Preface
It took a lot of nagging, but one day I finally convinced the library director, Mrs. Rogers, to let me into the rare book room.
“We don't get many visitors these days,” she said, adjusting her drooping glasses, and with a little force, she pushed open the heavy door to that sacred place. Inside, the ceiling lights flickered and the smell of aging paper filled the room – that sweat, dusty aroma particular to old books. “Feel free to look around,” she winked before locking me in. “I'll be back after the trustee's meeting.”
As soon as the door clasped shut, an electric shock overwhelmed my entire body. Alone in that wonderful place, books reposing on dusty shelves from floor to ceiling, it was hard to know where to begin. Almost in a trance I meandered the stacks, one finger grazing the bindings like a blind man reading braille. The sleeping tomes all seemed to stare at me. Each had their own story to tell. Each longed to come alive once again. Exactly why I suddenly paused before a set of volumes so blackened with age the lettering on the spines could no longer be read, is still a mystery to me. But whatever it was – call it a sixth sense if you will – something drew them to me. The title-page of the first volume boasted: “A Forgotten History of Salem Village,” in elegant black letters. Then just beneath it the smaller subtitle, evidently bashful of such a bold proclamation, replied, “A Personal Account of the Witchcraft Hysteria, written by many, and later compiled by one, who wishes to remain anonymous.”
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All in all, there were six volumes, quarto sized, bound in red Moroccan leather, tattered at the top by clawing fingers too impatient to grab them by the sides. Within, the penmanship varied. The first two volumes, evidently by the same author, were in an elegant old world script, the iron gall ink having long settled into, and in some cases almost eaten through, the heavy handmade paper. The next volume, composed in a tiny neurotic scrawl, slanted slightly to the right and was heavily foot noted, while the last three volumes stitched together the work of many different scribes, written mostly in an illegible hand (until one got used to it after many hours of hard work), often interrupted by sections haphazardly inserted without regard for transition, but which, nonetheless, formed an uneven but convincing narrative, painstakingly reconstructed by a meticulous editor who had access to many anecdotal and spurious sources, no longer extant.
It was with these six long forgotten volumes of lore I spent that night, and many more just like it, joyously, alone in that tomb-like room, surrounded by so many literary fossils. And although many years have passed, I still feel these strange texts have meaning, even in the modern world. As to their veracity, I leave that up to the reader. What follows is verbatim. Only the occasional arcane puritanical English word or phrase has been updated.
Judge them not too hastily, for even though they may sound far-fetched, they are in all likelihood no more fantastic than any other original sources from that period.
