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It was late September 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The dusk air felt heavy; a low layer of fog hovered over the road. Only two days prior, eight accused witches were hanged at Gallows Hill.

“Keep your wits about you, men. Remember, Rebekah and Mary Thompson are accused of using witchcraft,” said Thomas Polpe.

Thomas Polpe and Robert Altman led a group of men to the Thompson sisters’ home. The sand, dirt, and gravel road that led to the small two-room cottage had developed many large ruts from the early fall rains. 

The heavy oak-framed house stood at the end of Main Street, east of the Town Bridge. A massive brick chimney rose from the center of the home; smoke curled from the chimney.

The men grumbled as they carried their pitchforks and torches. 

“The Devil is with them,” one man uttered as Altman guided them to the front door of the Thompson home.

Altman ignored the comment and pointed toward the door. “Break it down.”

The men looked at Altman with wide eyes. 

“Move yourselves,” said Altman.

Two men handed their pitchforks to the nearest men beside them. “On my word,” said the larger of the two men.

The other nodded.

“Ready.”

The two men lowered their shoulders and slammed into the wooden door. The oak door withstood the first blow, but they heard wood splintering on the other side. Screams followed from inside the house.

“Again!” commanded Altman.

After two more attempts, the bar across the door splintered completely, and the door swung inward.

Rebekah stared at them wide-eyed and snapped. “What is the meaning of this?”

The two men made way for Thomas Polpe and Robert Altman to enter.

Thomas Polpe unrolled a parchment. “Rebekah and Mary Thompson, you stand accused of sundry acts of witchcraft. You are to be brought before Judges Corwin and Hathorne for your plea and examination.”

“I say before God . . . that we know nothing of witchcraft,” responded Rebekah.

“Is that your plea?” Polpe retorted. 

“We have made no such plea,” responded Mary.

“You will enter a plea to Judge Corwin or suffer the same fate as Giles Corey.”

“We will not hang as you have done to others, nor be pressed beneath stones as was Mr. Corey. It is shameful what has become of our once peaceful village.”

“Take them away,” he ordered.

They exited the house with their captives. Suddenly, the sky lit up as if night turned into day. A fiery streak flashed across the treeline. The light disappeared below the treeline. A towering column of water shot upward, glowing against the blackening night sky. The world went silent for a moment—then:

BOOM!

The ground underneath them shook, and a gust of hot wind hit their faces, throwing a few off balance. The men panicked, and one yelled. “What have these devils brought upon us?” 

Mary responded to the accusation, her voice quivering as she spoke. “We have done no such thing. That was a thunderstone brought down to earth by God. We are just as fearful as you. Pray, let us go.”

Polpe seized Mary’s arm. “You are not deceiving us, you demon.” He glanced at his frightened men and straightened himself. “We move on. On the morrow, we shall investigate what the Devil has sent us and return it to hell, as is God’s will.”

A mile away, that same flash illuminated through the kitchen window of a small farmhouse.

“Abigail, did you see that light outside?” asked Agnes.

Abigail Renford raised her head as she sat at the kitchen table, writing in her journal. She looked out the kitchen window, but the sky was now dark once again. “I saw a light but nothing else.”

“What do you think it could be?”

“I’m not sure, but probably a thunderstone,” replied Abigail.

Agnes nodded. “In the morning, we should go see. Maybe it holds something rare that we’ve never seen before.”

“Agnes, you know well and good that we have to be extra careful. Our family has been here for two generations, and right now, the villagers think we’re just good farmers, and I want to keep it that way. If we’re seen looking around the thunderstone, they might accuse us of being witches as well.”

“But we are, and they cannot hurt us.”

Abigail looked at her younger sister and shook her head. “We are not to hurt any of those not blessed with magic. Mother and Father set down that law before they passed, remember?”

Agnes hung her head. “Well, it’s just not fair. We should be able to do anything we want.”

Abigail’s eyes narrowed. She raised her right hand and moved it in a motion as if turning a knob. A red orb appeared in front of Agnes, and a hollow voice of their father echoed from the orb.

We must always follow the laws of magic. Never use your gifts to harm another. Use them only for good, lest misfortune befall you. 

Agnes rolled her eyes at Abigail. “Why do you always play Father’s message every time we have this discussion?”

Abigail dropped her hand, and the orb disappeared. “Because every time we have this discussion, you prove you still haven’t learned.” She went back to writing in her journal. Without looking up, “We’ll wait for Henry to return and decide then. Remember, we would have to pass through Salem to get to the thunderstone.”

Two miles away, where the Wooleston River bifurcated into the Crane River and the Frost Fish River, the meteor rested half-submerged. An orange-white glow illuminated thick clouds of steam that continued to billow upward.

The water boiled violently around the meteor, then gradually settled. The glow from the meteor slowly faded, and the now warm waters of the Wooleston River grew still. 

The black night sky was lit only by the stars until the moon rose above the horizon. Its pale light spread across the Wooleston River, revealing the meteor’s half-submerged silhouette. 

The water and the night air were still.

The silhouette opened an eye.

Rebekah and Mary Thompson were locked up in the Salem Witch Jail. Once secured, the men headed to Thomas Beadle’s Tavern. The pints flowed as freely as the stories as the men relived the strange flashing light across the sky. 

Two men still had trembling hands as they lifted their ale. One mumbled, “I shall not go out there on the morrow. No, sir, I shall not.” The other just nodded.

As the evening wore on, the stories expanded as if alive. The flash of light intensified; the explosion grew louder, and the ground heaved beneath their feet. Those willing to listen past midnight learned how the two Thompson witches transformed in front of them, and how they barely escaped the Devil himself. 

When the tavern finally closed for the night, the air was heavy with fear of what the morrow would bring.

The fog that rolled in the night before lingered as dawn approached. The eastern sky glowed with yellow and orange rays as clouds began to roll in.

Agnes Renford dressed quietly, then tiptoed out of the bedroom to the main room. The predawn light shone through the windows. 

“You’re up early,” said Abigail.

Agnes jumped back and grabbed her chest. “You gave me such a fright.”

“That’s not all I should give you. Did we not agree last night to wait for Henry?”

“We—did not agree. Besides, we don’t need to rely on Henry for everything, and we have no idea when he will return,” replied Agnes as she grabbed her boots.

“Agnes!” Abigail said. “You will not go to the thunderstone. I forbid it.”

Agnes scowled at her.

“We have too much to do here before winter settles in,” Abigail continued. “And the thunderstone is not going to move. We will wait until Henry comes home. That is final.”

“Fine.” Agnes slammed her boots on the floor.

“Now come. I will make us breakfast, and then we have chores to do.”

An hour after sunrise, Polpe and Altman gathered several men to search for the thunderstone.

Altman addressed the men first. “I know that several of you were weaving tales at Thomas Beadle’s Tavern last night. We shall go see what fell from Heaven.”

The group headed to the impact site without the same bravado many had the previous night at Thomas Beadle’s Tavern. They slowed their pace when they crossed the Town Bridge and ventured past Gallows Hill.

Several of the men gasped as the hairs on their arms stood on end. Altman heard them mutter that they felt the witches creeping up their arms.

“Enough of that. The witches are dead; they cannot do anything to you now.” His voice cracked on the final words.

The men grumbled as they continued. The heavy morning air weighed on them as they traveled the muddy lanes through Northfields. 

They noticed a lone figure ahead where the road forked. As they drew closer, Polpe recognized John Pickering and Samuel Gardner, the Fence Viewers. 

What they didn’t notice was a figure following them. A petite woman darted in and out of the growth along the muddy lanes, careful to avoid wandering eyes.

The two men stood in front of the road gate, hands raised.

Polpe and his men stopped. “John, Samuel.”

“What are you doing up here, Polpe?” Pickering pointed to the group.

“We’re here to see what fell from the sky. We want to know if it is tied to the Thompson witches.”

“Yes, we know of what fell, but not what it is. There was much damage from it, but that was not the least of it. Constable Putnam and Osgood have heard tales of the Devil rising from it.”

“What do you mean?” Altman asked.

Pickering moved closer. “What fell is not of this world. Mary Warren is gone, the house destroyed. Seems the Devil wants its revenge.”

“Poor Mary. ’Twas her testimony that brought us the Jacobs,” Pickering said, shaking his head.

“It’s moving east along the Wooleston. The Endecotts are gone too.”

“How do you know of its direction?”

“Its tracks, which are strange indeed, are larger.” Pickering stared at Polpe and Altman. 

“Larger? Larger than what?” 

“The tracks by the river, at the site of the impact, were smaller. We followed them, and after each house, the tracks were larger.”

Polpe, Altman, and the men stared back and forth at each other, silent.

“Constable Putnam is gathering a posse to track it down and kill it.”

“What does it look like?” Altman asked.

“We don’t know. No one has seen it clearly. But go talk to Putnam and join the posse.” 

John Pickering and Samuel Gardner opened the gate and stepped aside. Polpe and Altman nodded and were followed by their volunteers.

A slight figure hiding on the side of the road listened to the conversation.

I need to get back to Abigail. 

Clouds had rolled in by the time Agnes arrived back home. Abigail stood with her arms crossed, silent. Agnes opened her mouth to share with her sister what she had overheard, but Abigail raised her hand.

“Sister—” 

Abigail cut her off. “You do not get to speak.” 

Agnes flung her arms in the air. “You have—”

“Not—a—word.”

Abigail pointed to a chair. “Sit!”

Agnes obeyed her sister, sat down hard in the chair, and crossed her arms. She sat there with her jaw twitching and breathing heavily. Abigail waited five minutes in silence for her sister to calm.

“You deliberately left the house knowing you should not. We have . . . .”

Agnes began to interrupt her. 

“No, not until I finish. We have survived as a family because of our trust in one another. It’s all we have right now, and you’ve broken that trust.”

Abigail paused, her eyes tearing. “What if you’ve been spotted?” She turned away from Agnes and wiped her eyes.

Agnes’s shoulders sagged, and she remained quiet. 

“I’m sorry, Abigail.” 

She walked over to Abigail and hugged her. Both women began to cry.

Agnes whispered to Abigail. “May I speak now?”

Abigail nodded. Agnes shared everything she overheard between Polpe and the Fence Viewers. 

“You were right, Abigail. I should have listened to you and stayed home. I would have been in trouble if I met up with this thing.”

The sisters hugged again. “We’ll wait for Henry,” said Agnes.

Black clouds covered the sky, then rain began to fall at dusk. Soon the area was engulfed in darkness except for the flashes of lightning that temporarily lit up Salem. With each flash, a silhouette could be seen just above the treetops, north of the Wooleston River. 

Abigail and Agnes were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner when the storm hit. Amid the thunder, both women heard another distant sound.

GHRRR-KHRAAAAOONK!

The sisters looked at each other, wide-eyed. Agnes blurted out, “What was that?” 

“I do not know. It is nothing I’ve ever heard of.”

“What do we do?”

“I think now we should go into town and find out what others know.”

They donned their heavy cloaks and ventured out into the stormy night. They trudged to the Town House. Along the way, they heard the roar in the distance and quickened their pace. 

By the time they arrived, Town House was full. Heads turned when the Renford sisters walked in.

“Abigail, what brings you into town?” Elizabeth James asked.

“I presume the same reason all of you are present: that awful sound.”

Elizabeth nodded. “But there’s more.”

Abigail and Agnes’s eyes widened. Before Elizabeth could continue, Jonathan Hathorne brought the meeting to order, and Reverend Samuel Parris began with a prayer. Hathorne introduced Thomas Polpe to share the news.

“Thank you, Judge Hathorne. I shall speak plainly: the Devil has come to Salem.”

He shared how he, Altman, and his men joined the posse that Constable Putnam formed. He and his men took to the river while Putnam and his men tracked the creature on land.

An exhausted Polpe shared his experience. “It was hideous. It was no creature of God that I’ve ever seen.” He shuddered. “It was too dark to see everything, but when the lightning flashed, its one eye glowed, and you could see horns. It truly was the Devil.”

Polpe’s legs gave way, and he collapsed. The townspeople reacted to the news.

“The Devil took Polpe!” someone shouted from the hall.

“Everyone must leave at once. The creature is coming this way,” said Judge Hathorne.

Just as the crowd began to exit, the roar of the creature stopped everyone in their place. They heard wood splintering and screams from outside.

Someone burst through the doors of the Town House. “The monster is here!”

The crowd began to scream. “What are we going to do?”

Agnes looked at her sister. “We need to do something.”

Abigail looked around the room, full of fearful faces, and nodded. “You’re right. Come on.”

When they stepped outside, they saw the monster for the first time. It was nothing like anything they had ever seen. It looked like a head with snake-like arms and long, clawed hands. 

“Abigail,” Agnes’s voice cracked.

The monster dropped to the ground and reached out with its arms. 

It grabbed three townspeople and shoved them into its mouth, between the two horizontal fangs. The red dots above and below its mouth became more pronounced.

“Its head looks to be swelling,” said Abigail. 

The three horns lengthened, and its arms stretched farther out.

The blood drained from Agnes’s face. “What are we going to do?”

Abigail clenched her teeth. “Come.”

She approached the monster, who was reaching for more of the townspeople. Abigail moved her hands in an elliptical pattern. A green orb formed, its glow intensifying as her hand movement quickened.

Abigail threw her hands in the direction of the monster. “EVECTUS!”

The green orb shot from Abigail’s hands and hit the monster in the face before it could devour anyone else. Agnes copied her sister, and they pelted it, hoping to stop it. 

“Keep going,” Abigail shouted to Agnes. “It seems to be working.”

The townspeople inside the Town House heard explosions and stepped outside. They watched in horror at the sight of the monster.

Then they noticed the Renford sisters fighting the monster . . . with magic. 

“Run!” Abigail screamed.

The monster roared again and stood on its arms. Its most chilling part, its single red eye, locked directly onto the sisters.

It began to move toward them. “Agnes, run, now.”

Agnes kept on firing at the monster as it slowly moved toward them. 

“What are you doing?” Abigail shouted.

“I’m trying something.” Agnes sent objects that were strewn along the road at the creature. Some appeared to cut the monster. Some red blood dripped from the wounds the objects created.

“I think it’s working. Do the same.” Agnes’s speech was short and choppy.

Abigail followed Agnes’s lead and sent more objects at the creature. The combined force from the two sisters appeared to work. Most of the townspeople had escaped, but a couple stayed behind.

Judge Hathorne and Robert Altman watched as the two witches kept trying to kill the monster and save Salem. Hathorne shook his head with his lips drawn tightly together.

Altman looked at the judge and nodded.

The monster roared louder. Intact windows shattered at the sound, and it picked up debris, then threw it at them. The distraction was long enough to allow the beast to advance on them before they could react.

It reached out its long arms and claws to grab Abigail and Agnes.

Judge Hathorne and Robert Altman could do nothing but watch. They realized there was no hope left and ran from the creature.

Abigail and Agnes reached for each other. The giant clawed hand came down upon them, and they closed their eyes.

They heard the monster’s roar again, but it didn’t touch them. Abigail opened her eyes. “Henry!”

“Henry!” Agnes repeated.

“Get up! I cannot hold it for long.” Henry had created a large, thick, glowing blue lasso and wrapped it around the appendages of the creature, but it wouldn’t last for long.

As Henry held onto the creature with all his skill and might, Abigail and Agnes resumed their cutting of the monster. They threw everything at it: splintered beams, iron posts, anything that had been torn apart by the creature was now being used against it.

Judge Hathorne and Robert Altman heard the Renford sisters yell Henry’s name. They stopped and looked back, slowly approaching the fight.

A few townsfolk watched, then joined in. The monster weakened further but tried to roll over, and the blue lasso loosened. It reached for a nearby townsman, who screamed at the sight of the claw coming at them.

Henry quickly sent another lasso at the beast and hooked its arm before it could grab the townsman. He added another and held on tight. 

Abigail, Agnes, and the townsfolk continued to stab the creature. 

Henry shouted. “Keep stabbing. It appears to be shrinking.”

“Go for the red dots,” said Abigail.

The creature continued to fight. “It’s losing strength; keep going.”

Agnes sent a large beam into the eye of the beast, and it took the rest of the fight out of it. Another townsman stabbed an iron rod into a red dot, and blood poured all over the dirt street. The fight was over.

Henry dropped to the ground, his breathing heavy, and his arms hung at his sides. Abigail and Agnes ran to him. They hugged him for several minutes.

Abigail, with tears in her eyes, asked, “What took you so long?”

Agnes answered for him. “You always were a show-off. You just wanted a grand entrance.”

Henry gave one weak chuckle and smiled.

The three of them sat there holding each other for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly, the townsfolk congregated around them.

Abigail and Agnes looked at each other. They saw the townspeople stare at them; their secret was out.

“Come on, Henry, get up. We have to get out of here,” Abigail whispered to him.

They helped their brother up, and the three of them slowly backed away from the growing crowd.

“STOP!” 

The voice of Judge Hathorne rang out. He and Robert Altman approached after their victory.

“Do not move another step.”

Henry stood erect and pushed his sisters behind him as they stepped back slowly.

“Stop, please.”

The use of the word please caught Henry by surprise, and he obeyed. Abigail whispered, “What are you doing?”

Henry turned his head toward her. “Wait.”

Judge Hathorne, Altman, and the growing crowd gathered in front of the three siblings.

“So you three really are witches. Why did you save our town given the way we treat your kind?” Hathorne asked.

“They are not our kind. The victims were wrongfully accused and executed. Not one of them was a witch.”

“Why didn’t you try to stop us?”

“If we did, you would accuse us of being witches, and we would have to protect ourselves against being taken. We do not harm those without the gift and avoid putting ourselves into that situation,” said Henry.

Altman joined the conversation. “You could’ve shown us.”

“Would you have listened then?” Henry inclined his head.

“No, probably not.”

“Why did you help us now?” Hathorne asked.

“Because we couldn’t bear to see you all harmed.”

“But what about all those people who were afflicted by some demon?” asked a townsman.

“I cannot definitively tell you what afflicted them, but it was not witchcraft.”

Abigail and Agnes watched with pride as their brother handled the crowd in front of them and protected them first.

Several townspeople nodded.

“We owe you our lives, and I thank you. Is there anything we can do for you?” Hathorne asked.

“Yes, release all those accused, and let us leave in peace.”

Hathorne extended his hand to Henry. “You don’t have to leave. We realize that the three of you are valuable members of our community, and there’s much for us to learn. Please stay.”

Henry shook Hathorne’s hand. The Thompson sisters would be released that night, and the process of releasing all the others would begin the next morning as the town mourned their dead and cleaned up the village.

And that was how the witch executions in Salem came to an end.