One

They hanged my mother on a June morning in 1648. It was an overcast day, but the crowd was there to hail the witch out of this world and into the next one, which they were sure was the everlasting fires of hell.

I was seven hours old. Clearly this is not my earthly memory. Some of this I learned from Patience Coffin, the woman who raised me from the moment my mother died. The rest I learned when I died, myself.

Patience scooped me up from the cell where they kept my mother until I was born. Those good God-fearing people would not cause an unborn child to die just because her mother was a witch, a consort of the devil.

Patience was a wiry and wily old woman. No one questioned her as she took me from the cell as they led my mother to the hanging tree,

She bundled me in her cloak and walked out of the village and into the woods. She had known this day would come and she had found the place where we would live.

It was a long walk to the safe place she found for us. It was near a family of the Oneida tribe. One of the women had a baby boy who was a few days older than me and she fed me along with her son for a long time.

That’s where I started. This is where I am now. I am watching roll into the front yard of the Walker mansion on a sunny June morning. I’m here to tell you about this evil because it is a small evil and these small evils destroy human happiness, goodness, and lives.

You may wonder what makes me an expert on evil. Curiosity is good. It’s one of the characteristics that make life so interesting. Maybe you are wondering what makes me an expert on life. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, allow me to introduce myself.

I am Zenobia Coffin. I'm 358 years old. If you met me today, you'd never guess I was that old. I was 24 when I died in the summer of 1672. Who knows? Today might be the anniversary of my death. It was a summer day and it was after the summer solstice when I was struck down.

I was born in 1648. I didn’t live to be very old or very wise. But I did live and now I am dead. I was going to tell you my story and planned to begin at the beginning but I’m anxious to get on with where I am today, standing near the outskirts of Walkersville.

It was not far from here that Patience rescued me and raised me and loved me and all that I learned, I learned from her.

Her last lesson was the day she died. The hour she died. She was on her death bed, looking so old and frail. Her blue eyes had sunken into her face and her mouth was barely visible among the wrinkles of her collapsed face.

It was the evening and the darkness was gathering around us.

Patience lifted hand and I took it in mine. I did not want her to go but I had seen this before. The old cow had died. So had chickens over the year and some of the goats.

I knew that it was selfish of me to want her to live. I would miss her. I whispered, “Please don’t go.”

Patience made a sound that might have been a chuckle, or it might have been a cough. “You will be all right, girl. You will be all right.”

I kissed her dry, warm forehead and left my lips against her skin until I feared that my tears would spill over my cheeks and land on her face.

“Zenobia,” she said, "This is not the end. Fear not death. Fear the evil in people."

I leaned back and looked at her and nodded and tried to smile.

“And seek the good in people.”

Those were her last words to me.

In this world, that is.

I saw evil roll into the front yard of the Walker mansion on this fine sunny July morning. I’m here to tell you about this evil because it is a small evil and these small evils destroy human happiness, goodness, and lives.

Maybe in 2006, I look a little older than a current day 24-year-old woman. Life now, the things people eat, and the creature comforts they enjoy are quite different.

When I was alive in this world, my skin was sundried, so my face has a weather-beaten look. My hair is short. I had washed it in the pond the morning I died, and it remains clean and shiny. When I say short, it’s trimmed just below my ears. There’s a story behind that but this is not the time to talk about that. I was born female but because of my slender frame, I can disguise my gender. I can, and I have.

My green eyes are clear and bright, and I feel strong and energetic. When I lived as a human, appearances were not that important. That's okay with me. I'm as strong and as wiry as I have ever been in this human form.

I’m standing near the tip of Armstrong Point, looking at the Walker mansion. It is set back from the road in the wooded area to the north and the east of Walkersville. There is a semi-circular lane running from the main road to the broad front of the old house.

A row of rose bushes runs between the two entrance ways. The rose bushes look like they had been freshly planted or transplanted. They aren’t very tall.

I want to tell you about evil and forms it can take but I have to do it slowly so that the full panorama of how it flourishes can be made clear and visible. Having been a human being, I know how understanding can be clouded by so many variables.

Having been a spirit – being a spirit – I know how good and evil co-exist and do battle. Spirits do not communicate with words and gestures. There is a melding of our souls, the core of who we were when we were humans, and an understanding that is so complete that it is never overshadowed with confusion and lack of clarity.

I’m tiptoeing around the reality of this moment because I must explain why I am here and hope that you understand. I’ve been dead for centuries, but my spirit is eternal and melds with other spirits. We live on the other side of a veil. Think of it as an alternate world where I can be standing beside you, or even in the same precise location where you are standing, yet we never touch.

This isn’t a very good description because we are not flesh and blood. I’ll explain more about that later. Right now, I want to talk about evil and how it is about to descend on Karen Densmuir Smythe. Karen is a descendant of me, a twelve-times great grand-daughter.

I have always been able to watch over my beloved child and her child and all her child’s children. In the great beyond which is not far away but layer over your world, I am part of a spiritual cloud of good. Some people might consider us ghosts. Others might consider us angels.

There is a difficulty with communication when we are limited to words. Words are not big enough to tell the wide expanse of the spirit world. Have you ever watched a mother cat teaching her kittens what to do and how to behave and did you ever watch the kittens seem to naturally catch on to what they should do?

It's like that in the spirit world. It's not like the images I have seen over the centuries of a bunch of beautiful people in long robes and flashing white wings roaming around on fluffy clouds.

Evil doesn't have ugly faces, fangs, arched eyebrows, and pointed ears. Evil has a common face. Evil looks like you or your sister or your best friend. Evil looks normal. It's only on the inside that the difference is obvious.

It's so easy to conceal how we are on the inside when we are human. Cautions. Clothing. Smile. Evil can be seen in person's eyes, if you know what to look for. But you have to know what to look for and because of the way humans been trained for centuries, you don’t always see it. You’re not trained to look at the face of a friend and recognize evil.

Evil can masquerade as anything you want to see. If you ever listen to two sides of the same story, you want to believe that only one side is right. The reality is both sides could be right. Or wrong. You wonder, is each one telling you only part of the truth?

The forces of evil like the one that I am here to keep an eye on are always waiting to lure the unsuspecting into their world. To keep my meandering explanation simple, I am good, and I am here to deflect the forces of evil that are trying to destroy my grand-daughter.

This morning, I stepped through the veil which allows me to stand here on this fine summer day on the edge of Walkersville, a small town near the water on the eastern border of New Hampshire. I stepped through the veil a couple of miles away on the Line Road.

I’m small by current standards. It's just the way things were when I was a human. I'm well-muscled and I can walk for miles without even thinking about it. I enjoy walking.

I'm wearing leather boots, pants, a big-sleeved shirt and a straw hat. I have a thin woolen shirt tied around my waist. The weather here can be quixotic. It's not yet noon and it's hot but by tonight, who knows what it will be like. As a side note, these are the clothes I was wearing when I died.

I could have stepped through the veil from the other side right into the front yard of the big old Walker mansion here on the northeast of the town, but I wanted to have the experience of striding along a road and feeling the sun on my face.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle the situation that is unfolding before me. I have a choice. I can appear as a human person or I can step back through the veil into the so-called ether and observe.

I was about half a mile away from the mansion when a huge vehicle, spraying bits of gravel in my direction, roared past me. I could hear it change its roaring noise as it slowed down. It turned into the lane and came to a very noisy stop directly in front of the house.

Evil had arrived just slightly ahead of me.

~~~