THE OLD SEWALL
HOUSE ON HOWARD AVENUE
Dirt be dirt.
But some dirt be
dirtier
than other dirt.
Robert M. May the
19th 1695
(Graffiti found on
a basement wall in a mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, during its demolishment
in 2025)
May,
2024
“But it’s the middle of May,”
groused Bridget Bishop. “Why isn’t anything out there growing?”
She’s standing at the kitchen
window by the sink looking out at the backyard.
Her husband, Sam Sewall, is at
the kitchen table having coffee and reading the morning paper.
“Maybe it has to do with the
late Spring,” he said without looking up. “The lows were in the thirties
last week.”
“Well, it was sixty yesterday
and it’s supposed to be sixty-five today,” answered Bridget. “I want to see a
green lawn and some flowers.”
“Relax, Bridget. We’ve only
been here two months. We can plant some annuals. I like Salem. It’s a great old
city with a lot of history. And they still have a real morning newspaper. Delivered
by a kid on a bike, no less. Way better than having to read the news on my
phone.”
“There was a foot of snow on
the ground when the realtor showed it to us last November,” said Bridget,
unable to let it go. “We never thought to ask what was under the snow. And
look at the neighbor’s yard. They have both a lawn and flowers. We’ve
got dirt. Ugly gray dirt.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll go out and look at it,” said Sam.
“Not
that I’d know what to look for.”
“You’re just humoring me,” said
Bridget.
“Yes, I am, sweetcakes. Yes, I
am.”
***
Sam walked the length and
breadth of the yard and couldn’t see anything unusual. Except for the fact that
there was no greenery. Not even any dead weeds along the fence from last year. And
shouldn’t an old house like theirs have some trees? Stately old maples, oaks,
or elms?
“Morning. Whatcha lookin’ for?”
came a voice from across the fence.
“Good morning to you too,” said Sam.
“I’m John Sharp, yer neighbor. Sorry
the missus and I didn’t get around to welcoming ya like we shoulda.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m Sam
Sewall,” Sam said, extending his hand over the picket fence. “Nice to meetcha. It
was Winter. Probably everybody around here pretty much stays inside until it
gets warmer.”
“Ayuh, that’s the truth,” said John.
“But we still shoulda stopped over.”
“Well, my wife and I are from
California. We’re not used to two months of below freezing temperatures, so
we’re glad it’s finally Spring.”
John looked down at his shoes
like he was weighing what to say next.
“Don’t get me wrong, we love
the house and Salem,” said Sam, thinking he may have offended John by
complaining. “Really —"
“Yer wife’s name’s Bishop,
ain’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Bridget Bishop.”
“Jesus Pleezus,” said John,
shuddering. “A Sewall and a Bishop married and livin’ next door to me in
that…, that house.”
“Is something wrong with that?”
“Everything’s wrong with that,” said
John, staring Sam in the face with what looked like menace. “Don’t ya know
where yer originally from? Right here! Yer ancestors were born and raised in
that house.”
Sam’s mouth dropped open. Neither
he nor Bridget were into genealogy and had never thought about where their
families had lived before California. Both of their parents and all of their
grandparents had died years ago. Before he and Bridget had met.
Now that he thought about it,
there were a number of odd coincidences.
“Do you have any idea as to why
we don’t have any grass or plants in our yard,” Sam asked, trying to change the
subject.
The anger on John’s face seemed
to loosen a bit. “It’s the damned dirt. It’s cursed. Nothin’ will ever grow
there unless…, never mind, it’s cursed. Leave it at that.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to get a
little angry. “What do you mean, cursed? Is this some kind of ‘Yankee pulling
the leg of the stranger in town’ thing?”
“Do ya know how many people
have owned that house in the last three hundred plus years? More than a
hundred. And it’s been vacant most of that time too. Nobody stays for more than
a few months. They just up and leave and it sits until some realtor buys it
from the county for back taxes. And sells it to somebody from somewhere far
away. Like California.”
After that little speech, John
turned to leave.
“Now, wait just a minute,” said
Sam. “I’ve got more questions.”
“You can Google ‘Samuel Sewall
and Bridget Bishop from Salem,’” John said over his shoulder.
“You were gonna say something
about a curse and then changed your mind. What were you gonna tell me?”
John stopped and turned back. “The
curse can be lifted for the current owners if there is a sacrifice,” John
intoned in a sonorous voice. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “I won’t
say no more. I shouldna said that. It made me say that. I was too close
to that fuckin’ dirt for too long.”
Sam watched John walk to his
back door and go inside. He slammed the door as if to say something was done.
“Now, that was odd,” Sam said
to himself. And then, “Would I sacrifice somebody to keep this house?”
That last thought caused him to
smile.
And that caused him to
shudder.
***
Sam went from the yard straight
to his laptop. There were plenty of hits for “Samuel Sewall and Bridget Bishop
from Salem,” all of them relating to the Salem Witch Trials.
“Son of a bitch,” Sam muttered.
“Find something on the Internet
about why our yard is dead?” Bridget
asked, coming up behind him.
“Maybe,” said Sam.
“Oh, my gosh!” said Bridget.
“We’re all over that page. Click on one and see what it says.”
Bridget pulled up a chair and
the two of them spent the next twenty minutes learning about what had gone on
in Salem in 1692.
“So, my namesake was the first
witch to be hanged in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials,” said Bridget. “Some claim
to fame, huh?”
“And mine was one of the judges
at the time. Apparently, even though he apologized and agonized over his part
in the trials after they were over, his family suffered for it as if…,”
“As if what?” asked Bridget.
“Oh, it was just something our
neighbor said out by the fence. Nothing, really.”
“Come on. Give,” Bridget said,
elbowing Sam in the side.
“He said nothing grew on our
property because the land and the house were cursed. Silly, huh?”
Bridget frowned in
concentration. “What else did he say?”
Sam hesitated. How much should
he tell her? If she got freaked out, would she insist on going back to
California?
“He implied that we’re the
descendants of those two from the trials. They’re not just our namesakes.
They’re family. And he said it was wrong for the two of us to be married and
living in this house.”
He sat there waiting for the
explosion.
“Well, that’s just nuts,”
Bridget said, laughing. “Whacko City, right?”
“Yup, it is,” Sam said,
relieved. “People mixing history with superstition.”
But he wasn’t as sure of what
he was saying as he was trying to sound.
While at first he’d thought
he’d maybe said too much, at least he hadn’t mentioned the weird intonation
about the need for a sacrifice. He’d talk to John Sharp tonight after dinner
and pry more out of him.
“What say we go to that nursery
down by that strip mall and pick up some plants?” he said.
“Let’s do it. We can have lunch
at that little Italian restaurant.”
***
“Saw ya planting them flowers.
Seems like maybe ya didn’t hear me when I was talkin’ to ya earlier today.”
“Oh, I heard you, all right,”
Sam replied. “I just don’t know how much of what you said isn’t a load of
crap.”
“Maybe you should sign on with
one of them ancestry organizations. Ya don’t have to take my word on things.”
“They gonna tell me about
curses and sacrifices?”
John’s lips got very thin.
“Forget about the sacrifice. Forget I said it. Know why? Because out of those
hundred or so people who owned that house before you, there were at least ten
unsolved disappearances. Unsolved murders is what I think. Attempted sacrifices,
ya might say. And a
number of suicides.
“Where did you hear about all
this?”
John stared at Sam and didn’t
say anything. Sam walked over to his porch where he’d left the spade after
planting the flowers. He walked back to where John was still standing on the
other side of the fence and started digging up dirt and throwing it over the
fence onto John’s lawn.
After four shovel fulls, John
finally yelled, “Okay, okay! Enough! Stop! I got it from the last guy who lived
here. Almost fifteen years ago. Completely off his rocker. He told me he killed
his wife and then the house had accepted him. They never did find his wife. Six
months later he was a suicide. He’d told me the sacrifice deal was temporary
and he’d been right.”
As if not trusting himself to
stay another minute, John turned and hurried to his back door.
When Sam was back in the house,
he found Bridget packing suitcases in the bedroom. There was a Glock on the bed
by one of the suitcases.
“What the hell are you doing?”
asked Sam. “And whose gun is that?”
“Go look in the bathroom,”
Bridget said, not answering either of Sam’s questions.
Sam shrugged and went into the
bathroom. On the mirror, written in Bridget’s red lipstick, were the words:
THOU SHALT
NOT SUFFER
A WITCH TO LIVE
“Did
you write this?” Sam
yelled from the bathroom to the bedroom.
“No, of course I didn’t,” said
Bridget, as she continued packing. “Edith Sharp was over while you were out by
the fence throwing dirt around. She told me a little about the history of this
place and gave me the Glock. Someone, or something, wrote that while we
were in the living room talking.”
“Why the Glock?”
Bridget stopped packing and
looked Sam in the eye. “For protection. The last guy who lived here killed his
wife and then some months later, himself. Some nonsense about a sacrifice. I’m
going back to California. I hope you’ll come with me, but I am going.
Today. Now. I won’t be some kind of sacrifice for this house.”
***
“It's been two days since we’ve
seen either of ‘em,” said John. “Ya think we should go over and, ya know, see
if everything’s okay.”
“You know damn well
everything’s not ‘okay’ over there, John. We both heard the shots that night
after I left yer Glock over there. One or both of ‘em’s dead.”
***
A couple of days later, Edith
is finishing up the morning dishes.
“I talked to Bridget this
morning while you were at the hardware store,” said Edith. “She was out weeding
the flowers her husband planted. They actually seem to be growing. She was singing
some song about strawberry
fields. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it.”
“So, she wasn’t the one who got
–-”
“No, it was him. She said she
shot ‘em when she caught ‘em putting something in her drink after dinner that
night. Turns out he’d bought some poison for moles when they went to the
nursery for those flowers. As if moles could live in that dirt.”
“Is he still, ya know, in the
house?”
“That’s the funny thing,” Edith
said, drying her hands on her apron. “She said that night something told her to
drag ‘em out into the yard and leave ‘em there. She did, and in the morning, he
was gone. She says the dirt ate ‘em. She said that’s why the dirt’s so nasty. A
lot of angry dead bodies in it. Nuts, huh?”
“Everything’s nuts about that
place,” John replied, nodding his head thoughtfully. “So, what do we do now?
You and me?”
“I’m thinking we should sell
our house and move to Florida ASAP. Have you looked at the spot recently where
he threw dirt onto our lawn?”
“Can’t say as I have. Why?”
“Because the lawn is dead
there. And the dead spot is getting bigger.”
THE END
