A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.

Squeezing in one more chapter before Thanksgiving!

Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 10 – Confused and Abandoned

Forks, Washington: October 31, Present-Day Halloween

"In morning news, last night, convicted murderer, James Hunter, disappeared from his cell in Tacoma Federal Prison. Hunter, serving a life sentence for the brutal slaying of his wife and two daughters, was last seen around the prison's five p.m. roll call. However, when guards made the evening round, they discovered his cell to be empty. Now, in a…peculiar twist, more apropos to the Halloween date on the calendar than to reality, a couple of the prisoners claim they saw a shadow flash through the halls, then heard Hunter's muffled scream before he disappeared. Officials are questioning all prisoners thoroughly, and this morning, they ask all Tacoma citizens to be on alert and…"

While the TV drones in the background, I wake with a long sigh and a smile, rather than the gasps that have marked my waking for the past few mornings.

"Mmm, Soaring Eagle…" I hum in contentment, "that was…mmm."

Though, even as I say the words, I'm not sure what they mean. The sensations are already receding. Yet, the illusionary mix is potent. Even as it fades from consciousness and becomes part of a forgotten dreamscape, its warmth lingers and cocoons me on what the windows show me is another cold, gray Forks morning. Why we live in this godforsaken town, I have no clue.

Meanwhile, colors, shapes, and scents mingle and dance in my memory. In a blur of lush greens, peach flames, and the pale hues and essence of soft leathers, they're all framed by crimson eyes familiar to my waking self, if not ty fully awake self. Despite the disorientation, for a handful of seconds, I allow myself to savor it all.

That is, until I'm seized suddenly and violently by a series of stomach spasms that annihilate the warmth and contentment. They're vicious in their intensity, cramping muscles stretching and contracting like a rope wrangled around my innards. Instinctively, I double over in bed, pulling up my legs and curling in on myself and calling out in a weak, strangled breath.

"Edward…Edward, ohhh."

There's no reply, and I'm in too much pain to wait for him to show up. Unsteadily, I get to my feet, gripping my stomach as I leave our bedroom and make my way to the staircase.

"Edward!" I shout down from the top landing, his absence and my pangs inciting a new sense, this one of fury. I growl, then curl a hand tightly around the banister, limping down the steps while keeping my free arm curled around my stomach. Whimpering and unable to stand straight from the continuous barrage stabbing at my middle, I make my way to the kitchen.

Because it's hunger, I know that much. My stomach is contracting from deprivation, from need.

From starvation.

"EDWARD!"

With a shaking hand, I yank open the refrigerator and pull out the first item with which my hands make purchase. Whatever it is, I shove it into my mouth while its juices spill from the corners as I chew-

-then wretch onto the tiled floor.

"FUUUCK!" I howl. "EDWARD!"

When I slam the fridge door closed, the door falls off its hinges and topples face down. All the food items on the door shatter and leak onto the floor. But I'm beyond caring about the state of the house. Instead, I grasp the back of the kitchen stools and use them as support, knocking a couple of them over as I stagger to the sink. When I make it there, I ram the lever up with so much desperation that it breaks off, and a wild stream pours from the faucet. Like whitewater, it splashes everywhere as I make a well with my palms, filling them and bringing them to my mouth. My hands shake so furiously that half of the water spills out. It makes little difference anyway; almost the moment the water hits my mouth, I spit it out into the stainless steel sink.

"Oh, shit," I shriek. "Oh, shit."

My pulse races. My heart hammers. My vision blurs.

"I'm hungry. I'M THIRSTY!" I bang the kitchen counter, eyes growing wide at the jagged crack that instantly appears, and cry into the empty house. "EDWARD!"

When the room spins, and my insides coil tighter, I know I need help. And Edward…

Edward isn't around to provide it. Wobbly and weak-kneed, I leave behind the destruction in the kitchen and somehow manage to make it back up to our bedroom without toppling down the stairs. I almost wish I had broken my neck, to teach Edward a lesson for not being here when I need him. With a wildly shaking hand, I pick up my cell phone from my nightstand, vaguely noting that all my rings, including my wedding ring, are missing from my fingers.

"Okay, a doctor," I breathe as I open up my contacts list and fall more than sit at the edge of the bed. "I need a doctor." But then…I pause. "And tell the doctor what? That I'm having nightmares I can only half recall, where I see myself as a seventeenth-century Puritan woman, in love with…some sort of red-eyed being? Oh, yeah, and any sort of food tastes like excrement."

In the next moment, all those questions fall to the backburner anyhow. As I scroll the phone, something hits me: it's empty. I have no contacts, no social media accounts, and no apps. No internet access.

It's as if someone has purposely left me a phone with which I can do nothing.

"Edward?" I murmur, undeniable fear now tinging every part of my voice. In the absolute silence, broken, unplaceable phrases flash through my mind:

'…best time to take care of vermin is when they're groggy...'

'…thy beauty, sweet girl, sets ye apart from all other women in Andover…she be nothing to thee…thy inferior…and with thy assistance…'

'…what would ye give me…what freedoms would I earn…?'

'…when ye were there, I was there as well…I learned how…'

'…thou art the witch, not I…!'

'…I be no witch!"

'…was he worth the burn…?'

I squeeze my eyes shut and cradle my head. "What the fuck is going on? Okay, think," I command myself. "Think. Maybe if I head outside, I can find a way to-"

The phone, still clutched in my hand, vibrates. So, it seems it is good for something – to receive, if not make calls. There's no caller ID, but reopening my eyes, I answer it quickly, hopefully.

"Edward? Baby?"

The voice that replies isn't Edward. It's sharp and blunt. "No."

"Alice, where's Edward?"

There's a long beat of silence. "Who is this?" she hisses.

"Alice, it's fucking me! Who the fuck else is it going to be? Where's Edward?" I screech.

When she speaks again, her tone is the scathing flames of an inferno. It's the lash of a venomous viper's tongue. Its malignant contempt seeps through the invisible phone lines and turns my blood to ice, sending quivers shuddering through me. Because Alice is my best friend.

"He's not coming for you. Someday, we'll figure out how to get you out of there," she seethes. "For now, enjoy your once-a-year nightmare. You've earned it, for what we reap in this world, we sow in this world. And don't even think of leaving that house."

"Alice, please," I beg and cry simultaneously. "I don't know what any of that means. I'm…I'm confused. I don't understand what's happening. Where are my rings?" I demand.

"They're not your rings," she growls.

"Yes, they are! My grandmother…her grandmother…and my wedding ring…and…and I'm hungry…and so damn thirsty!"

She doesn't answer right away. "Starve, witch."

The call ends.

"Alice?"

No answer.

"Alice!"

For a long moment, I sit with a palm over my mouth while a series of sobs rack my frame. My head sways, and my stomach is knotted with equal parts dread and spasms. Something is horrendously wrong, but I have no idea what it is. What I know is that I'm cut off from the world. I'm starving, yet I can't eat. My husband, who's sworn to love me forever, has apparently abandoned me. And my best friend suddenly speaks to me with an abhorrence that could smite a god.

Swaying and with my stomach in fluctuating knots of dread and cramps, I try to think, to focus, but it's not easy.

Suddenly, I remember the last thing Edward said to me yesterday before he disappeared:

'I'll be home soon. Don't go down there, okay?'

We were talking about the basement.

The basement. For the past few days, he's been trying to keep me out of the basement. But why?

And just like that, I know.

My answers are in the basement.

Drawing in a deep breath, I stifle the series of dry, broken heaves still piercing me and steel myself against the continuous, bombarding torment from both mind and body. When I rise back to my feet, my head spins. I shut my eyes for a few seconds, searching for final reserves of strength and courage because I am all I have left now. I know I'm in mortal danger, and no one is coming to my rescue.

Whatever is going on, I'm going to have to save myself.

I reopen my eyes, and that final reserve of strength and courage is tested…undermined…sapped when I catch a glimpse of my reflection.

"Who is that?" I shriek. "Who the fuck is that? That's not me! THAT'S NOT ME!" I scream, yanking at the dark hair reflected in the mirror and glaring at the dark eyes glaring back at me because I…

I, Rosalie Hale, am blond and blue-eyed.

Then, as I lose consciousness, all goes black.

A/N: Thoughts?

Facebook: Stories by PattyRose

In this story, Rosalie Hale's character is very loosely based on the real-life Abigail Williams, one of the first afflicted girls in the Salem Witch Trials. (Although, names and dates have been changed ;) ) And, since we're now headed into relevant territory, here's:

A SHORT (NOT SO SHORT?) HISTORY LESSON ON ABIGAIL WILLIAMS – AFFLICTED SALEM GIRL, for those who are interested (from and ):

Abigail Williams was one of the first afflicted girls in the Salem Witch Trials. Despite the fact that she was one of the main accusers during the Trials, not much is known about her before or even after the trials ended.

What historians do know is that Abigail Williams was born on July 12, 1680. At the time of the Salem Witch Trials, she lived with her uncle, Reverend Samuel Parris, his daughter Betty Parris and Parris' slaves Tituba and John Indian. It is not known why Abigail was living with the Parris family, but many historians assume her parents had died.

William's troubles began in the winter of 1691/2, when some of the "afflicted girls" were reportedly experimenting with fortune-telling techniques, specifically a technique known as the "Venus-glass," during which the girls dropped egg whites into a glass of water and interpreted whatever shapes or symbols appeared in an attempt to learn more about their future husbands.

According to the book A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft by local minister, Reverend John Hale, on one of these occasions, the girls became terrified when they saw the shape of a coffin in the glass. Shortly after the incident, in January of 1692, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams began behaving strangely - having fits, screaming out in pain, and complaining that invisible spirits were pinching them. Ann Putnam, Jr., and the other "afflicted" girls soon started experiencing the same symptoms. At the end of February, Reverend Samuel Parris called for a doctor, but the doctor found nothing physically wrong with the girls and determined they must be bewitched. Just a few days after, the "afflicted" girls named three women they believed were bewitching them: Tituba, a Caribbean woman enslaved by the Parris family; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.

The women were arrested and examined on March 1, 1692. During Tituba's examination, she confessed that "The devil came to me and bid me serve him," she said, describing elaborate images of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds, and a "tall man with white hair" who wanted her to sign his book. She admitted that she'd signed the book and claimed there were several other witches looking to destroy the Puritans.

This confession has been pretty much nullified, as it's pretty likely that Tituba, a "Native," was beaten and/or terrorized into confessing. What's more, she was told that confessing would save her life, whereas denying it would see her hanged. Nonetheless, the confession confirmed the colonist's greatest fears: that the Devil had invaded the colony. It sparked a mass hysteria and a massive witch hunt in Salem…and, to a lesser extent, in neighboring Andover Village.

With the seeds of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed over the next few months. Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the church in Salem Village, greatly concerned the community; if she could be a witch, then anyone could. Magistrates even questioned Good's 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, whose timid answers were construed as a confession. The questioning got more serious in April when the colony's deputy governor, Thomas Danforth, and his assistants attended the hearings. Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in for questioning.

After news of the witch hunt spread throughout the colony, Reverend Deodat Lawson, the previous Salem minister, returned to Salem in mid-March to find out more about the suspicious activities in the village.

Lawson witnessed and published a firsthand account of one of Abigail Williams' fits in his book A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft, at Salem Village.

On Sunday, March 20, Abigail Williams disrupted services in the Salem Village meetinghouse several times due to the presence of accused witch Martha Corey. Corey had been accused of witchcraft the previous week and a warrant had been issued for her arrest on Saturday, March 19. Since there wasn't enough time in the day to arrest Corey and warrants weren't served on Sundays, Corey was free until Monday and decided to attend services, which upset the "afflicted" girls.

Also according to Lawson's account, On March 31, the colonists held a public fast due to the suspicious activities in the village, during which Abigail Williams claimed she saw witches having a sacrament that day at a house in the village. Abigail said she saw the witches eating and drinking flesh and blood, which appeared as red bread and a red drink.

This claim came up again during Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyces's examination on April 11, 1692, when Judge Danforth asked Abigail Williams about it, according to court records:

Q. Abigail Williams! did you see a company at Mr. Parris's house eat and drink?

A. Yes Sir, that was their sacrament.

Q. How many were there?

A. About forty, and Goody Cloyse and Goody Good were their deacons.

Q. What was it?

A. They said it was our blood, and they had it twice that day.

It was during this examination that Abigail Williams and the other "afflicted" girls turned on John Proctor and accused him of witchcraft as well.

It is not known why exactly the girls accused John Proctor, but it is suspected that it was because Proctor was an outspoken critic of the girls, often calling them liars, and reportedly stated they should be whipped for lying.

In Arthur Miller's 1953 play, The Crucible, in which Abigail Williams makes an appearance as a major character, Williams is portrayed as having an affair with John Proctor and accuses Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft so she can marry John herself after Elizabeth is executed. (The movie is pretty interesting if anyone wants to watch it – Winona Ryder plays an evil Abigail Williams to Daniel-Day Lewis' John Proctor.)

It's unlikely that this actually happened due to the age difference between the eleven-year-old Abigail Williams and the 60-year-old John Proctor at the time. There is also no proof that Williams and Proctor even knew each other before the witch trials began.

Yet, Miller wrote in an essay for The New Yorker in 1996 that he was convinced John Proctor had a relationship with Williams. He explained that he based the entire play on this idea after he read about how Williams tried to strike Elizabeth Proctor during her examination but instead brought her hand down gently and softly touched Elizabeth before screaming out that her fingers burned:

"In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail's mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed, most likely to appease Elizabeth. There was bad blood between the two women now. That Abigail started, in effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil."

The Proctors weren't the only people Abigail Williams accused of witchcraft. As one of the main accusers during the Salem Witch Trials, Williams accused about 57 people of witchcraft, according to court records.

On May 27, 1692, Governor William Phips ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex counties. The first accused witch brought in front of the special court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman known for her gossipy habits and promiscuity. When asked if she committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I am as innocent as the child unborn." The defense must not have been convincing because she was found guilty and, on June 10, became the first person hanged on what was later called Gallows Hill.

Just a few days after the court was established, respected minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the court not to allow spectral evidence—testimony about dreams and visions. The court largely ignored this request, sentencing the hangings of five people in July, five more in August, and eight in September. On October 3, following in his son Cotton's footsteps, Increase Mather, then-president of Harvard, denounced the use of spectral evidence: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned."

Phips, in response to these pleas and his own wife's questioning as a suspected witch, prohibited further arrests and released many accused witches. He dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29, replacing it with a Superior Court of Judicature, which disallowed spectral evidence and condemned just 3 out of 56 defendants.

By May 1693, Phips had pardoned all those imprisoned on witchcraft charges. But the damage was already done. Nineteen men and women had been hanged on Gallows Hill. Giles Corey, Martha's 71-year-old husband, was pressed to death in September 1692 with heavy stones after refusing to submit himself to a trial. At least five of the accused died in jail. Even animals fell victim to the mass hysteria, with colonists in Andover and Salem Village killing two dogs believed to be linked to the devil.

Even though Abigail Williams accused many victims at the beginning of the trials, especially in March, April, and May, she only testified against eight of them: Mary Easty, George Jacobs Sr, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Mary Witheridge, and John Willard and gave her last testimony on June 3, 1692.

After that date, Williams disappears from the court hearings for reasons unknown. It is possible her uncle, Reverend Samuel Parris, sent her away to prevent her from further participating in the witch trials, just like he sent his daughter away, but there is no evidence of this.

Of the people Williams accused and/or testified against, 15 were executed, one was tortured to death, and the others either died in jail, were pardoned, were found not guilty, escaped jail, or evaded arrest altogether.

After the witch trials ended, several members of Reverend Samuel Parris' congregation fought for years to have Parris dismissed from the church due to his role in the Salem Witch Trials. His dissenters submitted a list of problems they had with Parris, which included a number of issues that were directly related to Williams and the "afflicted" girls.

These problems involved the dissenter's inability to attend church during the witch trials because of "the distracting and disturbing tumults and noises, made by persons under diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing, understanding, and profiting by the words preached" and also Parris' "easy and strong faith and belief of the affirmations and accusations made by those they called afflicted."

In November of 1694, Parris responded to these claims by writing an essay titled Meditations for Peace, in which he stated that God tried to teach him a lesson by allowing the witch hunt to begin in his family.

The essay also states that the fact that some people in his household were accusers (Abigail Williams and Betty Parris) and the accused (Tituba) in the Salem Witch Trials was also a personal reprimand from God.

The essay also excused Betty Parris and Abigail Williams' behavior during the trials by stating that the Devil sometimes not only afflicts people in the shape of innocent people but also deludes "the senses of the afflicted that they strongly conceive their hurt is from such persons, when indeed it is not."

As for himself, Parris acknowledged that using "one afflicted to inquire by who afflicts the others, I fear may be and has been unlawfully used, to Satan's great advantage."

These acknowledgments did nothing to help Parris or his cause. In 1697, Parris' dissenters won, and Parris was dismissed from his job as minister of the church. He left Salem Village shortly after, taking Betty Parris and, most likely, Abigail Williams with him.

Neither Abigail Williams nor Betty Parris ever apologized for their roles in the Salem Witch Trials. Ann Putnam, Jr., was the only afflicted girl who did when she submitted a written apology to the church in Salem Village in 1706.

Although Betty Parris later married and raised a family in Sudbury, Mass, there are no records indicating what happened to Abigail Williams after the Salem Witch Trials ended.

The book The Salem Witch Trials: a Day by Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege states that Williams died in 1697:

"Abigail Williams, haunted to the end, apparently died before the end of 1697, if not sooner, no older than seventeen."

Yet, there is no proof of this though, and this particular claim seems to be a vague reference to an anonymous afflicted girl mentioned in Reverend John Hale's book, A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft.

In Hale's book, published in 1697, he mentions an anonymous afflicted girl who suffered from "diabolical manifestation" until her death and died a single woman. Since only three of the girls, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mary Warren are unaccounted for in the records at the time, it is possible Hale was referring to Williams.

The location of Abigail Williams' grave is unknown.

The site of the Salem Village Parsonage, where Abigail Williams lived at the time of the Salem Witch Trials, was excavated in 1970 and is open to visitors.

OOOOO

Our next History Lesson will be about the real Andover Village, and we'll find out what was done over the next couple of centuries to restore the good names of those accused (and murdered).

And amid all this Puritan Lore, Happy Thanksgiving, and let's try to be nicer to our fellow humans than the Puritans were. 3

"See" you soon!