Once Upon A Midnight Dreary
Salem
He watched her carefully with the same grim menace the other town folk had but felt the stabbing pain brought on by guilt for not stepping in. The crowd had gathered at Willow's Pond that morning with three girls in tow, their hands bound by rope and their eyes on the wooden contraption nearby. The youngest barely entered her 16th year when a former childhood friend had pointed her finger in contempt and brandished the girl as a witch. Her older sister was accused as well. The third girl was hardly a girl at all. At the age of 21, she had already been married and widowed when her husband had taken ill and died the winter before. Her mother in law, while in a state of grief, claimed she had used witchcraft to kill her son. The rest of the man's family turned against her as well and it wasn't long until she was tried and would stand the ultimate test of innocence – the drowning of a witch.
The sisters cried helplessly, begging their neighbors and friends to look at them - see their faces and their innocence. But the crowd stared on, their minds already set. As far as the mob was concerned, the girls were guilty of conspiring with the devil. The first girl was loaded into the iron cage. Her sobs echoed into the morning as the town magistrate's voice boomed towards the crowd.
"Mary Margaret Hawthorne, you have been accused of witchcraft – what say you?" The girl grasped the cage's bars, her round features pressed tightly against the metal.
"I am innocent! I beg you to let me out! Please…I'm begging you!" Mary Margaret fell to her knees, her plain brown skirt littered with the forest floor's debris. He watched a handful of men pull the rope and down she went. Mary Margaret's face went pale as the cold water flooded into the space around her.
That's what he hated most about this trial. They went about it so slowly, torturing the poor soul in hopes of hearing a new name so that the process could be repeated again and again. The girl's sobs turned into horrified cries as she was finally submerged into the murky waters. A few moments passed and the townsfolk began to wonder if they had just sent an innocent to their death. But the brown fabric slowly rose to the surface and it wasn't long until Mary Margaret's corn silk colored locks floated against the broad current. A prayer was said and Mary's older sibling was loaded into the cage. She refused to look at the pale corpse that was once her sister as they loaded her into a wooden cart reserved for horse dung.
"Sarah Katherine Hawthorne, you have been accused of witch craft – what say you?" Sarah's blue eyes were tainted by sleep deprivation and the horror of seeing her younger sister killed before her. Her cheeks flushed with anger and a thin finger poked out from a gap in the iron.
"I say you can burn in Hell! You just murdered an innocent girl! May your houses be damned for eternity!" The village didn't want to hear anymore from Sarah and set to her trial. The cage was once again lowered and they waited for the sign of innocence and bellowed with confirmation when the guilty party floated to the top.
He searched the crowd for the young woman, her cold brown eyes already boring into him. She didn't give off an angry energy. Instead, she was eerily calm. She had accepted her fate when she had witnessed the town sentence an eighty year old woman who could barely read the words in the Hymnal, let alone read a spell.
They carried young Sarah to the same wooden cart and placed her next to her sister. A white frost covered Mary Margaret's plain brown dress and he felt it once again - The painful stab that accompanied guilt.
The third woman walked up to the chilled river's banks and calmly allowed her neighbors and friends ease her into the iron cage. The town's magistrate began to speak.
"Beth Ann Rickenbacker, you are accused of witchcraft and conspiring with the Devil. What say you?" The woman smirked sadly and only allowed a single tear to fall. She wouldn't be a bellowing mess.
"It matters not what I think or say. You all have already accepted responsibility as my judge, jury, and executioners." The crowd murmured prayers amongst them as the cage dipped underneath the soft current. Air bubbles escaped to the surface and finally, Beth Ann's raven colored hair swirled towards the top.
The wind whirled around him as a few men lifted Beth Ann's corpse from the murky waters and laid her in between the two sisters. The hairs on his arms stood up as he followed the cart back to town. This was a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time. Tonight they would store the bodies underneath the church and bury them in the morning.
"Mr. MacLeod, I'm sorry you had to witness such things today." The town's magistrate patted his shoulder and walked with Duncan back to the main row. Duncan shifted his weight nervously. Words had to be chosen carefully and steps had to be taken to ensure that innocence was kept in this town.
"You did what had to be done." Truth be told, the same thing had been done to him. He survived death and was considered a heretic among his people. He hated the way outsiders were treated. And from what evidence? A scorned mother in law who disliked her son's wife so much, she yelled of a wolf amongst lambs.
The electricity in the air was still hovering around Duncan that night. It had grown even more intense and it was something he would not gain any sleep over. He tossed and turned for hours until he finally lit the oil lamp beside him and scurried out to the church. The townspeople were tucked warmly in their beds when he scuffled down the stairs. Mary Margaret was placed neatly to the right and her sister to the far left. But there was something missing. A large puddle told where the body had been laid and a set of wet footprints told him where it went – back upstairs and underneath a pew. Duncan doused his lamp and fell to his knees.
She was shivering profusely but her dark hair had dried into a crusty heap. Her knees were crushed up against her chest and those big brown eyes spoke two things to him – fear and fury. A fist lashed out towards him and he winced as three scratch marks appeared on his cheek. Part of him wanted to curse her and leave the girl to the hungry wolves she once called her neighbors but he also knew what she was going through. The fear that takes over when you suddenly wake up with memories of your death is nothing short of terrifying.
He reached out again and graced her cold fingertips. He watched Beth Ann's eyes flicker from his hand to the other side of the pew. Her bottom lip trembled and the emotion came rolling off her like an avalanche. He had only spoken to her once since moving to the colonies, but he couldn't just leave her. Not now.
"I just woke up! But I remember…I remember everything. I even remember looking up through the water and trying to breathe…but I…I…" Duncan moved his hand to her cheek in hopes that he would calm her.
"I know, Beth Ann…I know. You drowned in the lake." Her eyebrows crinkled to the middle of her forehead, like she was trying to piece together a giant puzzle.
"But I didn't fall in, did I? They put me in that cage and sentenced me to a death I didn't deserve!" Tears were falling freely down her face now and Duncan's breath caught in his throat. She was a beautiful crier.
"I will explain everything in due time, but until then, lass, I need you to quiet yourself and come with me." She jerked back at this. He could only imagine the stories she had been told as a girl, guarding her against the vile men in the world.
"You will turn me in! They will do something worse than drowning. They will hang me or put me under those horrid stones!"
"They will do no such thing, Beth Ann. I give you my word, that I will protect you with my life and educate you with every bit of knowledge I own." He surprised himself, even, with those words. It had been such a long time since he had had a companion. She studied him for a moment before crawling out from underneath the pew. Duncan withdrew from his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Hours later, dawn began to creep up on them. The lantern's last bit of flame dimmed the room to an orange glow as Duncan let his words sink in. He told Beth Ann his own story and bits and pieces of who she was…what she was. He explained The Game and reminded her that he would train her himself.
For a while, she simply stayed quiet and he figured she was absorbing the information she had just been given. She asked no questions until the very end. She was wrapped up in a quilt, her eyes fixated on the small flame in the lantern. Finally, her cracked lips parted.
"Do I have to keep this identity?" Duncan repeated the question out loud.
"Most immortals don't…they tend to like the fact that they can become whoever they want and slip in and out of society." A smile eventually overtook Beth Ann's face.
"I had no choice in the matter of my marriage. My father thought the Rickenbacker's a good family. Their eldest son had taken a bride the summer before and seemed blissfully happy. I was closest in age to the middle son and spoke no opinion in our dealings. He never raised his hand to me and barely uttered a word when we consummated the marriage. And when he took ill, I stayed by his side the entire time. And then when he passed, I had no choice in my outcome. I was judged and sentenced because his mother didn't care for me." She rolled her body into a sitting position and cradled her knees in her arms. Her raven locks fell in waves down her back.
"There were nights that I wanted to run away to a nearby tribe…just as long as I didn't have to keep my chin down and take orders from everyone around me. Duncan, I no longer wish to live as the meek Beth Ann Rickenbacker any longer." Duncan doused the lantern and opened the trunk he was going to hide her in until tomorrow night.
"Lass, you don't have to be Beth Ann if you don't wish to be…but I doubt there is anything truly meek about you."
Present
"And then she goes bat shit crazy after her lover is killed and tries to kill you." Ritchie shuffled through his iPod in hopes of finding something that could drown out his mentor. It's not that he didn't mind Duncan's stories about the Immortals, but he just didn't want a perfectly good road trip drowned out with a harrowing tale.
"Ritchie, there might come a day when Sadie meets you in a dark alley and she manages to put all that anger and all that pain into her fight. And you're not going to be able to defend yourself because you don't know a thing about her." Ritchie thought about this and put down his iPod.
"So, you're saying she's an enemy."
"I didn't say that, either."