Page 52 of Wildwood

“Did my husband say something to you?” Defensiveness has always been my fallback.

“No.” She says it calmly, without elaboration.

I feel guilty. Like always. I am distracted. She’s right. But how could I not be? I stare out the window. It’s another gray day. The clouds are low and heavy. They look like how I feel.

“Elinor?”

I drag my eyes back to the small square office, with its ghastly fluorescent lighting, back to the OB who is staring at me, arms folded across her chest.

“Yes?”

“I’m putting in a referral to psychiatry. I can’t make you see them, but I think it might help. Given your history, you might have perinatal depression. You should speak with someone.”

I don’t have perinatal depression. I have a ghost. I wish I could say these things to her.

“Okay, thank you. I’ll consider it.”

She’s staring at me with such concern that I stand up, to show her I’m ready to leave. I’m the one in control here, not her. But I know the move makes me look like a teenager. A few minutes later, I walk through the hospital doors and out into the chilly October day. I avoid eye contact with others in the parking lot and pretend there aren’t tears running down my face.

* * *

When I get home, I march straight into the library. I’m going to prove this. I’m going to prove this for myself, for my baby, for the woman in my dreams. And I’m going to prove this to Topher. He doesn’t believe me. For the first time in our marriage, he is not on my side. He doesn’t see what I see. The knowledge breaks something inside of me.

I sit at Ezra’s massive desk and power up my laptop. As I wait for it to load, I look around the room impatiently. It’s then that I notice that something is slightly off. My laptop was open when I sat down. I always close it when I’m done. I stand slowly and look around the room. Nothing looks out of place. I walk slowly through the first floor of the house. Peering carefully into each room. Hugo follows me dutifully. He’s not barking, so I know no one could be here. But still, it feels like someone is here. Or was just here.

I sigh and head back into the library. When I walk into the room, I step on something sharp. My first instinct is that another damn nail is rising up, but I hear a tiny clink when I move my foot away. The object I stepped on isn’t attached to the floor. I see a shiny piece of metal and I bend down to pick it up. It’s a paper clip. But it doesn’t look how it should. It’s been bent, so one end sticks up and that must be what I stepped on. I carefully place it on the desk, wondering what it reminds me of, wondering if it’s another piece of this puzzle. Another mystery. But that’s okay. Because I’m going to start getting my answers. Tomorrow, I’ll talk with a proper witch historian, someone who is not Topher, or Madeline, or Dr. Kahn. Tomorrow, I go to Salem.

Chapter 42

I am on the road, leaving Vermont, for the first time since moving here. My body is humming with excitement, and I feel happy and lighthearted for the first time in a long time. I told Topher that I’m going to spend a night with my friend Mia. She lives in Arlington with her husband, two kids, a Persian cat, and a golden retriever. Topher thinks it’s a fantastic idea and practically helps me pack my bag. He’s made an effort it seems, ever since his day hunting with Julian. Giving extra kisses on the head, squeezes of the hand. I don’t know if it’s because he feels guilty or because he’s worried about me. I never confronted him about the wheat I found in his jacket. Because what could I say really that wouldn’t sound paranoid? And I can’t help but fear that Topher is getting a bit sick of me. Getting tired of a wife who is constantly preoccupied, who is plagued by nightmares, who spends her time in the library rather than meeting new friends or setting up the nursery. Who can’t just be happy.

It’s not a total lie. I am seeing Mia. In fact, she’s meeting me in Salem. I’ve given her very short details on what’s been happening through texts. I’ll give her more detail tonight. I’m dying to know what she’ll think. She’s levelheaded, but more open to the supernatural than Topher is.

I arrive in Salem around eleven. I’m not meeting Deb until two, so I grab a sandwich at the Gulu-Gulu Café. It’s a bohemian joint with the menu written in chalk on boards behind the counter, and an eclectic mix of clientele. Retro mustaches, piercings, pinup girl dresses. I feel glaringly normal.

I eat a “Millennial” chicken sandwich, and then wander down Essex Street, the main pedestrian drag. It’s a wide brick street lined with places called the Magic Parlor, Hex, and the Black Cat Curiosity Shoppe. In the years following the witch trials, the town burned official records. For centuries after, the topic was taboo, and people tried to forget the lives lost and the role the town had played in it. It was only in the seventies that Salem started acknowledging its dark history. Now it celebrates it. Not the trials per se, though those are certainly a commercial draw, but the notion of witchcraft itself. I’d been here once with Topher, braving the throngs of tourists on a weekend in October. We’d stood shoulder to shoulder, enthralled by the spectacle of it all. Street performers, food vendors, costumes, fortune tellers, psychics.

A place called the Coven’s Cottage looks busy, so I pop in, my curiosity piqued. I’m hit with the scent of incense. It takes me back to my childhood, and the occasions we went to a Mass. The priest would wave a metal canister of frankincense, the smoke wafting over silent parishioners and up into the heavens, a ritual going back millennia. I’m struck, not for the first time, with how much overlap there is between religions, so much more in common than not.

Customers mill about, examining herbs, crystals, black scrying mirrors, which claim you can see the future and commune with spirits. The merchandise boasts great claims, from seducing lovers, to increasing fertility, to attracting luck at gambling. It seems there is something for everyone here. I pick up a crystal, cloudy white on one end, clear and pointed at the other. It’s apparently a clear quartz and is used for protection and to commune with the spirits. Why not?

The woman who rings me up wears heavy eyeliner and half her head is shaved. As I wait for my card to go through, I look around at my fellow customers. Some people look how I’d expect. Dressed in black, tattooed, solemn. Or dreadlocked and serene. Others are here for the intrigue. Something bordering on voyeurism as tourists, young and old, snap photos with their phones, momentarily wondering if this is something they can pick up. Will I really burn sage to purify my apartment in Brooklyn? Will I make offerings to the gods of nature once this vacation is over?

I still have time to kill so I wander into the Witch Dungeon Museum on nearby Lynde Street next. It’s a tourist trap for sure, but I feel as though I can’t come here without experiencing part of the spectacle. The museum is housed in an old church. First, there will be a reenactment of a trial. Before it starts, I wander around the room, reading small informational plaques. One plaque talks of how one accused woman escaped the gallows by confessing she rode a broomstick. I think of the witch’s window at Wildwood. So apparently the broomstick lore was actually a reality in the Salem trials. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Another plaque talks of how two accused witches were spared hanging because they were pregnant. It seems they at least had one line drawn, that innocent children should not be punished for their parents’ misdeeds. Or alleged misdeeds.

Two women dressed nearly identically in long dresses with high necklines and linen caps on their heads enter the room. I take a seat alone in a pew; a few other weekday visitors occupy other rows. The women act out the accusation of Sarah Good by Abigail Williams. Abigail shrieks in agony as Sarah pinches and torments her from across the stage. Abigail claims that Sarah uses black and yellow birds to harm her and others. At the end, the audience looks around at each other, unsure if we are supposed to clap or not.

“Sarah” then leads us into the basement, a dark series of rooms with faux stone walls and a dank smell. Sickly looking wax figures in puritanical clothing depict the witch trials, one frozen horror scene after the next. A cell, no larger than a phone booth, with a broken woman crammed inside. A man in agony underneath a pile of rocks. Our guide tells us the man is Giles Corey. In the late 1690s, once a person entered a plea (guilty or not) his estate could be claimed by the local government. Giles refused to enter a plea, so the town subjected him to “pressing,” to force him to enter a plea. Apparently, the stubborn man didn’t and simply cried “more weight!” each time a stone was added. His estate was left to his sons, though Giles himself died three days later.

The final set shows the gallows. One man and three women hang from a tree. Their faces are expressionless. Their hair like unkempt dolls. It’s such a disturbing scene taking place in a tiny, underground space. I begin to feel claustrophobic. For a moment, I wish I could cut down all the figures so I could hang them up outside, so they could at least feel the cool breeze on their waxen bodies. You are losing it, I think. So I thank the tour guide and hurry up the steps and out into the real world, where I take deep breaths of the brisk autumn air.

Chapter 43

At two, I make my way down Essex to the Hawthorne Hotel. Mia is waiting out front for me, her blond hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her face is open and smiling, her eyes crinkling at the corners. God, I miss her.

We hug for a while, squealing with delight. She puts her hands on my belly and beams at me.

“I can’t believe you’ve got a baby in there!”