Booke of the Hidden Read online

  “Thank you, young lady. And here’s the bad news. I had to charge you a bit extra. The plasterin’ took a bit longer than I anticipated. But I wanted to make sure it blended with the old.”

  “And it looks perfect.” I checked the bill, but I really couldn’t tell that he’d added much to it. “Let me get my checkbook.” As I went into the back room, I could hear him talking.

  “Ay-yuh. This is a mighty pretty shop you got here.”

  “Thank you. I hope to be open by Friday.” Tearing off the check, I came back out and handed it to him. He didn’t even look at it before stuffing it into the front pocket of his overalls.

  “Now don’t touch that wall for at least a few days. Needs to cure. Then you can paint it.”

  “Sure thing. And thanks again.”

  He shoved his arms into the sleeves of his jacket. “Looks like she’s breezed up out there. Storm on the horizon, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Good day for a fire in the fireplace.”

  “Ay-yuh. Oh, by the way. I hear tell Seraphina will be paying you a call.”

  “Seraphina?”

  “I just wanted to let you know not to worry too much over her. I know she can be a bit overwhelming at times. She’s part of our local coven.”

  “Coven? As in witches?” This had to be a joke. Maybe a bit of hazing for the new guy?

  “The coven is harmless. And ‘Wiccan’ is the preferred term.”

  “Ah, I see.” Okay, definitely a joke then. I put a smile on my face. “Is there a difference?”

  “I don’t think Seraphina would like you to picture her as an old crone leaning over a cauldron.” We shared a laugh. “And I’ll be damned if anyone starts calling me a warlock. No, Wiccan’s fine by me.”

  “Uh…warlock?” My smile faded.

  “Oh, didn’t I mention? I’m part of the coven, too.” He winked before he turned toward the door, grasped the knob, and pushed through it.

  Chapter Three

  I knew I stood staring at the door for a long time once Doc Boone had made his pronouncement. It started me wondering a bit about Moody Bog. When I called that number on Craigslist and found the town just off the main highway, I had thought, why not? And then I drove across country and through the little berg of woods, old church, village green, and quaint houses—the newest ones from the 1930s, the oldest from the 1700s—and it all looked so perfect. Serene. Just like the pictures. A place one could settle down in.

  But what did I really know about this village or its villagers?

  And this Booke. It occurred to me that I might have asked Doc about it, but was glad I hadn’t. How involved did I want to get with this coven anyway?

  But he was right about one thing: There was a storm brewing, and the afternoon sky had darkened considerably. The wind picked up and the trees on the opposite side of the street were whipping around, their limbs looking like a stormy sea and doing their best to shake off the last of their colorful leaves.

  It must have been the moving tree limbs, then, because I could have sworn I heard that same scratching I heard yesterday before I broke through my wall. I stopped moving and listened. Scratching, all right. Was I going to have to call an exterminator too? I approached the wall, sure the sound came from there…but was surprised when it didn’t. Great, it’s moving. But even as I listened, it didn’t seem to be coming from the wall at all.

  I looked up at my ceiling, at the rafters and the plaster centuries old.

  Grabbing a fireplace poker, I headed up the stairwell. Cautiously, I pushed open the door to my bedroom, poker at the ready. I was hoping for a squirrel rather than a raccoon, or worse, a rat. The scratching was getting louder. I threw open the door…

  Silence. No scratching and no varmint. I looked under the bed anyway and tore open the wardrobe. Nothing.

  As I lowered the poker, my eyes immediately went to the Booke on my corner desk, and I shook my head. Odd men with their doom-sayings were getting to me. But I did notice a flashing on my laptop that told me I had mail. I set down the poker and leaned over the computer, pressing a button to bring it up. It was from that museum about the Booke.

  Sliding into the chair, I opened the email.

  Dear Ms. Strange,

  Thank you for your recent email. The little information I have on the Booke of the Hidden can be found at my museum. I’d be glad to talk with you about it.

  Best,

  Karl Waters

  Making sure I had plenty of business cards in my purse, I shrugged into my jacket, and stood at the bottom of my stairs, looking for the shop key in the cavern of my bag. The scratching started again upstairs, and I froze. I hadn’t seen anything, though I hadn’t looked very hard either, picturing giant Sumatran rats. Must be a tree. All the same, I didn’t trust the presence of Mr. Gloom-and-Doom somewhere outside, so I scuttled upstairs and grabbed the Booke before returning downstairs and locking the shop.

  I backed my Jeep out of the parking area. There was a little bit of rain with the wind, and I switched on the windshield wipers as I headed up the lonely highway. The asphalt wound through the dense walls of trees shouldering both sides of the road. I could just see the stormy gray ocean in the distance through the “V” in the hills. Maine was very different from California. The few times I’d ventured into the mountains in my Southern California home, I had found the forests sparse, with their live oaks, sycamores, and telephone-pole-like pines. I wasn’t prepared for the incredible concentration of growth that meandered over the surrounding Maine hills, nor the deep shadows they cast that crept onto the road as the sun followed its arc across the sky. It was as if no sun ever penetrated the canopy at all. But I never expected quite such a spectacular vista as I experienced here in my first of hopefully many autumns. How the dense canopy morphed from one remarkable array of color to the next. My eyes flicked involuntarily from road to scenery. I couldn’t seem to stop staring at it. And especially into the dark shadows rimming the road.

  As I rounded a curve, four motorcycles riding abreast took over the highway coming toward me, including my side of it. I kept expecting them to move over, but they didn’t. They were playing a dangerous game of chicken. My elbows locked and my hands gripped the steering wheel. Heart pumping, I swerved at the last minute, slamming the brakes and skidding hard, nearly ramming into the mountain. Shaking, I pulled over and looked back.

  Nope. Not one of them stopped. I could have been killed! Just a smear on the hillside. I watched them ride away. Each wore a leather jacket with a lame club logo on their backs: an upside-down pentagram with some goat head in the middle. My car and I were fine, so after a few moments to catch my breath, I shook off my shock and indignation and pulled carefully back onto the road. Idiots.

  The sign for the village of Gifford Corner was just up ahead, and I quickly forgot about rogue biker gangs. When I made the turn, I saw why there were names such as so-and-so’s “Corner” or “Hill” or “Bog,” because there were so many little villages in Maine, a place founded by a single farmer centuries ago, that had, over the years, only extended itself by adding a market or gas station but little else. Countless little bergs sprouted up all along the roads, and Gifford Corner didn’t disappoint.

  The “museum” was hard to miss, because it was really only one of two structures on the highway. Weathered mailboxes leaned into the road at the end of the curving asphalt. Those must be the other inhabitants of Gifford Corner. I made the turn into the museum parking lot, just a gravel expanse in front of what looked like an old clapboard market. I shut off the engine and got out, grabbing the sweater-clad Booke in both hands.

  The bell above the door tinkled as I entered. Inside was an open room with bookshelves and glass display cases. Pictures on the walls depicted local history in engravings and watercolors, obviously from an older period, based on the yellowed images and the dust on the frames.

  “I’ll be out in a minute!” came a voice from somewhere behind a counter among archive shelves. A man’s head popped u
p, startling me. He smiled. He wore glasses, and the laugh-lines behind the wire frames gave him a friendly appearance.

  “Hi. I just emailed you. Kylie Strange?” I extended a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Karl Waters.” He took it and gave it a few shakes before releasing. He leaned on the counter and looked me over. “So, not from around here?”

  “What gave me away?”

  “Your tan, for one.”

  I laughed. “Yes, I just made the big move from Southern California.”

  “Aha! Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  I gave the space another look. “This is great. And you run this yourself?”

  “It’s not much. But I do like to dabble in the past. It’s my little way of giving back. I archive most of the local history.” He glanced pointedly at the package in my hands. I set the Booke on the counter.

  “I’m opening an herb and tea shop in Moody Bog. And while I was getting the place in shape, I came across this.”

  I pulled off the sweater to reveal the old Booke in all its dusty glory.

  Karl gasped. “Wow. She’s a honey. May I?” His hands were poised to touch it.

  “Go right ahead.”

  He carefully turned it so the cover was facing him. “‘Booke of the Hidden,’” he read. “Wow. I’ve heard about this for a long time, read about it in some of the more obscure texts, but I never expected to see this in the flesh.”

  “Kind of creeps me out a bit, to tell the truth, but I figured it might be valuable. I actually found it bricked up in the wall.”

  His mouth fell open. “In the wall?”

  “Um…yeah. I made quite a mess getting it out. What can you tell me about it? I saw the picture on your website.”

  He fiddled with the metal clasp that kept the Booke shut. “You wouldn’t have the key for this, would you?”

  “It’s not locked,” I told him.

  He toyed with it a moment more. “It seems locked now.”

  “What?” Another thing I ruined somehow? I spun it on the counter, grabbed the clasp, and it practically jumped open. “Oh!”

  Karl made a pleased sound, but when he grabbed the Booke to turn it toward him again, the cover slammed shut, the lock closing with a click. “So it’s just a bit tricky.”

  “Seems so,” I said, feeling uneasy.

  He tried to compress the locking mechanism, but it was stuck again. “It doesn’t seem to like me,” he quipped, struggling.

  I reached over when he pulled his hands away, and at my touch, the Booke sprang open once more. We both stared at each other.

  Karl huffed a breath. “Well that’s certainly…different.”

  “Did you see that?”

  He said nothing. But when he tried to turn a page, the parchment was stuck together.

  “This is completely nuts,” I muttered and reached over to turn the perfectly unsticky page.

  Karl shook his head, looking over the blank sheet. “It does seem to like you.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “Maybe not,” he murmured. He didn’t try to touch the Booke again but instead laid his arms on the counter and simply leaned into it. “Are all the pages blank?” he asked as I turned over each leaf for him.

  “Yes. That’s odd, isn’t it? It seems old. It shouldn’t be blank, right?”

  “It is old, I can assure you. I’ve seen many similar books in the archives here.”

  “Books like this?”

  “Well, nothing quite like this. Or this big. Or this…stubborn.”

  “Look.” I edged away from the Booke without realizing it. “I came here because I went online and found only one reference to this, and there was this kind of scary engraving and not much else. It led me to you. I had hoped you could help with more information.”

  He nodded. “I know the engraving you mean.” He gave the Booke one more wistful glance before he made another attempt to touch it. The cover slammed shut.

  “What the…?” I said, stunned.

  But Karl was looking at me as if he’d expected that to happen. “Come back here with me.”

  I gave the Booke a reproachful glare and slid behind the counter to follow him. He went to the far end of a row and removed an archive box and pulled it from the shelf. Laying it on the table behind him, he lifted off the lid, pulled on cotton gloves from his jeans pocket, and shuffled carefully through the papers. They were all old foxed papers and some parchment with faded ink scrawled in a tiny old-fashioned hand. He took out an engraving on yellowed paper and laid it in front of me. “Is this the one you’re talking about?”

  I leaned over to look. Sure enough, it was the same disturbing drawing of the wild-eyed woman, clutching a large book to her chest and fleeing a dark man. “Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “That’s the one.”

  “I thought so.” He picked it up with his gloved hands, running a finger along the printed caption. “The Booke of the Hidden.” He turned it over, and there was a hand-written paragraph in the center of the page. “This was the last owner, according to the text. That was in 1720.”

  I tried to read it over his shoulder, but I wasn’t exactly versed in chicken scratch. “What does it say?”

  He cleared his throat and read:

  Mistress Constance Howland opened the Booke of the Hidden and was cursed with containing the demons she released therein. For her sins, she was hounded by the booke’s Demon until she ended her damned life by hurling herself from the cliffs. Before her much deserved death, she is said to have contained sixteen evil spirits, but the Dark, the wickedest of devils, finally consumed her soul.

  “What’s all that supposed to mean?” I asked, voice rough.

  He slowly shook his head. “Damned if I know. But when I discovered this engraving some years ago, I wondered about it and did a little digging.” He riffled carefully through the papers and pulled out a small book. It was also of great age, hand-bound with uneven paper within its covers. He opened it, turning the pages. It was a printed book, with each letter just a little askew, and all the s’s looking like swashy f’s.

  “This is also from around this same time period,” Karl explained. “You have no idea how much trouble this was to acquire. It’s something like an almanac, talking about the weather, the crops of this area, the general terrain. But it’s also full of little histories as well. It offers great insight about where some of the early homesteads came from around here and the families who owned them, almost better than local family bibles. Now, there’s a lot of water damage and some of the pages aren’t legible, but it also had this weird little bit about your book. See here.” His finger found the paragraph and I followed along where he read aloud:

  The local parfon, Parfon Simmons, warned of the ftrange happenftance in Moody Bog. Mistress Howland lay down with the devil and began to write in a booke the horrors from hell. She had always decried that fhe had not called them forth, that fhe was instead in the business of slaying them.

  He shook his head and tapped the page. “Water damage obscures the rest until we get to this passage: …Mistress Howland defired the return of the booke—something, something—and then: fhe took the booke to the next village of Moody Bog and there it difappeared. Mistress Howland, having difpatched her duties, declared that the village was safe. But soon thereafter, purfued by the aldermen of the village, ran to the edge of the Falcon’s Point and threw herfelf into the pit. The Dark Man was feen at the edge of the cliff, curfed the town, and was seen no more.”

  His voice stilled and I realized I had been holding my breath. “Um…what about this…Dark Man? Who is he?”

  “I haven’t been able to determine that. But in other writings of the day, I’ve seen it used interchangeably with ‘Mr. Scratch,’ ‘Old Scratch,’ ‘Beelzebub,’ and the like. It’s another local term for the Devil.”

  “Oh.” It made sense, of course. The early New Englanders were obsessed with the Devil. But if I remembered my history correctly, this was at the end of the witch trial frenzy,
when more secular heads prevailed. Yet it seemed that any strange event involving a woman had villagers up in arms, attributing odd happenings to her being a witch and consorting with the Devil. “What do you make of that whole story?”

  “Well, besides pure fabrication to somehow do away with poor misunderstood Constance Howland, it’s quite a tale. I mean, it’s really something out of fiction. She’s like some pseudo-Van Helsing.”

  “What? I’m not going to find a coffin walled up in my shop, too, am I?”

  He chuckled half-heartedly. “I don’t think so, but though there are scant details it certainly reads like that sort of thing. Here, look at this. This is a copy of the court records of her trial, and it wasn’t much of one. Basically, they accused her with this long list of all sorts of things she was supposed to have done, from souring the local cows’ milk to some really outlandish stuff, like flying over rooftops. Whatever was going on, she sure scared the hell out of the locals.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice quavering. “But what about that part about demons?”

  Karl thumbed through the loose pages. “It’s one of the more interesting parts. Let me read you her speech from the trial. She was only allowed to speak once and no one wanted her to do that much. It’s actually quite amazing that it was even taken down at all. Listen:

  I swear by almighty God that my testimony is true and honest. For I never wished this upon me, and as all the angels can attest, I am a godly Christian woman, without a husband, and doing honest labour. But this thing was thrust upon me, not by the Devil, but by God to do His work. I opened the Booke and did not mean for the evil to escape into the world, but now that I know my mission I shall fulfill it, heartily so. I am to capture and subdue all that I released, and after so doing, write it in the Booke so to keep them captured for all eternity. And because the cursed Booke cannot be destroyed, to keep it locked up safe ne’er to be opened more. Even should I have to subdue myself I shall do it. I mean no harm and only grace to my village. I so swear my oath.”