Salem Village–outpost of godliness.  Surrounded by forest where the Wabanaki are massing.

Penetrated by the Devil.  The invisible world is everywhere.  Witches meet in the home of a pious family, right in front of them!

A strange creature beside the path at twilight. Turns into 3 women who fly off.

The specter of the old widow, suddenly in the room, tortures the sick girl with inhuman seizures.

The leading citizens knock on the widow’s door, examine her body. Find a teat, between her fingers, where a dog or a hog must suckle.

Even Salem has fallen away.  Fewer attend church.  Fewer are baptized.  Tempted by the Quakers, or by slight innovations in doctrine.  There have been thefts. 

The family returns from the long sermon, to study further in the cold parlor.  In a hothouse of gossip, feuds.  Sunk in the invisible world.  With the Wabanaki at the first trees…

Next door, the sick girl still sees them butcher her parents.

In the meeting house, she faces her tormentor.  “Your movements, right now, are controlling my movements.”

The witches are hanged in small groups.  The churchgoer.  The one whose decades of loneliness broke her.  Buried outside the village.

But more and more are afflicted.  And more and more are signing the Devil’s book.

Their specters eat red bread and go forth in an assault.

God could make it stop.  The Devil is not free here, only on a long leash.  To do God’s bidding.  To chastise.

Finally, he can go to town.  Create demons of a whole new order. 

Play with the already-traumatized.  Throw the 80 year-old in jail, in winter.

The village is immersed in the Devil’s nature.  In the forest, the shamans of the Wabanaki sacrifice their firstborn.  Are becoming impervious to musket-fire.

A Black servant accuses the Governor’s wife.  A reverend is hanged.

The villagers are cleaving harder to God.  Crowding the church.  Getting baptized as adults.  They agree with the finest points of doctrine.  When will it be enough?