Night of the Full Moon
Officer Brendan Lane arrived at the Salem police station ten minutes early and decided to have a cup of Maxwell House instant with the desk sergeant before going on duty. As the two men sipped their hot coffees, Sgt. Hendrickson thumbed through The Salem News.
"How did the Red Sox do last night?" Brendan asked.
"They lost in the tenth inning. With the game tied, Manny comes to bat with two on and two out and looks at three called strikes. How do you like that? He never even swung at the ball!"
"Cheer up, Sarge; they're still in first place."
"Yeah, but I can feel those damned Yankees breathing down our necks."
Sgt. Hendrickson put the newspaper down, swallowed the last of his coffee and announced with a heavy sigh, "I better get back to the desk. It's going to be a busy night."
"Oh? Why is that?" the rookie officer asked. "Is there something going on in town that I'm not aware of?"
"Don't you know? There's a full moon tonight. That always brings out the lunatics. Every time there's a full moon all kinds of kooks come out of the woodwork. Last year a tourist from New Jersey tried to tear the clothes off a young woman from Pennsylvania in the middle of a presentation at the Witch Museum and demanded to see if she had a witch mark on her body."
Officer Lane laughed. He had only been on the Salem police force a few weeks, assigned mostly to traffic duty, and enjoyed hearing the sergeant's anecdotes.
"Of course, we get the run-of-the-mill full moon madness as well," the veteran policeman continued. "Bar fights, domestic disturbances, petty vandalism, road rage."
"But don't you see such cases on a fairly regular basis year round?"
"Yes, but come the full moon, the lunacy escalates."
While the two men debated the likelihood of such a phenomenon, a meek, mild-mannered mathematics teacher walked into the police station.
"Excuse me," he timidly interrupted. "I need to speak to someone about one of my students."
"What's the problem?" Sgt. Hendrickson asked.
"She's guilty of trafficking with the devil."
Sgt. Hendrickson turned to his fellow officer with a look of vindication on his face, and asked, "See? What did I tell you?"
The veteran officer then spoke to the math teacher.
"What's your name?"
"Sanford Armstrong," the man introduced himself.
"Have a seat, Mr. Armstrong, and Officer Lane here will take your statement in a few minutes."
"You're not serious, are you, Sarge?" the rookie asked when the teacher was out of earshot. "The guy is certifiable."
"Doesn't matter. We still have to take down his statement. Get used to it. We get all kinds of wild accusations and confessions in here. Hell, two years ago a guy came in and told me he was the unknown gunman on the grassy knoll who shot JFK."
"Why do I have to take his statement, Sarge? I'm just a rookie. Shouldn't I be out on the streets, looking for jaywalkers and speeding motorists?"
"One, you're here. Two, it will give you some experience handling crackpots in the future. And, three, he claims his student is trafficking with the devil, and traffic is your area of expertise."
Lane shook his head and grumbled, "What am I supposed to do? Give his student a ticket?"
"Just don't hang her. This city's been trying to live the last witch-hunt down for more than three hundred years."
"Look at the bright side," the rookie laughed. "Another witch hanging may increase Salem's tourist trade."
* * *
Officer Lane entered the complainant's name, address and telephone number into the department's computer system. Then he turned on the cassette recorder and journeyed into the land of insanity to take the teacher's statement.
"Let's begin with your student's name."
"Millicent Hale."
"Address?"
"She lives on Turner Street, not far from the House of the Seven Gables. I don't know the house number, but I'm sure it's in the school records."
"I can get that information later," the rookie said, wanting to get the interview over with as soon as possible since he would much rather keep an eye out for speeders on Route 114 than listen to Armstrong's mad ravings. "And what makes you think this Millicent Hale is a witch?"
"All you have to do is look at her to tell. She dresses in black all the time and wears a pentagram pendant around her neck. Besides, she admits to being a witch. She doesn't try to hide it."
"Lots of teenagers and even many adults claim to be witches, especially here in Salem. It's not a crime to practice Wicca, or witchcraft, these days. It falls under the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion."
"Do you think I'm an imbecile?" Sanford asked indignantly. "I'm not talking about a girl who dabbles in tarot cards, love spells and palm readings. I'm talking about someone who is pure evil, a loathsome creature who ought to be hanged by the neck or burned at the stake."
"Hold on now, Mr. Armstrong. That kind of talk can get you into trouble. Just calm down and stick to the facts."
Officer Lane wondered if the Salem school district knew what kind of screwball was teaching its young, impressionable students. It might be in everyone's best interest, he thought, if the math teacher were to look for a new line of work.
"You want facts? Millicent's been a straight-A student since kindergarten. She's in my Algebra I class, and yet she can solve difficult trigonometry and calculus problems without any effort. And she doesn't even need a calculator or pencil and paper; she does all the figuring in her head."
"Maybe she's like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman."
"I assure you Millicent is not autistic. She excels in every subject: science, history, English, Latin, even sports and liberal arts courses."
"So, maybe she's some kind of a genius like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting."
"This isn't the movies," the exasperated teacher cried. "This is real life."
"Okay. Just calm down. Let's get back to your statement. Forgetting about Miss Hale's taste in fashion, religious preference and superior academic achievements, what crime has the young woman committed?"
Try though he might, Officer Lane could not conduct the interview without conveying his contempt for fools like Sanford Armstrong.
"Unlike other Gothic kids in our school who tend to be social outcasts, Millicent is hands down our most popular student. All the other girls want to be her friend, and all the boys—well, you know what teenage boys are like with their raging hormones."
"How does Millicent get along with the other teachers?"
Sanford paled, and Officer Lane sensed he had struck a nerve.
"She's pulled the wool over their eyes. I'm the only one who sees her for what she is."
"And why do you think that's the case? How is it only you can tell that she is evil?"
"I'm not sure, but I assume it's due to my strong religious beliefs. I'm a devout Catholic, you see. I studied for the priesthood as a young man but had to leave the seminary because of an urgent family matter."
Warning bells went off in the rookie's head. Although raised a Methodist, he had since become an agnostic. And ever since the pedophilia scandal in Boston some years earlier involving Cardinal Law and Father Geoghan, he had harbored an aversion and distrust of priests. He knew he was being unfair and that a lot of good, decent men wore the collar, but he could not help adopting a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude toward the Catholic clergy.
Officer Lane hesitated before asking his next question, fearing it might cause Armstrong to become distraught and possibly violent.
"Did you ever have any inappropriate feelings toward your student?"
Sanford's pale complexion became a deep red.
"Certainly not!" the math teacher exclaimed, vehemently denying the officer's veiled accusation.
"I apologize if I offended you, but these questions must be asked."
"Why don't we get to the heart of the matter then, so we can conclude this interrogation and you can go back to your coffee and donuts?" the formerly timid schoolteacher asked angrily.
"First, I'm not interrogating you, and, second, I don't like donuts. Now what is it you consider to be the heart of the matter? Because nothing you've told me so far warrants a police investigation."
"Millicent Hale is going to kill me, and even in these enlightened times when witchcraft and devil worship fall under the heading of guaranteed freedom of religion, I believe murder is still a serious crime."
"Has the young lady said as much? Because if she has, she could be charged with terroristic threats."
"Not in so many words, but I know that beyond her condescending manner, she hates me. And when there's no one else around, she gives me the evil eye."
"The evil eye?" Officer Lane echoed, trying to maintain a straight face.
"I don't expect you to believe me; you've never met Millicent Hale. And if you had, I've no doubt you would fall under her spell just like all the others. But mark my words: unless someone stops that evil little witch, I'll be dead by the next full moon."
* * *
"Do you want me to go talk to this girl and tell her to steer clear of the teacher?" Officer Lane asked the desk sergeant after relaying the gist of Sanford's accusations. "You never know what a nutcase like that is liable to do."
"That won't be necessary," the veteran police officer replied. "I'll phone the school principal, an old friend of mine, and alert her to the situation. She'll make sure no harm comes to the girl."
As it turned out, Miss Hale was not the one in danger. Two weeks after Sanford Armstrong had walked into the Salem police station to accuse her of trafficking with the devil, the math teacher was found dead in his basement.
"How did he die?" Brendan asked Hendrickson when he heard the news.
"Suicide. Hanged himself."
"Isn't that peculiar? Two weeks ago he was afraid for his life, and then he goes and kills himself."
"He was obviously off his rocker. Too much math can do that to you," the sergeant joked.
Officer Lane laughed half-heartedly but found no humor in the math teacher's death.
Once off duty, the rookie cop went to a computer terminal and keyed in Armstrong's name. The autopsy report was unavailable, but the crime scene photos and the responding officer's report were on file. The evidence all pointed toward suicide. The doors in the house had been locked from the inside. There was no sign of a struggle, either on the body or in the room. Yet no suicide note had been found. While not every person who took his own life was obliged to leave a written explanation of his actions, Lane's instincts told him that Armstrong was the type of man to spell out his reasons in detail.
"Despite the nice, neat crime scene, I would have suspected foul play," he later told his wife, Bethany. "I guess I'll never make detective."
"You've seen too many episodes of Law & Order. You have to remember the old saying: if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.'"
Bethany—God bless her!—was a sensible woman who could never be accused of having an overactive imagination or thinking outside the box. She was perfectly happy living in her well-ordered world where two plus two always equaled four. The late Sanford Armstrong, Brendan assumed, had probably been cut from similar cloth. To a math teacher, it was always easy to find the value of x and to tell a duck by its quack and waddle. Still, this same pragmatic man also jumped to the outlandish conclusion that his student was a witch who wanted to kill him. Surely in that case he heard the quack, saw the waddle and concluded it was a cat.
And yet hadn't Armstrong's dire prediction come true? He had died before the next full moon.
* * *
Officer Lane forgot about Sanford Armstrong until June came around and he and Bethany were invited to his niece's high school graduation party. To the policeman's surprise, one of the guests was Millicent Hale. Although only a sophomore, the teenager was clearly popular with the seniors at the party.
Several times during the afternoon Brendan stole surreptitious glances at the girl. Armstrong had neglected to mention that Millicent was exquisitely beautiful. Despite her somber clothing, the red-haired, green-eyed dazzler looked more like an angel than one who trafficked with the devil.
"So what are your plans for college?" Bethany asked the new graduate.
"I'm going to attend UMass in the fall," her niece by marriage replied. "That's where most of us are going."
"Except for Millicent," one voice rang out. "She's sure to be accepted to Harvard or M.I.T. when she graduates."
"You must get very good grades," Brendan remarked, taking the opportunity to converse with the younger student.
"I do pretty well in school," she acknowledged.
"I'll say you do," one of her friends added. "She gets straight A's."
"Even in math?" the police officer asked.
The look in Millicent's green eyes chilled him to the bone.
"Yuck! I always hated math," his niece piped in. "Especially when I had old ...."
She immediately fell silent when she saw Millicent glaring at her.
"What's wrong with math?" her uncle pressed. "Is it all the formulas you have to memorize for geometry or the factoring in algebra?"
"A little of both, I guess," his niece answered and then tried to change the subject. "Ken is taking me to Fenway Park next week to see the Red Sox play the Yankees."
"That sounds like fun," Brendan said and adroitly steered the conversation back to the previous subject. "There was a math teacher from your school who hanged himself earlier this year, wasn't there?"
"Suicide? What a horrible subject to bring up at a barbecue," Bethany declared.
"Were any of you in his class?" the police officer asked, ignoring his wife's comments.
"I had him in my junior year," one young man volunteered.
"What about you, Millicent?"
The other students turned away, avoiding eye contact with their friend.
Can it be they're all afraid of her? Brendan wondered.
"He was my algebra teacher—at least at the beginning of the year."
"Such a shame to lose a fine, dedicated educator, don't you agree?"
Millicent's green eyes locked with Brendan's blue ones in a contest of wills.
"He must have thought he had a good reason for killing himself," the girl offered.
"Maybe he didn't commit suicide. It's possible someone wanted him dead."
A smile brightened Millicent's face, but her eyes remained cold.
"Then that person was smart enough to kill him in such a way that no one suspects her involvement."
"Her? What makes you think the killer was a woman?"
If Brendan had thought to rattle Millicent or trip her up, he was mistaken. The young woman's cool composure never wavered.
"I don't. I'm merely pointing out that she—or he—would be a dangerous person to cross."
At last Millicent broke her gaze, but only to turn her eyes on Brendan's wife and eighteen-month-old child, a clear warning that he was not to pursue his line of questioning any further.
* * *
While Officer Lane would never openly accuse Millicent Hale of having played a part in Sanford Armstrong's death, he wanted to discover the truth for his own peace of mind. He conducted an unofficial investigation on his own time since he did not want the Salem Police Department or, more importantly, Millicent to catch wind of his activities.
As the math teacher had told him, the entire faculty admired Miss Hale, yet the teachers' praises seemed automatic and spoken without feeling. Lane was reminded of The Manchurian Candidate in which brainwashed former POWs declared that Raymond Shaw was the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being they'd ever known. How was he to ever learn the truth if Millicent—as the math teacher believed—had bewitched everyone into thinking she was something she was not?
Suddenly, Lane had an idea. Armstrong believed he could see Millicent for what she was because of his strong religious beliefs. Could another person of faith see beyond the façade as well? Rather than consult a priest or minister, the policeman decided to pay a call on a Wiccan neighbor since she would be more likely to recognize witches, good or evil.
"Brendan?" the neighbor asked with surprise when she opened the door. "What brings you here? Please come in."
Over a cup of freshly brewed herbal tea, the police officer told the Wiccan about Sanford Armstrong's accusations against Millicent Hale.
"At first I thought the man was just a religious nut, but then I met the girl at my niece's graduation party, and I felt there was some basis for the teacher's fears. I got what they call 'bad vibes' about her. I guess I came here because I want you to tell me I'm being foolish, that there are no such things as evil witches outside of fairy tales and Disney movies."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but just as there are good people and bad people, there are benevolent witches and malevolent ones who use their knowledge for personal gain or out of spite and a desire to cause harm to others."
"Is it possible then that Sanford Armstrong was right about his student? That she is an evil witch who wanted him dead?"
"Yes, it is. It is also possible that his death wasn't a suicide."
Officer Lane then told her about Millicent's thinly veiled threats on the day of the barbecue.
"Don't be fooled by her youth. If she is a student of the black arts and was responsible for her teacher's death, then you must take precautions or you could be her next victim."
The neighbor then cast a protection spell over Lane and gave him a charm to help ward off any curses Millicent might use to harm him. While the police officer was not completely convinced that the girl was a witch, he saw no harm in playing it safe.
* * *
That weekend Brendan and Bethany had tickets to see the Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays (who had the "Devil" exorcised from their team name) at Fenway. The doorbell rang as he was tying his Reeboks.
"That must be the sitter," his wife announced as she went toward the front door.
"Hi, Mrs. Lane."
The voice sent a shiver down Brendan's spine. His head shot up, and he watched with trepidation as the Hale girl walked into his living room.
"You remember Millicent, don't you, honey?" Bethany asked. "We met her at the graduation party. She's going to watch Timmy."
Brendan reached into his pocket and clutched the charm his Wiccan neighbor had given him. As his fingers closed around it, Millicent's luxurious red hair turned a straggly gray, and her green eyes turned black. He gasped with horror as the pretty, youthful face metamorphosed into a hideous visage of wrinkles and boils.
"Brendan?"
Worried by her husband's sudden paleness, Bethany grabbed his arm.
"Are you all right?"
His instincts to protect his family won out over his love of baseball.
"No. I'm not feeling well. I think we'll stay home tonight."
He reached into his pocket, took a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and with trembling hands gave it to the witch.
"Thank you for coming over, but we won't need a babysitter after all."
His wife started to argue, but Brendan firmly closed the door and locked Millicent outside.
* * *
While Officer Lane was eating his lunch on Salem Common, a group of teenagers passed by him. In the center of the group, reigning like a queen bee over her swarm, was a red-haired, green-eyed beauty.
"Wait a minute," she told her peers when she saw the police officer. "There's someone I need to talk to. You go ahead and I'll catch up with you later."
Lane nervously looked around the Common as the witch approached. He reached into his pocket for the charm but decided it would be less disconcerting to talk to Millicent in her guise of an innocent teenager.
"That was very rude of you to send me away the other night," she said with a pout.
"I don't want you near my family."
"I know you've been asking questions at the school. I thought you were smarter than that, Brendan. You should have left things alone."
The young policeman stood up, anxious to escape the company of the witch; but Millicent suddenly leaned forward, drew him close and firmly pressed her lips on his. Dazed, the pretty young high school student then broke the embrace, stumbled out onto Hawthorne Boulevard and walked in front of an oncoming car. Officer Lane ran forward to help, but there was nothing he could do.
After the ambulance drove away, an evil smile appeared on Brendan's handsome face. He reached into his pocket, gingerly took out the Wiccan's charm and tossed it into a nearby trashcan.
What a pathetic trinket to use against my vast power, he thought. You might just as well have gotten a rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover.
Then the centuries-old sorceress walked off the Common, enjoying the surge of physical strength that flowed through her new body.
Salem is the only one I know who suffers from full moon madness regardless of the lunar phase.
