The fireworks had ended, and the witches were gone. Rose Whelan settled her cart under the only oak left standing at the top of Gallows Hill, not far from the pavilion, with its caving roof and urine stench. The banshee music was in her ears tonight, and death was everywhere. Each fall, the leaves looked exhausted before they began to reveal the true colors that lay beneath their green masks. Every year, as they felt fall’s inescapable death pull, they turned the reds and oranges and yellows that drew tourists to New England. The maples, whose leaves were always the first to turn, were naked now, their webbed branches sweeping the dark sky like witches’ brooms. Only the oaks still held their scarlet flames.
Rose was exhausted, too. She greeted the tree as she sat down under it. Then she spoke to the pigeons; she was simply going to join them for the one night, she explained. Soon, she was drifting off, moving in and out of consciousness, dreaming a recurring nightmare from her stay at the state hospital. In it, the witches’ hanging tree was chopped down, and then its massive trunk was floated along the North River toward open ocean, like a Viking ship carrying the souls of the dead to Valhalla. The dream woke her up, as it did every time she had it. Though she’d been dozing for only a short while, it took her a moment to get her bearings. It was the cooing of the pigeons that reminded her: Gallows Hill, a misleadingly named park that had nothing to do with what really happened here.
“If it weren’t for me,” Rose told the birds, “historians would still claim Salem built a gallows to execute them. On this very spot.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t be living here if they had. You wouldn’t build your nests where any such thing had happened, would you? Of course not.”
The hanging spot, on Proctor’s Ledge, sat unmarked, abandoned, and overgrown next to the Walgreens parking lot just below. The hanging tree, on which the condemned had been executed, had vanished long ago, and even the crevasse that had served as their mass grave was barely visible now, but Rose could still feel it there, unsanctified and cursing the whole area with bad luck. The Great Salem Fire had started right across the street in 1914, destroying hundreds of houses and leaving half the population homeless. To this day, there was crime, violence, and a darkness the neighborhood couldn’t shake. The only way to stop it was to finish the blessing they had started that night on Proctor’s Ledge, the night her girls were murdered.
Rose had been wrong that night, taking the girls up there. Not because the place didn’t need to be consecrated, but because the remains of the executed from 1692 were no longer there. Shortly after the hysteria ended, the bodies had begun to disappear from the crevasse into which they had been thrown. Two of the bodies had been taken by their families and buried properly, but the remains of the others executed that dark year had simply vanished. What in the world had happened to them?
“Find the hanging tree, and you will solve the mystery,” the oak trees had told Rose over and over, and she had come to believe them. “Find the tree and finish the blessing. For it is not just the wrongly executed who need God’s mercy, but the tree itself for the part it was forced to play.”
Rose had listened carefully when the trees began to speak. The oaks had saved her that horrible night in 1989, and she owed them a debt of gratitude. Finding the hanging tree had become Rose’s sole purpose in life.
The birds appeared unimpressed, and Rose closed her eyes again, sighing. “There was a hanging tree,” she mumbled, her speech slowing as she grew sleepier. “That is true. Down there.” She pointed toward Proctor’s Ledge. Rose hadn’t been back to the spot since that night. This was as close as she dared get.
“The hanging tree disappeared…everything disappeared. The tree, the remains of the nineteen people they executed as witches, and even the young women I used to know.” Rose began to doze. “You’ll disappear one day, too,” she murmured to the birds, her voice slowing even more. “You don’t know that, but it’s true. Everything disappears. The banshee takes them all…” Her head dropped to her chest, and she became silent.
“Hey, grandma, the witches all went home.”
Rose’s eyes snapped open. There were three boys standing too close in front of her. The one who’d spoken couldn’t be more than fifteen. Low-riding baggy jeans and heavy boots made him look younger than the OG tattoo on his arm.
“I’m not a witch.”
He moved even closer, smirking, his blue eyes in stark contrast to the dark look he focused on Rose. “I know exactly who you are. And I know what you did.”
“Keep your distance from me,” Rose warned.
“Good idea,” he said, fanning his face. “You got a real stink there, grandma. When’s the last time you took a shower?”
“Go home,” the second kid said, shoving her.
“She doesn’t have a home, do you, grandma?” OG laughed.
“Keep your hands off me,” Rose said, pressing her back against the tree, hearing her pulse in her ears. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be,” the second kid said, laughing.
“You’re the one who should be afraid,” Rose countered.
“Yeah? Why’s that?” the second kid taunted. “You planning to kill me the same way you killed the rest of them? By screaming?”
“Screaming?” OG started to laugh. “She didn’t kill them by screaming. That’s just what she told the cops. She slashed their throats.”
“I know,” the second kid said.
“I don’t want to kill anyone.” Rose hoped she wouldn’t have to. She thought of Olivia, Susan, and Cheryl.
“She’s crazy,” the third kid said. “Let’s go.”
Rose liked this one. His eyes were still soft. She spoke directly to him. “It’s her you have to be afraid of. Not me.”
“Who?” Soft Eyes asked, looking around.
She turned back to OG. “She could kill you right now and no one could stop her.”
“Did you hear that? She said she could kill me.” OG pulled a knife out of his pocket. “Seems like I’m the one holding the blade tonight. Be afraid, grandma. Be very afraid.” With a quick slash, he drew the dull side of the blade across her neck.
Rose scrambled to her feet.
“I didn’t say you could leave,” OG said.
“He did.” Soft Eyes turned to the second kid. “He told her to go.”
“Well, I didn’t,” OG said. “Sit back down.” He pushed hard, slamming her back against the tree, knocking the wind out of her.
“You’re the one who needs to sit down,” Rose choked. “If you don’t, you’re going to die.”
OG laughed. “How’s that?”
“You’re in mortal danger. From the banshee.”
“The What-she? Bee-she?” Soft Eyes said.