Wiccaphobia
While waiting for the coffeepot to finish percolating, Sarah Ryerson flipped the page of the calendar on the kitchen wall. She found it hard to believe that another month had passed.
"It's July already," she announced to Lionel Penn, who had just entered the kitchen. "It doesn't seem possible. Half the year is over."
"People do say time goes by fast when you're having fun," the psychiatrist teased and kissed her on the cheek.
"I'd hardly call the past sixteen months fun! You were the lucky one. You could treat your patients via telephone or video chat. The situation was quite a bit different down at the hospital."
"At least most businesses are starting to reopen," Lionel replied as he got the milk out of the refrigerator. "We can go to shops and restaurants again even if we have to wear a mask to do so. When this pandemic is officially over, we should all gather on the Common and burn them in a giant bonfire."
"Speaking of gathering on the Common, will you be able to pick up our costumes on Saturday morning?" Sarah asked, bringing the two cups of coffee to the kitchen table."
"I'm sure I can fit a trip to town into my busy schedule."
His response was said in jest since he rarely saw patients on weekends, except in emergencies.
As was the case in many small towns and cities across America, Puritan Falls had its annual Fourth of July traditions, which included a parade, a barbecue picnic on the Common and fireworks display in the evening. Since large public gatherings had been discouraged in July 2020, most residents celebrated the nation's independence in their own back yards. This year, with COVID restrictions being eased, the town was going all out. In addition to the parade, picnic and fireworks, there was to be a costume party where all attendees were to dress up as a famous person in American history.
"I had better get going," Sarah announced once she finished eating her yogurt. "Unlike some people around here, I don't keep bankers' hours."
"I'll remind you of that comment the next time one of my patients phones at three in the morning."
After kissing him goodbye, she was out the door. Smiling, Lionel listened as her Subaru pulled out of the driveway. Since his first appointment of the day would not be until nine, he got up from the table and poured himself a second cup of coffee.
* * *
"Goodbye. Have a good weekend," Judy Stanfield, the psychiatrist's administrative assistant, said to her employer's last patient of the day on Friday afternoon.
She had already shut down her computer and was removing her mask when Lionel emerged from his private office.
"Are you leaving now?" she asked.
"Yes. I'm meeting Sarah for dinner down at the Green Man."
"Lucky you. I've got to go home and finish sewing our costumes."
Lionel then asked the question that had been heard countless times in Puritan Falls over the past several days.
"Who are you two going as?"
"Pocahontas and John Smith. What about you?"
"George and Martha Washington. We're renting the costumes from that store on Essex Street. I'm afraid the only sewing Sarah does is suturing patients' lacerations."
Fifteen minutes later, Lionel walked into the Green Man Pub, sat at a table next to Sarah and removed his mask. Despite the fact that it was not yet six o'clock, the restaurant was nearly filled to its suggested fifty-percent capacity.
"Isn't this better than picking up our food at the curb or having it delivered to the house? It's nice to come in, sit down, relax, enjoy a meal and see other people," the psychiatrist said, as he waved to Jacqueline Astor and her husband, who had just entered the pub.
"Hi, Jackie," Sarah called when the village's real estate agent sat down at the next table, which had been moved six feet away. "I see you sold that enormous house on Proctor Street."
"Yes, to a wealthy couple from Boston who want to get out of the city. They moved into the house last week. He's a vice president of an investment company, and she designs jewelry."
After the salad bowls were cleared away and the main course delivered to their table, Sarah and Lionel noticed two strangers walk through the front door of the Green Man.
Jacqueline Astor broke off her conversation with her husband, leaned over and told them, "That's the couple I was telling you about, the ones who bought the house on Proctor Street."
Sarah watched them cross the room and commented, "He doesn't look like an investment banker."
"Oh?" Lionel laughed. "What's an investment banker supposed to look like?"
"I don't know, fat and bald, maybe. This guy looks more like a professional athlete, like he should be playing defense for the Patriots."
"What about his wife? Does she look like a cheerleader?"
"Nah. She looks like a jewelry designer. She's got that artsy look about her. I wonder if she designed that necklace she's wearing."
The couple from Boston was temporarily forgotten as the two doctors debated whether or not to order dessert. Then the jewelry designer got up from her table and walked in the direction of the ladies' room. On her way, she crossed paths with Shannon Devlin, who was about to lend a hand to her husband, Liam, the pub's bartender. Suddenly, the former Bostonian let out a cry and fell to the floor.
Sarah quickly got up from her seat and went to the woman's side.
"Perhaps I can be of assistance," she told the husband as she bent to examine her. "I'm a doctor. Does your wife have a medical condition?"
"No. She's never been sick as long as I've known her. You don't think it's COVID, do you?"
"She doesn't feel as though she has a fever. I assume she's been vaccinated."
"Yes. We both were back in March."
As the woman's eyes fluttered open, she uttered one word: "Witch!"
"She's coming to," Sarah announced.
"What happened?" the newcomer to Puritan Falls asked, as she attempted to get up from the floor.
"You fainted," her husband replied. "Lucky for you, this doctor was here."
"I'm afraid I wasn't of much help. I'm Sarah Ryerson, by the way. I work in the emergency room at Puritan Falls Hospital."
"I'm Gregory Vandenberg," the man introduced himself. "And this is my wife, Winona. We just moved here."
"Nice to meet you both," the doctor replied and then turned to address Winona directly. "You seem to be okay now, but you might want to get a checkup just to be sure."
"Yes. Thank you. I'll call my doctor first thing Tuesday morning."
Before Sarah headed back to her table, she could not help noticing that the woman from Boston seemed to shy away from Shannon as she continued on to the rest room.
* * *
After working a double shift on Saturday, Sarah slept late on Sunday morning. When she woke, just before nine, Lionel surprised her by serving her breakfast in bed.
"I know you prefer pancakes, but mine never come out right," he apologized. "They're always raw in the middle."
"French toast is fine."
After taking several bites of her breakfast, Sarah reached for her cup of coffee and said, "I wonder if the Vandenbergs will be at the picnic today."
"Why do you ask? Are you worried about the woman's health?"
"Not really. Healthy people occasionally faint. Maybe she was dehydrated or didn't eat anything that day. She might even be pregnant. It's just that something she said when she was coming to bothers me."
"What was that?"
"She said, 'Witch.'"
"I wouldn't worry about it. The woman fainted. I'm sure she wasn't entirely lucid at the time."
Looking to get some much-needed exercise, Lionel and Sarah walked down to Essex Street and stood in front of The Quill and Dagger, the halfway point of the designated route. Although the parade was not due to pass them for another ten minutes, the street was already lined with spectators. Many people were wearing red, white and blue, and dozens of children were waving small American flags. A man dressed as Uncle Sam walked down Essex selling balloons, glow sticks and tricorn hats.
Moments later, Rebecca Coffin emerged from the bookshop.
"You're not open today, are you?" Lionel asked.
"No. I just wanted to be sure everything was ready for my Fourth of July sale tomorrow."
"Where's Dylan?" Sarah inquired.
"He's at the Common, helping Josiah and Shannon get things set up for the barbecue."
The sound of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" signaled that the parade was near. The Puritan Falls High School band led the way, as it did in every town parade. After the band, the mayor appeared, riding in a classic Cadillac convertible. The fire department came next, with two volunteers tossing out candy to the children on the sidewalk, from atop the department's newest fire engine.
"There's Shawn," Lionel announced when members of the police department passed, riding on a float that featured a scaled down Independence Hall and an oversized Liberty Bell.
There were three additional floats. One featured the two minutemen statues at Concord and Lexington, another was meant to represent the Boston Tea Party and the last was a tableau of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Between the floats various groups marched including both boy and girl scout troops, a school band from Copperwell, Little Leaguers and tap dancers. The final guests in the parade were two grown men-one playing a drum, the other a fife-and a teenager with a drum. The trio, dressed like eighteenth-century American Patriots, emulated A.M. Willard's painting "The Spirit of '76" and appropriately played the song "Yankee Doodle" as they marched.
"The organizers really outdid themselves this year," Sarah said. "That was a great parade."
"Are you going to wear your costumes to the picnic?" Rebecca asked.
"No. They're rented, and I don't want to spill anything on them. We'll change before the party."
"Then I'll wait to put mine on, too."
Since the barbecue would not start until noon, the doctors returned to their home where they enjoyed an hour of quiet time before the festivities resumed.
* * *
"Aren't you going to have any corn on the cob?" Sarah asked as Lionel heaped potato and macaroni salad onto his plate, next to the hamburger and hot dog.
"I ran out of room. I'll get some when I come back for the fried chicken."
Her significant other somehow always managed to put away two to three times the amount of food she did and never gain any weight.
"Honestly, I don't know where you put it. You must be blessed with an amazing metabolism."
"What can I say? I like to eat. It's better than suffering from obesophobia, or as some of my colleagues call it, pocrescophobia."
"I assume that refers to the fear of gaining weight. Tell me, Dr. Penn, is there anything that someone somewhere is not afraid of?"
"Nope. We've got phobias for everything under the sun, including the sun, which is a condition called heliophobia. There's even a phobophobia, which is the fear of fear itself."
"What's this? Talking shop on a holiday?" Shawn McMurtry laughed as Lionel sat down next to him at one of the long folding picnic tables that had been set up on the Common.
"I'll make a deal with you. I won't discuss phobias if you don't talk about police investigations," the psychiatrist suggested.
"Deal!"
"I wonder if the new people in town are coming to the picnic," Shawn's wife, Penny, said. "I haven't had the chance to meet them yet."
"I did," Sarah replied. "They showed up at the Green Man Friday night. The wife passed out cold on the floor."
"She's not sick, is she?"
"I don't think so, but I hardly had the opportunity to examine her."
"From what I've heard, she's ...." Penny stopped, trying to think of a delicate way of expressing her thoughts, and then continued, "... a bit peculiar."
"Really? In what way?"
"I was talking to Sue down at Shop 'N Save. The woman hired her husband to repair the broken fence. While he was at the house, she asked him if he could put a witches' seat on her chimney."
"A what?"
"Ah, here comes Abigail. I'm sure she'll be able to tell us exactly what a witches' seat is."
Abigail Cantwell, who owned the town's New Age shop, and Ezra Graves, owner and editor of The Puritan Falls Gazette, sat down at the table, across from Lionel and Sarah. After the couple had the opportunity to greet everyone at the table, Penny deferred to the older woman's knowledge of arcane subjects.
"Tell us, Abigail. What's a witches' seat?"
"They are flat stones embedded in the outer part of a chimney. Sometimes referred to as witches' stones, they are found in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey. According to folklore, some witches had to fly great distances to attend sabbats. If they grew tired, they stopped on a rooftop and rested on these stone ledges, thus the term witches' seats."
"Why on earth would someone want such a thing on their house?" Sarah asked.
"To placate any witches that might be in the area."
"I told you she's peculiar," Penny laughed.
"You must be talking about that new woman from Boston, Winona Vandenberg," Abigail surmised.
"Yes. She wanted a witches' seat put in her chimney. And that's not the half of it. She asked Sue's husband if it were possible to seal up a dead cat in the cellar wall. I can't imagine why."
"It's an old wives' tale that burying a dead cat in the walls of a house will protect the inhabitants from witches," the town's expert on the occult explained. "Obviously, the woman has something against witches. She came into my shop and asked my part-time helper, Brittany, if we carry witch balls—those brightly colored glass balls people hang in the windows that are supposed to ward off witches. Nowadays, such apotropaic devices are more decorative than functional."
"Apo-what?" Shawn asked.
"Apotropaic. The word refers to items that are meant to ward off evil, such as witch bottles, horseshoes, rowan branches, crucifixes and such."
"I can't imagine someone in this day and age being afraid of witches," Penny said.
Lionel got up from the table and went back to the food line for his corn and fried chicken before anyone could suggest Winona Vandenberg might be suffering from wiccaphobia.
* * *
"I hope the high school gym is air-conditioned," Lionel groaned as he buttoned up the George Washington costume. "If not, I'm going to swelter in this getup."
"You won't be the only one," Sarah said, putting on an elaborate powdered wig over her short black hair.
Thankfully, the gymnasium was a pleasant seventy degrees, and there were plenty of cold drinks available should anyone get thirsty.
"I wonder who was in charge of decorations," the psychiatrist said when they entered the room.
"Martha and Noah volunteered, but I'm sure they had help."
Martha Prescott, the former TV host known as Belladonna Nightshade, was currently seeing Dr. Noah Prestwick, a colleague of Sarah's from the hospital. In fact, it was Sarah who introduced the two.
As friends and neighbors arrived at the party, Drs. Ryerson and Penn had fun trying to guess the person from history each of them was trying to represent. It was not always easy to tell their identity from their costume alone. Abigail, who wore a "Votes for Women" sash across a nineteenth century dress, was easy to spot as Susan B. Anthony, as was Ezra, who was dressed as Christopher Columbus.
"My coming as Columbus may not be appropriate," the newspaperman admitted. "Although many people revere him as the man who discovered America, he never actually made it to the U.S."
"Maybe you should have come as Leif Erikson," said Josiah Barnard, owner of the Sons of Liberty Tavern, who made a good Benjamin Franklin.
Sarah correctly guessed that Rebecca Coffin and her husband, Dylan Osborne, had come as Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. Lionel had no difficulty naming Shawn McMurtry as Abraham Lincoln, but Penny had to tell him that she was supposed to be Dolley Madison. The red cross on the old-fashioned nurse's uniform made it easy to associate Jacqueline Astor with Clara Barton. Martha and Noah were in outfits from the 1920s, and Sarah, an avid reader, identified them as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The three people who were most difficult to name were those represented by Victoria Broadbent and Shannon and Liam Devlin.
"No, don't tell us," Lionel said, when Sarah incorrectly guessed they were passengers aboard the Mayflower. "You're Stephen Prescott, the founder of our town."
"Wrong," Liam said. "I'm Cotton Mather, Shannon is Bridget Bishop and Victoria is Rebecca Nurse."
Living less than half an hour's drive from Salem, most residents of Puritan Falls were familiar with the key players in the 1692 witchcraft trials. Mather was a Puritan minister who sought to drive the devil from Salem, while Bishop and Nurse were among those poor souls hanged as witches.
No sooner did a local band take the risers and begin to play than the town's fire siren started to sound. More than a dozen volunteer firefighters ran from the gym to answer the alarm. Shawn, always the dedicated police officer, called the station to learn what he could about the fire.
"She's here. I'll tell her," he said and put his phone back in his pocket.
"What is it?" Sarah asked, thinking she might be called in to the emergency room if there were injuries.
"It's the Bell, Book and Candle," he announced. "It's on fire. I've got to find Abigail and tell her."
* * *
"Thankfully, someone spotted the smoke coming from the shop window and called 911," Ezra explained once the fire was extinguished and he and Abigail arrived at the Common for the fireworks display.
"I'll have to close the store for a few weeks," the shopkeeper added. "And I'll need to replace a good portion of my inventory—mostly because of smoke damage."
"I'm not normally given to trite remarks," Sarah said, "but thank goodness no one was hurt."
"You're right," Ezra agreed, putting his arm around Abigail. "Things can always be replaced but not people."
After the thirty-minute-long pyrotechnic display, during which Lionel's neck grew stiff from looking up into the sky, the two doctors bid farewell to their friends and walked home. It had been a long day, and they were eager to take their costumes off and get into bed.
Since the Fourth of July had fallen on a Sunday, Lionel closed his office on Monday in observance of the holiday. Midmorning, as he was reading about the fire in the Gazette and nibbling on chocolate chip cookies from Victoria's English Tea Shoppe, he was interrupted by a knock on the door. When he answered it, he was surprised to see the investment banker from Boston on the stoop.
"Dr. Penn, I'm Gregory Vandenberg. Might I have a word with you?"
"Sure, come in. Would you like some coffee?"
"No, thank you. I don't mean to bother you at home, but, quite frankly, I'm at my wit's end."
"Is this concerning a mental health issue?" Lionel asked. "If it is, you ought to call my office. My assistant will set you up with an appointment."
"This is something of an emergency, I fear."
"Were you under a psychiatrist's care in Boston?"
"I'm not here on my own behalf. It's my wife; she's the one who set fire to that shop yesterday."
"Have you told the police this?"
"No. I just came from Ms. Cantwell's home. I've agreed to pay for all the damages and to give her something to tide her over while her shop is being repaired. Please, Dr. Penn, I need to talk to you."
"All right. Follow me."
The psychiatrist led the way through the kitchen to the deck, preferring to speak outside rather than in his house.
"Have a seat. Now tell me. Is your wife a pyromaniac?"
"No. She's never set fire to anything else. Winona's reason for setting this one had nothing to do with pyromania. She specifically targeted that shop because of its association with witchcraft."
"It's a New Age shop. There are quite a few of them in Massachusetts, especially in Salem. They're perfectly harmless. Abigail sells tarot cards, incense, books on Wicca and things like that. She doesn't conduct black masses or try to conjure up the devil."
"You and I know that, but Winona ... she's afraid of anything that smacks of witchcraft—even Harry Potter. My wife is a jewelry designer, and lately every piece she creates features a symbol or foreign word meant to protect the wearer from evil magic."
"Superstition can be ...."
"I'm afraid this is more than a simple case of superstition. We didn't leave Boston to escape the hustle and bustle of the city or because we wanted a view of the ocean. We came here because my wife would often accuse people she met there of being witches. Some of those people were my clients."
"Has she ever sought professional help?"
"I suggested she see someone, but she flatly refused."
"And what makes you think she'll agree to see me?"
"I'm not taking 'no' for an answer this time. Good God! Winona tried to burn down a building yesterday. I don't know what she might try to do next."
"Can you bring her to my office tomorrow? I have a full day scheduled, but I can see her at noon when I normally take off an hour for lunch."
"Yes," Gregory replied, relief flooding over him. "We'll be there. Thank you, Dr. Penn."
* * *
"Since when do you work through lunch?" Judy asked when her employer told her there would be a new patient coming in at noon.
"It's an emergency," he replied. "But there's no need for you to stay in the office."
"Good. I have to run to the mall. Want me to bring you back something to eat? You can sneak a bite between patients."
"Thanks. You're a sweetheart."
"Be careful what you call me," Judy laughed. "I might bring you up on sexual harassment charges."
Lionel saw three patients that morning. After the third one left, Winona walked into his office. Gregory, at Lionel's suggestion, remained in the waiting room.
"So, your husband convinced you to come see me," the psychiatrist began.
"Obviously. I wouldn't be here if he hadn't. I certainly wouldn't have come here on my own."
"Gregory tells me you ...."
"Why don't we cut the crap and get to the point," the woman said, rudely interrupting the psychiatrist. "I'm here because I set fire to that witch store."
"And why did you do that?"
"Because the Bible says, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'"
Moments after quoting from Exodus 22:18, Winona burst into laughter.
"Is that what you wanted me to say, Doctor?"
"I want you to tell me the truth. If that's the reason for your action, then, yes, that's what I want you to say."
"Well, it isn't. I don't believe a thing that's written in the Bible. In fact, I doubt the existence of God."
"And yet you clearly believe in witches."
"Because I've seen them with my own eyes, whereas I never saw God."
"How can you tell a person is a witch just by looking at her or him?"
"I have what some people would call a sixth sense. Like that kid in the movie. Only I don't see dead people; I see witches."
"Your husband tells me you saw witches in Boston, some of whom were clients of his."
"Does that surprise you? Salem isn't the only place in New England that is home to witches. Why, there are a number of them right here in your quaint little town."
"You're referring to Abigail Cantwell?"
"Yes, and that redheaded woman at the Green Man Pub."
"Shannon Devlin?"
"I suppose that's her name. There are others, too. I can feel their power whenever I leave my house."
Lionel knew all too well that there were inexplicable forces in Puritan Falls, but honest-to-goodness witches? He supposed it was possible.
"If they are, in fact, witches, why do you care? I'm good friends with both Abigail and Shannon, and I know neither of them would hurt anyone. On the contrary, they're both charitable, kindhearted women."
Winona's voice softened, and she seemed less like a haughty wife of a wealthy banker and more like a little child about to cry.
"People aren't always what they appear to be. So-called God-fearing people are often like wolves in sheep's clothing."
"Has such a person hurt you in any way?"
The woman stared at the doctor, her eyes full of pain.
"I ... I ...."
Suddenly, she stood up and ran from the room. Lionel heard her husband run after her, calling her name. He doubted if either of them would ever come back.
The next day, however, Gregory called Judy and made a second appointment for his wife. He also requested one for himself, so that he could discuss her condition with the doctor.
"I realize you've only had one session with Winona," the man said when he entered Lionel's office, "but did she give you any indication at all what's behind her strange behavior."
"She left before the appointment was half over. I barely had time to question her. Perhaps you can help me by answering a few questions."
"Certainly."
"Is your wife an atheist?"
"She's never had any religious beliefs. I've never known her to pray, and the only time she goes to church is for weddings and funerals. Why do you ask?"
"Because wiccaphobia is often caused by strong Christian biases, and there don't seem to be any here. When did you first notice her obsession with witches?"
"Back in 2018, we took a cruise to the islands. We were nearing Bermuda when there was a storm. It wasn't a hurricane, just a run-of-the-mill rainstorm. But she freaked out. The ship's doctor had to give her something to quiet her down."
"And how soon was it after that incident that she began suspecting people of witchcraft?"
"The next morning. We were on our way to the dining room for breakfast, and she claimed the woman in the next cabin was a witch who wanted to sink the ship. It was ridiculous. The woman was a retired librarian from New Jersey."
Lionel had more questions for Gregory, but the answers failed to give him any insight into Winona's condition.
"As I tell all my patients and their families," the psychiatrist said when the appointment came to an end, "there is no quick fix. It could take weeks, months or even years to get to the root of your wife's phobia."
"I can only hope she doesn't set fire to another building—or worse—before you do."
* * *
Once the damage to her shop was repaired, Abigail Cantwell held a party to celebrate the grand reopening of the Bell, Book and Candle.
"I'm glad Dylan set up an online store for me last year, so business didn't suffer while the work was being done," she announced, as she passed out glasses of wine to her guests. "And Ezra let me store some of my inventory in the back room of the Gazette."
"Did you ever find out how the fire started?" Rebecca Coffin asked.
"No. Someone was probably careless with a cigarette."
Other than the Vandenbergs themselves, only Abigail, Ezra and Lionel knew that Winona started the fire. None of them wanted to make the woman's guilt public knowledge. However, their silence was contingent upon the woman getting psychiatric help.
"I'll bet that Vandenberg woman had something to do with it," Shannon whispered to Sarah.
"You shouldn't accuse people without evidence," the doctor warned.
"There's something about that one that disturbs me. The day after she passed out in the pub, I went by her house to see if she was all right, and she slammed the door in my face. But not before she said I was a witch and that I ought to be hanged like Mary Lee."
"Who is Mary Lee?"
"I haven't any idea. None of the people hanged in Salem were known by that name. There was a Mary Easty but no Mary Lee."
As they drove back to their home after the party, Sarah told Lionel about the publican's encounter with his patient.
"She said Shannon ought to be hanged like Mary Lee."
"Who's Mary Lee?"
"That's what I said."
While Sarah was taking a shower, Lionel took his iPad out of the drawer and googled the name Mary Lee. The search yielded 955 million hits, so he narrowed the search by adding the word witch. That reduced the number of results by more than half. Still, over 400 million links was too much for any man to look through, so he scanned the first page of the listing. One article caught his attention. It was entitled "Witchcraft in Maryland."
"Come look at this," Lionel called when Sarah got out of the shower. "In 1654, a ship called the Charity left London, heading for Maryland. As the vessel neared Bermuda, it was nearly destroyed by a terrible storm. Sailors, being notoriously superstitious, feared a witch had caused the change in weather. They accused a passenger named Mary Lee of using black magic to try to kill them."
"Do you think it could be the same Mary Lee?"
"I would assume so. The sailors stripped the poor woman, found what they believed was a devil's mark and hanged her."
Lionel did not add that Winona's wiccaphobia began during a storm near Bermuda since he did not wish to break doctor-patient confidentiality.
Perhaps Winona heard the tale of Mary Lee while she was on the cruise, he thought. But why would such a story affect her so deeply?
* * *
Winona entered Dr. Penn's office, sat down in the chair across from him and turned her face to the window. She was tired of these visits and the ridiculous questions the psychiatrist asked. Had Gregory not threatened to take away her credit cards, she would never have agreed to the appointments.
"You seem preoccupied," Lionel observed. "Is something bothering you today?"
"I'm bored."
"Then let's dispense with the usual pleasantries and begin. Now, Mary, when ...."
"What did you call me?" the patient cried, her demeanor immediately changing upon hearing the name.
"I didn't call you anything," Lionel said, feigning ignorance of the deliberate use of the name Mary.
"You called me Mary."
"Did I? A slip of the tongue. Now, on our last visit, you mentioned a woman named Mary Lee."
"I did no such thing!"
"I have it right here in my notes," the doctor argued, pretending to read from the patient's file. "Yes. Here it is: 'I told that redhaired witch from the Green Man Pub that she ought to be hanged like Mary Lee.' Those were your words."
Winona shook her head, vehemently denying his accusation.
"I never told you that."
"But you did say it to Shannon Devlin."
"It's unethical for you to discuss my treatment with outsiders. I ought to report you and have your medical license revoked. I ...."
"Who is Mary Lee?"
"I never heard of ...."
Despite his patient's emotional distress, Lionel relentlessly continued his questioning.
"What has Mary Lee to do with you?"
Winona tried to speak, but her words were lost in pitiful sobs.
"What happened when you were cruising near Bermuda?"
"The storm. It nearly sunk the ship."
The change in his patient's voice took Lionel by surprise. Not only was it of a much higher pitch than usual, but the words were spoken in a British accent.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"My name is Mary."
"What happened to Winona?"
"I know no one by that name."
Is this a case of multiple personality disorder, the psychiatrist wondered, or is she faking it?
For the time being, Lionel gave his patient the benefit of the doubt and spoke to her as though she were Mary Lee or, rather, as though her body was being possessed by the accused witch's spirit.
"Why did you leave England, Mary?" he asked.
"Because the New World held opportunities the old one lacked."
"You never made it to Maryland though, did you?"
"No. The storm prevented us."
"Tell me more. You and your husband were aboard the Charity ...."
"Charity!" she echoed, her voice hardening with anger. "It was a poor name for a ship with such a crew!"
"Why did they blame you for the storm?"
"Because men with narrow minds need to point fingers."
"By why single you out? There were other people on the ship."
"He saw me," the patient replied in a voice so soft it was barely audible.
"Who is he, and what did he see you do?" Lionel pressed.
"The cabin boy. He saw me give my husband a potion to calm his stomach during the storm."
"What kind of potion?"
"In England, I learned midwifery and the use of herbs from my mother, who learned it from hers."
"So, you were what some people called a wise woman?"
"And what others called a witch. I had knowledge of plants and minerals but not magic. I could not cause a storm even had I wanted to. But that frightened little boy told the other crewmen what he saw. I was stripped of my clothes, and my body was searched. They found a birthmark on my back and swore it was the mark of the devil."
"And they hanged you."
"Yes."
"And what about Winona? How does she fit into this picture?"
"I told you. I don't know who she is."
"She's the young woman whose body you are currently inhabiting."
Mary looked down at her hands as though seeing them for the first time.
"These rings," she said, looking down at the three-carat diamond engagement ring and the gold wedding band. "They're not mine. And these strange clothes and shoes ...."
"Aren't yours either. Your body has been lying at the bottom of the sea for close to four centuries."
"And this woman, this Winona, she has allowed me to borrow hers?"
"No. In fact, your presence has upset her a great deal. I'm a doctor, one who treats illnesses of the mind. I'm trying to help Winona get over her fear of witches. It's a fear she acquired when she encountered your spirit on a ship near Bermuda."
"Which is where I died."
Tears slid down his patient's face. Were they Mary's or Winona's?
"I don't want to harm anyone." (It was still Mary. He could tell by the English accent.) "Least of all this innocent woman. But if I leave, where will I go?"
"I wish I could tell you, but I can't. I don't know what happens to people after they die."
"Neither do I, but I suppose it's time I found out."
There were several minutes of silence. Finally, the psychiatrist spoke.
"Mary?"
"Who's Mary?" Winona asked, all trace of the previous accent gone.
"She was a witch."
"Yeah, sure," the patient laughed. "Did she fly around on a broomstick and scare trick-or-treaters on Halloween?"
"Don't you believe in witches?"
"What person in his right mind does?"
"But there are witches right here in Puritan Falls. You said so yourself."
"Look, I don't know what game you're playing, but I don't want to play along."
With that, Winona rose from her seat and left Lionel's office.
Three months later, the Vandenberg house on Proctor Street was back on the market. Its recent owners had moved away, not back to Boston but to Baltimore. Thus, Winona was cured of her wiccaphobia, and the spirit of Mary Lee finally completed the voyage it began in 1654.
Mary Lee was a real person who in 1654 was accused of witchcraft aboard the Charity and hanged.
Salem went to a costume party dressed as Martha Stewart. It was a good likeness, except for the tail.
