Once the last witch had crossed the road on the way up to Gallows Hill Park, Rafferty’s escort duties were over. He circled the city, checking on the rental cops and mounted police. A weird energy. He noticed that the Choate memorial statue at the corner of Essex and Boston Streets sported toilet paper streamers—nothing new or particularly weird there. Costumed children roamed more freely here, mostly without their parents: the little ones sugared up and bouncing, the older kids just looking for trouble. He spotted a few teens hanging out in the parking lot of an auto body shop on Boston Street. They scattered when they saw him coming—probably a drug deal. There’d been a lot of that lately in this area. He hoped the new senior center they were going to build here would turn the neighborhood around. That lot had been vacant too long.
He U-turned into the parking lot of the Dairy Witch and came back around when he got the call that there was some kind of disturbance in the Walgreens parking lot a few doors down. “I’ve got it,” he said, thinking it was probably the same kids. But as he pulled into the lot, the kids were nowhere to be seen. He drove around back and spotted the hearse parked at the side of Proctor’s Ledge. Hearse tours were big business in Salem; featured venues included everything from haunted houses to the apartment building over on Lafayette Street where the Boston Strangler had killed his only North Shore victim back in the early sixties. Salem entrepreneurs would go to any length to frighten the tourists, especially on Halloween, though the ghostly Fright Tours logo hand-painted on the side of the hearse looked far more like Casper than Jacob Marley.
Unless the neighbors had a legitimate complaint, the police did little to discourage the fright tours or anything that made a dollar for the people who relied on Halloween to make a living. But this wasn’t public property, it was private, and the manager of Walgreens as well as the neighbors up the hill resented the invasion of tourists. Especially lately, as the site of 1989’s still-unsolved murders had become Salem’s most popular tour.
He could see the candles from here. He recognized the voice of a local talent, someone they’d nicknamed Actor Bob, who’d made enough money with a voice-over commercial selling burials at sea to buy himself the old hearse and outfit it with cushy cutaway coffin seats lined with satin. Tonight, Actor Bob’s baritone was far less comforting than his oceanic funereal voice. Tonight his voice was raspy, haunted.
“And now we come to Proctor’s Ledge. Though some will tell you otherwise, many believe this place, not Gallows Hill, is where Salem executed nineteen accused witches back in 1692. This is also the place where, back on Halloween in 1989, three beautiful young women were brutally murdered: Olivia Cahill, Cheryl Cassella, and Susan Symms, whose ghostly white hair and skin were cut from her body to be used for some kind of Satanic ritual.”
The crowd murmured, shocked.
Rafferty had heard Actor Bob lead the tour on several occasions. He always played to the crowd, changing and embellishing the story for effect, but this last part had been added recently—and embellished beyond belief.
“Remember their names. And remember the nickname the townspeople gave them. These young women were so beautiful and so bewitching, everyone called them the Goddesses.”
More murmurs from the crowd.
“Neighbors on Boston Street and along the North River could hear their screams that night, but no one called for help until the next morning. It was as if a spell had been cast across the entire city of Salem, and no one could break it. For what the girls were doing that Halloween had been forbidden, way back in 1692. They were trying to consecrate the mass grave of their ancestors, five of the women who had been executed during that dark time—for signing the devil’s book.”
Bob paused again.
“The ritual the Goddesses were performing that Halloween night in 1989 had been against Puritan law in 1692. To consecrate the ground where one of the Salem witches was buried was once an offense punishable by death. Which, ironically, is exactly what happened to those beautiful young women in 1989. Someone, or something, decided to punish them.
“Strangely, the bodies of all those executed in 1692 had disappeared shortly after the hangings, never to be found again. This is one of Salem’s greatest mysteries. But the bodies of the Goddesses were left for all to see. Their throats were slashed, their corpses pushed into the same mass grave where their ancestors had once been buried.”
Another lie, Rafferty thought. The bodies of the Goddesses had never been put on display. Where did Bob come up with this nonsense?
“There were only two survivors that night in 1989, a middle-aged woman and a young girl. The woman was found in Broad Street Cemetery, covered with the blood of the victims, ranting about the unearthly creature who, she claimed, had killed the girls. Most think the woman was the guilty one. A once-respected historian and scholar, she lost her mind that night and has never recovered. To this day, you can see her wandering the streets of Salem, predicting the death of everyone she meets. She has never been charged. No one could ever prove who the guilty party really was. Some think it was the crazy woman. Others believe the killer is a far more sinister creature, a screaming spirit of ancient powers who returns every Halloween to claim new victims.”
On cue, a high-pitched scream pierced the air just behind Rafferty.
The group gasped.
Rafferty spun around in time to see Actor Bob’s accomplice run from the woods. “You’d better run,” Rafferty said under his breath. He pushed through the brambles, swearing as a branch snapped back, slapping him on the side of his face.
“What about the little girl?” one of the tourists asked. “What happened to her?”
“No one knows,” Bob replied, pausing once more for effect. “The little girl disappeared shortly after the murders. No one has seen or heard from her since.”
At the sound of Rafferty’s uncontrolled groan, the now terrified tourists reeled around. Even Actor Bob held his breath until he spotted Rafferty coming through the brambles.
“Are we just about done?” Rafferty asked. “Or is there more to this ridiculous story you’re trying to sell these poor people? Bob, you know you’re not allowed to do this here.”
Rafferty hated that the still-unsolved case had become fodder for fright tours and tourist dollars, taking on mythical and paranormal proportions and embellished with exaggerated details that simply weren’t true. The murders had taken place years before he arrived in Salem, but, to Rafferty’s mind, the lack of closure was a stain on the police department that he now ran.
Rafferty escorted the tourists back to the hearse, then led the car out of the parking lot and onto Boston Street, turning left at the intersection and continuing downtown to the far end of Essex Street, which was party central.