THE HANGED MAN

I remember the last witch hung in Springhollow as if he were my own kin. I awoke early on the frost-bitten December day of his bloody execution to greet him with a final kind face. Death was less alarming with company. My role was simple. Comfort him, pray for him, coerce repentance from his foul mouth. That most morbid of years, there had been more executions than I had ever witnessed. Loathsome, abominable, degenerate covens and malefactors laid with forces of Hell. They lived only to summon the burning rain of lost and rotten Lucifer himself. If I made the laws I would never have offered those wicked devils sympathy but as the Pastor I was informed it fell under my responsibility to bring comfort to those disobedient children sentenced to the noose. I kissed my son, innocent and pure, on his forehead and left him to sleep. 

The doomed boy was Alaric, no family name to speak of. A boy of twenty-one. Many thought him a woman with black hair grazing the backs of his knees and small flowers of white braided through. He was short but more slender than any man should have been. His filthy feet were bare and the soiled rag of clothing he wore resembled more a dress. He lurked around the river, harvesting thorny, odorous roots. They were not a pretty flower nor did they serve any use in medicine nor prayer. He had no need to be cultivating such a stash. In his belt he had a dagger with a dull blade worn and crooked from use and a handle carved of unknown bone engraved with a sigil of staring eyes and unfurled wings. There was no doubt, this boy was a witch. He tried to run as they all did though he was soon captured as they always were. They dragged him back to the river. If a soul is pure the river would embrace them, pulling them into her babbling current, baptising them for Heaven’s eternal hold; it was only the damned and dirty that the river refused to clean. It rejected them. He cried for mercy, begged to go home, spluttered nonsensical as he swallowed water by the mouthful. Yet the boy did not drown. The sun rose in dazzling pink and he still had breath in his chest. They kept him locked away where he could hurt no one with his sorceries. They said he did not sleep for three days. He just shook his shackles and wailed his innocence. For such treatment, many would be carried to the gallows but this one had the presence of mind to stand on his own strength.

The bells chimed five. The winter sun of faded orange and the smoke-like fog rose against the morning sky. Alaric was chained to the back of a small cart drawn by a large brown mare. I stroked her muzzle and fed her a carrot. She was such a gentle creature who knew not the necessary evils of the human world. She did not know her purpose brought condemned men to their deaths. Sitting atop the wood of the cart, Alaric quivered as the cold nipped his childish features. I would have thought him still a child had he not revealed his most blasphemous nature in the river’s embrace. They sheared his hair cropped and messy by his ears. His face once gentle and unmarred was dark with shadowy bruising and drops of blood dried to his hollow cheeks. His eyes, grey and flat as pebbles were wet with tears as I placed my hand on his bony, trembling shoulder.

“Father White, I swear I am not a bad person,” his barely aged voice trembled.

“You cohort with the devil, my son.”

“No,” he shook his head slowly. “You do not understand, Father.”

“You have confessed to renouncing God. Made your sinful lusts known. The Devil is inside you, child. You invited him in.”

“It is not The Devil I pray to Father. I speak not with the Devil, I beg you to believe me.” He wept once again, his pleas babbled through drooling lips.

“Child, your earthly life cannot be saved. But our Lord and maker is forgiving. Renounce Satan, my son, repent for your weakness and pray your soul can be redeemed.”

“Please, I am afraid. I–” His body bent double as his small frame rose and sank with his howling cries. 

“There may yet be mercy for you, child.”

“I have a family. I have brothers.”

“Aye. Had you revealed your wicked coven’s names, perhaps they would have spared you.” I lied. Though many of these creatures did betray their own at such a promise, only to burn alongside them. “It is not death you fear, child, it is damnation.”

“Father, am I going to Hell?” His eyes were wide and wild as he turned his head to me.

“Only God himself knows that, my son.”

“Papa,” Charles bounded over to me. “They say it is time,” he said with a wide grin.

“Thank you, son,” I ruffled his ginger locks and sent him running back down the path.

“Come now, witch. You must meet with your maker.”

Alaric continued to shake his head and sob as I guided him onto the ground. He did not fight against my grasp but he required a harsh shove to force his bound feet to walk. 

Atop a small hill on the edge of town stood a mighty oak. None remembered when it was planted nor why though over the centuries it became the gallows for impure sinners and heretics. Our very own hanging tree. Two hangmen almost as wide as the tree itself stood waiting for their victim. I rested my hand against his back as I nudged him forward. His breath stopped in his lungs as he witnessed it. The finality of this journey settled deep into his mind. It was a mercifully short walk from the cart to his doom. A small crowd of fifty or so had already gathered. Their riled cheers echoed for miles. Children chased each other around the thick trunk. When I pushed Alaric into view, a dark hush befell them as they scowled and readied their buckets of stone, rotted food and excrement to throw.

He stumbled over himself as his body collapsed forward heavily. One of the hooded hangmen strode forward and forced him to stand, shaking him awake and giving him a harsh slap across his face. We exchanged nods as I joined the crowd and they dragged him to the tree.

Almost as soon as he was presented to his audience the harsh curses and rain of offal descended upon him. His tattered clothes were soon adorned with macabre reds and ghoulish greens. The foreboding goliath of nature appeared even mightier up close. A sharp and jagged rock crashed into Alaric’s head sending streaming crimson into his eyes as an anguished yelp slipped his lips. It was an unpleasant fate but it was the one he had chosen for himself. A blasphemer’s death.

At the foot of the sprawling oak a wooden stool was placed. Normally that would be enough but the boy was still too short. An upturned fruit box was placed on the stool before one of the two burly hooded men guided him to stand atop. He struggled to keep his footing as the heavy winds blew right through him, catching himself with wobbly knees. As they settled the gently swinging rope around his neck, his breath hitched loudly as the bindings cinched his throat. His lips moved rapidly as he squeezed his eyes shut but no sound parted from them. His silent prayer ended as one hooded man gargled in his throat, spitting in the boy’s face.

When he opened those sad, silver eyes he looked at me. Flushed with tears and red with blood, they begged me to save him. He was smeared in the disgust of his audience yet I saw something in him. His fear melted like the snow dusting him. He looked innocent. I had to remind myself he was a child of darkness lest a well of pity formed.

As one of the men cleared his throat and began to speak, Alaric’s dirtied face snapped back to the crowd. His words stuck in his panting throat as he shook his head and wept loudly. Neither Alaric nor I cared to listen to the fantastical decree of his executioner. All who gathered already knew his name, his crime, his punishment. It was not until he asked for the boy’s last words that the ears of the crowd pricked up like dogs in hunt. He looked to me once more before staring out before him. Besides the screeching winds, the creaking of the crumbling branches and Alaric’s squeaking whimpers all was silent upon the hill.

As he opened his mouth to speak, a shrill voice came from across the path. Another young man with uncovered feet and flower trimmed hair, his eyes burnt violently. He ran towards us, shoving through the crowd. I grabbed him by the collar of his torn and ragged dress and held him in place.

“Alaric!”

“Si…” Alaric’s voice gained clarity.

“Please, he is innocent. Let him go,” the boy wailed, wriggling in my grasp.

“Silas, mo chuisle,” he hesitated, squinting his eyes and spluttering, “go home. Go to Magus.”

“No. No, I will not leave you.”

“Enough,” one of the hangmen bellowed. “Speak, witch.”

“You know not what you will unleash,” Alaric whispered almost too faint to hear. “It is not The Devil I serve but something far more powerful. More powerful than God himself. You have slaughtered many of her children, our blood feeds the grass that grows here. You will know wrath. You will know it well. I curse you. I curse you all. I am a child of–”

With a resounding kick, the hangman launched the stool backwards. The box dropped, as did the boy. A short and sudden stop. A crack echoed across the hill. Birds took flight and an even quieter hush fell over the crowd. Alaric’s frail neck had broken like a twig. His neck stretched and his head tilted. His eyes bulged and his tongue forced out his mouth as his face reddened. He was looking at me. He swayed in the breeze, each time a creak rattled out of the branch. His body grew tall in length. He was still looking at me. 

The boy Silas fell to his knees out of my grasp. One hand clutched his stomach as the other covered his mouth. I cannot describe the noise that escaped him. It was more than pain, more than grief. It was as if his very soul had been torn from his body. 

The crowd dispersed back to the mundanity of their daily strife. I followed, I could not look upon him another moment. All that was left was the boy Silas, retching onto the grass beneath him.

For three bloody days his body hung there, silent and swinging.

They continued to pelt his body with volatile hatred until we cut it down on the third night. The birds and maggots had begun to pick and pluck at his purpling flesh, tearing it from the bone. His corpse was handled with the lack of care a sinner deserves. We cut the rope and let him thud against the slush and muck. He was thrown atop the cart and wheeled a ways away. We buried the witches a mile to the West, across the border to the next town so that their sin may not permeate our home further.

It was strange how Alaric’s body housed life. From he scrapes and cuts, the gaping opening of his mouth, wildflowers sprung. With small round petals of lightest purple and a sweet scent they protruded as if they had grown from his very bones. Witches were such odd creatures.

The row of shallow, unmarked graves stretched wide with the sinners of Springhollow. Alaric’s resting place was already dug. Barely a foot deep with another mangled, decomposed body already rotting therein. They tipped his body with a loud thud into the hole and recovered it. This malevolent soul deserved no burial prayer, no final blessing. He should have felt lucky his body was ever cut down. If I made the laws, I would have left him strung up for all to see. Made him a warning for all the other dirty miscreants who threatened the sanctity of our sacred world.

Out of the corner of my eye, barely moving in the twilight glow, I saw a small figure lurking amongst the trees. As we departed, he stepped towards the grave, dropping onto his knees beside it. His broken, untamed cries grew faint. He twisted his body next to it as if he were laying himself down to sleep. I turned away, not wanting to trouble myself any further with Alaric and his queer company.

I attempted to return home silently but our old hinges squeaked once I closed the door.

“Papa?” A small and sleepy voice came from the bedroom door.

“Charles, it is the middle of the night.” I scooped my son up in my arms. It should have struck me as odd, he seldom woke during the night. 

“My belly hurts. You were gone.”

I shushed him gently. “It is alright. I am home. You must go back to sleep now.”

“But, it hurts.”

I stroked my hand across his forehead. He had no fever. “You seem perfectly well to me. Some rest will help.”

“Is the witch gone?”

“Yes, he cannot harm anyone now.”

“He was scary.” 

“Did you have bad dreams? Is that why you are awake?”

He nodded. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

I placed him down and walked to the wooden table in the next room. I still had a dark glass bottle with a few splashes of gin left in the bottom. It is what my mother would do when I was a babe. I wetted two fingers with it, blinking away the strong scent. “Open up.”

He opened his mouth allowing me to rub the thin liquid onto his gums. He puckered his lips and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He rubbed his half-open eyes and leant into my shoulder as I picked him up once again. He would soon be too grown for this. I carried him back to his small bed, laid him down and pulled the thick, warm, knitted blanket up over him. I kissed his forehead quickly as he snuggled further down.

“Papa?” he uttered.

“Yes, son?”

“I did not lie. My belly hurts.”

“It was just a scary dream, Charles. Rest.” I closed the door quietly.

It took almost an hour to rinse all of the dirt under my nails. Some of Alaric’s congealed blood had stuck to my skin as had the thick sap of those strange blooms. I had hung almost one hundred witches yet this child, insignificant and unholy, struck me in ways I could not understand. Perhaps it was his crudely hacked hair, once lucious with flowers. His young eyes, so harrowing and tormented. The way his scarred body seemed to crumble in our hands. Those parting words to the world. His final curse. The flowers blooming from the rot. Like fungal spores they latched to my mind and grew thoughts I had to cull. He wept so violently when he knew he was going to die like a lost child unsure of their way home. I could not console such a monster and yet I wish I had found the heart to comfort him. I tossed and turned in my bed all night, unable to sleep. Young Alaric’s face was all I could see.

The sun had not yet dared to kiss the night when the first loud knock wrapped my door. Rousing from my half sleep took only a moment and yet the knocking returned quicker, growing furious.

“Father White! Father White!” A woman yelled.

I stepped quickly into shoes and ran for the door, clumsily bumping my hip against the table. I swung it open, letting the harsh winter morn air assault me. She was one of the miller’s daughters — I had baptised her child not six months ago. I did not remember a sermon where her kind face and blonde hair had not been amongst the crowd.

Her eyes were wild with tears, her hair strewn and unkempt. If it were not for the damp air and harsh winds I would not have noticed she was unchanged from her sheer nightgown. “Please, Father, you must hurry. My baby.”

“Hurry where, Miss?”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me outside, joining her battle against the cold in our thin nightwear. She began to sprint towards the mill. I almost struggled to keep up with her. She did not slow nor turn as I called for her.

We quickly arrived to her home. Our breath mist in the air. Her sisters, each fair and feminine, were huddled on the doorstep, rose with my arrival. Doctor Hannigan, grim in his reaper-ish face, stood pale and agasp. He turned to me and in a low, sombre voice said,

“I have never seen anything like this, Father.”

I saw him then. The very babe I had Christened, docile and wheezing, swaddled tightly. A small touch to his brow almost burnt my fingertips.

“He screamed all night,” the child’s mother spoke timidly. “He would not settle, he would not keep down milk, he rejected my touch when he has always been so good. Show him,” she asked her sister.

Gently she pulled back the thin, blue blanket wrapping him.

Like a spider web, a wispy black rash was growing up the infant’s stomach, pustules had formed and his veins grew inky, slowly growing further and further. Like a creature under the skin it moved and pulsated.

“What happened to him?” I asked the Doctor, trying to hide my horror at such grotesque sickness.

“I do not know. I have tried everything. The fever will not rest, the child will not sleep or eat or cry. I cannot draw whatever this strange infection is. He is not the only one.”

“How many?”

“Three last night, another five this morning. Children complaining of agony and exhaustion, pains in their stomachs and chests.”

My eyes downcast. “Pains in their stomachs?”

“Aye, it is the first symptom to show.”

My own chest tightened. My little boy. “Charles. I have to—”

“I am coming with you.”

“No, go see the town. Keep them calm.”

“Yes, Father.”

I quickly excused myself before taking off as fast as my legs could carry me, the sister’s cries echoed behind me. The poor infant’s rippling, blackened skin churned my gut. 

My front door was still ajar. The old hinges cried as I crashed through it, bumping the same hip as earlier.

“Charles? Charlie?” I yelled, slamming the door shut behind me.

“Pa…” his strained little voice whimpered.

“No, God, please,” I muttered to myself as I ran to his bedside.

Small locks of his fiery hair had fallen onto his pillow. A film of ice cold sweat covered his trembling body. His thin arms were wrapped around his stomach and splats of vomit damped the corners of his mouth. His skin was yellowing with small pus-filled boils breaking out across his face. The disgustingly familiar black mass was growing up the back of his neck.

“Papa… it really hurts.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I knelt down to him, stroking my thumb through his hair. “Charlie, you are alright.”

“So sleepy,” he breathed.

“I know, darling, I know. Papa is going to be right back, hold on.”

I sniffled back my tears as I raced to the small water pump outside the house. I filled a basin with clean water and grabbed some clean clothes from our table. I dabbed the wet cloth across his face and down his neck. The corners of his lips pricked up with each soothing swipe.

He eventually soothed into a light slumber. I could not count how many frantic knocks beat my door that day. Thirty? Fourty? More. Every child with the same unknown affliction. Every child in pain. Every parent trying to conceal the same fear that sent my hands shaking. Many clutched their children close to them, begging for me to cleanse them of the thick blackness slowly growing across their pink flesh. Strange it was that none of the children tried to cry or scream. It was as if they were too tired, too drained, too agonised 

By afternoon, I no longer opened the door. What could I do? What could I say? My own child could seldom find the strength to breathe. I sat helplessly with Charles, his small greying hands clinging to me, begging his Papa to save him. He would not take even a sip of water. He moaned of fever whilst his body was ice. He struggled to open his eyes. All I could do was pray. Pray for my son and the children of this poor town. Pray that God in his wisdoms would deliver a cure. 

The good doctor called late in the evening. The skeleton man’s timid knock was one of exhaustion and lament.

“Richard,” his sombre voice tremored, “we must speak.”

“Papa, do not leave me,” Charles whimpered, resting his head on my arm.

“It is the doctor, son, he is going to help us.” I settled his head against his pillow.

I opened the door to his eyes swimming with defeat. Neither of us had to speak. I ushered him inside and brought him to my table.

“How many?” I asked.

“I fear every child in the town. Each the same.”

“What sickness?”

“That is why I come to you, Father. I must ask about the boy witch that was hung three days ago. I did not attend his execution but they say he cursed Springhollow. I must know what happened.”

“Alaric, his name was Alaric. Aye, he cursed the town. He was hung before his grand proclamation was complete. We cannot know what he hoped to say. Though he promised wrath, for his passing and that of his kin,” I paused with a stammer. “He said they pray to a being higher than the lord God.”

“The Devil?”

“Nay. Worse.”

“Father, these children are not likely to survive in their conditions. I deal with illness not divine retribution. What do we do?”

I rubbed my throbbing temples. “There was another boy. Alaric called him Silas, hair like gold. He told him to go home. If we find Silas, he may lead us to their coven.” I was not sure even I believed my own words but what choice did I have?

“But how shall we find him?”

“Alaric had a sole mourner. He slept in the dirt of his burial plot.”

“And this was the boy Silas?”

“I assume but I cannot know for certain. Still I must tend to the land. If it is Alaric who brought this disease upon our young, his remains cannot be left to rest peacefully. From the soil, I shall exhume him and make ash from his bones. I pray the curse burns with him.”

“And if this does not work?”

“I cannot lose him, doctor. Not my boy.” I pursed my lips and pinched my eyes. “We must make it work. I will not find the grave in such darkness. I will leave at sunrise.”

“I will be here. I will watch over Charles.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“All will be well, Richard.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “I will return soon.”

“Papa!” Charles yelped.

“What can I do to ease his pain?”

“Sit by him, speak with him, hold him. No child should know fear.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

I did as he said. The knocks on my door, the screams of parents in grief, I ignored them all, God forgive me. I stayed with Charles. I sat in his bed, holding his weak body against me. With every passing hour he seemed to lose more strength. The small basin that had been filled with water now weighed heavy with upchucked bile and less and less food. Strings of spit and deep crimson hung from his lips. I soaked a cloth to hold against his boils, that burst with vile ooze at the slightest touch. The web of disease covered his entire back, puckering and bulging atop a violent red rash he pleaded for me to scratch.

“Papa?” he asked shyly as I cradled him. “Why does it hurt?”

I pulled him even closer. “Where does it hurt?”

“Inside me. My blood hurts.”

“Papa is going to make you well again, I promise. In the morning I will get you better.”

“Can you tell me a story? The one about Mama?”

He always slept so soundly when I told him that story. He always drifted before I got to the ending. That was for the best, it was not a happy tale. Looking down on him so frail and gaunt I dared not tell him a story of such woe. “Maybe another one tonight, Charles.”

“Please, Papa. I want my Mama.”

“Alright, sweet boy, alright.”

Once upon a time, in a town called Springhollow, the son of a preacher was morose and alone. He had many brothers but they all were now fathers themselves. He had given his life to God, serving him in every honest way. Every day his Father asked him ‘Son, when are you going to find a wife’? and every day the son would say ‘my only love is God’. When he was all grown up, the son took his late father’s role in the church. He was still dedicated to God and he had never given his heart to another. Until one summer’s day, when he met a beautiful young lady. Her mother was a seamstress and together they were stitching new curtains for the church. The preacher’s son and the seamstress’s daughter fell in love. She would bring him flowers and leave them on the church steps. He would write her letters and poems that he would slide under her door. They were married the next summer and soon she was with child. The seamstress’s daughter got very sick and the doctors said she would not get better. She told the preacher’s son that he would have to be both mother and father to their child. He promised to take care of their child, whatever it took, nothing would break his vow to her. They had a son on the eighteenth day of November. They named him Charles after the girl’s father. The seamstress’s daughter lived for seven days before her illness took her. She handed the babe to her husband and said ‘I will watch you from above. I will guide you. You will know the way for I will show you. You will raise our baby boy and I will raise you’. Peacefully and painlessly she fell asleep. A grand angel with wings of white visited her that night. He took her hand and took her home, to God’s side in Heaven above. The preacher’s son now had a son and did not know what to do. He loved the babe as much as the babe could be loved but each night he wept for his wife. On the anniversary of her passing, the preacher’s son was so heartbroken he did not open the doors to his church. He asked God ‘Why her? Why punish a servant as loyal as I? Was my wife not a saint upon Earth’? And as he cried to Heaven, he heard a voice speak. It was the seamstress’s daughter. She said ‘My husband, you must not question why the Lord brought me home when he did. You must not blame his divine plan for robbing you of earthly happiness. Aye, you lost a wife but gained a son as bright as a son can be. Your life is a blessed and lucky one. Let not your grief spoil it. Open the doors and welcome the world in. There are souls to save. You and I will reunite one day but for now, your son will guide you’. The preacher’s son kissed his boy and laid him in his crib. He flung open the doors to the church and bellowed most proud ‘come now, Springhollow, come now to God’.

I have never known a longer night. Trying to find ways to explain to my boy why he could taste blood on his tongue. Why his little legs tingled before falling numb. With each new dry gag of his empty stomach, he would cry. As promised, the doctor arrived with the sun. His night had been just as sleepless as mine from the look of the shadows under his eyes.

“Papa, please.”

“The doctor is going to take care of you, Charles. I will be back before you have a chance to miss me.”

“But what if I need you?”

“I can help you, Charles.” The doctor peeled him from my hold. “Your father will not be away long.”

I stroked his warm hair, thin strands falling with my fingers. 

I dressed myself plainly and hesitantly stepped into the frost-bitten morning. I had never seen the town so silent. No noise but the wind. Nay a mutt nor a crow. As I paced through the misty, damp streets, I searched for any sign of life. Springhollow was dead. Large black crosses had been painted over door frames to expel the evil. Large garlands of herbs that burnt my nostrils had been draped over others. My fingers were numb and my nose blue by the time I reached that cursed land. Not one person had crossed my path. The rickety wooden cart was still sitting by the last dug plot. The grave of Alaric. 

The soil was overturned, dug and clawed. The melting snow turned it to mud. The dirt was like stone from the chill and yet it had been wrenched up. The long decomposed body remained but Alaric’s corpse was gone. All that lay within the dirt was trim purple petals.

“No. How is this possible?” I fell to my knees with a thud. I clawed deeper into the trench, not knowing what I hoped to find until the frost burned my fingers.

The whipping wind carried the petals in spiralling abundance. A long, soft trail of delicate lilac settled into the snow-kissed ground. Small footprints retreated into the treeline. Obscured by the snow but visible. My heart begged for me to return home, to hold Charlie against me knowing I could not save him. I had to find Silas. The Magus. The coven. I followed the petals and snowy footsteps. They took me back towards the town but away from the civilised homes of good people. They led me to the side of Springhollow I seldom visited. The Devil’s own garden.

Limp, drunkards and skin-sick beggars laid in the gutters amongst the droppings of animals I barely recognised. The air carried smoke and vileness I could not name. The grimy houses were slums of pierced roofs, smashed windows and crumbling walls. Every face that glared at me was starved and sickly, watching me as feral predators stalk their prey. At least there was noise. Loud crashing, chattering noise but it was kinder than the silence of death that hung back home. If Springhollow was Hell, this was the deepest pit.

I held my handkerchief over my nose and mouth. The scent of lavender did little to combat the horrid musk. I could feel hands gripping the trail of my robe. I could no longer follow the footsteps. There were too many sets in the all but melted snow. Though every few inches another petal had landed. There was no colour here, no other flowers. It made my path easier to find. The boy Silas, so small and light, could not have carried Alaric’s corpse all this way.

I weaved through the spluttering, cackling, sagged and aged hoards until a young man caught my eye. He was tall but thin as if starved. Hair of brown braided to the bottom of his ankles, kissed by flowers. Our eyes met as if he had been waiting for me. He slimmed his lips and released a high whistle like a bird in flight. I saw more of them, nestled amongst the bustling crowd. All boys, all hollow, all adorned in petals. When one whistled, another responded, their tones and pitches danced as if it were their own language. Slowly they moved towards one another until they formed a straight and single line. Each pair of eyes studied me. I, a man of God, slayer of their kin, had plundered their territory. 

As they turned and slowly walked away, following the same petal trail, I knew somehow they wanted me to pursue them. I hung a few steps behind as they navigated through the winding, soiled backstreets of Springhollow. I wanted to yell, to call upon them for mercy on our children but my mouth would not open as if it had been stitched shut. It was not me making my feet move. I had become a doll in their hands.

Abrupt, they stopped outside a large set of wooden doors. The building was isolated from the slums. If it were not so derelict and run-down I would have thought it a church it was so grand, or perhaps once was. The windows were cracked soon to shatter, and the roof had been torn away leaving the guts of the place exposed. It was overrun with moss and lichen. The doors opened from the inside, inviting me in. The witches closed the door behind me returning to the slums. There was no joy nor life in the building. It was lit dimly only by dripping white candles that sent strange clouds of purpling smoke into the air, choking me. Gooseflesh grew across my skin. There was no warmth. By the end of the aisle stood an altar adorned in stripped bird skulls, laced with flowers of every colour and intricately knitted rows of twine. A corpse lay on top. Silas knelt by the altar, working diligently on the body, singing softly to himself in a language I did not know.

With the slam of the door, the boy turned. When he saw me his eyes widened and brimmed with tears. I approached him slowly, seeing him flinch with every movement. Silas threw himself over the corpse, guarding it with his little body. 

“Have we not suffered enough?!”

I saw it through the gaps in his hold. It was Alaric’s cold corpse upon the altar. His body no longer resembled that which hung from the oak. His wispy black hair had been washed clean of blood, muck and ice. Brushed softly and plaited into a small, thin braid. The flowers of sweet-kissed purple hung loosely in his hair. His skin too was fresh. Mopped tenderly of filth until his young skin seemed to glow. The maggot-torn and raven-pecked holes had been stitched with fine white thread, reconstructing that porcelain doll face. His eye sockets were empty and hollow but clean of gore, allowing the buds to sprout through and bloom. Delicate rouge had been painted onto his gaunt cheeks and blue lips. He looked almost alive. His whole body had been washed and tended to in the same way. His tattered dress had been changed into a soft, pressed white gown that covered him modestly. His soft hands had been placed neatly on his stomach, clutching a bouquet of blooms that seemed to grow in his cold, dead palms.

“Leave this place, foul monster.” Silas yelled.

“That is enough, Silas.” A calm, soothing voice came from the shadows. A tall, slender man with hair of glowing white and a wrinkled face stepped into the half-light. His robe was more elaborate than any others, with sleeves engulfing his hands and a long train behind him. He had strange pink markings painted onto his face. 

“But Magus, he-”

“I know, child. I shall make it right. You must go and ready yourself for the burial.”

Silas’s eyes were still rageful as they glared at me. “Yes, Magus.” Softly, his thin, pink lips kissed Alaric’s unaged forehead. He kissed him with the tenderness of a husband kissing his wife. He rose from the floor, bowed halfway to the man he called Magus and disappeared through a door at the back of the church. 

“Pastor Richard Samuel White. Son of Pastor Richard Samuel White and Esther Martha Darlington. Husband of Hannah Mary Burns. Father to Charles Samuel White.” The Magus spoke approaching me. With each name, I felt iron clamping on my heart. He moved towards me slowly with such grace it appeared as if he were floating. His neck was adorned with amulets of stone and wood carved in eyes and wings. “You may call me Magus Lucien.”

“You sick bastards!” I cried out, finally able to speak once again. 

“I know you are angered, Pastor. But please hold your curses, we are in a holy house.” his voice seemed to effortlessly fill every corner of the hall without raising above a calm whisper. 

“Holy? Holy? You call this place Holy? You unholy creatures are abominations!” I charged towards him before my feet stuck to the floor, sending me tripping onto my knees. “My little boy. You are killing my little boy.” I whimpered.

“I am not killing anyone. Neither did young Alaric.”

“That witch cursed this town. He cursed our children to die in pain and sickness.”

“Nay. You are wrong. There is much to our ways and our peoples that is lost to you and yours. Listen.” Magus Lucien was suddenly and silently before me. He knelt to meet my face. His face was kind but his eyes glistened as if he had witnessed centuries of life and loss. He was haunting. 

“Why did that boy damn us? How could he be so cruel?”

“Alaric was a good boy. The kindest of us all. He came into my care unable to speak, barely able to stand, sixteen winters ago. His father had thrown himself at the steps of your very church, pleading for aid after his wife perished. He could not take care of the child alone, he had been driven to the edge of his wits. He was turned away by your dear father. He brought the child to me for shelter and safety. I took him in, raised him, nurtured him and taught him our ways as my own father once did for me. He was my son in all but blood. My Alaric was loving, full of adventure and above all else, innocent. He was a son to me, a brother to this coven, a husband to Silas — another boy who already thought he had lost everything. And for these crimes it was your judgement that slayed my Alaric and countless others. I know not how you call yourself a man of God with so much blood on your hands.”

His words echoed in my head like a ceaseless bell. I had to steel myself to look him in his discoloured eyes. “You steal children from grief-stricken parents, turn them into vile weapons against Heaven. You force them to bed with other men. You teach them heinous blasphemy. You have no power to judge me, villain.”

“I rescued that boy from a life of neglect at the hands of a bereft man. I taught him to write, to speak, to pray. He and Silas were soul bound from infancy. Inseparable. Their love was destined. Your kind may look down upon it, but not us. We are not monsters, as much as you would believe us so.”

“We could debate until the rapture, and I would if allowed the time, but that is not why I am here.”

“You want a cure.”

“I need one. I cannot lose Charles too.” I bowed my head, my voice softening. 

“To know a cure you must first know the disease. Aye, it is true that your young are cursed. Alaric was a gifted spirit but he would never curse another living being, let alone a whole town. What you call witchcraft, can only be done with directed intent. What he said upon your gallows was a cry of fear. A boy scared to die as any boy would be. He did not intend to hurt anyone.”

“And yet, since his passing our children have suffered. Little children. Babes still unable to lift their own heads.”

“We pray to nature herself. The sweet mother who birthed us all. You have slain and humiliated hundreds of her loyal sons and daughters. One would think this a fair exchange if one had no heart. This sickness that steals your children from you, is not our doing but your own. Talamh Torthach now rebels against your abuses of her children. She demands a sacrifice, retribution. We cannot control her anymore than you can influence your own idol.”

“So my son will die? All of our young will die?”

“Your God and his many rules are cruel, Father, ours is merciful. She will reap only what she needs to feel satisfied and spare the others. I am sorry but there is nothing we can do. Return to your boy and pray he is lucky.” He rose.

I gripped the old Magus’ robe. “No, no, I do not accept that. My boy can be saved, I know it. Can you not pray to her? Is there no ritual? You say she is merciful and fair then surely you can stop this.”

I would look upon this moment with despair, my faith so weak as to plead to a lesser god — a fictitious one. A better man would have renounced this false priest and his heresy. And yet there I knelt, in a blasphemous temple, begging to a being I could not bring myself to believe in to spare my only child.

“Spare you and your people so you can continue to steal my children from me and string them up like criminals? You may think us heretics but do not think us fools. Even if we could, to end this now and save your children, we would simply be damning our own to your vicious wrath. Why are the souls, the lives, of your kin more esteemed and worthy of salvation than mine?”

“If you save the children of Springhollow, I swear it, we will never execute another witch.”

“You cannot make such promises, Father.”

“I can and I will. As God as my witness, save my little boy and we shall spare all other witches. No more hangings, burnings, beheadings, guttings, no more trials. All those we hold will go free. Please spare them,” the words caught in my throat and yet I forced them out.

The Magus was silent for a moment. Contemplative. His hand, firm yet soft, rested atop my head. “I shall speak to her. I will plead reason. Though I must ask for more in return.”

“State your demands, Magus.”

“That hideous display you call a resting place. Alaric will not go there. He will be buried as we bury all of our children. We will take him to the shore and burn his body taking his ashes to the very river you tried him in. We want this for all of our dead, not just Alaric. Should you interfere with our burial rites then consider this curse a pittance to what powers we may bring to bear.”

“Yes, whatever you want, just help them please.”

“I will do what I can. But if you should ever betray our deal, I cannot promise the same mercy.”

“Please, Magus Lucien.” I tried not to sound like I was begging. I know God looked upon me as he must have done those fallen sinners as he cast them down to Hell. My own damnation would have meaning, knowing my sacrifice meant Charles could live. That they all could live.

From one of the strings around his neck he pulled a small wooden whistle and placed it to his lips. Two low pitched notes hummed in the air. “Go, return to your son, Father White. We cannot save those who are already dead. Pray he does not join them.”

The doors flung open once again. I wasted no time scrambling to stand. I flew out the temple, shoving my way through the writhing mob of the slums and did not slow my pace. All I hoped was that Charles lived. That when I stepped through my door he would run into my arms. My boy. My sweet boy. 

As I came upon our improvised graveyard I saw all the holes exhumed. Each as Alaric’s had been. Every inch of clawed soil was dusted in fallen petals of purple, pink, blue, white, yellow, red, orange, and black.

My body tired, my legs burned, I no longer felt the chill against me. The falling snow had sodden my clothes and yet I did not slow my pace. 

I heard home before I saw it. A scream so curdling and blunt it cut through the wind. A woman in a blood spluttered nightgown knelt on the road outside her home. To her chest she clutched a still, silent, limp child. From the babe’s open mouth grew a single yellow flower. Another cry rippled from her. I stopped, unable to catch my breath, knees trembling. Her eyes met mine with accusation. 

“Where were you, Father White?” Her voice was that of the living dead. No rise in pitch, no inflection of words. “The children…”

I could not find the words to comfort her. I looked only at the corpse she cradled. The poor, sweet, baby. I stumbled forward, vomit rising into my chest. The town was alive again yet told two stories. Through fogged windows I saw children standing from their beds, warm, safe and well in their parent’s arms. Their skin healed of sickness. In others all that travelled was the Godless wails of parents realising their children would never wake.

On the doorstep of my home, sat the doctor. He held his head in his hands, fighting back tears. I knew it then. I do not know how I knew but I knew. My heart stopped beating and it would never start again. He rose and placed his hand against my chest, blocking me from the door.

“Richard…”

“Let me see my son.”

“Richard, I did everything I could. And now I beg you, do not go in there.”

When I lost Hannah, when she went cold and limp and quiet in my hold as Charles screamed starving in his crib, I thought I understood how hopelessness felt. I thought there could be no greater grief in this life or any other. I thought that was God’s ultimate test of faith. Now, even as the doctor spoke, I did not hear his words. I made to move past him to the door like a man asleep to the world. His hand rested still on my chest.

“Thrice as many have recovered than perished, Richard, I know not what you did but you saved them. A miracle of God when we needed one. Let me handle the rest as you take to the church. The people need you, Father.”

“My boy needs me.” I dragged his hand away from me, barging past him and into the house. The old hinges, once a reminder of home, now scratched my bones.

I could smell it as soon as I stepped inside. My eyes watered, my nose irritated, the scent of a meadow assaulting me as if it permeated every plank of wood in our home. I shook as I stood in the doorway to his room, as if I didn't open it and he would be alive and well. I could fool the Devil but not myself. I forced myself to open the door. I took one look and flinched my body as if I had been struck. I expelled my guts onto the floor before I even got close to him. 

The doctor had called it ‘a miracle of God’. What God? My life had been one of obedience, faith unwavering. Not one missed prayer, not one sin unrepented. Yet still I was punished. A blasphemous and false deity had outwitted and outsmarted the almighty maker. How could someone all-powerful, blessed with all-knowledge be beaten? Charles was punished. I wanted so desperately to believe God had taken him peacefully, brought him home to his side. He was just a boy. My boy. My boy with a life he loved so dearly. A life he craved to live.

He was so tiny. His pillow was still rancid with sweat, vomit, his shedded hair. His eyes had rolled into the back of his head leaving nothing but blood-shot whiteness staring at the ceiling. His whole body was tainted by the fraying threads of blackness under his skin. His skin grey and cold already weeping bloodied sores. He was curled tightly, still holding himself. From his mouth, out of his throat, planted and seeded deep within his empty gut grew large white flowers with petals like stars. My legs fell weak underneath me, collapsing me to the ground. I crawled wordlessly, breathlessly, to his bedside. I took his small hand, still almost as small as the day he was born and it could wrap around my little finger. I brought it to my lips. He was long gone cold. I do not know why I did not scream, why I did not cry. I sat there until dark, unmoving, not uttering a word. Even when the doctor placed his hands upon my shoulders, assuring me that he was there when Charles passed, promising that my child did not die alone, I did not speak. I could not bring myself to lower his eyelids, the doctor did it for me. It did not look like sleep. It looked like sickness. The doctor asked me if I had prayed for Charles, and blessed his body. I had not and I would not.

I am sorry, Hannah, I failed him. I failed him.