically. He must wonder what I’ve been doing all this time. Sitting and staring.

“Don’t tell Topher.” I pat his head for good measure.

Scanning the table of contents, I see the book is a deep dive into the Salem witch trials. I learned about the trials growing up, of course, but I’m hazy on a lot of the details. Nestling into the chair, I become absorbed by the writing. It’s academic but enthralling, just as the history itself is a grotesque yet fascinating time in our history. According to the book, the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed twenty women and men for witchcraft over a nine-month period from 1692 to 1693. All had been hanged but for one man, who died under a torture method of being pressed to death with heavy stones. Some documents suggest two hundred suspected witches terrorized the skies of Massachusetts during that time. Tituba, an enslaved indigenous woman, Sarah Good, a beggar and mother, and Sarah Osborne, a Christian whose church attendance had waned, were the first accused. Like the total number of accused, the later theories for what caused the hysteria were vast.

Some blamed economic, religious, and class tensions. Others think toxic mold in the grains could have caused hallucinations, leading to strange behaviors in those thought to be afflicted by witchcraft. Then there are theories on teenage hysteria, the psychological effects of a hothouse religion in a cold climate, and political instability. And of course, there are those who blamed witchcraft itself.

Reading about it with twenty-first century eyes, it’s tempting to judge the Puritans as simply either fearful and superstitious at best, deliberate murderers at worst. But I think about my own isolation and how on edge I’ve felt, and I have the benefit of television and a working internet connection. I can see how the colonists imagined evil on their doorstep.

When my back begins to ache and my eyes blur, I close the book. While certain elements of a witchcraft theory fit with early Vermont’s history and the cold climate, the threat of the “devilish savage,” a most crucial element, does not. Newfield Village was allegedly settled in the early 1770s. The Salem witch trials, which represent the height of witch hysteria, occurred in the 1690s, nearly one hundred years earlier. But I suppose I have learned one thing. I eye the collapsed shelf, the splintered wood like a wound. I think Lydia wanted me to read this book. A book that breaks down the horrors of witch hysteria and the dark places that people, when faced with hardship and isolation and fear, can find themselves in.

I need to learn what I can about witch trials in Vermont. And I need some fresh air. Grabbing my laptop, I head to the back porch, with Hugo following dutifully. The September heat has finally begun to cool. The leaves are beginning to show hints of red and gold. I wish I could appreciate the beauty around me. But I feel like I’m walking around in a state of only partial presence. Half my brain is carrying out the tasks of everyday life. Bathing, eating, taking the dog out. But the other half is constantly replaying the dreams, testing out theories, trying to travel back in time. Everything has a tint to it now. I am consumed. Possessed.

While I look out at the field, I am also trying to see it as it would have been back when it was first settled. It must have all been wooded then.

I have a decently strong internet signal right now, which hasn’t been the case lately. I google witch trials in Vermont. I read the first headline and my body sags. There was only one documented case of witchcraft in Vermont. The “Widow Turner” of Woodsville. To determine if she was a witch, she was thrown into a hole cut into the frozen Hoosic River. If she floated, she was a witch. If she sank, she was not. She sank. Fortunately, the villagers jumped in to save her. Apparently, she fared well as far as accused witches go.