Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (17 page)

But this was not a relationship of reciprocity and it was
soon apparent to the sachem, especially after his beloved daughter’s death,
that the explorers used their teachings and their people for their own gain.
Epidemics in the forms of tuberculosis and small pox transmitted from infected
explorers all but wiped out the Nauset Tribe.

After the Pilgrims settled, the land was overtaken by
profiteering English and an outpost was erected. Bones of the dead Indians were
displaced and ground into dust and the huts that remained, even those with the
mummified bodies of the afflicted still inside, were burned to the ground.

When Adelaide’s statue was ordered destroyed, two of the
strongest colonists were recruited for the task. According to a witness, as
soon as their mallets touched the stone, they bounced back and caved the
workers’ heads in. Adelaide was left alone ever after.

After the colonists attempted to raze Adelaide and the
gravesites of the Nauset people were defiled, the colonists went through a
period of much tragedy.

The people were not at all profitable. Many of their crops
withered as soon as poked up from the ground. The settlers believed the cause
of all their woes was what they referred to as the Nauset Curse. Even the fish,
abundant all through the area, seemed to stay away from their stretch of land.

Many illnesses and subsequent deaths befell the settlers.
In the larger population of Massachusetts, the area was akin to a leper colony and
the settlers were left isolated, as no one dared to venture onto the island. It
was well-stated that inhabitants of the settlement were not welcome in areas of
“civilized” Massachusetts. Most of the first generation of Pilgrims save two or
three elders, died off quickly and their children were left alone to fend for
themselves and reproduce.

In 1682, members of the troubled Massachusetts Bay Colony
decided that Boston believers needed a larger dose of puritanical values
instilled in them and travelled areas around Massachusetts looking to establish
a new meeting house to reeducate wayward followers. But as the organization was
financially unstable, their leaders isolated an area of extreme poverty and
desperation where they knew they’d be able to get the most land for the least
amount. The members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were well aware of the
reputation of the settlers where the Nauset once flourished and sought to
displace what they looked upon as savages as soon as land broke for the new
meeting house.

The colonists who had not fled the area of what was to be
the Battleroy embraced the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and their
ideas. They saw this as an opportunity to finally outrun the Nauset Curse and
the riches the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s leaders enticed them with would
finally help rebuild the settlement they always hoped for. There were only two
women left in a colony of twenty-two men and those women were old. If they
could rebuild, they could also repopulate and this was the key to survival.

But the settler’s elation was short-lived as the
Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter was soon revoked by the Crown. There would
be no hope for the settlers.

The remaining settlers living on the land went through an
even bleaker period after the great disappointment of 1682 when the
Massachusetts Bay Colony lost its charter. Some members fearing they’d die on
the settlement fled, hoping to settle in other areas with more prospects and no
Curse. The first generation was gone, the second generation was on their way
out and the third generation was clueless.

This third generation of settlers were the least ambitious
of them all and the colony entered a decade of great complacency. They cared
not to build anything, ate plants and bugs and, as was rumored, each other and
thought of little else but their next sleep. There were no women left on the
colony and the oldest settler out of the sixteen men who remained was on his
last legs at the age of forty-two.

In early 1692, when witch hysteria began to heat up with
the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials, Luther Parrish, a colony resident was
out digging for worms and uncovered a rusty tin box buried deep in the ground.
Inside the box were two ancient manuscripts,
Formicarius
and the
Malleus
Maleficarum
, first printed in 1475 and 1487, respectively.

When Luther Parrish discovered the manuscripts, though he
did not read Latin, he knew he found something magical. He brought the
manuscripts to one of the three remaining elders of the colony who, upon
studying the manuscripts, fainted. When he refused to read the books, this so
incensed the curious settlers, they held a rusty piece of sharp metal to his
throat until he read every page of the books twice and explained their
contents.

The books stated that witches provided a path directly to
the Devil and the glorious gifts of His Kingdom. The books, to these men, were
not cautionary tales or to be used to get rid of witchcraft and the Devil, but
rather, instructional manuals to produce witches so they could reap the rewards
the Devil was sure to bestow upon them. After all, why worship God when they
blamed Him for everything that went wrong in their lives when the Devil seemed
to bring far greater gifts?

After the books were digested by the remaining settlers,
nightly meetings between the residents of the colony took place. The men
decided that the reason their settlement was dying out was not because of their
lack of skill or even lack of ambition, but because they did not have any of
these witches in their presence.

Their ideas were further bolstered by the fact that when
the first generation came to the land and displaced the Nauset bones, the
settlers found all of the bones belonging to the male Indians splintered or
otherwise mutilated, while the women were wrapped carefully and were well
preserved. They decided that the solution to their problems was simple: they
needed women and those women needed to be witches.

The elder tried to convince the men that witchery is an
innate power that could not be taught, but his pleas fell on deaf ears as the
men figured since they had the ancient texts, they could train the women. They
told the elder, whom they later butchered and ate for his troubles, they did
not fear the idea of witches among them and were proud of themselves for
finally showing a bit of ingenuity.

But as women were the one thing the settlers did not have,
a great plan was devised to steal them. They crept in the night and travelled
great distances, snatching girls as young as twelve and no older than twenty
out of their warm beds.

The settlers picked the right time to enact their
kidnappings because the entire state was gripped in witch hysteria. When a
young girl went missing at the hands of the settlers there was rarely a true
investigation. Neighbors who may have acted strangely or even the girls’ own
fathers, were ultimately charged when one of the girls went missing. It was
said that these girls were given to the Devil and the case was closed.

The settlers stole thirteen girls from their homes over
six months and they then began the task of educating these poor souls. They
looked upon the girls as their slaves and they were used not only as vessels to
the Devil, but also to repopulate their colony with children born of evil. The
brutalized women were beaten, raped, tied to posts and left outside.

Frightened and confused, the girls were convinced that
these Devil worshippers wanted to use them for human sacrifice. When it was
explained that they were expected to become witches, some of the girls refused,
seeing it as an evil trick to confess to something they were most certainly
not. But the girls were tortured by the men until they finally embraced
witchcraft, rather than denounced it.

A series of cruel coincidences further bolstered the men’s
opinions that their witchcraft instruction was working on the girls.

One of the girls, eighteen-year-old Amanda Larkin knew
much about building techniques as her father, unbeknownst to the men of the
colony, was a building draftsman by trade. Amanda spent a lot of time in her
father’s workshop and they discussed many facets of building including correct
material use and application.

Knowing that the men wanted to improve the colony, Amanda
fed the men information, instructing them how to build amazing saltbox homes on
the land hoping she would be rewarded with her freedom. While the men did treat
Amanda a little better, the men, of course, believed that it was their
witchcraft instruction that infused Amanda with her building knowledge. The
settlers soon built incredible homes and meeting halls on their land.

Another girl, sixteen-year-old Trinity Hobbs’ father was a
veterinarian and Trinity gave the men all kinds of information about animals,
including livestock. Soon the men built a large barn and pilfered cows, steer and
chickens from other farming properties. The colony was soon richer than it ever
was.

The girls rarely had a moment to themselves without one or
more of the men guarding them, but when they did, they spoke of escape. The
problem was, the girls had no idea where they were. When they were taken, their
heads were covered in burlap sacks and none of them had traveled outside of the
small towns where they were abducted. For all they knew, their parents could
have been three miles or three countries away.

As the girls figured out that what the men, who were
largely idiots, wanted was information to make their colony run and prosper,
the girls set themselves up to be truly indispensable to the planning and
management of the colony.

Each girl went on to have two babies a piece and the
colony, three generations after they settled in, became one of the most
prosperous and talked about colonies in Massachusetts that was never visited by
any other citizen in the area.

Six years after the girls were abducted and five years
after the Salem Witch Trials ended, the powers that be in Massachusetts could
no longer ignore the rumors and concerned citizens coming to them with stories
about, what was now referred to as, the Witch Colony.

Now, these rumors about the colony always persisted, but
the authorities were weary to investigate any allegations of sorcery after the
bad publicity surrounding the Witch Trials. The Trials made the citizens of
Salem look anything but the gentile and civilized people the governing body in
Massachusetts, now known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay, wanted to
present to the public.

By now, the Witch Trials were looked upon by the majority
of the population as a hoax. But when the thirteen girls who were abducted did
not magically reappear after the Trials ended, law enforcement wondered if
there was some legitimacy to the girls’ parents’ pleas that the girls did not
fly off into the night on their broomsticks because they were witches, but
kidnapped by evil and villainous savages. The Witch Colony seemed a good spot
to start. Talk of their prosperity and abundance, seemingly out of the blue,
garnered much suspicion especially since the settlers were thought of as no
better than common beggars, a blight on the good state of Massachusetts and quite
possibly engaged in cannibalism.

In February of 1699, the Province of Massachusetts Bay
gathered a crude task force to scout the Witch Colony. The task force attacked
the colony in the middle of the night and hauled the babies, the girls, who
were now women, and men out of their homes. As the inhabitants of the colony
never experienced a takeover, they were overtaken quite easily. The task force
members took the babies from their mothers and handed them to the nuns that
accompanied the men. The women were returned to their families, the babies were
adopted out illegally to orphanages and the men of the Witch Colony were
arrested and hung.

Upon inspection of the site, it was estimated several
hundred pounds of human bones were strewn around the camp. Satanic symbols and
texts were discovered and human skins stored in an intricate meat drying cabin
were found. The authorities left all evidence where it lay and did not touch
another thing. The entire site was condemned by several religious leaders of
the time and the area was labeled haunted and off-limits. The site became the
first ghost town of the east.

For nearly one hundred years, no one dared to go near the
site until 1798 when a foot traveler by the name of Jonas Dashiell became
disoriented after walking all the way from Ohio and wandered into the camp. He
thought he found paradise, after all, he’d been on the road for almost an
entire year, wandering from town to town and trying to find someone he
connected with.

Jonas, even by his own account, was a strange boy. He
never fit in with his wealthy Ohio family nor his privileged friends. Jonas’
parents decided their wayward boy would attend the College of New Jersey to
follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue a career in politics. Jonas wasn’t
interested in having anything to do with government as he saw all politicians
as corrupt. His dreams were small: he wanted a modest farm he could work
himself and a family. And he didn’t want to wait. So, the night before he was
to leave for New Jersey, he simply disappeared from his family’s home and
walked east.

When he stumbled upon the Witch Colony, he had no idea
where he was. How he even found it is a mystery as the land leading to the site
was so overgrown, it was nearly impossible to navigate. But find it he did and
when he arrived, despite the lack of any other inhabitants, Jonas Dashiell felt
as if he finally found the connection he so desperately needed and set about to
make the abandoned site his home.

And when he cleared away the wild vines and brambles from
Adelaide and gazed upon her for the first time, her beauty so entranced and
mesmerized him, he spent the better part of six months just tending to her and
the garden. He washed her lovingly and slept at her base even though he had
many buildings to make his own. He begged her to speak and kissed her hard,
cold face.