House of Six

Chapter 2

When John Andrews walked downstairs the next morning to make coffee, he stopped at the bottom of the staircase and investigated the living room at the portrait of his ancestor, Rebecca Nurse.

“Please talk to me,” he said, gazing up at the painting. Just like almost any portrait of a Puritan woman, Rebecca

Nurse was unquestionably not pretty in her black dress with a high white collar. She sat in a rocking chair working on a piece of embroidery as her unsmiling face gazed out of the portrait.

Until very recently, John had hated the portrait, which had come as part of the furnishings of the house he’d inherited from his great aunt. His aunt’s one condition on giving him the house had been that Rebecca’s portrait had to remain

hanging in the house. For years John had never understood his aunt’s reasoning, but he had honored that condition, hanging the portrait out of sight.

He used to joke that Rebecca Nurse had been “as ugly as a Rottweiler with a sore ass,” but that was before the spirit of Rebecca Nurse helped him avenge the murder of his late wife. Until a few weeks ago, John Andrews would have scoffed at the idea of spirits, and when Rebecca first appeared to him, he had feared he was losing his mind. However, after the events of the past few weeks, his cynicism, or what he might have called his reporter’s skepticism, was gone. He no longer had any doubt spirits existed or that they could communicate with the living, or, for that matter, that Devil worshippers had been living around him in Salem.

The Coven had operated in Salem for the past three hundred years and been responsible not only for the Salem witch trials, of which Rebecca Nurse had been the final victim, but also for countless blood sacrifices over the intervening centuries. John Andrews knew he was a man whose sense of certainty about everything in life barely existed.

In fact, he now acknowledged that the spirit of Rebecca Nurse was the reason he had survived the events of the past month. She had been the key to unlocking the Coven’s foul secrets and had shown him the secret door that allowed him to attack them in their underground lair. In so doing she had opened him up to the mystical or spiritual power—whatever it had been, he still had no idea what to call it—that had allowed him to kill the leaders of the Coven. As a result, John had moved Rebecca’s portrait and it now hung where it belonged, in the place of highest respect and visibility in his home, right above the mantelshelf.

As a professional journalist, Andrews was trained to question everything, and find the facts to support a story. These days he not only believed that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living, but he also missed having that communication and wished Rebecca Nurse would continue to guide him as she had in the days when they struggled together against the Salem Coven. However, as if their victory over the Coven had somehow released her spirit to go wherever spirits went when they were at peace, Rebecca Nurse remained silent as she had in the days following Andrews’s ultimate battle with the Salem Coven.

Andrews stood in front of the painting for another few seconds. “Not talking to me again today? You even there anymore, or have you gone on permanent vacation? Not that you don’t deserve a permanent vacation, of course, after every- thing that happened to you. I hope you’re someplace with palm trees and a sunny beach and people to bring you those little drinks with umbrellas in them. And no offense, but I hope you can finally get out of those heavy black clothes, put on shorts and sandals.” Finally, he shrugged, knowing anyone who overheard him would think he was absolutely nuts, and he went to the front door to bring in the morning papers. He grabbed The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, tossed them onto the counter, went to the coffeemaker and hit the on button then went back, pulled the papers from their plastic tubes, and started scanning the morning headlines.

He always read The New York Times first and skimmed over the paper’s descriptions of disasters and conflicts around the world: another battle in Afghanistan, a car bombing in Iraq targeting Shiites, flooding in Thailand, a riot over growing unemployment in Spain. Strangely, when Andrews read world events, he found they relaxed him. At least these were straightforward things that happened month in and month out, year after year. A man could deal with wars, famines, and floods, he joked to himself, but not with Satan-worshipping Covens doing blood sacrifices in his own backyard.

As the aroma of brewing coffee filled the kitchen Andrews started to feel better, and his memory of the nightmare that had awakened him a brief time earlier faded from his memory. That was when he turned the page and saw the article about a drought in Great Britain. Something about it nagged at him, and he saw the girl from his dream again, her foot- steps kicking up small puffs of dust. The dream’s setting with the rural lane, the stone wall along the road, and the grassy hillside with herds of sheep had been so quintessentially British, all except for the dryness.

Preoccupied with matters closer to home and he didn’t think he’d even been aware the U.K. was suffering a drought. Why would he have dreamed it? Was it just a coincidence? Did the dream mean something, or was it simply a bad dream? He couldn’t shake the feeling it meant something, and the whole thing gave him chills.

He stepped over to where he had his cell phone on the charger to look up the number for Captain Andrew Card. Card was a Massachusetts State Police detective John had taken down into the warren of underground passages to show Card where he had fought and killed the leaders of the Coven. However, when they had reached the room where the fight took place, John was shocked to find that the dead bodies and all the other evidence was missing. As stupefied as John had been, Card had seemed unsurprised, and that was when he had let slip the fact that he knew far more about the Covens and Devil worship than he had previously admitted.

John had tried calling Card multiple times since they’d discovered the bodies were missing, but Card had never returned his calls. John assumed the detective was extremely busy, and that he’d also probably assumed John wanted to talk things out, rehash what had happened and ask a lot of questions Card might be unwilling to answer.

Still, those questions had been eating at him. How much more did Card know? Why wasn’t he willing to be more forth- coming? John needed answers, not only because the journalist inside him craved information, but also because what he had said to Amy earlier in bed was true. It wasn’t over. He felt it in his guts like an essential truth, but he couldn’t say why. He needed someone who knew more than he did to help him understand, but there was no doubt in his mind the danger still existed. It wasn’t as close as it had been, but it was out there in the darkness. His nightmare had been a reminder of that truth, but was it more? Was it an omen of something in the future or a warning he should act on now? He needed to know these things. As foolish as he might sound recounting all this to anyone else, he was willing to take the risk, and Card was the only person John could think of to call.

Card’s cell phone rang until a recording asked John to leave a message.

“Andrew,” John said, leaving another message. “I had a dream last night and… look, I know this sounds crazy, but I’m quite sure I saw a girl who was about to be abducted by the Coven. But it wasn’t this, Coven; it was a different one, someplace else. In England, but I can’t be certain. It looked like England, but it could have been anyplace. I don’t know who else to tell this to. Please call me.”