The young women exchanged guilty looks but said nothing.
Rose gave a dismissive wave of her hand and turned uphill. “Let’s pick up the pace and hope that Leah can catch up.” She pushed through the brambles, moving higher on the hill into a thick patch of dying brush, its branches dense and dry, snapping back like rubber bands as each of them passed.
“You need a damned machete to get through this stuff,” Cheryl muttered under her breath.
Susan stumbled, then stifled a cry.
“Shhh,” Cheryl warned.
“Hurry up,” Olivia whispered, taking her daughter’s hand, pulling her along.
A branch cracked behind them. A squirrel ran across their path, scrambling up a nearby sumac, then onto the branches of a taller tree, leaping from limb to limb in an effort to escape. Callie’s eyes followed until the squirrel disappeared into the darkness, leaving only the sound of the wind moving through the tangled trees.
When they finally reached the clearing, Callie stopped short. Her mother tugged at her hand, but the girl refused to budge.
“What now?” Rose turned back with a huff.
The light from the full moon behind the branches cast veined patterns across their faces. Just ahead of them, the crevasse dropped into dark nothingness. Callie recognized the place from the stories Rose had told her over and over. This was where it happened, the pit where the bodies were dumped after the execution.
“I’m scared,” Callie said.
“It’s okay,” Olivia answered. “There’s nothing here to be afraid of.” She tried to hurry the child to catch up with Rose, who was standing now at the rocky edge of the crevasse, waiting for them. Callie wouldn’t move.
“No,” she said, her voice shaky, almost inaudible. She gazed past her mother to Rose. “I want to go home, Auntie Rose.”
“Oh, honey.” Rose came over and leaned down, bringing herself to Callie’s eye level. In the moonlight, she could see the little girl’s tear-streaked face. “Your mother’s right, there’s nothing here to be afraid of. Not anymore.”
Callie looked doubtful.
“Is that why you were crying?”
Callie shook her head no and seemed about to offer another explanation when Olivia spoke up. “She wanted to go trick-or-treating, but I told her we had to come here instead, that you were going to kick us out of the house if we didn’t show up.”
The remark was supposed to make Rose feel guilty.
“Was that before or after the adults-only party you took her to?” Rose retorted.
Olivia removed her Mad Hatter cap but said nothing.
“It was a costume party,” Callie said, trying to help her mother. “I got to be Alice in Wonderland.”
“I can see that,” Rose said softly. “You make a very pretty Alice.”
“I want to go home now,” Callie again insisted, fresh tears forming. “Please don’t kick us out.”
Rose shot a look at Olivia. She leaned down, bringing her face close to Callie’s. “Sweetie, don’t you worry about that tonight. Tonight is the special night you and I talked about. Tonight we are going to do something important that is long overdue: We are going to say a prayer and consecrate the ground where our ancestors were hanged and buried.” She smiled tenderly. “Can you tell me the name of your ancestor?”
“Rebecca Nurse?”
“That’s right,” Rose said, patting the girl’s cheek.
“Let’s do this already,” Cheryl said.
“We can’t start until Leah gets here,” Rose said.
“Leah isn’t coming,” Olivia blurted.
“What do you mean, Leah isn’t coming? This is our last chance to do this. We’ve been planning it for months!”
Another look passed among the three younger women.
“What are you not telling me?”
“She isn’t coming, Rose,” Cheryl confirmed, swaying and worrying the tail of her dormouse costume.
“Explain yourselves,” Rose said.
“We don’t need to explain ourselves,” Olivia snapped. “You’re not our mother.”
The minute she said it, Olivia regretted the words. Rose was clearly seething.
Behind them, more branches cracked.
“What the hell?” Cheryl turned as two more squirrels scrambled out of the brush, one running directly across Susan’s foot, causing the March Hare to shriek as the creature went scrambling up a nearby elm.
It was colder here in the clearing, and Callie started to shake. Rose removed her dark jacket and draped it around the girl’s shoulders, creating a long cape over the blue dress and white pinafore.
“Can we just get on with it?” Olivia asked. “I’ve got to get her home.”
Rose considered. “For the child, yes.”
The women gathered, forming a circle at the edge of the crevasse, just as they had practiced. Rose raised her arms to the heavens and cleared her throat. “Mother Mary, we know our prayer circle is not complete, but we pray that our intention and our strength will overcome any absence. Hallow this ground, dear Mother, in the name of our five ancestors who died here on July nineteenth, 1692. Bless it for all nineteen poor souls who were hanged that terrible year and for the one pressed to death. All innocent victims of government-sanctioned murder. Mary, in your name and in the name of your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, bless the souls of our faithful departed.” She fingered the first petal of her old wooden rosary, the one with a carved rose instead of a cross. “Elizabeth Howe,” she said, turning to Susan and moving her fingers to the second petal.
“Susannah Martin,” Susan said. In the moonlight, her skin looked even paler than usual.
Everyone turned to Cheryl.
“Sarah Wildes,” Cheryl said as Rose touched the third petal of her rosary and then moved onto the fourth as Olivia and her daughter, still holding hands, spoke in unison, with Rose joining the chorus. “Rebecca Nurse.”
Rose moved her fingers to the fifth and final petal. Hearing a whisper of words on the wind, Callie spun around, but there was no one there. Rose looked around as if she had heard something as well. Then, the wind stilled and the world went silent as Rose spoke the name of the final ancestor: “And Sarah Good.”
“Amen,” the women chorused. Rose began to chant, an old Irish prayer with a Celtic melody. It hung in the air and moved among the knotted trees that surrounded the clearing, seeming to untangle their branches as it passed. For a moment, everything was suspended in time and ether. Callie looked up and saw a vision of the hanging tree that had not been there just moments before, the one Rose had told her stories about. She saw the victims left dangling from the limbs where they were executed, displayed for all to see, a gruesome warning, the wages of sin. She stared as, one by one, their bodies were finally cut down and dropped into the pit below, each falling slowly, as if through water. She closed her eyes tight to block out the vivid image her imagination had conjured.
“Let us say the Lord’s Prayer now,” intoned Rose.