Chapter Two

"A kind woman once told me the problem with knowing things is that you can never unknow them." - Anne Hale

When I reached full maturity and it had become my eighteenth year, my father approached me with the horrifying truth. Elizabeth Hale was not my true mother. She had raised me since infancy, but my real mother was in fact the Countess Marburg, a powerful and ancient witch. My father, too, was a witch. The Countess had chosen my father to sire her offspring and to raise and protect me, her only female heir. I was a child of one year old when we came to live in Salem. I was just learning to walk as we settled into our new home.

For the first few years of my life, I came into my powers with a great intensity. I was able to move objects with just the determination of own my mind. Every day, my father worked with me in a secret room of our house, teaching me skills that until I learned the truth, I had long forgotten.

Now that I had become a young woman, my father showed me the secret, attic room. When he spoke of the past, I did not want to believe him. How could it be true? My mother wasn't really my mother? I was born of a witch?!

I couldn't wrap my mind around what my father was telling me. He practiced the dark arts? And I was a witch as well?!

It couldn't be true! I was a good person! I loved animals and nature and those sweet children at the orphanage! I was NOT a witch! I couldnot be!

I was everything good!

"No! No!" I screamed. "It's not true! I am not a witch! I am not!"

"Anne, calm down. I feared you would react this way," my father said as he tried to console me.

"You should have told her years ago, John," said Elizabeth, the woman whom I had just learned had not given birth to me. She had joined us in the secret room which was located in the attic of our house. "All of this; it is far too much for her to handle."

"Are you a witch, too?" I screamed at her.

"No, I am not. Anne, I love you - just as much as if you were my child..."

I wasn't listening. They had lied to me! They had lied to me ALL of my life! I was angry and it felt as if my head were about to explode. It was getting suffocatingly hot within the room. It smelled like something was smouldering!

"I hate you!" I screamed at my parents. "I hate you both and I wish you were dead!"

Suddenly then as I wished it was so, something horrific began to happen. My mother's head caved in as if it had been squashed by a brutal, giant fist. She made a sound like a scared, wounded animal as blood rushed from her skull and she crumpled to the floor.

I then turned my attention onto my father. He looked petrified. "Don't do it, Anne. I am your father!" I heard him begging. "Don't! Don't..."

But it was too late. My rage was volatile and it was fatal. He suddenly flew backward at a great velocity. He hit the wall with a sickening crunch. Blood splattered upon the wall directly behind my father's head.

My parents were dead and I was responsible. I fell to the floor, sobbing in anguish. How could I have committed such a terrible act of brutality and I had not even touched them?! What sort of dark forces were raging inside me?!

For the longest time, I lay upon the floor, weeping. It was hours later that I stood up slowly, determined to clean up the mess. It took a great deal of scrubbing to get all the crimson stains off of the wooden floor and walls. Ohhh what would I do with the bodies?

It couldn't be true, could it?! I couldn't be a witch and a killer!

I finally made up my mind. I buried the bodies in the cellar. I decided I would tell everyone my parents had gone to Boston. No one had to know the horrible truth and I would go on with my life as usual. I loved my parents and I missed them, but yet they were not without blame. They had LIED to me! They had kept secrets - terrible secrets-and because of what they done, it had unleashed powers within me which frightened me to the innermost core of my being.

I had almost set the house on fire that night during my outburst. I needed to get control of the rage that was seething inside me like a living thing. And still, throughout it all, I just didn't want to believe it. Me - a witch? I was too good. I was too full of light and love. I was ME - not a witch! I wanted to prove it was untrue, somehow!

I went to the one person I knew could help me in my pursuit of finding out the truth. I ended up at Cotton Mather's, knocking upon his door in the middle of the night, wearing nothing more than my long, thin nightgown.

"Anne, what is wrong?" he asked in concern. I could tell he had been drinking. I could smell the scent of the potent liquid upon his breath as he leaned into me, staring into my eyes.

"Please, Cotton - Reverend Mather, you have to help me," I pleaded.

"Help you with what?" he said as he ushered me inside. His living quarters were a chaotic mess of countless books that had been written about the subject of battling witchcraft, strewn clothing, and half empty bottles of potent amber spirits.

"I think I might be... I might be a-a witch..."

"A what?"

He sobered up a bit, hearing my words although they were barely audible. "Anne, not you. You could never be a witch."

"I need you to examine me," I insisted. "Look for the mark. The witch's mark. Please."

I was pleading as I began to undo the laces of my nightgown. His eyes got huge. He knew then that I was serious and just what he needed to do.

"Go lie down on the bed," I heard him say. His words were gentle, but I was trembling from head to toe, scared of what he might find.

He was Increase Mather's son. If anyone could locate a witch's mark upon my flesh, it would be him.

"I have to examine you. Everywhere," he said as he came to stand over me. I lay upon his bed as I quietly shut my eyes.

I was barely breathing as it would soon be the moment of truth.