Page 82 of Wildwood

But the map raises other, equally disturbing questions. Newfield Village apparently had a number of inhabitants. Families for whom there are no records. Now I need to find out what happened to the entire village, not just the four unmarked graves. They couldn’t have just murdered an entire settlement. Unless they did.

The bodies. It always comes back to the bodies. We need to find them.

Oh, Ezra, what did you know? When I think of my uncle, I swing like a pendulum. He left the key to the box with the map, but it’s possible he didn’t know what the key was for. The secret space beneath the floorboards looks like it hadn’t seen the light of day in decades. But on the other hand, he told the Brooks he had proof. The questions swirl around and around in my head. My mysterious uncle Ezra, as impenetrable as he’s always been.

Then I think of myself and my role in all this, equally obtuse. At first the visions, the sight of Lydia, her face contorted with rage, scared me. But then I began to feel that Lydia didn’t mean me harm. That she knew I would help her. But what if she wasn’t a Bishop. What if her last name was Abington? All this time, I’d thought my family was trying to reveal the wicked past of Newfield Village. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe we were the wicked.

I fold up the map and put it on my bedside table. I close my eyes, though I know it’s a futile effort. I haven’t truly slept in over a month. I’ll toss and turn. I’ll slip into a light sleep, only to jerk myself awake. My brain is all off-kilter. It’s spinning with theories, it’s terrified of dreams, yet it craves sleep. These nights are long. So, so long. When this is all over, I’m going to check myself into a five-star hotel and sleep for a week. I’m going to order breakfast in bed, and wear nothing but a robe so thick it’s hard to move in. It won’t be an indulgence. It will be a requirement. Because how I feel right now is not good. How I feel right now is dangerous.

Chapter 72

“Follow me.” The voice is warm but stern.

I blink open my eyes, expecting to see the painted trees. But instead I see faded roses. I’m in my old bedroom. How did I get here?

“Follow me.” The words repeat; they sound as though they are spoken from under water.

I sit up in bed and see a woman in the doorway. She isn’t facing me, so all I can see is the cascade of curls down her back. One hand is on the doorway, and her skin glows like the rivulets of a stream.

She walks out of the room, and I follow. We go down the stairs and out the front door. The grass is cool beneath my feet. I want to ask her where we are going, but I cannot find the words. I cannot find my voice. It has retracted someplace deep inside me.

We cross the meadow and step into the woods. The trees at the edge should be bare. They have been for days. Weeks. I’ve lost all sense of time. But right now, they are not. They are covered in the new growth of spring. The air feels fresh.

Once under the cover of the trees, I should feel scared. It is so dark. But Lydia seems to glow and she casts the light of the moon all around us. We walk barefoot through the forest, not feeling the sharpness of the pine needles beneath us.

“The woods are safer.” The voice surrounds me. “Remember that.”

Then we come to the place that I know we’ve been heading to. We are at the old stone foundation. Then, before my eyes, the stones ensconced in earth and moss move. They roll up onto themselves, and then walls build up from those, as though a person who had been sleeping for a very long time is slowly standing up, bone by bone. Smoke comes from a chimney, and it rises through the night air like ghosts.

“I’ll tell you my story,” she says.

Lydia

The first thing you must know is that life in the settlement was hard. We were granted land under the condition we make it habitable. Newfield Village was rocky and the men who came here wrecked their bodies clearing granite and felling trees taller than anything we’d seen before. We were isolated and security was elusive. One time I was in the woods, foraging for mushrooms, and I came upon a black bear. It huffed at me, saliva dripping from its gums, before its great black mass turned and lumbered away. My breath quaked and I looked down to find all the mushrooms had fallen to my feet. I left them there in a little mound on the forest floor, and on shaking legs, made my way back to the house.

In this way, it wasn’t surprising, I suppose, that we were susceptible. That we were looking for ways to bargain our way into God’s good graces.

Our community was strong in those first few years. We were bonded together through hardship and hope. We supported one another, leaned on one another. But then, discontentment began to grow among some. Levi Brook, who lived across the road, claimed his land was too rocky, believed that was why his crops failed to grow. William Bishop, the blacksmith, lusted after our access to the river. He wanted to build a mill. The two of them began to gripe together and cast James and I snide glances when we passed them on the road. The others in the village didn’t see this side of them. If anything, the more Levi and William resented us, the more they ingratiated themselves with the rest of our neighbors. It happened slowly, and in retrospect, I should have made more of an effort to strengthen the bonds with the other families. Particularly as we Abingtons were the outsiders. We followed the same God but through a different name. But I didn’t. As I said, life in the settlement was hard. The days were long.

The preacher arrived on a Sunday in November. He came wearing a black cassock and carrying a tattered bible. Our village welcomed him with open arms, so eager for a man of God, here to guide us through another cold winter. He claimed he had come from the old country, from England, but that he had also traveled to the east to far-off lands to bring the word of God to the heathens.

How enthralled we all were. How enraptured. We hung on his words and now I can see how it affected him. The adoration. The power. And then I started to see the three of them together, the preacher, William Bishop, and Levi Brook. Huddled together after the services, walking the road, talking in hushed tones when they passed others. And then came the first disease and the first death. Lavinia Brown. A child taken too young and too quickly.

After this, the preacher’s words grew darker, more fire and brimstone. More talk of sin and the need to be saved. More talk of the horrors of God’s vengeance. He stoked fear, and what a powerful tool that can be.

A feeling started to grow, a hard kernel in my belly that told me something wasn’t right. The preacher’s words were dangerous. And I didn’t trust the way he and William and Levi had formed an unholy trinity. I knew we were on the brink of something. I felt it simmering just below the surface of my village, still raw and freshly hewn from the wilds of New England.

James was convinced that there was nothing to worry about. Times had changed and rational thought would prevail. But I knew differently. And I knew we were targets. William had me marked from the beginning. He wanted something and through the preacher, he’d found a way to get it.

I was watching the road the morning they came for me. Something had drawn me to the window, and at first, I marveled at the beauty outside. The mist snaking through the birch, pines, and maples, the first rays of light fighting through the fog. The rise of the hills in the distance. I noticed shadows from the trees out on the road, performing a slow, graceful dance in the breeze. But then, the shadows took form. Shadows in the shape of three men. And I knew they were coming.

We were tried in front of the church. It was too small of a village to have a proper courthouse.

“Lydia Abington, you have been accused of the grievous crime of witchcraft,” said Levi Brook.

“Who sayest this?” I spat, though I knew.

“I.” It was William Bishop, of course.