In the following days, they let him know repeatedly that they were proud of him. They couldn’t understand his reticence to talk to reporters, or even to accept thanks. He had surely saved a life.
But he had also seen the other girl. The one who hadn’t been saved.
He was also embarrassed. He didn’t want to be hailed as a hero. He wasn’t. A dead man had come to him and told him what to do. The dead man was a hero, but it was hard for a dead man to accept any acclaim. And it was hard for Jon to accept what he’d seen.
Jon lay awake, night after night, wondering if he had really seen the man in Puritan clothes, if he’d been mistaken, if it had been an actor.
Years later, he again met the man who had helped him. The dead man.
By then, Jon was looking at sports scholarships to just about any college he might want to attend. And it wasn’t anywhere near Essex Street, the cemetery, a museum, or the memorial. He had just spent a good day at Dead Horse Beach with friends, and was zipping up his backpack when he heard a voice.
An unmistakable voice.
“You’ll be heading out soon, eh, son? Leaving this place.”
Jon turned around slowly. He was dressed in the same Puritan garb, a harsh-looking man of about forty-five. Not harsh; maybe weathered was a better way to describe him.
“No,” Jon said simply. “You’re not... You’re no Puritan. I’m not hearing a thou, or a thee. You’re an actor, and why you chose to make me crazy—”
“I was a Puritan. I’ve been walking these streets for...well, a very long time,” the man said. “And why I haunt you? Haunting matters sometimes. We saved a life that day. Be thankful for your gift. It’s rare.”
“What gift?”
“You see the dead.”
Jon shook his head. “I’ve seen you. I don’t see the dead. And whoever or whatever you are—”
“Obadiah Jones,” the man said. “Feel free to look me up. Everyone remembers those who were hanged, and old Giles Corey, who was pressed to death. They forget how many were arrested—how many died in jail, how many were ruined for life, who went on to die, their bodies ravaged with disease and malnutrition from imprisonment. I died in prison, but I was never convicted, so I lie in holy ground. And I watch, and I do my best to see that such horrible injustice never comes to this place again.”
Jon stood still. His friends were still out on the sand. He waved to them and forced a smile.
“This can’t be real,” he murmured.
“Open your heart and soul, my dear young fellow—open to the possibilities of this world. Use your talent. Use your gift. You have the rare ability to listen and see, and maybe not change the world, but maybe change the world for some.”
“I...”
“You’ll know what to do,” the man said. He walked away, disappearing into the sun and sky.
It couldn’t be real.
But as Jon watched him go, he knew that the man—apparition, ghost, whatever—had certainly changed one life forever.
Jon’s own.
One
Kylie Connelly could feel it.
First, the terror.
Then the knife, slicing into her flesh, slamming into her bone. It was agony. As the blade rose and fell, again and again, she began to feel a strange numbness, the unbearable pain lessening, fading, the light before her eyes...
But her mind fought the vision. She couldn’t remember exactly where she was, what she was doing, how she was seeing this...
She had to see and feel something else: the past, the future, anything. This place, her friends, the laughter that had come before.
As if in a little bubble, she could see the immediate past; her friend, Corrine Rossello, third up with the hypnotist for their bizarre bachelorette party. Like a small screen before her eyes, she could again envision what she’d seen. Corrine, happy as a lark. Under hypnosis and enjoying her beautiful vision.
“I’m walking... I’m walking along, and the day is bright. I’m in a park... I can feel my dress, I believe it’s satin, and it makes a delicate little swishing sound when I move. And in front of me... I see a carriage,” Corrine said in the bubble of Kylie’s memory. “It’s a beautiful carriage, and there’s a man who steps from it, but not before he’s assisted by a footman in a truly regal costume. And then...he has his hand stretched out to me. He’s so good-looking, gorgeous actually, and he’s waiting for me. I start to hurry... A maid is following me, she’s my maid, but we’re very good friends, and she’s happy!”
Corrine was a beautiful young woman with raven-dark hair, broad cheeks and deep brown eyes. She looked like she was in rapture, lying on the hypnotist’s couch, her head and shoulders on a bed of pillows...
No. Kylie knew that she was now the one lying on the couch.
But the bubble of the memory fell back into place. Corrine’s eyes were closed; she had consumed her tea—something that helped with regression, or so the hypnotist had told them—and she was smiling as she recalled her former life.
“Yes. You’re making us see you,” declared the hypnotist, Dr. Sayers. “You, as you were. I believe it’s Hyde Park. And you are going to the man you love. Your husband, I believe, and he’s...he’s a duke!”
Kylie had to keep seeing this recent past, Corrine’s turn on the couch, with the hypnotist. It was something she could cling to as she fought against...
The knife.
No! Something inside her screamed, fought the new images that were not the past, but now.
Fight it, fight it, fight it!
Kylie saw the little bubble-movie of the recent past again. Sighs and murmurs of amazement and pleasure went around the little group who had come to Dr. Sayers, a psychologist/hypnotist who specialized in past-life regression. Her friends were enchanted.
But Kylie couldn’t help but think, What a pile of...
Yet, she had agreed to come. Her friends were dear to her, and Corrine was the bride-to-be, and this—regression to past lives—was what she had wanted to do that day.
So Kylie had smiled the whole way. They were in Salem, a haunt they had all visited multiple times in the past, for parties, for history, the Peabody Essex Museum, fun ghost tours, even shopping.
They were all from Massachusetts and had met at Harvard. None of them had come from money; they had worked hard for their scholarships and had kept jobs to pay their way through their school years as well. That had made their little jaunts extra special.
They had come here, close to all their homes, so many times. They all loved the city. They took a ghost tour every time but avoided the obvious tourist traps. They didn’t usually come for tea-leaf or palm or tarot readings. The town, with its incredibly sad past, was a natural backdrop for every manner of Wiccan, New Ager, or occultist. They had fun with it. And Salem was, at a certain time of the year, Halloween heaven.