The Wicca Woman

by David Pinner

  ‘This is going to be fun,’ Mary shrieked, lashing the writer again with her whip. ‘Mind, this is what most men deserve.’

  The other women cheered when they saw the blood seeping through Paul’s shirt, and dripping down his spine.

  ‘Bloody right. We should flog all the guys ‘till they’re awash with their own fucking blood,’ shouted Rachel as she whipped Paul’s shoulder blades with several feet of her coiled rope.

  Then Sue lunged forward, and she ripped the blood-stained shirt off Paul’s shoulders, tossing his shirt down onto the basement steps.

  ‘Right, so move, you bastard, and get that cross up them steps,’ chorused the other women.

  ‘Well, it’s only right, Hopkins, because you’ve always seen yourself as the Messiah,’ Lulu murmured, switching the petrol-can to her left hand. ‘So now we’re going to make your messianic nightmare come true.’

  After a laborous effort, the stricken figure of Paul succeeded in dragging his juddering cross to the top of the basement steps. Again Mary’s whip and Rachel’s flailing rope scourged the writer’s blood-flecked shoulders, while Lulu’s power over him, prevented him from giving voice to his pain. And as Paul knew that this was only the beginning of his suffering, he was consumed by despair.

  27

  Under the icy moon, in a frenzied dancing-rhythm, the children’s feet pounded down the cliff path towards the beach. Scarlet wore her plastic horse’s head. Bella was a baby crocodile. Alfie Biggs bulged as a tubby Panda bear, and Tom White sported a lizard’s head. The other village children were snakes, wolves, beavers, leopards and giraffes. They were all carrying dead branches, and they were waving them in their jubilant procession. When they reached the beach, the children throbbed over the sand like human drums while their mouths made bestial sounds.

  With their black hoods tinged with moon-silver, the villagers, who were armed with lighted torches and even larger dead branches, followed their dancing children across the beach towards the ocean. Leading the villagers was Alfie’s father, the overweight Dave Biggs, who was mounted on his silver-white horse. As he took another slug from his half-empty whisky bottle, he was panting hectically, and sweating under his hood. Riding beside him was Tom’s father, Bob White, who was stroking his moustache. Bob encouraged his piebald mare to gallop over the undulating sand, while he continued to laugh at Dave’s puce expression. Behind the two horsemen, there was the six-foot-five figure of Don Winterton, the tallest man in the village, and he was riding his black stallion. The rest of the hooded villagers followed on foot, brandishing their torches and swishing their dead branches. They surged along the tide-line like rolling, black waves, tinctured with pinpricks of fire.

  The sea pulled them towards the fast-approaching Millennium ceremony. As all the men in the village had suffered from the dire consequences of having four consecutive, bad harvests, they realised that they had to go through with the forthcoming sacrifice. Now the time was fast approaching when they would participate in the immemorial ritual of blood. It was an integral part of their breathing. Even if they wanted to escape the primordial compulsion that possessed them, it would be impossible to do so. They owed their allegiance to earth, water, air, and, above all, to fire, without which they could not exist. The four elements controlled their lives, so on this night of nights, the villagers would dispense with the vagaries of worshipping a crucified Christ. Not that they had anything against Christ per se, but with midnight and the Millenium close upon them, they regarded Christ as a mythic miracle-maker of the past. And as He couldn’t guarantee them the harvests, which they ardently yearned for, there was no point in kow-towing to His bitter passion.

  Then more rockets exploded to the left of the moon, followed by dozens of cracking bangs and searing flashes that reignited the night-sky. But the animalistic-and-reptilian children, and their hooded-and-torch-bearing fathers, were all so obsessed with dancing and brandishing their dead branches, they were oblivious that there was a continuous fireworks-war in the heavens. The only thing they heard was a solitary mouse’s dying whimper as an owl’s beak razored its neck.

  In turn, the rest of the hunting owls, which were hovering in the nearby woods, were equally content to wait for the humans to make their first, sacrificial kill on the stroke of midnight…when all the death-bells would ring out across the sea.

  *

  Ten minutes later, the women, in their animal heads, moved forward along the clifftop, overlooking the beach.

  They were jeering at Paul as he dragged the cross onwards along the rock-strewn path. Although Mary and Rachel had long since stopped whipping the writer, the immense weight of the cross on his severely-bruised, left shoulder proved too much for him. With a pitiful groan, the writer slumped to his knees, discarding the cross, which teetered precariously on the edge of the cliff.

  Instantly Sue and Tina ran forward. After a combined effort, the two women were able to prevent the cross from tumbling over the cliff. Together they lugged the cross back from the edge, while Lulu applauded their swift reactions by drumming her hand on the side of the petrol canister.

  As more fireworks flared up in the night sky like hundreds of exploding roses, everyone but the exhausted and pain-wracked writer looked Heavenwards.

  Gwynne glanced down at her watch.

  ‘I know, Gwynne,’ Lulu agreed. ‘In thirty-five minutes time, it will be the Millennium.’

  Still nodding, Lulu moved forward to peer over the cliff at the hooded men and the masked children, who were piling up their dead branches on the beach by the basalt caves. She realised that the branches were going to be the fuel in the villagers’ forthcoming bonfire. In response, she tightened her grip on the petrol canister. Peering down to her left, she noted the flaming torches that the men had thrust into nearby clefts in the rocks to illuminate the proceedings. The men’s bustling efforts were also being observed by the three frightened horses, which were tethered close to the caves.

  ‘So, Lulu, as the Millennium Ritual is almost upon us,’ Gwynne said, nudging Lulu, who was still focussing on the fervent activity on the beach below. ‘You must tell us – as you promised – why you are certain that Hopkins will always be inordinately-dangerous to women. We all know, of course, that he applauded the fire in my cottage, and also that he tried to strangle and burn you to death tonight. So we already have more than enough reasons for making this bastard pay the ultimate price at Golgotha.’

  At that moment, the moon regained her ascendancy over the cobalt sky while the fireworks dwindled into mere flickers of light. This prompted Lulu to glance up at the lunar iridescence above her. She sensed that the moon’s serenity was a direct criticism of her own vengeful fury, but she shook her head defiantly in the moonlight. Then she had placed the petrol canister on the cliff top, and she knelt down beside the writer, imperiously clicking her fingers in front of his wavering vision.

  ‘You are still engulfed by the raging inferno inside your skull, aren’t you, Hopkins?’ she whispered.

  Paul nodded numbly.

  ‘But now I insist that you speak out, Matthew Hopkins,’

  ‘My name is not…Matthew Hopkins; it’s Paul Hopkins!’ he asserted painfully.

  ‘On the contrary, the reason that you are habitually - and justly - tormented by the eternal bonfires in your forever-aching head, is because – for several years now – you have believed that you are the reincarnation of Matthew Hopkins,’ Lulu insisted.

  ‘I don’t believe in reincarnation, either. Well, how can I? I’m a Christian, for Christ’s sake!’ he rasped.

  ‘You’re no more a Christian than I am. And, furthermore, you not only believe that you are Matthew Hopkins reincarnated, but also youfully aware that Matthew Hopkins was your 17th Century ancestor. It’s why you continually dream of women being hanged, Matthew, and of their bodies being burnt.’

  ‘Look, my name is not Matthew, Lulu! It’s never been Matthew. It’s always been Paul.’

  ‘Yes, he’s right, Lulu,’
chorused the other women. ‘His name is Paul.’

  ‘Ladies, you say you want to know the truth about him,’ Lulu shouted at the semi-circle of women around her. ‘Then listen, and learn!’

  Gwynne and the other women acquiesced, and they nodded silently.

  Lulu refocused on Paul, who painfully inclined his head away from her.

  ‘No, don’t turn away from me, Matthew,’ Lulu admonished, thrusting her face closer to the writer’s contorted features. ‘You must keep looking into my eyes.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? My name…is not…Matthew,’ he gasped, now transfixed by her unblinking gaze.

  ‘In your benighted soul; your name is Matthew,’ she insisted. ‘So what do you see in the depths of my eyes, Matthew?’

  ‘Nothing but…blue spirals of…nothing,’ he whispered in awe. ‘Looking into your eyes, Lulu, is like…peering into a double…abyss.’

  As Gwynne and the other women moved even closer to the supine writer and his kneeling interrogator, Paul continued murmuring in his hypnotically-induced trance; ‘And now, Lulu, your sea-blue irises have turned into…wraith-like flames. And those flames are luring me…deeper…and deeper…down into…the purgatorial fires of…the dead. Yes…and in the heart of the inferno, now I can see and hear dozens of…women being hanged to death, and they are all screaming in agony. And, God help me, because I am deliriously elated as I watch all these women suffering such excruciating pain. And now…now I am applauding ecstatically at the spectacle of them being hanged, and I am cheering at their dangling corpses.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Lulu said in the writer’s ear. ‘And, what’s more, Matthew Hopkins, ever since Midsummer, with every passing day, you have lusted to transform all those sadistic reincarnation-dreams of yours into a terrifying reality – with your female neighbours as your screaming victims.’

  ‘No, no, no, that’s not true,’ Paul rasped through his foam-flecked lips.

  ‘It most certainly is true. And here is the proof.’

  As she continued to gaze into Paul’s gaping eyes, Lulu gestured at Sue, who was holding Paul’s toolkit.

  ‘Open the kit, and bring it to me,’ Lulu ordered.

  Perplexed Sue obeyed. Then Lulu slipped her hand into the tool-kit, and she pulled out the book, with the scarlet cover, which earlier she had thrust into the bag before they left the basement.

  ‘And, what is more, you read this scarlet book of yours far more often than you read your Bible, don’t you, Matthew?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Stop lying to yourself,’ Lulu commanded, pulling the bookmark out of the volume. ‘And this is the chapter that you can never get enough of – because this chapter is devoted to your evil idee-fixe; Matthew Hopkins. Yes, and as you know only too well; Matthew Hopkins was a lawyer during the English Civil War, and he was personally responsible for condemning more women to be hanged for witchcraft than any other man in English history. But, worst of all, Hopkins committed these execrable crimes in the name of your Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew. And for his satanic deeds, your “hero” was rewarded and praised by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans.’

  ‘I’ve never read that book, I’ve never fucking read it!’

  ‘On the contrary, you read this chapter barely half-an-hour-ago in your basement. Furthermore, it was this chapter that incited you to fetch your petrol can from your garage. What’s more, it fully explains your sick view of women because…’ Lulu said, now reading from the chapter. ‘“In the two years between 1642 and 1644, Matthew Hopkins not only tortured 300 so-called witches in the Counties of Middlesex, Essex and East Anglia, but then he put the poor, innocent and broken women on trial. And after he had erroneously found them guilty of practising witchcraft, Hopkins fervently applauded while they were being hanged on the gallows”,’ she said, looking up from the book, and peering into Paul’s feverish eyes. ‘Yes, and he applauded them in much the same way as you applauded the fire in Gwynne’s parlour, when you wanted her burnt to death,’ she said forcefully. ‘So no wonder Matthew Hopkins is your demonic role-model – because amongst all his countless, female victims, there was not one single man, whom Hopkins ever condemned as a witch.’

  ‘Why can’t I move my arms or my…legs?’ the writer jibbered almost incoherently. ‘Oh God, now the only things I can move are my…lips. But why is that?’

  In the moonlight, the surrounding women stared balefully at the corpse-like figure at their feet, while Lulu went on with her damning indictment.

  ‘The reason you can’t move anything but your lips, Matthew Hopkins, is because the iron manacles that you would like to cruelly bind around your female victims’ bodies; now those shackles bind your limbs. And I’m right, aren’t I? You would love to torture us all, wouldn’t you? Yes, and like Matthew Hopkins, you would adore to put 68 women to death in one day as he did in Bury St. Edmunds,’ she said, returning to the book, and reading from it. ‘“Then in Chelmsford, Hopkins hanged 19 women in a single day, and he was well-paid for ridding the towns of totally-innocent women. And to add to his rapacious tyranny,” – like you – “Matthew Hopkins lusted after all the beautiful, young women. And when they refused his lecherous advances, he called them Satan’s succubi, and he herded them off to the gallows”. And that, of course, is why the Puritans called him; “The Witchfinder General”.’

  ‘I’m not like Matthew Hopkins at all. Not…at all,’ he lisped painfully.

  ‘No, in some ways, you are worse because you don’t just want to see your female victims hanging from a noose. No, you would infinitely prefer…’ Lulu said, pausing to look up at Gwynne and the other women. ‘…To see each one of us, being burnt at the stake, so that our deaths will prove to be even more prolonged and terrifying.’

  Then derisively Lulu tossed the book, with the scarlet cover, back into the toolkit, and she turned away from the gaping writer. With a judicious nod, she acknowledged the fury in the eyes of the surrounding women.

  ‘Mercy,’ Paul begged, with saliva running down the sides of his mouth into his beard. ‘Please, Lulu, I beg you…show me some mercy.’

  ‘I will show you as much mercy as you would have shown to us, Witchfinder General, if we were at your mercy,’ Lulu responded, her judgmental voice ringing out into the night.

  ‘Lulu’s right, Hopkins. ‘Cause you certainly wanted to burn me - and Lulu - to death, didn’t you?’ Gwynne said, nodding vehemently. ‘And, what’s more – as you made it only too clear in your basement – you also lust to burn every woman here to death as well. So death, by fire, is the only just punishment for you.’

  With the whip in her right hand, Gwynne moved away from the hunched and pleading writer. After she had pulled her black hood back over her head, she swished her cloak. Then the witch pointed at the hooded men and the scurrying children in their animal masks, who were completing the building of their bonfire on the beach below.

  ‘And that’s why we’re taking you, Hopkins, to the bonfire that they’ve built for you on the beach,’ the witch shouted, cracking the whip close to his beard. ‘And once we get you down there, then you will pay in full for all the horrors that you want to inflict on us, and on the rest of womankind.’

  ‘So get to your feet, Matthew,’ Lulu said, imperiously gazing into his wavering eyes.

  ‘I can’t move,’ he breathed huskily.

  ‘You can. Now arise, Witchfinder General, and go down and face your fiery destiny, with your cruciform burden,’ she commanded, picking up the petrol canister, and jabbing him in the ribs with it.

  Wincing, the writer forced himself onto his knees. After several unsuccessful attempts, finally he got to his feet, while Sue and Tina lifted up the cross from the rock at the cliff’s edge where they had propped it. Together the two women hooked the left crosspiece over Paul’s bruised shoulder. Again Gwynne cracked the whip to urge him to move.

  ‘So now it’s onwards and downwards, Hopkins,’ Gwynne said.

  Paul’s stumbling figure lurched for
ward, dragging the cross along the jagged clifftop.

  ‘And very soon we will lift you up on high, Witchfinder General, so you can emulate the fate of your Messiah. Then, like Him, you can do permanent penance on the cross that you have made,’ Lulu proclaimed, waving the petrol-can to incite the other animal-headed women, who responded by cheering their approval.

  Tina Biggs rattled Paul’s toolkit in the writer’s face as she jeered; ‘Yes, Matthew Hopkins, and I’m sure you can’t wait for us to hammer your six-inch-nails into your shitty hands, and into your shitty feet.’

  Then for the first time since they were in the basement, Rachel lashed her coiled rope against Paul’s muscular arm as she forced him to begin his descent along the cliff-path towards the beach. Every time the heavy cross bumped over the rocks, he groaned, while directly above him, the Woman-in-the-Moon seemed to be serenely smiling down on his purgatorial misery.

  28

  Five minutes later, goaded on by Lulu and the masked women, the labouring and broken writer dragged the cross down onto the beach. As they were moving across the sand, Gwynne registered that the children were no longer collecting fuel for the bonfire. The kids were down by the moonlit ocean where they were playing ducks-and-drakes, and skimming their stones across the creaming waves.

  Once Gwynne was certain that the children were out of earshot, she decided that it was the perfect moment for her to reveal to the men what she and her friends were planning to do to Paul.

  Urgently waving at the villagers, the witch hobbled along the beach towards Dave Biggs and the others, who were standing by the unlit bonfire. It wasn’t until Gwynne was only a few feet away from them that Dave and his neighbours registered her gesticulating arms. Then behind her, they focused on the hunched and stumbling figure of Paul, who was dragging the cross over the sand.

  With perplexed looks on their hooded faces, Dave and his friends were about to move towards the cross-bearing writer, when Gwynne stepped in front of them. As Paul stumbled to a halt on the beach with his burden, again Rachel whipped him with her chiding rope, impelling the writer to lumber on.