Page 1 of The Witch

PROLOGUE

1692

CAROLINE

I always knew I would die young.

My mother perished in the throes of childbirth. After several losses, she was overjoyed to give my father an heir at last. She labored three days, but by the time she birthed a baby girl, her life’s blood had drenched the sheets of the bed. She was but twenty years old.

My care was henceforth entrusted to my mother’s elder sister, Prudence, a sturdy woman who had not a husband of her own. I remember Prudence quite fondly, but when I was seven years old, she was seized by a prolonged fever, and on the fifth day of the illness, her breathing ceased. She was nine and twenty years old.

By then, I had grown old enough to tend to myself and help with household duties. My father provided cornmeal and flour and a roof over my head and later arranged my union to an upstanding merchant. One year hence, my father developed a dreadful cough, followed by a fever, and passed soon after. He was eight and thirty years old, although every hair on his head had already turned to gray.

I cannot name one member of my family who lived beyond the age of forty.

I never planned to have wrinkles or age spots. If my hair turned gray, it would only be because it was prematurely so. It was a fate that I accepted and embraced.

But I never expected to be slaughtered in Town Square. And certainly not for being a witch.

1

PRESENT DAY

JULIA

I believe in ghosts.

I’m in good company. According to a study I read, 41 percent of all people believe in paranormal phenomena. We might not be the majority, but we are a very sizable minority.

Still—and I mean this with absolutely no offense to the 41 percent of the population that thinks ghosts are real—I am not a typical “believer.” I’ve always been an extremely logical person; I was a math tutor, for God’s sake. Even when I was a little kid, I told my friends that there was no way a big man in a red coat was coming down the chimney to deliver us presents. It’s obviously our parents, you guys.

And if not for something that happened to me a long time ago, in this very spot, I’d be in that 59 percent who thinks ghosts are a big load of hooey.

This past experience—of which I never speak—at least partially explains why I’ve been sitting in my car for the last twenty minutes, outside my grandmother’s house in a small town in northern Massachusetts called Woodhaven. Actually, the house is less of a house and more of an estate. It even has a name: Pemberton.

Once upon a time, I said the words I am never setting foot in Pemberton ever again. Never ever.

And yet here I am, after all these years, moving in. Or at least, I will if I can work up the nerve to get out of my Ford.

The house was built on the property in 1660. It’s one of the oldest houses in the entire country, so large that Gram could never keep up with cleaning it, even when she was young, so that the far corners grew cobwebs.

My father—her son—would drive us there twice a year when I was growing up. At first, I loved it, but then something changed. By the time I was a teenager, I would sit in the back seat sullenly, debating if I should make a run for it at every red light.

Now I’m attempting to summon the courage to knock on the door. My hands, gripping the steering wheel, are visibly shaking. Am I embarrassed that I am twenty-seven years old and still scared of my grandmother’s creaky old house? A little. But sooner or later, I’ve got to get out of the damn car.

From the driver’s seat, I’ve got a vantage point of the entire length of the house. Two stories, and an attic on top. I can just barely make out one of the windows of the attic, and for a split second, I spy a flash of peacock-blue.

Well, at least someone is home.

I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. After another moment, I climb out of my Ford and grab my two pieces of luggage from the trunk. I put some of my stuff in storage after I lost my apartment in Manhattan, but I tossed most of it. I had a habit of snatching furniture from the free list on Craigslist and sometimes from the curb, so nothing was worth hanging on to.

I drag one piece of rolling luggage, and a duffel bag is slung on my shoulder as I make my way down the walkway to the front door. The grass around the cobblestones has become overgrown, snaking into the path to the door, and I remind myself to give it a trim while I’m here. I’m making a mental note of all the chores I’ll need to do to earn my keep. Gram’s sister Ethel is staying with her now, but both of them are in their eighties, and I assume they’ll appreciate the help.

That thought lifts my spirits. I have always felt guilty that I haven’t spent more time with my grandmother since…well, that incident. I call her on the phone, but I never, ever come to Pemberton for visits. She’s declined recently, and she won’t be around much longer. She needs me, and this is a chance to feel useful again. And it just so happens that I’m currently homeless, so it’s all worked out.

The front door to the house is imposingly large, as if the home were built for a giant, which seems strange since people were typically much shorter back in the seventeenth century. It’s made of sturdy chestnut wood, but the most remarkable thing about the door to Pemberton is the knocker, which was part of the original construction of the house. It’s a black metal knocker molded into the image of a bear’s head, its mouth wide-open and its teeth bared.

That knocker used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid. I was certain that bear was going to leap right off the door and gobble me up in one bite.