Page 42 of The Spider & the Storm

Born in 1663 and dead in 1734, Annabel was the oldest soul in my cemetery—the graveyard guardian, some might call her. Her small, flat little marker was tucked just on the other side of the stone fence separating my cottage from the graves. Why she’d been buried there instead of beside her beloved husband, Thaddeus Black—buried somewhere in one of Salem’s other cemeteries—I wasn’t sure I’d ever know, but I suspected it had something to do with Thaddeus’s family disapproving of his marital bonds to an accused witch.

Once a week, while on my rounds, I made sure to leave a flower on her grave, knowing nobody else would. Nobody cared about a seventy-one-year-old felon who’d escaped the hanging rope. She hadn’t made the history books like the rest of them. Her story had begun in a town outside of Salem, one no longer written on the map, and she’d gotten lucky and died in her bed, I’d learned after doing some research. Nobody ever looked at her grave, nobody knew it was there, and maybe that had been done on purpose—whether by Thaddeus or someone else—hidden by bigger, more impressive monuments and headstones. Hidden from the accusations, judgment, and torment.

But not from me.

Today, a Sunday like any other, I walked past Luke’s bike and hopped the low fence—a shortcut to Annabel’s grave I’d discovered on accident while trying to trim a low-hanging branch a few years ago.

“Hey, Anna,” I greeted as I normally did while approaching the little worn headstone tucked away between a couple of bushes. “Found a nice lily last night on my way back to the house and thought you might—”

My words were cut short by the sight of a rose, lying precisely beneath the dash Annabel had filled with supposed witchcraft, love, and scandal. Its full bloom and deep, healthy color reminded me at once of the flowers Nana had instructed Luke and me to drop unceremoniously onto our parents’ caskets on the day we buried them.

It had been a short while since I’d felt the viselike grip around my lungs, squeezing from me every breath of air I needed to survive. But there it was again—the panic. As strong as the day I’d found that cigarette on Luke’s bike. The escalation of my heartbeat. The saliva flooding my mouth. The sticky sweat coating my palms.

“What the f-fuck?” I uttered in a high-pitched, squealed whisper as I turned on my heel, whipping my head this way and that to survey the land around me.

The landscaping went a little wild back here. The trees were fuller; the bushes grew wider. The shadows were darker, stretching long over the cleared but rarely walked path. It would be easy enough for someone to conceal themselves within the brush, cloaked in darkness and shrouded in mystery. Watching. Laughing. Taunting.Planning.

My lungs pumped harder, working overtime. My jaw began to tremble, my teeth chattering like I'd suddenly been submerged into the dead of winter. I thought about the cigarette butt left beneath the helmet, and now this.

Someone's watching. Someoneknows.They know who I am.

The lily fell from my hand to the ground, glistening with the remnants of the morning's rain. And I ran, jumping the fence with the agility of an Olympic hurdle jumper and hurrying through the rarely used back door of my house.

With the dead bolt locked, I pressed my back to the door's surface, squeezed my eyes shut, and pushed the breath from my panicked lungs.

“Breathe, breathe,” I coached myself, my voice hushed against the ticking of the clock I'd taken from my childhood home.

In through your nose, out through your mouth …

In … out … in … out … in—

A floorboard creaked from deeper within the house, and my eyes flew open at the same time my lungs stopped working altogether. Then another creak, the sound of a light footstep.

Someone’s in the house.

A swarm of dreadful, unwanted memories encircled my brain, and adrenaline blanketed over the panic. I knelt, concealed by the kitchen island, and quietly untied my heavy steel-toed boots. I slipped them off and stood slowly to ensure I was still alone in the kitchen, then grabbed a long chef's knife from the rack, still drying from breakfast.

I listened for the floorboards' telltale whispers, another needed clue of the intruder’s whereabouts, as I tiptoed through the kitchen and into the living room, pressing my back to the wall and gripping the knife in a steady palm.

It was a small cottage, containing only a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. There weren't many places for a trespasser to hide—or me for that matter—and I spotted them easily from where I stood.

A woman with black hair, tied into two sloppily coiled buns on top of her head, like a haphazard attempt at Minnie Mouse ears. She wore a long black coat, black pants, and heavy lug-soled black boots. Her back was to me as she stood at the mouth of the short hallway, leading to the bedrooms and bathroom, and I snagged the opportunity to make my quick approach.

I walked swiftly, rapidly, and grabbed her by the shoulder, whipping her around to pin her against the living room wall and pressing my forearm across the top of her chest while holding the knife up high with the other.

“The fuck are you doing in my house?” I hissed before recollection settled in and her green eyes came into focus.

She was the woman from Salem Skin. The one who I'd saved from being raped across the street.

What the fuck is she doing here?

Her bold gaze held mine with a bravery I admired despite the frantic thrumming of her pulse, fluttering beneath my arm at the base of her throat. The only tell that she was, in fact, terrified.

Good.

“I'm sorry,” she said with a held breath, fighting to maintain the calm in her tone. “Your door was open.”

“And that gave you the right to trespass?”

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