Goody Martin’s face sank momentarily. Then she was out of her chair and moving fast, gripping Lils’s arm and guiding her away from the front door. “The root cellar. Now. If they find thee here, dressed thus, speaking thus, there will be no saving either of us.”
Goody lifted a loose floorboard, revealing a small dark space beneath. “Get in. Quickly! And stay quiet, no matter what thou hearest,” she hissed, lowering the board back into place.
Lils dropped into the cellar, feet hitting damp earth. The space was barely large enough to crouch in, and the smell of mold and rotting vegetables made her gag. Complete and absolute darkness pressed against Lils’s eyes like a physical thing. She could hear her own breathing, too loud, too fast. This is real. This was really happening.
“Where is she?” She heard a man’s voice above, gruff and commanding.
“Who?” answered Goody Martin, playing innocent.
“The young woman who was seen near the old graveyard by moonlight yesternight.”
Someone had seen her. Of course someone had. In a village this small, a stranger would be noticed immediately.
A younger voice continued. “We have testimony—thou wert seen aiding someone into thy home from the woods in the early hours of the morning.”
Heavy footsteps directly overhead. Lils pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to quiet her breathing. Panic grabbed hold of her like a vicegrip. I’m going to die here. I’m going to be dragged out and accused and hanged, and no one in 2025 will ever know what happened to me.
Goody sighed. “I found a girl near the graveyard, yes,” She said, holding her voice steady. “She was collapsed, and when she awoke I brought her here and gave her sustenance, and then I know not where she went once she departed.”
“Describe her.”
A pause. “Young. Dark hair. Well nourished, strong in stature. Spoke little. Babbled fever talk, I thought. Wore an odd cloak of sorts and seemed frightened.”
“And thou did not think to alert the magistrate? A strange woman, alone, near the graveyard where Eliza Proctor was last seen?”
Goody again. “I came to the aid of a soul in need and offered Christian charity, good sir. That is no crime.”
“That depends on whether the soul in need was sent by the Lord or the Devil.”
Lils tracked the footsteps by sound, and heard the men moving closer to her hiding spot. “Search if thou must,” Goody Martin said. “But make haste, I must leave shortly to prepare my stall for the market.”
The footsteps moved away, toward the back of the house. Lils heard drawers being opened, fabric rustling. Boots scuffing on the wooden floor.
Then, horrifyingly, the footsteps stopped directly above her, squeaking on loose board.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“What’s this?” the man said. His boot played with the wood, as if testing something. Lils’s heart dropped.
“That cellar has been here since the house was built,” Goody Martin replied. “My late husband used it to store root vegetables. There is naught down there but dirt and mold now.”
“Then thou wilt not mind if I look.” The board moved a crack. Lils was nearly too scared to breathe. There was no where to go, she'd be exposed immediately.
“Look if thou must, but mind the rats. They grow quite large in the dark.”
The word "rats" seemed to give the man pause. Clearly he was considering his options as he shifted his weight, testing the creaky side of the board with his muddy boot and peaking through the gap. Lils took a shallow breath, even as she accidentally put her hand through a spider web.
“Samuel,” Goody Martin interrupted, and Lils picked up on the calculated warmth in her tone. “How is thy step mother, Prudence? I heard she took ill. Did the tonic I sent help?”
A pause. Then the younger voice: “Aye, her cough is much improved. Thank thee for thy kindness.”
“I am glad to hear it. Thou art a godly son to care for her so well.”
The footsteps moved away from the board. Lils allowed herself to exhale completely.
“If the stranger returns,” the older man said, “Thou art to send word immediately. Is that understood? And guard thy household,” He paused, then leaned in and lowered his voice. “There are those in the village who say that thy herbal cures are witchcraft.”
“Then they should speak louder in my presence so that I might defend myself,” Goody Martin’s voice held an edge. “And know of whom I should refuse my healing services.”
A tense silence, then footsteps toward the door.
“Good day, Goody Martin. Be well.”
“Good day, gentlemen.”
The door slammed shut.
Lils waited in the darkness, counting her breaths. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. Finally, the floorboard lifted and light flooded in. “They are gone,” Goody Martin said, extending a hand. “But they’ll be watching, Lord as my witness. Thou must stay inside, out of sight, and cannot leave thus while they are out.”
Lils climbed out on shaking legs, gasping for fresh air. Her jeans were torn, her body aching from the cramped position.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you...for everything.”
“Do not thank me yet, girl,” Goody Martin pressed a small bundle into her hands, more bread wrapped in cloth, and what looked like dried herbs. “Thou may wish thou hadst not come here at all. But for now, I’ll not see thee hanged if I can help it.”
She moved to the window, checking the path outside. “Whatever brought thee to Salem, I pray it is worth it.”
Lils thought of Eliza, safe in 2025. Thought of Aunt Ivy and Lucy, probably frantic with worry.
“So do I,” she said quietly.
Hours later, Lils lay in the small upstairs room Goody Martin had temporarily given her, wrapped in scratchy wool blankets, her hoodie pulled tight. Outside, the sun was setting. She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and the screen was black. Dead battery, or maybe the time travel had fried it.
Either way it was useless, with no cell towers anywhere yet. No electricity either; just a piece of dead technology that would possibly look like witchcraft to anyone who saw it.
Lils tucked it back in her pocket.
This is what you wanted, she told herself. You wanted to reach Eliza, wanted to change her fate.
Now here she was in the depths of it, way over her head and panicking, and she couldn’t even use her phone to avoid her emotions.
Outside, the wind continued to whip through bare trees. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. The village was settling in for the night.
Lils was awake after a nap, and wondered how long she should wait for Goody to arrive back home from the market to start the fire. She didn’t even want to think about how she’d be surviving right now out in the elements if not for Goody’s generosity.
Now that Goody was away, the house seemed bigger, darker. Scarier. Trees tossed and swayed and branches tapped the windows like skeletal fingers, begging to come in from the cold.
Lils shuddered. What the hell had she done? The beams of the house creaked like an old sailing ship.
She pulled the scratchy blanket tighter and tried not to think about what would happen if they found her. About the rope and the platform and the villagers who would gather to watch. She had to stay alive, had to believe that herself or Aunt Ivy and Lucy would figure out how to open the door back home.
Had to.