Hallowed Horror

by Mark Tufo

  “Move aside, Galen!” shouted Elliot, removing the sharpened two-foot branch of hemlock from beneath his cape and holding it high over his head, his arms shaking with fury and fear.

  Galen pulled his arm backward and slammed a huge fist into Vickar’s cheekbone, shattering it with one blow. He rolled from atop him and shouted, “I’m clear. Now, Elliot!”

  Tears fell from Galen’s eyes as he watched Margaret remove the poker from Katherine’s chest. She tossed it aside. His gaze returned to Elliot, who appeared to be frozen in place.

  “Elliot! You must delay no more!” Galen could not wait any longer. He dropped down beside Margaret and took her hand in his, while each of their other hands covered the entry and exit wounds of the poker. Lowering their heads, they began a low chant, a healing spell they had both utilized in the past. The task of healing Katherine would require all of their strength now, even Elliot’s.

  Galen whispered, “He will see all of us dead, Elliot. It is in your power now.”

  With a scream that filled the cavernous room, Elliot brought the shaft down with all his might. Vickar, as though his senses willed it, rolled to his left at the last instant, the lance plunging through his right eye socket, breaking through the side of his neck with a sickly tearing sound, then a hollow tap as the blood wet stick hit the stone floor.

  He lay still. Elliot twisted the spear, jerked it from side to side, the sorcerer’s head moving grotesquely with each motion.

  “We need you, Elliot. Hurry.” Galen and Margaret continued the low chant.

  Joining them, Elliot lay his hands atop each of theirs and joined the incantation.

  Katherine’s chest heaved upward, her back arched. With a high-pitched gasp, she drew in an enormous, sharp breath. The others lifted their hands from her body and held them over her, joined together in a circle.

  The hole in her chest was gone. Galen was the first to release the others.

  “Katherine, my love.”

  Her eyes flittered open, focused for a brief moment, then gently closed once more. When they opened again, she looked at Galen and smiled. “Did you . . . is he dead?”

  Galen looked behind him at the twitching body of Vickar. His chest moved ever so slightly, but he could not survive long. “As good as, Katherine. As good as.”

  Voices. Outside the huge, wooden door. The sound of many torches burning together, clanging metal. Galen knew immediately who it must be.

  Hornsby. The witchfinder.

  “Leave him!” he said, indicating Vickar’s body. “Hurry!”

  While Elliot and Margaret pulled Katherine to her feet, he snatched the torch with which Vickar had lit the fire. “Follow me now!” He ran parallel to the door and down a corridor. Small torches, spaced every ten feet or so dimly lit the hall, and now and then a door presented itself. Inside each one was more pitch-blackness, a trap to stumble into with no way out.

  “Elliot, when you inspected the house, wasn’t there a door on the side somewhere?”

  “Yes, it should be up on the right . . . any one of these rooms may lead to it!”

  Behind them, the sound of wood splintering and boots upon stone.

  Galen’s body glistened with sweat as he pushed open the next door. He stared at Katherine, Margaret, and Elliot. “We must choose wisely or all we’ve done is for nothing. Pray for us, all of you.” He waved them inside and closed the door behind them.

  The sounds of the witchfinder and his agents grew closer. Galen and the others huddled in the darkness, waiting to be found and dreading what would follow.

  * * * * *

  The trial was held the day after their capture. It was clear to Galen and the others that Hornsby was particularly glad that Vickar was not dead. That was to be his pleasure, as Katherine had warned.

  The trial was all very perfunctory, as Galen knew it would be. Vickar, unable to speak or otherwise communicate, could not verbally give Hornsby details as to any of their activities, but that wasn’t necessary. Hornsby had gathered his own information. In his perverted pursuits, he had examined Katherine. It attacked Galen’s sense of control, knowing the bastard had touched her. Hornsby had discovered the tender, red skin on Katherine’s stomach and back, and when his agents recovered the bloody fire poker from Vickar’s home, he had correctly concluded that she had been impaled and had survived it – confirming unnecessarily that she was indeed, a witch.

  Galen did not want to live without her anyway, but a terrible sense of guilt consumed him. Katherine would suffer far more than if she had simply died there on the floor. Her vision had been nearly correct, though. She would see Vickar burn, but not from the crowd; she would be one of the attractions, and may or may not watch from her own pile of kindling.

  If she could watch Vickar burn, Galen knew, she would.

  He stood in the tiny cell, his head brushing the ceiling, his legs barely able to stretch out. It was bitter cold, and he felt for the others, wherever they were. His only hope was that it would end quickly, that each of them may be able to use their powers of detachment to separate themselves from the bodies that would suffer such agony at the licking flames.

  He knelt on his swollen knees and prayed, though to what god, he did not know.

  * * * * *

  The crowd was thin but growing in number, the morning bitingly cold and baleful. As Galen was led out to the platform, his arms and legs in chains, he looked away from the crowd toward the gray sky, but still he heard murmurs, some laughter, even someone clapping their hands together, screaming ‘Burn witch, burn!’. When he opened his eyes again, a piece of fruit so rotted it was unidentifiable spattered against his cheek, but all that warranted his attention lay directly in front of him. Five enormous pyres had been arranged on the platform, the sticks pointing toward the heavens, straw tucked between each one.

  They were to be burned at the stake. It was unheard of in New England. Galen had heard the Scots and Germans had burned their accused for centuries, but hangings were more common here. Poor Margaret and Katherine. They would be even more petrified by this final torture.

  Galen was led out first, for though Vickar was deemed the leader by Hornsby, he was nearly a corpse, mute and clinging to life. Galen’s shackles had already turned his ankles raw, the wide, steel rings sharpened for just that reason.

  Despite the tortures, he refused to give them the names of any of his loved ones. To block out the pain, Galen simply detached from his body and hovered overhead, watching the frustrated witchfinder and his henchmen batter, burn, and puncture holes in his body. They finally grew so frightened at his failure to react that they fled the freezing cell, amusing even Galen, though he realized when he once again joined his human form, the pain would be immense.

  That was of no matter. Hornsby wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing him suffer. Galen knew his death would come soon, and to see Katherine again was his only desire. She was aware of his love for her, but he felt a desperate need to tell her again before they parted forever.

  As he stumbled out, his body badly ravaged from the interrogations, he turned to watch Katherine. The fear was so evident in her eyes that it tore at his heart, but he held his tears and forced a slight smile. However unconvincing it was, she smiled back, her bruised face and neck clearly visible, even from a distance.

  Galen stepped up onto the platform, walked to the far end and was tied to the first fagot, the largest of them all, to accommodate his size, no doubt. As two agents tied Galen to the kindling, Katherine was led to the stack beside him.

  Be strong, my love. Galen projected the thought, and she looked at him. Dirty streaks lined her cheeks where earlier tears had fallen, but there were none now. He moved his lips to speak his devotion and words of strength, but suddenly his arms were jerked back and manacled with chains, which also ran from each ankle, around his waist, and wrapped around a center post behind him. Rope would burn through, and to the Christian citizens of Andover, a bound, burning witch was preferable to a burning witch run
ning, without deliberation, through the crowd, setting them on fire as it chanted the last evil spells of its existence.

  Elliot and Margaret were brought out next, and a man’s wails were suddenly heard above the crowd that had now grown to fifty or sixty people. Galen scanned the group and finally spotted Margaret’s husband, Andrew.

  His clenched fists raised high above his head, he shook them and cried toward Heaven. He did not look directly at Margaret; the single time he was allowed to visit, he was interrogated and she had told him not to. Hornsby wanted to take as many as he could, and Margaret wanted her children to be raised by their father, who could take another wife.

  Poor Margaret’s eyes were squeezed closed, and she drifted into her own world of safety. Nothing could be done now, even by one as strong as she. To truly reveal herself as a witch by attempting to save her own life would surely jeopardize the lives of her family. It was something Galen knew she would never do. It was much the same for all of them.

  Elliot showed no signs of fear, though his face was so battered he probably could not even see. Still, he faced the crowd in silent defiance, his head held high upon a bluish purple neck. Neither Elliot nor Margaret had spoken to the interrogators; it was something Galen simply knew. If only the witchfinders everywhere found only witches, it would all end soon; those with true powers would never speak the names of the innocent to stop their own torture.

  Galen and the others understood that the weakness of mortals was not their fault. The pain was intense, and they would give up their mothers and fathers to make it end. Sometimes even their children. By the time they did so they were nearly insane anyway, and could not be blamed.

  The last to be brought out was Vickar. A man on each side, they dragged him, sightless and seemingly near death, to the pyre closest to the steps. As he was tied, Galen stared alternately at him and at Katherine.

  At least the world will be free of him, Galen projected to Katherine.

  Maybe that will be a comfort to those we leave behind, Katherine responded, and Galen agreed.

  The job was finished. Galen and the others turned their heads toward the crowd as Hornsby made his way up the steps near Vickar. He banged his walking staff on the platform floor and instantly quieted the crowd. They would not defy him or any one of them could be the next examined for suspicion of witchcraft.

  “You see before you five witches!” he shouted, waving a hand toward them. “You will watch them suffer for their pagan ways this day!”

  Shouts of ‘Burn the witches!’ arose from the crowd, and scattered applause rippled from one side of the street to the other like a spreading fire fanned by a merciless wind.

  Dead wind, Galen thought. It is the promise of death that drives this wind.

  “We shall not hang these five! For their crimes they shall be burned to ashes, cleansing the good earth of their depravity! It shall be a lesson to all those who follow!” Hornsby walked up to the hooded executioner who held the torch, awaiting the command to light the pyres aflame. Hornsby reached to take it from him, and at first, he appeared to refuse, but quickly thought better and released it.

  Galen didn’t remember Hornsby actually carrying out the execution of any convicted witches before. Clearly, he held a special hatred for Vickar, who had purchased one of the finest horses in the land right out from under him. Hornsby had saved for almost a year and, at a tavern in Vickar’s presence, had discussed his intention to buy the animal. The next day, Vickar rode up on the fine stallion, making sure everybody in town noticed. He trampled an old woman crossing the street, one of the horse’s huge hooves crushing her skull.

  She fell in his way, he said. Hornsby was not the least bit concerned about the woman or her family. It was the horse he cared about, and nothing else. Galen knew that today Hornsby would get the remainder of his revenge. From what he’d overheard, the horse was confiscated and now belonged to the witchfinder.

  “Have you anything to say before I carry out your sentence, witch?” Hornsby asked, raising the torch high above his head.

  Galen watched as long as he could, then closed his eyes. It would be over soon. Once the crackling of flame met his ears, it would be the beginning of the end. The next thing he heard chilled him to the bone.

  It was Vickar’s voice, and it boomed over the noise of the crowd and filled his heart with a terror he had never before experienced.

  “You will burn me now,” he said. “But as my body twists in the flames before you, know that I shall return!”

  Galen looked at Vickar, and impossibly, his mouth was still, his face still motionless. Hornsby staggered away from him, the flames licking off his torch. He stared at the burning torch dumbly, then threw it against the straw and kindling stacked around Vickar.

  It caught rapidly, but Vickar was not finished.

  “I shall come back to fill the hearts of your children with terror, and their children, and their grandchildren! I shall kill, rape and maim them, make deformities of your future generations! And as these townspeople look on, they will begin to bleed from all orifices until they succumb to my power!”

  The people of Andover began running. Their eyes, their noses and mouths gushing blood, it was a stampede of dying humanity, trying to save themselves from the warlock’s evil curse.

  The flames grew higher around Vickar, and now his face was almost hidden by the yellow-orange death sentence. Galen spoke aloud to Katherine this time. He could not afford to allow her to miss his words.

  “Katherine! If Vickar returns, so must we! We must not let him loose upon the world with no one to put an end to him!”

  “Galen!” she cried. “We must come together! All of us!”

  The executioner leaned over and took the torch from the pyre, now fully engulfing Vickar. He made no more sounds. Elliot watched the hooded man touch the torch to the straw beneath him.

  Margaret’s was lighted.

  Katherine’s next. She screamed to Margaret, “Break free your hands, Margaret! Take Elliot’s hand, and take mine!”

  Margaret responded instantly. Her powers were such that Katherine’s was a simple request. In the next second, just above the flames that grew at her feet, her arms were free. She stretched out on both sides. “Elliot, break free and give me your hand!”

  Elliot struggled, concentrating with the whole of his mind and powers. The steel wrist shackle shattered with a sharp, metallic clang, and his arm was free. The flames around him already charred his legs and elbows, but he threw his arm out and clasped Margaret’s outstretched hand tightly in his.

  Galen’s shackle fell open and he took Katherine’s hand. As the flames grew around all of them, he lifted from his body and hovered just over the flames. He had to stay alive long enough to cast the spell. He projected it to all of them, and knew that they would all understand.

  “If Vickar shall return to administer hatred and death, then so shall we return to put an end to him forever. Katherine, Margaret, Elliot, Galen. We shall fight the Evil One until his soul curses this earth no more!”

  He plunged down into his body again. In his mind he heard Katherine’s voice uttering the necessary incantation, a voice he knew Margaret and Elliot heard in their minds as well. When she finished the words that solidified their mutual promises, he squeezed her hand one last time, then closed his eyes, concentrated against the licking flames slipped silently away from the burning shell that had been his physical form on this Earth for the last time.

  In utter silence, save for the crackling of the swirling flames around them, the witches bodies were burned by fire under the cloudy, early morning New England sky. This fulfilled the sentence recommended by Hornsby and handed down by the judge, and when it was over and the flames sank back into themselves, the crowd was no longer. Some were trampled by other dying men, women, and children – others had made it out of the square only to die on the way to their homes.

  All but Hornsby, who in a strange twist of fate, was trampled and killed by his fine black s
tallion the following day. As powerful as he had seemed in life, his evil soul was mortal. Death, at least for him, was final.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  Laguna Beach, California

  April, 2012

  Peter Webster put the paper down and stared at his twin brother across the round, glass kitchen table. Despite the fact that they both shared the same intense green eyes of their late father, they almost looked nothing alike. Glenn normally dressed in the latest styles, and Peter, educator that he was, settled for whatever he grabbed from his closet so long as it was unwrinkled and clean. Both men had handsome, chiseled faces and stood just under 6’5” tall, commanding attention when they walked into a room, whether they wanted it or not.

  Glenn tended to want it, being an attorney – Peter didn’t care either way.

  “How much evidence did they have on him, Glenn? A young boy was found in his house, right?”

  Glenn reached across the table and slid the paper toward him. He smiled as he read the headline:

  JURY RETURNS NOT GUILTY VERDICT

  IN CLARK MOLESTATION CASE

  Glenn looked at Peter. “Hey, that’s what I do. He wasn’t guilty of anything.”

  “How can you say that? What about the boy?” Peter’s eyes flashed anger at the thought. “Think he was there running errands for some ice cream money?”

  “Not at all. I think what I said in court. The boy was thirteen. You remember yourself at thirteen? You had your own mind, didn’t you? Did things you weren’t supposed to, sneaked out once or twice. Hey, I lived with you. Neither one of us was innocent.”

  “There were signs of sexual relations, for Christ’s sake. The kid had severe bruising around his testicles, didn’t he? I think had some anal tearing, too.”

  “You never jerked off too hard when you were a kid? Did yourself in the pooper with a frozen hot dog?”