Book Excerpt
the unconscious student out and
helped make sure John got down the
stairs. When he stumbled into the
freezing Vermont night, he realized
he wasn’t wearing a shirt. At the
same time the cold air lit up the
burned skin on his hand and his ear
and neck. The pain nearly took him
to his knees, but he didn’t think
about that. He was thinking about
the guy who had stood and watched
the smoke roil out around him when
he opened the window and who
hadn’t done a damn thing to help.
John pushed past the security
officer who was trying to get him
over to an ambulance where EMTs
were treating students for burns or
smoke inhalation and headed across
the street to where the man had
been standing. He wanted to find the
jerk and drive his fist right into his
nose, and he looked around, trying
to recall exactly what the guy had
looked like. He could only remember
a dark silhouette. The guy hadn’t
been too short or tall and hadn’t
been particularly fat or skinny. He’d
probably been wearing a down parka
and stocking cap like everyone else
in Vermont in late October.
The only feature that had been
distinctive had been the guy’s eyes.
Even from across the street John
had felt the…what…the hatred
that had seemed to make them burn
brighter than the night. Well, if he
found the guy, John was
going to make him
understand what hatred
really felt like.
Late the next day,
wearing thick
bandages on his neck,
ear, and right hand
and still loopy from
the prescription
painkillers he’d been
given, John
accompanied his
suitemates when
they got permission
to go back into what
had been their
college freshman
room. A fireman led
them up the stairs
and down the
corridor where
water still dripped
from the ceiling.
What was left of
the blackened
carpet squished
under their feet,
and the reek of
smoke came from
every surface.
The pony keg
they had tapped
was now a
puddle of
of the pages that had somehow
survived. He let out a sarcastic
laugh because except for some black
singe at the bottom of the cover
sheet, they looked almost perfect.
The paper’s title, “Rebecca Nurse:
A Wrongful Death in Salem’s Witch
Trials,” was still crisply legible.
“Dude, what’s funny about this?”
his roommate Steve asked from
the doorway.
“This.” John held up the paper.
“I just finished typing it yesterday.
Somehow it survived. I can still hand
it in. Go figure.”
He looked again at the paper and
below it his name and the date,
Sunday, October 17, 1978. Rebecca
Nurse, his distant ancestor, he
thought, recalling the family
portrait of the woman that hung in
his great aunt’s house. She had been
a grim-faced Puritan with a face like
a Rottweiler, but it was weird
because it had almost seemed like he
had felt her presence looking down
on him when he wrote the paper. It
was probably her he had conjured up
in his dream to make himself wake
up. He snorted another laugh as he
tucked the paper under his arm and
headed out of the room. He was
thinking Rebecca Nurse was so ugly
she could probably wake the dead, so
it was nothing for her to wake up a
drunk college student.
melted aluminum. John went into his
old bedroom and saw that nearly all
his clothing, bedding, books, shoes,
ski and hockey gear, and UVM
knapsack had been burned or badly
charred. The few items hanging in
his closet that hadn’t been burned
were soaked with soot-colored
water that had dripped from above
and heavy with the permanent
stench of smoke.
He turned a slow circle, studied the
devastation, remembering how little
beer he’d actually drunk but how
smashed he’d felt when he went
to bed. It was a miracle he was still
alive because he knew how soundly
he slept when he’d had a few. What
had woken him? Had it really been a
dream? He remembered the shouting
old woman. How could he forget her?
He’d never heard a voice with so
much power.
He was about to walk out of the
room when he glanced once more
at what was left of his desk and the
skeletons of burned books atop it.
As he scowled at the destruction,
he noticed something white on the
floor. Out of curiosity he went over
to see what had managed to keep its
color amid all the char. On the far
side of his desk where it had
apparently fallen to the floor in all
the confusion, he could see what
looked like one of his papers.
He bent over and picked it up,
feeling the wetness
Chapter One
Salem, Massachusetts,
October
17, 2012
JOHN ANDREWS
PULLED THE COVERS
BACK from his face,
slowly opened his
eyes, and croaked out
a curse. The early
dawn light that
managed to make its
way through his
curtains hurt like a
stab wound.
“Crap,” he said as he
elbowed himself into
a sitting position, put
his feet on the cold
floor, and started to bat
his hands in the
direction of the alarm.
Some idiot announcer
was saying it was
unseasonably cold for
late October. Like he
needed to be reminded
since he could nearly see
his breath in the cold
bedroom. He stood,
shivered, padded into the
bath- room to pee, then
slipped on his terrycloth
robe and slippers and
headed downstairs to make
3
coffee. At the bottom of the stairs
he flipped the thermostat from 50˚
up to 70˚. What had he been thinking
last night?—well, the point was he
hadn’t been thinking—then pulled
open the front door and snatched
the three plastic bags containing
The New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal, and The Boston Herald.
In the kitchen, he tossed the
papers on the counter, hit the switch
to start the coffeemaker then
started dumping the papers from
their bags. On their one or two
bounce trip from the delivery guy,
across the sidewalk to his doorstep,
each bag managed to pick up some
street crap, which always dropped
onto his counter. It made a mess,
and the mess reminded him of Julie.
She’d been a cleanaholic, always
after him to sponge off the counters
and put things away.
He missed being told to clean up.
He missed the noise of another
person. That wasn’t even the start
of it. He missed too many things.
He put the papers in a pile, wiped
his hand across the granite counter,
and swept the crumbs of street dirt
into the sink. He glanced at the plate
on the counter beside him and the
dirty glass and empty bottle. Pizza
crust on the plate, a bare drop of
scotch left in the glass and none in
the bottle. How many straight nights
of pizza, he wondered. Maybe four,
maybe five. How many straight
nights of scotch? He chuckled a
humorless laugh. Way too many to
count. More to the point, how many
nights had that dead fifth lasted?
Two? Two and a half? Something
like that.
If Julie was here she would have
a fit, disgusted at his diet and his
drinking. “It’s your fault,” he said
to the empty kitchen.
He got his coffee, but before he
started skimming the papers he looked
at his reflection in the kitchen window.
He still looked okay on the outside, he
thought, giving himself a frank
appraisal. Mostly full head of brown
hair with just a tinge of gray over the
ears. Trim physique, flat stomach, much
flatter than he deserved. Good genes
helping to cover for bad behavior, he
thought. The face was still there, too,
good cheekbones, strong chin,
reasonably tight skin, amazing lack of
bags under the eyes considering how
much single malt went down his throat
every night. It was a face that still
could be on national network news
every night if that was what he
wanted, but he didn’t. He just wanted
his quiet life and his quiet little
newspaper. He was done with the big
leagues and the stress. He was done
with love. He was holding it together,
he told himself. Just barely.