Salem Betrayal

Salem Betrayal

The day was September 19th, 1692. There was a crowd gathering in the town square. Rain had begun to pour down on the hellish scene below. The townspeople, including the jury who accused Giles Corey, were throwing rocks onto a seemingly harmless pile. What an onlooker wouldn’t know is that a man accused of being a witch was now dying for his pride. Giles Corey would be dead within the hour.

* * *

Giles Corey was a peaceful man. He was a full member of the church, as everybody was in Salem village. He also was a prosperous farmer. The land he owned was the best in the town and he produced the food that fed the mouths of the rest of the puritans of Salem.

It is April, and Giles has been preparing his spring crops. As far as he knows, his life is the same as it always has been. Everyone in town is still buying his crops, saying their daily “hellos” on their way to church. Nothing had changed in the town over the past couple of years he lived there. Except for one thing, he hadn’t seen Ann Putnam in a while. It might have been because he had missed church a couple of days tilling his field, or just that she hadn’t been buying her fruits and vegetables from him lately. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to matter much to him.

“Giles!” he heard a deep voice bellow from his front door. “Come out right now, we have reason to believe you practice witchcraft!”

Giles stood in his living room stunned by what he just heard. How could anybody possibly believe that he, the hand that feeds them, was a ‘witch’? “And what reason would that be?” he yelled out the door.

In a moment he realized the mistake he made. The members of the court waiting outside didn’t know he was in the house. At the sound of his voice they rushed in and slapped on the irons. “Mr. Corey, you are under arrest for the murder of Sarah Putnam, the sister of Ann Putnam who also told us you tried to get her to sign the devil’s book last night”

“This is insanity!” Giles fought back, “I haven’t been out of my house except to tend to the crops in days!” Even with this alibi, Giles was carried away to the local prison.

* * *

In the prison, Giles sat and pondered his fate. Did people really believe he was a witch? Could they actually find him guilty for these crimes he didn’t commit? How long would they keep him down in this desolate cell? All of these questions and more pounded into Giles mind fearing his death could come at a seconds notice.

“Mr. Corey?” a prison guard asked outside the cell.

“Yes? That’s me.” Giles responded.

“Your trial date is set for the 18th, you are to stay in custody until then,” the guard told Giles, “If you try to escape, we will capture you and definitely dispose of you.” After this, the guard left Giles to his solitude.

The words kept repeating over and over in Corey’s mind, “we will capture you… dispose of you…” If he had any plan of escaping, it had been immediately demolished.

* * *

“Hear Ye, Hear Ye!” the judge bellowed over the courtroom. “Court is now in session. The case of Corey vs. Putnam, please bring forward the accused.” Giles Corey was brought to the defendant’s box in cuffs. “Will the accusers please step forward!” the judge yelled. Three women from the town stepped forward into the prosecutors box. These women were Ann Putnam, Jr., Mercy Lewis, and Abigail Williams.

“Giles Corey, you have been accused of trying to get innocent women to sign the devil’s book in blood, on the 13th of April. You have also been accused of murdering the sister of Ann Putnam, Sarah Putnam, on the same night. Do you agree that you have practiced witchcraft and are guilty of said crimes?”

“I didn’t do it! And I’m not a witch!” Giles pleaded for his innocence. “I hadn’t been out of my house for three days before you all took me and put me in jail. I couldn’t have killed anyone.” Giles thought this was a very good plea in his defense but he decided to add the kicker.

“Plus, I was in bed with my wife the entire night of the 13th.” at this point Giles Corey believed there was no way he would be proven guilty.

“It’s true!” a woman shouted from the benches in the back. It was Corey’s wife. “He never left the bedroom the entire night. I had stayed awake to... um... read the Bible.” It seemed, to any ordinary person, that the case was already decided.

After Giles’s wife confirmed his alibi, the courtroom erupted with commotion.

“Order! Order in the court!” the judge yelled over the uproar of conversation. “His presence at his home does not provide any evidence in the least to prove his innocence.

Giles felt his stomach fly up into his heart and his heart sink below his ankles at this comment.

The judge continued, “Ann Putnam clearly stated that it was you apparition, or spirit, which visited her on the night of the 13th. You can be seemingly asleep and have your spirit floating around the village wreaking all sorts of havoc.”

“It’s true, he came to me in the midst of night and tried to get me to sign in blood!” Ann Putnam jumped from her seat desperately trying to get people to believe her. It was working.

A short, pudgy man that Giles recognized from his ‘”abduction” walked up to the judge and handed him a book. “This here is the book that Ann Putnam claimed as the ‘Devil’s Book’” the man pointed a short stubby finger at Giles and said aloud, “we found it in his house on the morning we jailed him.”

“Let me see that” Giles Corey demanded. The judge brought it over to Mr. Corey so he could take a look at it. “I don’t own that book, I swear it, it’s not mine.”

“Well then explain how we found it in your house, in your bedroom, Mr. Corey.” The judge turned to the people on the benches. “He claims he’s never seen it, yet it was in his bedroom when we found it.” Laughter waved over the people.

“My wife had been reading a book at that time that she would not allow me to see. I’m not sure if it is the same as that there, but it could be.” Giles couldn’t believe he was about to say this but he had to, for his own life.

“Whenever she was reading the book in bed, I couldn’t pray, but the second she left, I could pray again. Do you think that could have been the Devil’s Book in my wife’s hands?” He had just accused his own wife of witchcraft in order to save his own life.

Mrs. Corey, hearing this from her bench immediately jolted up in her seat and argued her own defense while it felt like the eyes of the world were upon her.

“That book is not mine!” She screamed.

“Then who’s is it Mrs. Corey?” the judge questioned.

“It’s Giles’s of course! I had only read it because I knew it was the Devil’s Book, I could smell the blood of all those girls night after night, the scents coming straight from that book.” She said pointing at the book in the judge’s hands. “I wanted to see what poor souls Giles had corrupted. I was going to report him to you, but you apparently caught him first.”

“Martha!” Giles was astonished that his wife would go to such lengths to save her life, albeit that he had just done the same to her. “You know that I never even touched that book.”

“Yes he did! He brought it to all those little girls’ houses at night when I was asleep!”

“Ow! Make him stop! He’s hurting me!” Ann Putnam yelped and pointed at Giles. “Make him stop, he’s trying to kill me just like Sarah!” At this remark, the other two girls started in on their cries of pain.

“Mr. Corey! It is bad enough you try to practice witchcraft on innocent children, but doing it in my court is unacceptable!” The judge motioned for the guards to cuff Giles. “I find you guilty of all charges and set your execution date for the 19th of September. Court is adjourned!”

* * *

So it all ends up back here, in the center of town, under a pile of rocks. Giles Corey was completely innocent, but nobody would ever know that, he would be dead and his story with it. It was later found out that Ann Putnam’s sister had died of a heart attack. Ann loved her sister and used Giles Corey as a scapegoat mainly because he supported Rev. Parris, the man who beat out her father for the head position in town. Even the fear of death had put Corey’s wife against him and now all he could do was savor his last breaths on Earth.

Giles couldn’t see much from under the rocks, but there were a few slits that he could see the sky through, see the rain pouring down on top of his deathbed. His arms could just barely reach out of the pile which was collapsing in on him. He groped at a man passing by.

"More weight" he said to the man, and those were his final words.

He could feel his chest getting crushed by the second. He knew the end was near. There was a sharp pain in his side and then in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. He was dying solely because he wouldn’t claim he was guilty. That would have spared his life, but his pride got the best of him. The thoughts of his short-lived life in Salem flashed before his eyes, and then it all went black.


The End