Authors: Kevin
“Elizabeth!” her mother yelled, enraged. “Return to your seat and behave, child, lest I summon your father to issue a scolding!”
But her behavior only worsened.
10
The Afflicted
Naomi became frantic. There seemed to be something seriously wrong with Elizabeth, more serious than a mere case of misconduct. She crouched down, knelt beside Elizabeth, and raised the girl in her arms, cradling her against her bosom.
“Elizabeth, dear child, what ails you?”
Her only reply was an incomprehensible
conglomeration of curses and gibberish.
Suddenly, Abigail cried out and collapsed. She writhed and twitched on the fl oor, saliva foaming from her cursing and laughing mouth.
“Tituba!” Naomi yelled, then turned around to fi nd her servant standing directly behind her, gawking.
“Yes, Mistress?”
“Fetch the reverend! And tarry not!”
“Yes, Mistress,” Tituba replied, then donned her cloak and left the house.
“Oh, Lord! Let them be well,” Naomi prayed, still in shock herself.
She sat on the fl oor, swaying back and forth with Elizabeth in her arms, growling and struggling to get free.
A short time later, Tituba returned with the reverend.
Upon seeing him, the girls screamed.
“Oh, dear God!” Parris exclaimed as he entered the room, hastily removing his coat.
“Samuel…” Naomi said dumbly, not knowing what
else to say. She glanced at the affl icted girls, then back up at him, searching for reassurance.
There was none.
11
The Necromancer
Parris knelt down next to Abigail and raised her head onto his lap. He brushed her hair away from her face and back over her brow, a paragon of caring and concern. He raised his eyes to his wife sadly.
Elizabeth uttered questionable sounds, sounds like foreign words in the sour mouth of a dying man. Parris judged the words of a language he may have once heard but had long since forgotten. Words of a language Elizabeth should not know.
“I think it best I summon Dr. Griggs,” he shouted above the girls’ screaming as he stood up.
Naomi nodded.
Just then, both girls groaned and dove like wild animals at Parris’s feet. They bit his ankles and tore into the fl esh of his legs.
“Lord!”
The reverend, still incredulous of this attack, struck Abigail in the face with the back of his hand, dazing her, and fl ung his daughter off with his leg.
“Help me put her to bed,” he said, reaching for
Elizabeth.
“What torments them, Sam?”
“I know not. It is such as I have never witnessed before.”
“Oh, Lord,” Naomi said, raising her eyes heavenward.
“What sins have offended You so that warrant such wrath?”
But there was no answer to her question.
The child struggled and lashed out at her mother and father, not failing a few times to claw them both with her nails as they carried her to her room and tied her down to her bed.
12
The Afflicted
“Dear God, help them,” Parris pleaded.
When both girls were restrained to their beds, Parris slipped into his coat.
“I must fetch Dr. Griggs,” he said, then left to seek the physician.
*****
This was confi rmed when Parris and Dr. Griggs
appeared. The girls’ conditions continued to worsen, and even as Griggs examined them, their screaming and thrashing increased in frequency and intensity.
“Child,” he said, leaning down toward Abigail. “Tell us what ails you so, that I may deliver you from your pains.”
“To the Devil with you!” Abigail roared in response, then cackled.
“Abigail!” her aunt cried out, cupping her hands over her mouth.
Griggs didn’t seem as shocked, however, and after some time he decided a different approach to the problem may be wiser. The doctor had made his best attempts to treat the affl icted girls, but fi nding his treatments ineffective, commenced an interrogation of them to uncover any clues as to the origins of their mania.
The inquiry lasted several hours until sometime after midnight, no answers forthcoming to the questions Griggs put to the girls.
13
The Necromancer
“They are most plainly bewitched,” the doctor
declared after concluding there was nothing in his power he could do for them.
Reverend Parris, distraught for the girls, opened the Bible and read from the Book of Psalms as Naomi looked on, sobbing.
“Save me, O God, by Thy name, and judge me by Thy strength.
Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words—”
Before he could fi nish reciting the verse, Elizabeth broke one of her bindings and lunged at her father, seizing the book and hurling it across the room with spite.
“Elizabeth!” the reverend hollered. His face fl ushed with blood. Outraged, he smacked her across the cheek, making the loud cracking sound of fl esh against fl esh. She glared up at him wildly, like an insane and injured animal. Parris held his hand up to his mouth and grieved inwardly, regretting the fact that he had just struck his daughter, but he knew she was without her wits and probably felt nothing. Still, he found it diffi cult to treat her in such a manner, and his chest pained him greatly as he re-tied her arm to the bedpost.
The doctor and the Parrises stayed up with the girls throughout the night. Parris feared that perhaps they were even in jeopardy of forfeiting their souls to the Devil.
The next few days, more girls, all of whom had
attended Tituba’s strange story-telling sessions, succumbed to similar affl ictions. The villagers and townspeople began to talk, and the matter, which Parris had till this time attempted to keep private, came to the attention of Judge Hathorne, who set forth a formal inquest to discover who—if anyone—was responsible for the maladies that assailed the girls.
*****
The Afflicted
After a week of investigations, they seemed no closer to the truth, but of one fact they were certain: Evil had come to Salem. There was quite simply no other explanation. If the Devil did fi nd a niche in Salem Village from which to wreak his mischief, what’s a more appropriate place to start than a reverend’s home? What’s a more appropriate victim than a reverend’s daughter? Wasn’t it also a well-known fact that the most numerous cases of demonic possession occurred to nuns in convents, on God’s very own hallowed soil? Yes. Evil was here. It had to be. There was simply no other explanation.
Discouraged, but not allowing themselves to be
defeated, Reverend Parris and Dr. Griggs did not relent in their inquisition of the affl icted girls. For good or ill, they were determined to press on until the girls were healed.
“Elizabeth?” Parris asked.
Blood and thick gobs of saliva fl owed from her mouth. Her teeth had chewed up her tongue and part of her lower lip during her fi ts. Her tongue now fl opped around loosely in her mouth as she chewed on it and mumbled.
“Elizabeth,” Parris continued. “Are you and your friends bewitched?”
A stench rose from Elizabeth’s bed. Her bowels had failed her, and watery brown excrement seeped through her dress and pooled out onto the sheets beneath her, saturating them.
She barked back at him incoherently, then spat in his face.
Parris fell back slightly and wiped her rancid and bloody saliva from his cheek as he choked back his tears.
The girls shrieked in chorus, as if on cue.
15
The Necromancer
“Who torments you?” Dr. Griggs asked them, but
received a reply of more shrieks and mumbling.
“I implore you! By the name of God! Answer me! Who
torments you!”
At once, as if the invocation of God’s name racked them with pains compelling their answers, the girls shrieked and cried in garbled wails: “Osborne! Good! Tituba!”
16
The room was dark and cold, despite the fi re that Roger had just stoked in the fi replace over an hour ago. The curtains were drawn. Martha thought it best that they remain so since the skies were laden heavily with gloom—as they had been all winter—and the dead trees in view of the windows seemed too dead. The contrast between the pure white snow and the frozen brown bark and gnarled branches was a depiction of austerity Martha found unnervingly depressing, and she didn’t wish to subject her ailing daughter to it. Phoebe’s condition wasn’t very promising, and if she were exposed to such scenes of barrenness, the sense of hopelessness thus excited would most likely have a negative effect upon her.
It was Sunday, the twenty-fi rst of February, a couple hours past dawn. Soon, Reverend Parris would start tolling the meeting bell and the villagers—those who were able—
would trickle out of their homes to attend the service. At the moment, however, Martha and Susanna were busy tending to Phoebe, sitting at her bedside, nursing her as best they could 17
The Necromancer
with cold compresses, hot soups, and warm caring as Roger looked on.
“Oh,” Phoebe moaned. “It pains me. It pains me so much.”
Her face was fl ushed and freckled with pustules, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Daddy?” she called.
Roger moved closer, placing his hand on Martha’s shoulder. He leaned in toward Phoebe.
“Yes, sweetest.”
“Why does it pain me so? Why must I hurt?”
At this, Martha broke down and wept. She stood up trembling and bolted from the room with her hands covering her face. Roger’s eyes glazed over, brimming with tears; Susanna’s cheeks were shiny with them. If there were any way Roger could convince the Lord that it would be better if he were wasting away in that bed and not his daughter... But it was futile to reason in that manner. Whatever fate awaited Phoebe was the Lord’s will. Roger knew that no amount of prayer would alter that painful fact. Soon, he thought, soon Phoebe will be with Him. Soon she will hear the ethereal chorus of seraphim and cherubim singing their praise of Him. Why?
Roger was angry. It seemed as if the Lord must take pleasure in seeing him and his family suffer, and now it looked as if He was going to claim her. But she was young...so young.
So damned young. She was all of ten years old.
Roger chastised himself for doubting and questioning the will of the Lord and took Phoebe’s frail hand in his.
Although her head had radiated with fever, it was cold now.
He gazed into her face. It looked blurry and faded through the 18
The Sermon
tears. Already, she was leaving him. He didn’t want to think it, but he knew it was the truth.
He remembered the one time he had taken her fi shing down at Mill Pond. She was eight then. She had caught a large spotted bass, and Roger helped her lift it out of the water. It fell off the hook before they could maneuver it into the pail and was thrashing about in the grass. She ran over to it and watched it fl opping around, its gills respiring laboriously.
“Daddy?” she said.
“Yes, sweetest.”
“Daddy, would you be angry with me if I tossed him back in the water?”
“Why?”
“It hurts. If he is not in the water he will die, will he not, Daddy?”
“Yes, Phoebe. He will.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“May I toss him back?”
“We need the fi sh to eat, dearest.”
“I know. But may I toss
him
back?”
“If you feel so inclined,” he sighed.
“Thank you, Daddy.”
She picked up the fi sh, carried it to the edge of the pond, and tossed it back in. When she returned, she looked up at him a bit sadly.
“Daddy?” she asked.
“Yes?”
19
The Necromancer
“I don’t think I like fi shing.”
“Very well,” Roger said, then took her by the hand and proceeded homeward.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Phoebe.”
“Why must there be pain?”
Roger didn’t know then, and he didn’t know now, and his reply to her remained the same:
“I know not, Phoebe. I know not. I know only that it is the Lord’s will.” Those were the bitterest words that had ever tripped off his tongue, and clearing the tears from his eyes with his free hand and seeing her gentle face more clearly now, he wished he hadn’t said them.
The Lord. What does The Lord know about suffering?
What does The Lord know about grief? The Lord knows nothing of those things, only that He knows how to bestow them freely upon His most faithful servants. The Lord is a barbarian. Only a barbarian would allow His own Son to suffer and die on a tree when He had the power to save Him.
But I love you, My son. Let not Satan get behind you. Follow
Me. Follow the way of the Lord and you shall be rewarded a thousand-fold in the Hereafter. You shall reap the fruits of Eternal Life in My
Kingdom, but you must have faith in Me and believe.
“Amen,” he heard himself say, and once again berated himself for wavering in his faith in God. He told himself that whatever hardships he and his family were forced to tolerate, they were a test and a purging. The Lord demands a heavy toll for entrance into His Kingdom.
“Amen,” Susanna responded, holding Phoebe’s other hand on the other side of the bed. “I love you, Phoebe. Bear yourself up strong. Be brave for the Lord. It is His way.”
20
The Sermon
“I am most truly blessed to have you as my sister,”
Phoebe said.
Outside, Reverend Parris began to toll the church bell.
Roger looked up at Susanna.
“You best prepare yourself for meeting, Susanna.
Get you and your mother to church and pray for your sister that she be well again. I shall stay and look after her. Give the reverend my regrets at not attending. It cannot be helped.”