Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem
By Vera Jane Cook
By Vera Jane Cook
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy
Publisher: Musa
ISBN: 978-1-61937-024-1
ASIN: B006PIYOXA
Number of pages: 367
Word Count: 130,000
Cover Artist: Lisa Dovichi
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/QXtnd8wMeTM
Book Description:
From
the Salem Witch trials through the Nineteenth Century and beyond, Annabel
Horton is pursued by the devil’s disciple, Urban Grandier, the demonic priest
from the incident at Loudon. She must take the bodies of those that the devil
favors to protect her family. She must uncover the motive behind the illusive
Ursula/Louis Bossidan, the scandalous cross-dresser who is pursuing her
beautiful granddaughter, and she must learn, being one of God’s most powerful
witches, how to use her power. But will it be enough to save her husband from
Urbain’s fiery inferno? Will it be enough to save her children from demons
greater than themselves? Read on, you will learn more…..
PART I
DOMINION
Chapter One
Some say I am a stain on
your history, a nameless statistic―a grotesque misfortune that is alluded to in
your textbooks. I cannot disagree. Allow me to introduce myself as I am.
Patience Annabel Horton is my given name, though I refer to myself as Annabel,
never much caring to claim a virtue I do not possess. I am in spirit form for
the most part, though it was not always so.
It was in the year 1692,
in the village of Salem, in the state of Massachusetts, that I swung by my neck.
Many of us died there, such needless, senseless tragedies.
There was evil in Salem
Village in 1692, but it was not in the soul of any of those women they hanged.
Poor Goodwife Nurse, now she was the saddest of the lot to be taken to the
tree. No more of a witch than poor Bridget Bishop. No one was safe from the
devil’s fire; certainly I was not, not with my detachment, my disinterest in
the other girls of my village and their silly games. You see, I knew I had
powers, and it kept me apart, but I told no one my secrets. Of course, I only
tell you now because it no longer matters.
But I am not here to
condemn anyone for my suffering. So do not be alarmed. As you may or may not
know, men who believed they were doing God’s work chastised many of Salem's
citizens as witches and brought us to trial. Many, like myself, were hanged. I
was eighteen years old.
I will tell you what
really happened in Salem Village before the century turned. You never learned
the truth of it. Your history books do not contain the truth, but I will open
the veil of time for you.
* * * *
Before my death, one year
to be exact, a presence came to me.
“Who goes there?” I called
in the dark. The form was like mist. The answer was like wind.
“Leave me, ghost,” I
whispered coarsely.
The wind became a breeze
and caressed my lips. I knew I had been kissed and I shuddered.
“Who are you?” I asked
softly. The form appeared to be that of a man.
“Yours,” I thought I heard
him say.
“You hold me in your arms,
and yet I cannot see you.” I looked around the room. I felt his movement. Once
again, he came so close.
The wind was like a dance
as it lifted the hair from my brow. The air around my body felt so light and
sensual. I seemed touched by a gentleness. It caused my heart to pound.
“Show yourself,” I
commanded.
He circled the room, a
tall gray mist. I was sure his hair was black, his eyes as dark as evening.
After that, I waited for
him every night, and almost every night he came to me. It was not long before I
fell in love with this spirit, as helplessly in love as any restless young
woman can be.
These ghostly visits
continued right up until my physical death. I always knew when he was near
because the air would become faint with the scent of fresh rain and I would
feel drugged with the fragrance that lingered in my room.
“You smell like late
afternoons in summer, after a rainfall,” I told him, but he did not answer. He
spoke to me so seldom. It was quite by chance that I heard his whisper.
“Matthew,” he said.
“Matthew is your name?” I
asked.
I listened so carefully as
the shutters moved and some papers on my bureau fluttered like wings.
“Matthew?” I asked again.
“Oh, please speak more. Tell me where you come from?”
My illusive shadow was
silent.
“Matthew. Matthew, speak
to me! Show me your face. Let me see the hand that strokes me.”
Suddenly, the wind
returned. “I am so far,” he uttered.
“Surely you must be a
spirit from another time," I said.
Miraculously, the papers
on my bureau flew around and around again, as if chasing each other in a
playful game of tag.
I knew he could not reach
me, could not fully pass beyond the barriers between us. Yet I felt him like an
artist must feel his subject.
“You are tall,” I said.
“Your shirt has cuffs of white and I have images of your smile. Does time part
us, Matthew? Are the centuries between us too vast?”
I saw a shadowy light. It
shone before me and revealed a man of great height, but in a split second the
light was gone, the image within, too oblique to recall.
* * * *
Soon after his first
visit, I received letters. They appeared out of nowhere. I would find them all
over the house, always beginning: To my
wife.
“What’s this?” I stammered
as I held the letters in my hand.
Know that I love you and I’ll come to protect you. He had written.
His notes were always
signed with the letter M, for his
first name.
“Matthew,” I whispered. “How is it that you
can leave notes about the house and yet not show me your face?”
But my ghost was silent
and could not find a way to answer me.
“Why do you sign only with
the letter M? I asked. “Is Matthew really your name?”
Silence remained, as still
as the night wind beyond my window.
I began to think that I
had truly gone insane. Oftentimes, I doubted the presence of my ghost and I
questioned Father about the mysterious letters. For surely, I thought, the sun
must be too hot and had affected my brain.
“Father, I have received
notes of affection. Do you know who sends them?”
Father laughed. “A
neighbor’s boy must surely be culprit to the bow of Cupid, daughter.”
Ha! I knew better. No
neighbor’s boy in Salem would dare call me his wife. I frightened the boys of
my village. They thought me haughty and illusive. Oh, there was a young man
from Andover with the courage to court me, and I might have married him if not
for my fascination with my ghostly lover, but I never got that chance.
It must be you who writes me. Mustn’t it be so,
Matthew?
If only I had known then
that it would be centuries before I would see the face of my beloved. But in 1692,
I could only cherish his words, so I made myself a wooden box and covered his
letters with a beautiful purple cloth. I placed all the letters inside. I then
covered the box with a square piece of coarse fabric and hid it under the
tallest elm tree by Frost Fish Brook. Many afternoons that year I read the
letters in the shadow of the branches. The writer’s hand was full of lovely
twists and loops, and the ink was black.
Had I not of died so soon
I might have lived my life with my ghostly lover and never come to know him as
a man of flesh. I would have assumed that some lost spirit had written the
letters and had found a way to leave them inside the house. But, that innocence
was not to be, and it was not fate that made it so.
It was Urbain, Urbain
Grandier, and the power given him.
About the Author
Vera Jane Cook, writer of
Award Winning Women's Fiction, is the author of The Story of Sassy Sweetwater,
Lies a River Deep, Dancing Backward in Paradise and Annabel Horton, Lost Witch
of Salem.
Jane, as she is known to
family and friends, was born in New York City and grew up amid the eccentricity
of her southern and glamorous mother on the Upper West and Upper East Side of
Manhattan. An only child, Jane turned to reading novels at an early age and was
deeply influenced by an eclectic group of authors. Some of her favorite authors
today are Nelson DeMille, Calib Carr, Wally Lamb, Anne Rice, Sue Monk Kidd,
Anita Shreve, Jodi Picoult, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Her favorite novels
are too long to list but include The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Cheri and The
Last of Cheri, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights, Look at Me, Dogs
of Babel, The Bluest Eye, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Body Surfing, Lolita,
The Brothers Karamazov, She's Come Undone, Tale of Two Cities, etc., etc.,
etc.,
Dancing Backward In Paradise,
Jane’s first published novel received rave reviews from Midwest book review and
Armchair Interviews. It also won the Eric Hoffer Award for publishing
excellence and the Indie Excellence Award for notable new fiction, 2007. The
Story of Sassy Sweetwater received five stars from ForeWord Clarion Reviews.
The Story of Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem is her first paranormal novel
and will be followed by Annabel Horton and the Black Witch of Pau and Annabel
Horton and the Demon of Loudun.
The
author works by day for an education publishing company as an account manager
and lives on the Upper West side of Manhattan with her long term partner, her
Basenji/Chihuahua mix, Roxie, her Chihuahua, Peanut and her two pussy cats,
Sassy and Sweetie Pie.
An interesting beginning!
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