Serenity, MI
December 1879
Mrs. Chance was almost blind. Oh, certainly some of it was due to worsening cataracts. One didn’t reach the age she had achieved and not notice some parts didn’t work as well as they once did. She felt she’d aged a hundred years since Michael had been born.
But the main sight-diminishing culprit at present was rage.
She had already hoisted Michael’s limp body onto the preparation table. Her eyes may be weakening, but just as she’d been promised, her back and arms remained strong, and she’d lifted her naked son with little effort, and tightened the table’s sturdy leather straps to keep him from rolling off the table and bumping his head or scraping his knee.
Boys!
Now she dragged the whore down the stairs from Rose Parré’s bedroom on the second story and her head bounced off every carpeted tread as Mrs. Chance held an ankle in each hand as she walked back to the surgery. By the time they’d reached the heavy door, a smear of blood marked their path on the floor, but the old woman either did not notice or, if she had, did not care.
The girl was placed directly onto the operating table. There would be no preparation for her. For her, the time had come.
“Time,” Mrs. Chance said aloud.
As a young girl, Sarah Cotton had not thought much about the nature of time. She smiled, as she did whenever her birth name popped into her mind—so many wonderful memories! But she was always far too busy a girl to waste time thinking about it.
But now, even at this minute as she pulled tight the wrist and ankle bonds on the operating table and stuffed a rag in the girl’s pretty mouth with a rag stiffened by the dried blood of an earlier patient, her mind once again, as if often did now, drifted into a reverie on the subject of none other than that.
Time.
As she walked to the instrument cart she thought about how many years she had survived to reach this point.
Her history stretched back much further than her life in Serenity. She had come west in an odd wagon train, a three-party caravan, women all. Just three horses, pulling three hay-filled carts.
Sarah’s wagon was piloted by her mother. She was only nine when they’d left New England, and her mother had been young and strong. The other two wagons all had a similar passenger manifest: one woman, one girl.
During the start of the great westward expansion the dangers and rigors of the journey were such that coming across a group such as this was rare, bordering upon unheard of. If one did encounter three wagons filled with six women, it was likely a grisly scene, in which the men had already been killed off, and the women were unsuccessful in either pushing forward or turning tail.
But this small group had not been part of the great westward trek. They were not heading to California for gold. Nor were they even part of the lumber boom.
For these women weren’t so much striking out to seek their fortunes, as fleeing for their lives. Things had gotten very intolerable for them in their small Massachusetts town.
They were not part of the first people to see the business potential of the forests of Michigan in the 1820s. Nor did their migration occur thirty years later and lead to Sutter’s Mill.
They had set out in the summer of 1692, leaving the town of Salem behind them as it descended into frenzied panic over the presence of witches in the colonial village. The three women and their daughters had watched in horror as innocent goodwives were accused by spiteful, play acting girls, tried, and hung in grotesque public spectacles.
The six-woman group knew the accused were innocent. History tells us that the trials would stretch on until the spring of 1693, and that ultimately about twenty were executed. But in reality there had ever only been six witches in Salem, and though they had little trouble avoiding detection (for the first thing that would have given experienced accusers pause was knowing that no real witch would ever allow herself to be found out), they were both troubled by the horror they were seeing, and as all of them were young widows raising daughters, they would eventually have been logical suspects. Keeping an image of purity would become increasingly difficult.
And so Sarah Cotton and her mother Elizabeth left with the other two true witches of Salem on the night of the new moon, August 12, 1692. They left behind almost everything, taking only the absolute essentials.
Sarah and her mother had finished building their small home, with a trading post to help other travelers in the woods of Michigan, before the first snow fell.
Upon adding the final touch to the mud between the log chinks, Elizabeth had turned to her daughter and said proudly,
“And here, at last, we have found our serenity.
And so it was, four years later, when Sarah reached the age of 13, that she and her mother went alone to the deep woods, several hours walk from their home and those of the first few others who had built near the trading post. In a dark glade, they had made a fire, then Sarah stripped naked along with her mother, and they began to dance in the fire light, their forms projecting a grotesque, shadow-puppet show on the surrounding trees as they swayed and chanted, drinking the elixir that Elizabeth had made sure was among the few possessions they’d taken when they fled Salem, and calling upon their Master to join them.
When all the elixir had been consumed ... he had joined them. And after he had enjoyed them both, he asked Sarah her heart’s desire, that he might grant it.
In what she had thought was a wise choice, she had said, “A long life, and the strength of body to live it well.”
As Mrs. Chance selected a long fileting knife and held it up to let the lamplight shimmer on its keen surface, she remembered the twisted, smokey smile, as the vanishing beast cackled the word,
“Granted.”
When they were walking back, her mother had told her, “His promise is always kept, but there is always a price.”
“What had been your heart’s desire, mother,” Sarah had asked.
Her mother had smiled at her warmly and said, “That I would survive at least until the day of my daughter’s acceptance by the Master.”
At that exact second, without the benefit of warning, a massasauga rattlesnake coiled in the undergrowth flashed its fangs and plunged them deep into Elizabeth’s ankle.
They had walked for another thirty minutes but by then the pain was unbearable, and Elizabeth could go no further. She died, horribly, six hours later.
Sarah had emerged from the forest around the small settlement, now called Serenity by all of its dozen or so permanent occupants, just as the sun was rising. She was covered in dirt, her fingers black and cracked from digging a shallow grave for her mother. She realized that her mother had had her pact fulfilled, and the IOU had come due immediately. And Sarah learned something about the nature of the Master.
She had also hoped that her payment had been made as well. That the loss of her mother would be the price of her longevity and strength.
Her longevity had required her, eventually, to leave Serenity. By then she appeared to be about thirty, although she was over twice that, and therein lay the problem. She had run out of viable excuses as to the reason she looked younger than people who had come to Serenity when she was a girl, and who had lived and eventually died. She had left briefly twice before, returning as her own younger cousin, with the deed to the homestead and trading post, and the sad news of Sarah’s passing both times, (although the second time it had been the first “cousin,’ Abigail, who had, like Sarah before her, died while traveling.) By the 1760s and Sarah’s eightieth birthday, Serenity had only grown to about twice the size it had been when Elizabeth had died. Michigan’s lumber riches had yet to be made, and it was still little more than a frontier outpost.
Sarah realized that the oldest residents of the area had been alive for the arrival of both cousins. Unless she left until the collective memory had enough time to dispense with her, Serenity could potentially become as infamous as Salem already had.
In 1763, she left Michigan, telling everyone she wanted to see family back east again before she died. With tearful farewells from the blacksmith and the farmer and the seamstress and the handful of other people with equally vital vocations, she left in a conveyance considerably sturdier than the hay wagon in which she’d arrived.
Mrs. Chance now turned to the naked whore. Whatever Michael had given her to render her unconscious was wearing off, and she began to moan. She approached, then stopped, remembering her robe, which she’d slipped on, but had not tied. It had been a gift from Michael a few Christmases before and she loved it dearly.
She turned and walked to a peg on the wall by the door and took it off. She did not want it ruined, even though she knew she would never wear it again. Just as she knew, when she returned again to Serenity in 1835 as the slew of major logging efforts were making men very rich, that she would never leave again.
At that time, she still appeared to be no older than when she’d quit the place sixty-two years before. But no one knew her. She returned to the now booming town, although her claim to the trading post homestead and indeed the place itself were long gone.
She ended up catching the eye of one of the new lumber tycoons, the charming and devilishly handsome Phillip Parré, who had come to the place with nearly unlimited resources eight years earlier. Although married for six of those years, Parré’s wife Rose had borne him no children, and it nagged at him that he had no heir to whom he could leave his still growing lumber empire.
Sarah had been working in the saloon, a structure that had not existed when she’d left in the 1700s, and he’d told his sad tale to her as she’d served him drinks.
At once, a plan formed in her mind.
Sarah had never had children either, but this was simply because even over a lifetime that was artificially lengthened, she had never found a man worthy of her. Sarah knew that any man she was with would eventually realize that while he was getting old and nearing death, she was not. If she was going to deal with all the ramifications of that, it would have to be for an exceptional man.
A man like Phillip Parré. In him, she at last saw her chance. That was the thought in her head when he’d placed his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to him.
“What is your name, lovely creature?” he’d asked.
“Chance,” she’d said. “Sarah Chance.” She smiled at her own cleverness, conjuring the surname on the spot.
Within a year, she gave birth to Michael, thinking that at last her decades of service to the master, of maintaining her craft, of conducting the required rites, had finally paid their dividend. Surely now her struggles were behind her! Phillip Parré would leave his wife. He’d put his cast-off spouse on a train back east, now that there was a station right in Serenity, and she would become Sarah Parré.
Mrs. Chance stood beside the operating table with the long knife in one hand. With her other, she picked up a pitcher of water and, without taking her eyes off the girl, she splashed it in Michael’s face. With a weak and sputtering cry, he woke up.
It was almost identical to the weak sputtering cry he’d issued when he’d been born, and the midwife had held him by his ankles and slapped his ass. He lifted his head to look around. Or at least he attempted to. His head was securely strapped to the preparation table. Mrs. Chance had angled it so that he had a clear view of the nude woman. In fact, his head bindings meant he could look nowhere else.
“Mrs. Chance, what in the name of—”
“You’ll call upon no names other than the name of the Master!” she snarled, still keeping her eyes locked on the whore. She wanted her to be a little more awake before …
“Uhh. Dr. Parré … ?” Gwen moaned painfully.
Good! Not only was she coming around, but she remembered being with Michael. That meant she’d be able to understand what was happening.
Just as Sarah Chance had known.
Phillip had taken the child from her and given it to his wife. The woman, a hopeless drunk, had no interest in raising “her son,” and so Phillip had hired the boy’s real mother to serve, first as his wet nurse, then his governess.
But after having her and at last gaining his heir, Phillip treated her with cruel indifference, and Rose treated her with outright contempt. When it was clear that the mistreatment wasn’t going to end, she took matters into her own hands, using the craft and untraceable but deadly potions.
Although Sarah had briefly thought having Phillip all to herself would be a dream, she now hated the man, and in an effort to avoid suspicion, or if necessary throw it toward Rose, she eliminated him first, giving him a brew of ancient creation which caused his heart to stop one hour after consuming it. She’d put some in his morning tea and he’d slumped over at his desk in his office in town, which happily caused fingers to be pointed at nothing but Phillip’s own excesses, although as she’d hoped there were some who suspected Rose.
When she died in exactly the same manner only a few months later, it was revealed that all of the family’s wealth fell to the infant Michael ... with Sarah Chance as his guardian. The will had caused the executors a brief bit of concern at the lateness of its date. It had been dated one day before Phillip Parré’s death. But enough circumstance had convinced all concerned that the document was legitimate.
She had steadfastly kept secret the truth of Michael’s parentage to spare him the shame and embarrassment, and he’d grown up thinking of her as one does a favorite servant.
But that was all over now.
Charles Hampton saw the snow and wind pick up as he put on his overcoat and pulled a hat down hard upon his head. He knew that Parré had taken the girl in his carriage, and that they would reach the house before his boot heels hit the street, but he also knew where they were going.
He’d made the walk up to the Parré property several times since coming to the gut-wrenching realization that the men who went into that house with the civil war veteran, the wealthiest man in Serenity, the medical school failure … those men never came out again.
Now he had pounced upon a new victim, and this time it was a young woman. She appeared quite fetching, although it was difficult to be sure from the window of his boarding house room.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether she was beautiful or if one look at her turned men to stone, he was not going to let Michael Parré kill her.
By the time he’d reached the base of the hill upon which the house stood as it glowered down with contempt at the lesser buildings of Serenity, Hampton was freezing, and was having difficulty seeing where he was going. The snow was now falling heavily and that, mixed with the rapidly accelerating winds, made for a challenging climb up to the building, especially since he took a wide detour of the main entrance, climbing a low wooden fence to which the more imposing iron fence and gates, complete with Parré’s monogram, gave way as it bent around the base of the hill.
Hampton knew of a door that he’d seen Parré exit, wheeling carts of what appeared to be animal offal out into the yard where he kept a drove of pigs, who happily gobbled all he could bring them.
He now knew it hadn’t been animals being butchered and devoured by the swine.
Hampton plodded through the snow. It had been a hard winter, and there was a good deal already blanketing the vast lawns of the mansion. Considerably more had fallen during the course of his walk from the village center. But after a slow trudge, made all the more so by his desire to remain undiscovered, he arrived at the door, which he tried and found to be unbolted.
He carefully pushed it open.
After making sure no one was near, he pushed it open a little further, enough to slide his trim form through, then noiselessly closed it again.
He had expected to need a moment for his eyes to adjust to total darkness before he walked down the hallway in the house’s basement, but once inside he saw a torch hanging in a ring beside an open door of substantial construction.
He began to move silently toward it, but before he had taken no more than two steps, the air was torn by a blood-curdling scream.
“This, Michael, is what happens to the impure,” Mrs. Chance said as she moved the blade in a slicing fashion, removing a long thin strip of the young woman’s skin. She’d taken the first such bit of whore-rind a moment before but the tramp was not yet conscious to the degree that she felt pain. At least not immediately.
By the time she took the second strip, the filthy bitch was wide-eyed and wailing.
“You were not put on this earth to carouse with women like this, Michael,” she said, abandoning her efforts on the bleeding torso and moving the blade to her face, where she immediately sliced off the woman’s nose.
“Mrs. Chance, stop! She’s not been properly prepared.”
“She’s been preparing her whole whoring life for this, Michael. But you. You have been preparing for greatness. You’ve continued your research, your experiments. You’ve learned things about the human body no other man has ever known, and by supplying skeletons you’ve helped the medical profession for years to come, not to mention kept food on the table after your excesses had depleted the fortune your father left you.
“And yet tonight I awaken from my troubled sleep to animal sounds emanating from your bedroom. At first I feared you were dying. You sounded just like your father when he died.”
For all the horror of the moment, Michael stopped her.
“My father died alone in his office. You couldn’t know how he sounded.”
“No, Michael, of course not. Do not attempt to change the topic, young man. But you are in this house, under my care …”
“I appreciate all you do for me. You have been a loyal servant, but clearly the stress …”
“Servant?” Mrs. Chance bellowed. “Servant?”
She had stopped mutilating the woman as they’d talked, but now she turned to her again. The girl, now showing more blood than flesh, opened her eyes just as the woman began stabbing and slashing with a speed and ferocity that caused Michael to disbelieve his own eyes. At first, the girl’s screams renewed—redoubled ... but the sounds quickly ended.
Mrs. Chance, covered in splattered blood, turned to Michael. She walked slowly toward him. It was difficult to see, but Parré thought he saw her take something else from the instrument tray as she passed the cart on which it sat.
“Mrs. Chance, you’ve had your fun. The girl is clearly dead. Release me now so that we can dispose of her.”
“No Michael. I will not release you. I cannot.”
She began to climb onto the preparation table.
“Mrs. Chance! What are you doing? And why are you naked? Cover yourself!”
“I cannot release you. From the day of your thirteenth birthday, when we walked to that distant grove and you asked the Master for your heart’s desire, I knew and dreaded the coming of this day.”
She’d appeared to age normally after Michael was born, and by the time he’d reached adulthood she looked as she now did—but Michael remembered that night, when he’d turned thirteen and she’d told him of the first rite. He remembered how they danced in the firelight.
But then the master had appeared from the smoke of the fire and had joined the dance—had altered the dance.
And when it was done, he’d asked Michael his heart’s desire. And the foolish boy had asked that when his time came he would be allowed to die in this state of arousal.
Sarah had stopped dancing at once, knowing the boy had foolishly doomed himself ... had doomed them both.
And now as she sat upon him, her body and identity shifted ... and she was Guinevere. Her ancient skin smoothed and softened, her hair became like golden silk. Her breasts firm globes of temptation.
“Dr. Parré,” she said, even her voice that of Gwen. “It’s me. I’m not dead after all.”
Michael looked at the other table and saw the body of Mrs. Chance lying there, bloody and mutilated. Then his gaze shot back to this new Gwen, naked and glorious, kneeling over him ... and he responded in the place where their bodies met.
“Oh, thank the Master,” he breathed. “I thought ... how did you ... but the knife ...”
At that moment, the door to the surgery was torn open by Charles Hampton who took a step into the room. He saw a body lying butchered upon one table. Upon the other, he saw Michael Parré, with his housekeeper kneeling over him. He saw her holding a knife aloft, and he pulled a revolver from the pocket of his coat.
Hearing the mechanical clicking of the hammer being pulled back, the transfigured Mrs. Chance turned and saw him.
Thrusting a hand in his direction, she uttered a word—or a sound, Hampton could never say for sure—and he found himself paralyzed. He was in full command of his wits, but he could not move a muscle.
Continuing to hold her hand this way, Mrs. Chance looked down at Michael Parré. And she began to speak. To Michael’s eyes and ears, she was the beautiful young woman from earlier in the evening, but the content of her words suggested otherwise.
“Michael, I have done my best to raise you to serve the master, but you have served only yourself, and this …” she nodded her head in the direction of the dead prostitute, “... this proves it. The Master decrees that today shall be the day of your heart’s desire.”
Hampton saw to his disgust that the woman was moving her hips while speaking, and that Parré was beginning to moan with pleasure.
And then Mrs. Chance drove the knife deeply into her son’s chest. And as she did, the enchantment ended and her body shifted back, once more trading places with the dead young woman on the nearby table.
Parré’s eyes shot open wide, and he gasped for breath, but succeeded only in coughing a spray of blood all over Mrs. Chance.
Then, as Hampton continued to watch in motionless horror, she set a wooden box on the still oozing chest wound.
“Master, in thy name I have served you all these many years, and now in thy name I have granted my son his heart’s desire, and now, again in thy name I bind our forsaken spirits to this house.”
And then she took up the knife she had extracted from her son’s chest ... and drew it across her own throat.
Her blood now joined that of Michael and, unfortunately some of the whore’s as well, as it stained the wooden box.
She lifted the box, even as her body began to convulse at the trauma, and placed it in a niche in the wall where a stone had been removed.
Hampton watched as the stone seemed to re-form around the box until it could no longer be seen, and then he also watched as Mrs. Chance tumbled from atop her dead son and hit the stone floor with a wet, splattering thud.
At that moment, Hampton’s muscles unfroze, but at first all he could do was slump to the ground.
And then he began to scream.
At last, he regained some direct control over his muscles and began to scuttle like some uncoordinated crab backwards out of the door, where he finally regained his feet and ran from the house.
As he continued to run blindly, desperately, down the path to the iron gate, obviously no longer concerned about being spotted by the occupants, his head spun as he mentally replayed the horror he’d witnessed ... a horror he knew he’d never be able to blot from a mind that was already shrieking with revulsion.
As he struggled to open the heavy gate, Hampton paused. A single sound had pierced the shock and loathing and terror that controlled his entire being. A sound from the direction of the house.
The wind and snow had stopped completely since he’d entered, and the world was eerily silent.
But that sound was unmistakable.
It had been a breath. Deep lungs had taken in air.
The house itself had taken the first gasp of life.
Hampton ran, screaming incoherently, all the way back to town.