You Wear My Ring

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. And no one saw it but me.

After Reverend Willard had taken Abigail, everyone said the house was haunted by the devil. Most villagers were too afraid to look at the house let alone step foot inside. And so it sat, quiet and moldering, left standing because no one wanted to get too close. Or perhaps it was a diversion—an empty place for evil to fill so that it didn’t infect the homes of god-fearing families.

It wouldn’t save them from the gallows, no matter how hard they prayed.

But I had watched the dark husk of her house nightly like a lone sentinel. I knew she would never come back, but the heart demands and I was powerless under the weight of its aching want. The house was a piece of her, even still.

It was a new moon and the soft amber glow fought the encroaching dark. The rest of Salem village was quiet, sleeping. The flame was perfectly still, stubborn and unyielding to the autumn breeze seeping through the cracked glass. It was a lighthouse—warning me away. It was a snare—waiting to catch.

The dry snap of twigs startled me and I glanced down—I had taken a step towards the cabin. As if my body were not my own. My heart leapt. Gooseflesh started near my wrists, running upwards towards my throat. It was a sign of life I’d never expected to see again, and I tried to resist the pull—a thread wound thrice around my heart, dragging me back to her.

But I couldn’t stop. Dead leaves cracked beneath my feet like small bones until I stood before the dark, familiar wood of the door. My breath fogged in the chill air. With trembling hands, I reached towards the handle, my fingertips just grazing the cool metal. The brass ring on my left hand, crafted from the thimble she gave me, caught the light. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I wanted to see what was behind the door. I ached for the impossibility of her. I longed to rip limb from limb anyone who dared to set foot inside her home. My mouth set in a hard line, my jaw clenched.

I grasped the handle but before I could turn it myself, I felt it move slowly beneath my hand. The door pulled me forward when it opened. I stumbled across the threshold, half-expecting to collide into the warm solidness of Abigail’s body.

Nothing stood on the other side. The absence of her made my chest tight. You never lose someone just once—grief unfolds.

Aside from the one candle the home was dark. Scant light built dark shadows, heavy with held-breath silence.

Outside, my feet had propelled me forward, but here they grew roots. Each step was like trekking through calf-deep mud. Sweat trickled down my neck, disappearing into the dark wool of my dress, the pale linen of my bonnet.

The door shut, splitting the silence like a choir. I looked over my shoulder, panting with the effort those few steps had taken. The moment it locked, the invisible weight around my ankles lifted and the home became suddenly quiet. I thought I knew silence, but this was the complete absence of sound. No wind, or the dry scratching of leaves, or the creak of wood, or the prowling of animals. The entire house had been strangled, cut off from the world outside.

My breathing sounded loud and strange as I walked towards the kitchen—the one room lit by candlelight. I hadn’t been inside this place since they took her. I had imagined broken furniture, for the house to look as pain-stricken as I felt. But it was just as it was—austere, everything in its place.

I wasn’t supposed to mourn her. Such love and longing was reserved for god alone. But I loved her more, and perhaps this was my punishment. God believed I would return to him if he removed her.

I stopped short. The kitchen was not as I’d left it. On the wooden table was the body of a girl, golden-haired. Just like Abigail. I had loved her hair, as soft as forbidden silk. I missed running my fingers through it, the way her eyes fluttered closed. The girl’s hair was uncovered, flowing over the side. On impulse, I reached out to touch it and immediately recoiled. Her hair was a dry, dead thing—like pressed flowers. A dull hue of what was, a memory of something once beautiful. My gaze shifted down, knowing but needing to see, and I gasped. Her brown wool dress was cut open, revealing the pale, bloody center of her chest. A gaping hole where a heart once lived.

I took one step back. And another. I ran back towards the door, but it refused to open. Panicked whimpers escaped my trembling lips.

As sudden as waking, my left ring finger throbbed. I held my hand up to the light. The thin band of green-tinged brass constricted, the vice-like grip turning my finger from dark pink to red to purple. The same bruised color of Abigail’s face when the noose tightened. I clutched my hand to my chest. I had tried everything to remove the ring. It seemed wrong to wear a one-sided promise. But it was as stubborn as a scar—a reminder of old violence.

Dread snaked its way up my spine, clammy and tasting of iron. My shift stuck to my sweat-soaked skin.

Rushing back towards the kitchen, I grabbed an iron shovel with my good hand. There were no coals, no dying embers, only ash. Once again, I retreated from the girl on the table, back through the main room and towards the opposite side of the fireplace. It was darker here, where the light couldn’t quite reach. Abigail’s empty bed sat in shadows.

Ann

I turned, right hand still clutched to my chest in a pantomime of longing.

Ann

Abigail’s voice. Thin, spectral. Directionless.

The sound of rope being dragged along the floor.

Tears stung my eyes. “Abigail,” my voice cracked around the letters.

The air stirred.

Lips at my ear. “Ann.” Louder than before. The feeling of her breath, the smell of damp earth.

I gasped, turning toward the voice, expecting nothing. But she was there, crouched, her eyes reflecting strangely in the dark. My heart leapt, sending my body into a similar motion. I gripped the shovel with white-knuckled fingers.

Abigail rose slowly, not following me into the warm pool of light.

Ann. My love.

Even in the dark, I could see the mottled bruise around her neck. My tears fell in earnest.

Shhh. Don’t cry.

Her ghost-pale lips didn’t move.

I closed my eyes tight against temptation. I raised the shovel. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t—

I swung at her blindly.

Ann. Please. I came back for you. I made a promise. You don’t need that.

The ring grew white hot against my numbing finger. I bit my lip. The shovel dropped with a clang.

He came to me on the gallows, offering you to me.

I opened my eyes and inhaled sharply. She was closer now, those animal eyes pleading with me. Her once-bright skin was sallow, waxy. I couldn’t move—a bird with a broken wing.

“A soul seemed like a small price to pay.” She spoke aloud, flashing dirt-stained teeth. “To have you.”

“I don’t understand.”

She held out her hand, her fingertips like flame-blackened kindling. “I made a promise. You made a promise.”

My brow furrowed. “You died. I saw it.” Tears streamed down my cheeks.

“And I came back for you. For you, Ann. Don’t you still love me?”

My chest constricted with a heavy sob. I reached for her then pulled back. “I never stopped.”

She tried to smile, which only made her skin split, and offered her hand to me again.

I didn’t take it. But part of me still wanted the girl I'd promised myself to. Even if I could only have this pressed-flower version of her. I couldn’t stand to lose her again.

“I’ll make this body new again. I just need more…” Hunger in her eyes, in the sudden tension of her shoulders.

My gaze darted to the kitchen.

She coughed, spattering the floor with dirt and pebbles and dead leaves.

Ann. Her voice was tinged with familiar impatience. Come.

She walked to the kitchen. The silk fabric of her dress caught the light—a rich green with gold embroidery. I’d never seen such a gown in our small village. Such things were deemed too frivolous. It distracted me from the hollowness of her cheeks.

Abigail stood over the body on the table, as is presiding over a feast, and dipped her fingers into the girl’s chest wound. I turned my face away.

Ann. You want to be with me, don’t you?

I looked at her again with frightened eyes. Her fingers were dark with congealed blood. “I—"

You said you’d do anything to be together. You wear my ring.

Abigail rounded the table, slid a silk-clad arm around my waist, brushed her blood-soaked fingers over my lips. My nostrils flared with the sharp smell of copper.

“In the woods, we can build a home where there are no crosses. We can be happy.” Her voice sounded like a shovel grating against stone.

Whatever she saw in my eyes confirmed something to her. She smiled.

“You won’t disappoint me. Not when I’ve done so much to be with you.”

I shook my head. She had defeated death to claw her way back to me. She knew what was best. Just as she had before her sentence. She ushered me to the door. I wish I could say I was forced.

Trembling, I placed my pale hand in hers. Her skin was winter cold, like a frosted pane of glass.

No one stirred in the dark houses of the village. My family would be marked. Suspect for their proximity to a witch. In time, they would be accused too. And I would be gone, far into the trees where the devil waited.

Love made me choose the woods.

At the edge of the forest, she turned to me. A shadow in the creaking darkness. “Will you be a faithful friend who loves me entirely?”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. The thread wound around my heart pulled. “Yes,” I said softly.

Abigail untied my bonnet, like loosening a noose. She ushered me into the woods. Trees groaned with the voices of old things. I stumbled over roots, but she never let me fall. Her grip was tight.

As dark as it was, I swore I saw shadowy figures, somehow deeper and more unnatural than the night. The sound of hooves against the rocks.

“Forever,” she said.

I could no longer see any houses. I would never find my way out again.

She withdrew a knife—a flash of silver in the starlight. “Forever,” she whispered against my ear.