Chapter 32

William Underwood came in a few minutes later. Harold Avery and the others told him what they found at Rebecca’s house. He listened, shaking his head as they spoke.

“When she would appear on the Common, we all knew she had lost her mind.”

Constable Eaton stood. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “We will have to go soon.” He peeked out the window. “The people are there.”

The five men enlisted by Reverend Churchill left, walking toward the Common. They stayed together, separate from the rest.

Avery turned to Constable Eaton. “I wish to accompany her.”

Eaton agreed. “You will also stay, Reverend?”

“I will,” Churchill said.

“Then I will bring her out.”

He went to the back. A minute later, he and Mary appeared, and he offered her a seat. She took it and looked up at the men.

“It will be soon?” she asked.

“A half an hour,” Eaton replied.

She dropped her eyes to the floor. Though frightened, she also focused on what she must do, and knew she had to do it at the exact moment. Too soon and it would not work. If she missed the precise instant, she would be dead.

“You are all good men,” she said, voice soft. “I am pleased you will be with me.”

“I truly regret not being able to give you rest in our cemetery,” Reverend Churchill answered. “Nor can I provide you a Christian funeral.”

“You follow our teachings,” she said.

“I do.”

“Then you are without guilt. I will have it.” She looked up at them. “If not now, then later.”

“When the court clears your name,” Churchill replied.

“Regardless of whether they clear me.”

Constable Eaton stepped forward. “It is time.”

Mary stood and squared her shoulders.

“I must tie your hands,” he said.

“Of course.”

He tied her hands behind her back, and he asked, “Is the rope too tight?”

“Not as tight as what is to come,” she said.

They went out the door. Across the rutted dirt road sat the big, oval shaped Common. The crowd gathered, separated into two groups. There were a few, just a handful, clustered together. They were the ones eager to see the hanging.

The others, most of the town, comprised people hoping for a miracle that would stop it and save Mary. Some were praying, asking God to intervene.

Constable Eaton led Mary and the others across the road and onto the Common. The spectators became silent, watching the condemned woman make her way toward them.

When they arrived beneath a large maple tree, they stopped. For a moment, Eaton was unsure how to proceed. He looked at Underwood, who whispered instructions.

While Constable Eaton read the charges and the order of execution, Mary looked up at the noose above her head and at the crowd. She saw the few who seemed crazed with excitement. The rest looked sad. Some women had tears in their eyes.

When Eaton finished, Reverend Churchill stepped forward and asked Mary if she would pray with him. She agreed and everyone lowered their heads. The Bible readings and prayers took nearly ten minutes.

Then, William Underwood grabbed the noose and pulled it low. He then began to slip a sack over Mary’s head. There is no reason to mention the rest. I told it at the beginning. The men raised her by the neck upward, and the execution began.

As she strangled, Mary struggled to stay focused. It was difficult, more difficult than she anticipated, and twice she almost lost concentration. A body fighting to live is a powerful force. Near the end, it took enormous concentration and willpower to enable her to make the leap at the precise moment of death.

At the instant she felt herself going, Mary stepped onto the path. The body died, but it, too, was in between. It would not decay.

A few days later, when the men brought her to the church, it was the last time anyone saw her. She lay, uncorrupted, in the wood coffin through the centuries.

“Until Frank found you,” Gail said.

“Until Frank came to Danielsford,” Mary nodded. She turned to look at him. “Now, I’m sure you have questions.”

He smiled and nodded. “The path.”

She rolled her eyes and flicked a quick glance at Marjorie. Going to the path was difficult, if not impossible, to explain. It was a place, they knew, no one who could not go there would ever understand.

Marjorie caught the look, and she nodded. Holding up her hand, she spent a minute trying to put her thoughts in order. What could she say that they had not said to him several times?

“Okay,” she said. “One question at a time.”

Frank began. “It doesn’t sound as easy to go there as you said before.”

“We told you. It isn’t. The process is difficult. In fact, it’s so difficult I’m surprised at the number of us today who managed it.”

“Dying before you can do it?” he asked.

“Yes, and the step, or jump, however you describe it, must be at the exact moment of death.”

“So,” Gail said, “You were dying when you went there.”

“I was,” Marjorie said. “We all die, Gail. It’s part of, well, life.”

“You said you were about thirty?”

“When I passed, I was thirty, of what we know today as cholera.”

Mary looked surprised and stared at Marjorie. “Of cholera? You were most fortunate to even be aware enough to take the step.”

“I think so,” Marjorie said. “I was awake to the end, and very ill.”

“Making the transition is the most difficult part,” Mary said. “Once we are between the worlds, we are free to move forward as far as the future exists, or backward.”

“But you can’t go beyond now,” Gail said.

“No,” Marjorie said. “There is no place to go. There is nothing beyond this moment in time. We are making the future.”

“How do you know the future isn’t already there?” Frank asked.

Mary and Marjorie stared at him, then shot glances at each other.

“Frank.” Marjorie’s voice was patient, as if speaking to a child. “We came here, to the end. If there was anything beyond, don’t you think we would know?”

“So,” Gail said, “these people saying the future already exists, all planned out, are wrong.”

“We are making the future,” Marjorie said. “Ahead of us a minute, or an hour, day, or a century is nothing. It’s empty until we create it.”

“Is there an end?”

“I don’t know,” Marjorie said. “Everything on this plane ends. I’m sure time is no different. Don’t confuse time with the next world, which is eternal. Time, death, the end of existence, are all mortal concepts, and unique just to this world, or plane, however you wish to call it.”

“I remember you telling me that before,” Frank said. “Time doesn’t exist in the next world.”

“A century is the snap of a finger,” Mary said. “We have said and said you will never fathom it, so stop trying.”

Gail nodded as if she understood. The look on Frank’s face showed he didn’t and wanted to continue to try.

“You were in the coffin,” Gail said. “Danielsford lasted another two or three more years after the hanging, but your body stayed the same.”

“I’d like to hear how that worked,” Marjorie said. “I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to ask.”

“Danielsford lasted just a few more years, until the storm destroyed it,” Mary said. “As for my body, it was in the coffin but also in between worlds, with me.”

“How?” Marjorie asked. “I traveled the path, but never heard of a physical body being there.”

Mary looked frustrated. “I do not know if I can explain. My body was in the church and a part of me remained with it. When the storm destroyed the church, the coffin went as well. After, I and my body began appearing every three years with the town.”

“Your curse trapped you with the town?” Gail asked. She seemed to have no problem with Mary’s explanation.

“Not exactly, but I suppose in a way you’re correct. I was there until the right person came along to give me the service and burial I desired.”

“And you knew it was Frank.”

“I did not know who it would be. When Frank came into the church, even not looking in the coffin or approaching it, he lifted the curse. Then I knew he was the one.”

A light went on in Gail’s eyes. “Rebecca confronted him on the steps.”

“She sure did,” Frank said.

“And she wanted you to open the coffin to free Mary.”

“Right.” Frank nodded.

“She was trying to help.” Gail sounded mystified. “She thought he had to open the coffin.”

“That’s what she wanted. I never thought of it that way,” Frank said.

Mary looked surprised. “I think you’re right. Even insane, some part of her wanted to help me.”

“So,” Gail continued, “she wasn’t all bad.”

“No, she was not all bad,” Mary replied. “Some of the Rebecca I knew had to remain.”

“It’s the way she demanded I open it,” Frank said.

“It was the insanity talking,” Marjorie said.

“Well,” Frank said, “she scared me, and when she began killing, that cinched it.”

“And you faced her right here, in Woodstock,” Gail said.

“I had to stand up to her or keep running,” Frank replied. “It was time to end it, but it turned out I had to go back to Massachusetts and find the site of Danielsford.”

“And you won,” Gail said.

“We won, the three of us who were there. I didn’t do it alone.”

Gail looked at Mary. “The path. Is it really a pathway with, like doors to different places?”

Mary smiled at Gail and waved her hand toward Frank. “I expected him to have all the questions. I found it the easiest way to describe the place between here and eternity.”

“Time ceases,” Marjorie said. “Whether you’re there a hundred or three hundred years, it’s the blink of an eye. I don’t know that I can tell about it any better. The path is like a street or walkway. You move along it, and there are openings into eternal worlds. Depending on how you have lived your life, God grants you entrance to them, and you can see into all of them, and you can visit the future as it’s made.”

“Even hell?” Gail asked.

“To hell, but not into hell,” Mary said. “And believe me, should you see what we have witnessed, you would strive to live the saintliest life you could.”

“There are no words to describe the suffering, the torture, the agony the condemned experience,” Marjorie added.

“Further along is an eternity much like this,” Mary said. “People must work, raise families, do what people do here every day. But their destiny is to do it forever. It isn’t punishment, but neither is it the reward we all seek.”

“It doesn’t change or improve?” Frank wondered.

“No, it never advances,” Marjorie said.

“I get that,” Gail said. “The next place would be a little better, and the next still better until you get to Heaven. How does it work for jumping from one era to the next, like you came from 1693 to now?”

“We already said, you advance through time. Besides the reward or punishment,” Mary said, “those of us with the gift can also visit different eras this world has experienced. I cannot go into more detail. Some things I don’t know, and others I cannot explain.”

“Someday you may visit for yourself,” Marjorie said. “By then you’ll have more of an idea what we’re talking about.”

“I’ll never be able to,” Frank said.

“No,” Mary said. “You can never know it.”

“You use a computer, and you make it work. Can you write the programs to make it work?” Marjorie asked.

“No,” Frank said.

“Neither did we create the path,” she continued. “They taught us about it, and many other things. They never said how it works.”

“Do witches today know about it?” Gail asked.

Mary and Marjorie looked at each other. Marjorie nodded.

“Those who came from the past, obviously, will know,” she said. “I don’t know about the others. There are some who claim to have knowledge passed from generation to generation. There are others who claim to be witches, but I’m not sure.”

“I doubt they have all the knowledge we possess,” Mary said, “just as I’m sure we never learned all the secrets from our ancestors. There are always things lost.”

“Let’s say maybe some do and others don’t,” Marjorie finished. “I want to add something else. There are people who made the jump scattered through the ages. They aren’t all here.”

“From the Witch Trial days?” Gail asked.

“From millennia ago. Witchcraft didn’t start in the Colony. There were witches during the time of Rome and from the beginning of humanity.”

“The past still exists,” Frank said.

“Think of dimensions,” Marjorie said. “They’re worlds similar to ours. We might be sitting on a railroad track, or in the center of a volcano, in another dimension.”

Frank sat back, lost in thought. It was too much for him to comprehend. He had read of other dimensions and remembered a TV show discussing the possibility. Now, he was listening to two women who visited them.

Mary watched him. “What is it, Frank?’

“I was thinking of religion. Jesus said Heaven was all around us.”

“He did, and He explained it very well. Every dimension is here, invisible to us. But it isn’t a religious concept. It’s the universe, and how it works,” Marjorie said.

“We are Christians,” Mary said. “Jesus was speaking to people two thousand years ago, who thought the world ended at the horizon. His teachings and parables mirror the time. Yet, if you read His words, simple though they are, they are correct.”

“If He lived today, I’m sure He would use modern terms,” Marjorie added.

“There are some today calling it a religion,” Frank said. “Witchcraft, I mean.”

“They are free to call it what they wish,” Marjorie said. “It never was and it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter so far as I’m concerned.”

Mary stood. “It’s past two in the morning. I’ve had enough of the past, the path, all of it for now. Tomorrow is another day. Gail, you can stay?”

“Sure,” Gail replied.

“Good. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow. Or we won’t. It depends on how I feel.”