wolfie
March 18th, 2003, 08:23 AM
Hi, ya'll! I am new around here. I've been dabbling with my writing for the last year...mostly short stories. But I'm trying to get serious. To that end, I have been toying around with a story and would like some feedback...How does it read? Does it intrigue you? How do my characters come across? Do you get any feel for them? Do you like the set up of this first part?
I appreciate anything advice, criticism, praise that you could provide. Thank you in advance and God Bless.
***
The Disgruntled Coven
Part I – The Right Time, The Right Place
The Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial
Salem, Massachusetts
February 29, 1992
Abigail Bethune stood in the early morning mist, her gray gown billowing around her, three inches of slushy, melting snow at her feet. Black was so…so…done…so passé, she preferred gray. It fit her mood, it suited the weather and it complimented her environs perfectly. The wind whipped her unbound, shoulder length, brown hair about her face, but she paid it no attention. Her eyes were focused across the street, at the recently dedicated memorial. The smell of the decaying flowers placed at the site to pay tribute to the victims was still pungent in the air, even at this distance.
Three hundred years! It took them three hundred years to do this…to try to make some peace with what happened here. Three hundred years! And what do they choose to commemorate the tragedy with? Stones. Stones! Still the indignity lingers…stones! One of the victims of that travesty died when stone slabs, weights were placed upon his body. He lasted two days…two days before succumbing and giving the villagers the satisfaction of his last breath. Stones! She would never breach those gates, never look at the stone slabs chiseled with the names and dates there…she would never remember her family at such a mockery, a sick joke. She would remember them in her own way, in her own time…and damn everyone else.
Abbie felt the fury rise within her, felt the wind pick up, felt the stinging lash of her curly, unruly hair as it whipped fiercely about her face. She cast a baleful look at the official memorial. Stones! She bent and worked her fingers through the cold, wet remnants of the last snow and found the frozen ground beneath. She dug her fingers into the slumbering Earth and made a solemn vow…the past was not forgotten. Not by a long shot.
***
The Witch House
Salem, Massachusetts
March 2, 1992
Elizabeth Gayle stood across the street, at the corner of Rte 114 and Essex, and regarded the Corwin House, better known as The Witch House. It wasn’t at the original location. It had been moved here in 1944 to save it from certain demolition. The local town folks didn’t want to see such a tribute to history destroyed and had managed to raise the necessary money to have it moved and preserved…keeping the legacy alive.
Betty shook her head, her raven black hair billowing around her flashing green eyes. Legacy! Hah! More like a tourist trap, a cash cow, especially come October. Her eyes narrowed as the proprietor stepped out to pick up the daily paper. She hated seeing what the house had turned into, hated knowing that money was being made off the dead bodies…37 bodies. She wondered how much of the profits had made it or would ever make it to the bank accounts of the ancestors. She knew that she had never seen a damned dime, even though, supposedly, restitution had been made to the families. What a crock! It was mere publicity only, propaganda, nothing more than a token writ.
She mouthed a few silent words and smiled grimly as a bird flew overhead and dropped a little bomb on the proprietor’s head. She turned and walked away chuckling darkly as his string of colorful invectives was carried to her ears by her friend…the wind.
***
The Old Cemetery
Sudbury, Massachusetts
March 19, 1992
It was a cemetery, just a cemetery, like so many other cemeteries, and yet it wasn’t. She felt a sense of peace here and not the usual eerie feeling of walking over somebody’s grave that she would have expected. She knew why. The why is what brought her here…on this day, the day that started it all for her, and yet it actually started so much sooner, for without the one, there wouldn’t have been the other.
Marianne Cloyce toyed with a lock of her blonde hair. It couldn’t be called blonde exactly. It was closer to silver in color and had been since she was just a little girl. People just had a hard time attributing gray or silver to hair on one so young, so blonde it was labeled and blonde she had become. Her recent marriage had sent her on an ancestral journey; her new husband was big into genealogy. The upshot was quite a shock to them both…her married name was one of a distant female relative…she had, in fact, married back into her family, the family of her grandmother, many times great, Sarah Cloyce nee Sarah Towne.
Marianne shook her head sadly. Sarah Cloyce had some notoriety, but not nearly as much as her sister, Rebeccah Nurse, and that is what led her to Sudbury and what would lead her next to Salem, to the old cemetery on Charter Street, The Burying Point. She had it on good authority that Sarah’s marker would be found here, though she knew enough of her family’s history now to know that she wouldn’t find Rebeccah’s here or at the one in Salem. No, they wouldn’t bury executed witches on hallowed ground. Her body was somewhere so secret that no one left in the family even knew where it was.
Wherever Rebeccah Nurse slept in final repose, Marianne hoped that at least her soul had found peace. She continued walking the rows of old, cracked, chipped and toppled-over head stones until she stopped dead in her tracks. She pivoted and hung a right and then a left amid the tangled overgrown weeds until she stood looking down at a partially moss covered stone. “Sarah Cloyce, b. 1639, d. 1703, beloved wife of Peter Cloyce, beloved mother of Benoni, Hepsibah, and Mary Cloyce, and Hannah, Edmond, Benjamin, Mary, Caleb, Sarah, and Alice Bridges.”
As Marianne felt the tears fall, the sky opened up and the rain poured down. Marianne dropped to her knees, her gut wrenching tears washed away by the water coming from the heavens.
***
Ok...that is not the end of the first part, but it was too long to put in one post...so, it follows immediately herein. Many thanks, again.
I appreciate anything advice, criticism, praise that you could provide. Thank you in advance and God Bless.
***
The Disgruntled Coven
Part I – The Right Time, The Right Place
The Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial
Salem, Massachusetts
February 29, 1992
Abigail Bethune stood in the early morning mist, her gray gown billowing around her, three inches of slushy, melting snow at her feet. Black was so…so…done…so passé, she preferred gray. It fit her mood, it suited the weather and it complimented her environs perfectly. The wind whipped her unbound, shoulder length, brown hair about her face, but she paid it no attention. Her eyes were focused across the street, at the recently dedicated memorial. The smell of the decaying flowers placed at the site to pay tribute to the victims was still pungent in the air, even at this distance.
Three hundred years! It took them three hundred years to do this…to try to make some peace with what happened here. Three hundred years! And what do they choose to commemorate the tragedy with? Stones. Stones! Still the indignity lingers…stones! One of the victims of that travesty died when stone slabs, weights were placed upon his body. He lasted two days…two days before succumbing and giving the villagers the satisfaction of his last breath. Stones! She would never breach those gates, never look at the stone slabs chiseled with the names and dates there…she would never remember her family at such a mockery, a sick joke. She would remember them in her own way, in her own time…and damn everyone else.
Abbie felt the fury rise within her, felt the wind pick up, felt the stinging lash of her curly, unruly hair as it whipped fiercely about her face. She cast a baleful look at the official memorial. Stones! She bent and worked her fingers through the cold, wet remnants of the last snow and found the frozen ground beneath. She dug her fingers into the slumbering Earth and made a solemn vow…the past was not forgotten. Not by a long shot.
***
The Witch House
Salem, Massachusetts
March 2, 1992
Elizabeth Gayle stood across the street, at the corner of Rte 114 and Essex, and regarded the Corwin House, better known as The Witch House. It wasn’t at the original location. It had been moved here in 1944 to save it from certain demolition. The local town folks didn’t want to see such a tribute to history destroyed and had managed to raise the necessary money to have it moved and preserved…keeping the legacy alive.
Betty shook her head, her raven black hair billowing around her flashing green eyes. Legacy! Hah! More like a tourist trap, a cash cow, especially come October. Her eyes narrowed as the proprietor stepped out to pick up the daily paper. She hated seeing what the house had turned into, hated knowing that money was being made off the dead bodies…37 bodies. She wondered how much of the profits had made it or would ever make it to the bank accounts of the ancestors. She knew that she had never seen a damned dime, even though, supposedly, restitution had been made to the families. What a crock! It was mere publicity only, propaganda, nothing more than a token writ.
She mouthed a few silent words and smiled grimly as a bird flew overhead and dropped a little bomb on the proprietor’s head. She turned and walked away chuckling darkly as his string of colorful invectives was carried to her ears by her friend…the wind.
***
The Old Cemetery
Sudbury, Massachusetts
March 19, 1992
It was a cemetery, just a cemetery, like so many other cemeteries, and yet it wasn’t. She felt a sense of peace here and not the usual eerie feeling of walking over somebody’s grave that she would have expected. She knew why. The why is what brought her here…on this day, the day that started it all for her, and yet it actually started so much sooner, for without the one, there wouldn’t have been the other.
Marianne Cloyce toyed with a lock of her blonde hair. It couldn’t be called blonde exactly. It was closer to silver in color and had been since she was just a little girl. People just had a hard time attributing gray or silver to hair on one so young, so blonde it was labeled and blonde she had become. Her recent marriage had sent her on an ancestral journey; her new husband was big into genealogy. The upshot was quite a shock to them both…her married name was one of a distant female relative…she had, in fact, married back into her family, the family of her grandmother, many times great, Sarah Cloyce nee Sarah Towne.
Marianne shook her head sadly. Sarah Cloyce had some notoriety, but not nearly as much as her sister, Rebeccah Nurse, and that is what led her to Sudbury and what would lead her next to Salem, to the old cemetery on Charter Street, The Burying Point. She had it on good authority that Sarah’s marker would be found here, though she knew enough of her family’s history now to know that she wouldn’t find Rebeccah’s here or at the one in Salem. No, they wouldn’t bury executed witches on hallowed ground. Her body was somewhere so secret that no one left in the family even knew where it was.
Wherever Rebeccah Nurse slept in final repose, Marianne hoped that at least her soul had found peace. She continued walking the rows of old, cracked, chipped and toppled-over head stones until she stopped dead in her tracks. She pivoted and hung a right and then a left amid the tangled overgrown weeds until she stood looking down at a partially moss covered stone. “Sarah Cloyce, b. 1639, d. 1703, beloved wife of Peter Cloyce, beloved mother of Benoni, Hepsibah, and Mary Cloyce, and Hannah, Edmond, Benjamin, Mary, Caleb, Sarah, and Alice Bridges.”
As Marianne felt the tears fall, the sky opened up and the rain poured down. Marianne dropped to her knees, her gut wrenching tears washed away by the water coming from the heavens.
***
Ok...that is not the end of the first part, but it was too long to put in one post...so, it follows immediately herein. Many thanks, again.