before it dissipates into a rolling puff of smoke. It growls from every corner of my room. Shadows deepen, surrounding me. They envelope me until I feel like I’m nearly drowning in them.
I try to yell for help but all I see is my mother. She stands in the hallway but she can’t reach me and just when I think the weight of the blackness alone will crush me, a small light appears in front of my eyes.
“Oblivisci,” the light tells me with a whisper. As a small, frail hand reaches for mine, the darkness is gone, and I’m awake.
Air rushes in and out of me at an incredible speed. I feel as though something’s been sitting on my chest. I take a few minutes to steady my breathing and remind myself it was all in my head. Literally.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes. I need to collect my thoughts, and the rest of me. My breathing slows but I find that my hands are shaking once again. I ball them into fists to regain some control but they still shake. I’m anything but in control here.
I stand and think. I pace the room.
At the window, I pause, and stare out toward Salem. I’ve spent so many years bottling this place away on a shelf somewhere in the corner of my mind. Now that I’m here, face to face with the past, it’s all rushing back, that’s all this is.
“You need something to eat, Coop,” I tell myself, but it’s still too early for even the home cooked breakfast that the B&B serves. To waste some time, I decide to see how others have perceived my mother over the years. I pull my laptop from its leather case and hit the power button.
I type “Crazy Maggie Shaw” into the Google search bar and wait before I hit the enter key. I’ve spent years resisting the urge to Google my mother, years resisting the urge to find the smallest piece of information. I’m not sure I’m ready to reopen this chapter of my life and read how other people judged it. But I do.
ENTER .
I click on the first “The Official Maggie Shaw” website I find. It takes no time to load. There’s a picture of Salem’s famous Witch House and my mom’s face in the header of the page. The background is black, the font is orange and they have eerie organ music playing as a default setting. I turn it off and scroll through the sections.
“The Life of Maggie Shaw” tells visitors a brief history of my mother. It glazes over her childhood, mentioning she grew up here, but fails to say anything about her parents, friends or social activities. I’m a tad disappointed that I don’t find anything about her that I didn’t already know. Or at the very least, something that might tell me she was once normal.
I wonder, while I scroll some more, why she never told me about my grandparents. Was my grandmother like her? Was she considered a bona fide witch? Did she kill her husband too?
It’s just as I’m asking myself these questions when I find another article titled “The Achilles Heel of Maggie Shaw”.
I stop and think for a minute. I never really thought of my mother as having any weaknesses. She always seemed like she was the one calling the shots, with me anyway.
The author of the post doesn’t list their name but they seem to have a very strong opinion of my father. According to this, Mom was considered to have had a lot of potential in some healing circles within Salem and was even expected to become very prominent within her coven before leaving.
That was a long time ago, though, they write.
Her reclusiveness and loss of touch with reality can easily be attributed to Ben Shaw’s years of stifling poor Maggie’s abilities and his constant abuse during their marriage.
I stare at the words I just read.
I’m at a loss here.
The phrases used to refer to my father are not computing and I wonder how many people have seen this website and read these words about him. How many people see him as an abusive asshole?
Was he an abusive asshole?
I mean, really? Dad? Mom was the one that lost her temper practically
I try to yell for help but all I see is my mother. She stands in the hallway but she can’t reach me and just when I think the weight of the blackness alone will crush me, a small light appears in front of my eyes.
“Oblivisci,” the light tells me with a whisper. As a small, frail hand reaches for mine, the darkness is gone, and I’m awake.
Air rushes in and out of me at an incredible speed. I feel as though something’s been sitting on my chest. I take a few minutes to steady my breathing and remind myself it was all in my head. Literally.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes. I need to collect my thoughts, and the rest of me. My breathing slows but I find that my hands are shaking once again. I ball them into fists to regain some control but they still shake. I’m anything but in control here.
I stand and think. I pace the room.
At the window, I pause, and stare out toward Salem. I’ve spent so many years bottling this place away on a shelf somewhere in the corner of my mind. Now that I’m here, face to face with the past, it’s all rushing back, that’s all this is.
“You need something to eat, Coop,” I tell myself, but it’s still too early for even the home cooked breakfast that the B&B serves. To waste some time, I decide to see how others have perceived my mother over the years. I pull my laptop from its leather case and hit the power button.
I type “Crazy Maggie Shaw” into the Google search bar and wait before I hit the enter key. I’ve spent years resisting the urge to Google my mother, years resisting the urge to find the smallest piece of information. I’m not sure I’m ready to reopen this chapter of my life and read how other people judged it. But I do.
ENTER .
I click on the first “The Official Maggie Shaw” website I find. It takes no time to load. There’s a picture of Salem’s famous Witch House and my mom’s face in the header of the page. The background is black, the font is orange and they have eerie organ music playing as a default setting. I turn it off and scroll through the sections.
“The Life of Maggie Shaw” tells visitors a brief history of my mother. It glazes over her childhood, mentioning she grew up here, but fails to say anything about her parents, friends or social activities. I’m a tad disappointed that I don’t find anything about her that I didn’t already know. Or at the very least, something that might tell me she was once normal.
I wonder, while I scroll some more, why she never told me about my grandparents. Was my grandmother like her? Was she considered a bona fide witch? Did she kill her husband too?
It’s just as I’m asking myself these questions when I find another article titled “The Achilles Heel of Maggie Shaw”.
I stop and think for a minute. I never really thought of my mother as having any weaknesses. She always seemed like she was the one calling the shots, with me anyway.
The author of the post doesn’t list their name but they seem to have a very strong opinion of my father. According to this, Mom was considered to have had a lot of potential in some healing circles within Salem and was even expected to become very prominent within her coven before leaving.
That was a long time ago, though, they write.
Her reclusiveness and loss of touch with reality can easily be attributed to Ben Shaw’s years of stifling poor Maggie’s abilities and his constant abuse during their marriage.
I stare at the words I just read.
I’m at a loss here.
The phrases used to refer to my father are not computing and I wonder how many people have seen this website and read these words about him. How many people see him as an abusive asshole?
Was he an abusive asshole?
I mean, really? Dad? Mom was the one that lost her temper practically
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