Annabel Horton, Lost Witch of Salem

This is my magic, my ability to see spirits, or to feel them. But is it evil? Is it harmful to anyone? I think not. None of us were of the devil, and Reverend Parris’s slave knew it. Yes, Tituba knew it. The children knew it too. I begged Father to take me to New York to escape the madness of murders around us, but we could not leave the farm, and Father did not believe that any harm would ever come to me. My brothers swore they would protect me, but I knew better. I knew I would be named a witch and taken to the tree. I could not sleep at night or enjoy the sun as it burst upon me in the mornings.

Soon enough, they served me my warrant as I lay in the field praying that God would see fit to help me. Ann Putnam had accused me. She hardly knew me, but she had seen me in Andover buying wheat and grain for the farm. My brother James tried to shield my face from hers when she fell on the ground before me and writhed at my feet. She pointed and held her side in pain.

“She torments me!” she screamed.

I fell into my brother’s arms and wept.

“Look into her eyes,” she called to all who listened. “They are of the devil, green as evil’s slime.”

I turned from her accusations, but she would not desist.

“Begone, witch,” she called.

And the townspeople came and stood around me. They looked into my eyes and said, “Yes, it must be so.”

“She accuses everyone that comes to mind,” I pleaded.

“She is weak and stupid,” I heard my brother say.

I took his hand. I knew that I could not prevent my fate, surrounded as I was by fools.

I hated the insidious evil that had inflicted the village. God, cure them, I prayed. They have surely gone mad.

I knew the truth and tried to speak it, yet none would hear it. There was only one other that knew as much as I did: the Reverend’s slave girl, Tituba. Yes, Tituba knew. She recognized the darkness and made a pact with the devil, and the devil saved her from the tree. I made no pact with the devil; I swayed by my neck in the August sun.