North Island, 1550

Where It All Did Not Begin

North Island, 1550. Thirty-five years before Roanoke

In a stone house that sat on the spot where Caleb Michael Smith would one day build his home, a mother-to-be lay in a sweaty heap on her bed.  A midwife stood before her urging the mother to push.  The father knelt before the fireplace in fervent prayer, clutching his Rosary with a grip that had broken the skin on his fingers, allowing drops of blood to fall on the flagstones of the fireplace apron.

The man kneeling on the stones in front of his fireplace heard the screams of his wife and then the screams of a new-born child.  He stopped praying and stood, knowing what must be done.  The man walked over to the mother who was holding the babe to her breast and took it from her grasp.

“Edmund, no!” the mother yelled but to no avail.  The child needed to be dealt with immediately.  The mother, still under the spell of the only recently burned warlock, cried and begged for the child to be returned to her arms, though she knew well that the infant was nothing like what it appeared to be, but rather a demon.

“Martha, it gives me no joy to rip this babe from your bosom.  You are my beloved wife and I know that you’re, well, you’re…well, you’re acting out of character with this witch was an act not of your own doing but of his.  I will see that you and I have children, our children, but this creature must be removed from our home, now!”

Edmund Willoughby lay the child gently on the table in the kitchen by the hearth and put his cloak about his shoulders.  He picked the infant up carefully, ignoring the cries and protests of mother and midwife and walked out into the evening twilight. He set a course, due North, going by where the sun was on the horizon, and walked briskly and with purpose to a place in the forest that he thought would be a fitting place to leave the child.  It was a natural clearing surrounded by long-leaf pines.  The natives had used it as a burial ground for people they had deemed to be cursed.  There was never any game in the area and no songbirds could be heard within a hundred yards of the clearing.

As the man approached the clearing, his resolve weakened.  He was a strong man, but a very kind man.  In England, he had fought anti-Catholic forces and had nearly lost his life in the process. He had fought for and defended his then future wife, a delicate and beautiful girl, against a tyrannical, nearly psychopathic father and two brothers who wished to sell her off for a dowry to the highest bidder. The father had been very sorry he had ever heard the name, Edmund Willoughby. The two brothers had gone to meet their maker at the hands of Edmund Willoughby.  What their fate was after that was anyone’s terrible guess.

This man was not afraid of much, except for doing the wrong thing.  In England, he had heard of the great bravery of Sir Thomas More who had met his own end at the hands of the King, but whose ultimate fate was probably much different from that of his wife’s two brothers.

So, he stood on the spot where he was to lay down the child and he hesitated. She was only an infant, after all.  She was innocent and did not deserve this fate. When he had finished that thought, a man in glowing gold and silver armor appeared before him, some ten feet away and some ten feet above the ground.

The man in the armor spoke, “Edmund Willoughby, faithful servant of God, why do you hesitate to do the Lord’s bidding?”

Willoughby, too thunderstruck to speak stood there, holding the child, saying nothing.

“You may speak, Edmund Willoughby.  I am an Angel of the Lord, part of a mighty, Heavenly army set to do battle with the forces of rebellion in God’s house.”

“Sir, I see that you are mighty, indeed. This child, born of Evil, has herself done nothing evil. She is but an infant and is innocent.  I am loathed to cause her to come to harm.”

“You wish no harm to the child because you are a good man, Edmund Willoughby. I tell you now to trust your instincts, the messages sent by God through his holy Angels, and lay the child in the pit that I have prepared for her, for she is neither a child nor innocent, though she doth appear so to you.”

With that, another man, this one with a sickening smell and a frightening countenance, appeared next to the warrior angel and said, “Give the child to me. I will care for her and see that she is safe. This angel before you would have you murder a babe, a tiny sprout who has done no evil in this world.”

The warrior angel spoke up, “It is true that she has yet done no evil in this world. She has done great, terrible things since the beginning of time, since the Great fall.  Edmund Willoughby, this is your choice to make. I pray that you make the right one.” Then, the warrior angel was gone, leaving Willoughby alone with the demon.

Willoughby stepped forward toward the pit that he saw in the forest floor.  He carefully laid the baby in the hole and stepped back.  He kicked some of the dirt that was on the side of the pit onto the baby expecting it to cry, but it did not.  As the dirt hit the child in the face, it transformed into a snarling, spitting animal, much like a badger. The baby turned growling demon, tried desperately to get itself out of the pit, but could not. The pit had been dug by the warrior angel and had been blessed with a heavenly enchantment to hold the tiny demon prisoner.

The odoriferous devil that had tempted Willoughby to turn the child over to him roared with Hellish fury, picked Willoughby off the ground and hurtled him against a tree, killing him.

Willoughby awoke on a great plain. A man dressed in strange garb was sitting beside him smoking what looked like an Irish clay pipe because it was.

The Chief thought privately, “Brooklyn is not going to work on this guy. I can’t really do an English accent convincingly. Better stick with thoughts. He will hear the thoughts in his own accent.”

“So, I see you made the correct choice.”

“Sir, I know not who you are nor have any knowledge of where I am. Further, I am ignorant of this “choice” of which you speak.”

“The baby.  You put the baby in the hole.  You made the right choice.”

Willoughby, though still a confused, began to remember. “Yes, the child. I put the child in the hole. I don’t remember why. I feel as if I did behave rightly, but I do not know why.”

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Mrs. Willoughby had been spiritually assaulted by a man who practiced the Black Arts, a witch, a warlock if you will, and the child now being born was a product of her unwilling union with this man.  The biological father had been found and accused of the witchcraft he had used to lure the woman into unfaithfulness and the town of North Island had gathered up a group of men to find this warlock and burn him, not on the proverbial stake, but on a pyre, bound with chains and gagged at the mouth.

The head of the posse, as it were, was an elderly Roman Catholic priest by the name of Caleb Smith.  As he stood, praying, before the pile of dried wood upon which the accused warlock lay bound, the warlock turned his head as much as was physically possible and met the gaze of the elderly priest. In his younger days, Father Smith might have been able to stave off the unholy attack, but now he was old and feeble and had been feeling that his time on this Earth was coming to an end.  The old priest fought as hard as he could, but his heart, weakened by age and infirmity could beat no more. Though no one could have known it at the time, inside the doomed man’s body his blood thickened and then stopped flowing. Father Smith fell like a stone, his bible coming to rest some inches from his eyes. It was the last thing he saw before he died.

The warlock on the pyre, no longer bound, laughed in a maniacal, nauseating way and the men looking on ran toward both the priest and the screeching witch.  One of the group turned the priest on his back and found that he had bitten through his own tongue and was very dead.  The other thing that no one could have known was that Father Caleb Michael Smith, now part of a Heavenly Army, was now helping the forces of God and Good prepare for a battle that would take place in Heaven, Hell and Earth.

Suddenly, the pyre was alight and the warlock was standing on it consumed in flames.  He stood on the burning wood, pointing at the men while his flesh melted from his bones, though he was not dying.

“Blackness be upon your souls.  Darkness be upon your spirits.  Your descendants will be born in misery and will live in hopeless pain.  The protection that has been on this land will be no more.  You all will be tormented in eternity!”

With that, the bones fell and were soon turned to ash on the burning wood.

This was the curse that would haunt the male descendants of the Smith family. Caleb, the son of Arthur, would be hit hardest by this curse. The darkness would try to kill him from the moment of his birth.