by Z. M. Wilmot
Sally
Sally Whitehouse was not a witch. She may have looked like one, dressed like one, and acted like one, but she was most certainly not one. It had wounded her deeply when the accusations had first been thrown about the town, and she had vehemently denied the validity of the rumours whenever they were put in front of her. Her subsequent haughty dismissal of both rumours and rumourmongers did nothing but fan the flames of the libel making its way around the small town.
In her last days on this earth, Sally became more and more isolated from those around her, spending all the day in her run-down house at the corner of Beck Street and Rhodes Way. She scarcely ever emerged, and those few who dared pass by her abode swore that they heard her wailing and chanting foul words, whilst an evil presence encircled the house.
On the fourth of May, the people of the town decided that they had tolerated her presence for long enough. Five children had vanished in the three months prior, and all fingers pointed to Sally. She was prone to night-time walks, dressed all in black, and was frequently spotted bringing magical herbs into her home. Most incriminating of all was the wart upon the left side of her slightly hooked nose; none but a witch was marked by the Lord in such a way.
What was more, her husband had vanished under mysterious circumstances five years past, on Midsummer’s Eve. On that dark night, terrible screams had been heard coming from the Whitehouse dwelling, and an evil cackling had filled the entire town. Edgar Whitehouse had not been seen since. When the official inquiry into the incident was made, the newly-made widow claimed that the screams had come from her, as her husband had hit her badly. Indeed, for months afterward, her face was badly swollen and bruised. With regards to the cackling, she pleaded ignorance.
Where then had her husband gone? Sally said that he had stormed out of the house and had not returned. He had quickly been declared missing, and searches for him or his body in the surrounding woods continued for three weeks before he was finally declared dead. Whatever reasons he had possessed to quarrel with Sally remained a secret, for she never spoke of the incident again.
It was these events, as well as the strange, indescribable sounds emanating from her house that caused the townsfolk to be inspired and swayed to action. On that fateful day, the entire population turned out in large numbers, spurred forward by the fiery rhetoric of Daniel Thayer, the village cobbler. He went from door to door, skipping the Whitehouse home with its boarded windows and overgrown garden, and gathered the townspeople in the Old North Church. His impassioned speech aroused great cheers from the populace, and everyone gathered what weapons they could find, lighting branches and makeshift torches as they strode purposefully towards the Whitehouse dwelling. The rag-tag mob, armed with spades, shovels, pitchforks, and the occasional musket, quickly approached their destination, arriving almost at the crack of noon, when the witch’s power would be at its weakest.
Daniel Thayer walked at the head of the militia. He strode boldly through the property’s iron gates, up the house’s sagging steps, and onto the porch. As much of the crowd as could fit into the tiny yard followed him, cheering him on and disparaging the witch they assumed to be inside. Thayer used the butt of his pitchfork to knock in the door, slamming his weapon into it several times.
As the door splintered and fell to the ground, Daniel and four others – farmer Jeremiah Nuben, brewer Andrew Calliston, carpenter Patrick O’Flanagan, and judge John Thornley – went through the open door and into the house itself. The rest of the populace remained outside, their shouts quieted by the somber air that now permeated the atmosphere.
The room that the five entered was nothing one would not expect to find in a home such as the Whitehouse’s. There was a small coatroom to the left of the door that opened up into a relatively spacious living room. It would have been graced with large windows had not boards been nailed over them. A dusty oriental rug was laid out in the center of the room, and several stuffed armchairs, as well as a large sofa, were placed on the perimeter. The focus of the room was a low coffee table made of a shining mahogany; surprisingly expensive for one of Edgar’s income.
The room itself was empty. Only Sally lived in the house now; she had borne no children, as she was supposedly infertile. The five men advanced through the living room into another area that one reached via a doorway to the right. They found themselves in a small dining room containing no more than a round oaken table with a chair on either side of it. A kitchen could be entered through another doorway on the right. Thayer stepped carefully into the smaller room and looked around, noting the layers of dust covering everything. Slightly unnerved, he turned back and walked out of the dining room, motioning for the others to follow.
At the far end of the living room was a staircase, next to the back door. He began to carefully ascend it, then motioned for the others to remain where they stood. He continued to the bedrooms upstairs by himself. He vanished from sight, and the four men below waited with bated breath for his return.
Two or three minutes later, a loud thud shook the entire house, sending dust raining down from the ceiling. The four exchanged a momentary glance, and they all set up the stairs at the same time, brandishing shovels and pitchforks. The stairs took a turn halfway up, and in a matter of seconds the group was on the upper floor. The dust was thick, save for where Daniel had stepped, and they hurried to the room at the end of the corridor, into which the footprints led. Judge Thornley was the first to round the corner of the door, and he immediately clutched his chest with fright and fainted backwards.
Startled, the other men stepped backwards, and then stepped over his fallen body, all leaping into the room.
Sally Whitehouse, clad in a thin white shift, sat in front of a grand piano, her delicate fingers playing a silent melody. Behind her was a bed whose sheets were once probably white, but were now almost completely stained brown with dried blood. Upon the bed was the naked body of Edgar Whitehouse, arms and legs spread wide. His erect member throbbed and pulsed with an inner force while the rest of him remained completely still.
Yet more horrifying was the corpse lying on the floor between Sally and her dead husband. Daniel Thayer, stripped naked, was splayed out in much the same manner, his extremely erect phallus spewing forth a fountain of blood. His face was frozen in a mask of utter terror, and his entire body rippled as if something was moving under his flesh.
The three men stood motionless, and Sally stopped playing and smiled at them. “Welcome, gentlemen,” she whispered seductively. Despite her large wart and slightly crooked nose, Sally had always been an attractive woman, well-endowed in those areas most associated with the feminine. The three living men in the room with her all felt a stirring in their groins, and to their horror found themselves wanting to do the unspeakable to the graceful figure before them.
As one, the three rushed forward at Sally, but tripped over one another, and ended up sprawled on the floor, beside and on top of their friend Thayer. A force seized them all, and they were lifted into the air and moved to separate corners of the room. Their arms and legs were spread out, and their members all became painfully erect. They gasped for want of sex, and Sally smiled at them as she stood up and stepped away from her piano bench. Her shift fell away from her body, and she stood over the prone form of Andrew Calliston. His clothes melted away to nothingness under him, and he lay naked upon the floor. She lowered herself down slowly, her soft hands moving his member until he was inside her. He closed his eyes in ecstasy, and then suddenly began to writhe in pain. Sally smiled at him and stood as his phallus began to shoot out gouts of blood. She repeated the procedure on the other two men, then walked outside of the room and did the same to the unconscious judge.
Content with her work, Sally Whitehouse donned again her white shift and sat back down at the piano. She continued playing her silent melody as naked male bodies writhed on the floor around her, spewing forth blood.
“Come to me, my children,” she whispered as she played, and her husband’
s corpse began to twitch violently. She turned to look behind her, and saw the corpses of the four men begin to still as her eggs took hold of their flesh, wriggling beneath the surface of their skin. Edgar Whitehouse’s corpse began to turn to purple, and then to red. The silent melody of Sally Whitehouse grew stronger and more powerful, and at the climax, her husband’s corpse exploded in a blast of rotting flesh and drying blood. Where his body had been now were thirteen things, with snapping maws and writhing tentacles. They slithered forward and off of the bed as they scuttled towards their mother, who halted her playing and knelt down upon the floor, beckoning them to her.
Sally Whitehouse smiled and gathered her offspring in her arms. She opened her mouth wide, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp fangs, and four writhing tongues deep within her throat. Her skin split open as tentacles replaced her arms and sprouted out of her back. More maws emerged along the length of her once beautiful body, and her soothing voice changed to a low growl.
The thing that had been Sally Whitehouse deposited her young in a pouch below her largest mouth, and then gathered up the corpses of the four men she had impregnated in her many tentacles. With a maniacal tittering, the thing began to glow with a sickly green light. The light grew brighter and brighter as the tittering grew louder and louder. The townspeople outside clutched their weapons in fright, and then dropped them in surprise as a loud crack, like that which thunder makes, filled the air around them.
The people were then unable to wait any longer, and they stormed the Whitehouse home, tearing it asunder in search for their missing companions and what they thought was a witch. All that they found was a bloodstained bed and bloody floor in the room at the end of the upstairs corridor.
The mayor declared that Sally Whitehouse had in fact been a witch, and had fled using her magic after slaying the five men who had so bravely gone in to face her. But he was wrong.
Sally Whitehouse was not a witch.