“Witch! Witch! Burn her!”
I grabbed a broom to escape, but it was too late. They’d come prepared, ropes flew, one caught my dress, down I came, and darkness closed in when I hit.
The cold of the water brought me to. The ducking stool first then. Down I went, and up, gasping for air. Down again, and up. And again, and again. Suddenly, the rope gave, and I was loose. A reed? There! The last of my breath drove the water out, and my dress held me down. Slowly I worked my way downstream, away from the mob. Goodman Willson so nearly found me, but I conjured a pike onto his toe and down he went. The river caught him, he couldn’t swim, and as he went down for the third time, I summoned the harpies. There is justice in the afterlife.
As I reached the watering hole, the cattle were still there, and obedient. Sliding among them, they surrounded me as far as the wood, and cover. Mistress Jones led the way, complaining, I’d short-changed her! She’d placed a Thaler on my burning for at least four hours, but I’d gone, vanished into thin air. A witch indeed! She’d learn.
That evening, she was careless. The snib lifted, and I was in. Quicksilver in the lamp oil, she’d find madness first. But before I slipped out, I left my mark, and stole a tub of lard.
Roosted in the rafters over the byre, I was woken by a scream of horror. She’d found it! The pentagram on the floor. The maid came running, what was wrong with the mistress? A pentagram? That witch! Oh, they were cursed. Running for the priest, she left the milk unguarded, nightshade, where? Over there. A quick squeeze, and away. The villagers came at a run.
Moving from house to house, I learned them. Needles and wax, hair from a comb, clippings from the floor. One by one, ten days, never had revenge been so sweet. Goodie Tomlinson I toasted. Young Johnnie, I roasted. Baby bunting, was sent a-hunting.
Impaled on a candle, the verger discovered I’d mixed gunpowder in with the fat the hard way. His wife they never found, she rests in pieces under the grave he’d dug for Tomlinson.
The bells! They’d taken refuge in the Church! I barred the doors, and heard them scrabble to the smuggler’s tunnel. How foolish, never cross a quaker. The roof fall spoke for ten, and fear took Father Thomas. Let’s see, there’s a priest’s hole somewhere. There. Smoke from the burning rushes flushed both Choirmaster and head chorister, falling to their deaths from fifty feet above their heads, and then fire took hold. One by one, the bells tolled their last, turning the nave into a shambles of chopped flesh.
Lover’s lane called. There they were, Sweet William and Pudding, lost to themselves as only a young couple can be. A wasps nest added a little spice, I felt. I wasn’t wrong, he made it to Dunscombe, babbling the news of my curse before the venom took him. I later learned she was never right in the head again, but the way he’d shot his load as the first stinger hit his nackers was impressive. Twins.
The villagers turned out. Granny Mitchell should have stayed home, she went with a smile on her face from the toy in her vag. But with them away I had free rein. The horses bolted when I torched the inn, and that took the hindmost. Deadeye Dick spotted me, and gave chase, they followed him to the mill, I raced to the top, and sprung my trap. Flour dust is explosive, and the bang lofted me high. It summoned the County.
Left right left right, the militia had turned out. Never march across a bridge, down they went, like ninepins. The splash raised the fetch of Goodman Willson, or rather his bloated corpse from full fathom five, and that so unnerved the Sergeant’s charger it bolted, dragging him by the ankle back to barracks. Having lived by the flogger, he died, flayed alive by the High Road. As a Headless Horseman arrived in HQ, his father, the Adjutant, completely lost his head too, diving into the magazine to avoid the maddened charger. With a candle.
It’s not as if he was alone. The river’s slow, so near the sea, and the redcoats reinforced the jack-o-lanterns, while the blast removed the topsoil from many a graveyard around the town. Three schooners in the docks caught fire, burning their moorings though, and wiped out half the fleet. Parliament sent in the Witchfinder General to investigate, he’s now called the BritchesFinder General after I nicked them. The King raised the Royal Standard, a complete innovation: since when has he ever done anything but lower standards?
Rumour inevitably reached the ears of the Coven, and they summoned the Covenanters. Bonnie Dundee arrived, with his rag, tag and bobtail clans, which did exactly nothing to help. Poor Tam O’Shanter barely made it back across the Forth of Fifth, complete with his bagpipes, although they played a tune never intended after the blowpipe went up his tailpipe and the pressure from the bladder turned his gonads into haggis.
Word inevitably reached far and wide, and we had half of Hogwarts International School pitch up unexpectedly. What they learned from Baba Yaga’s demonstration of the correct use of a pestle and mortar in Wiccan Magic has, sadly, offended the Mods, but Hogwarts Irish branch, Dogbreath Academy, now does a fine line in shamrock jockstraps.
My familiar, PoochPouch the ferret, has the remarkable ability to time travel, and tells me the River SludgeWater ran backwards for a century from sheer shock. I put it down to the soil heave the Coven accidentally caused when the attunement they had enchanted between Tam’s pipes and the constipation in a previously unidentified Stickleback Dragon resulted in some minor earthquakes, producing a baby boom which repopulated the graveyards as the innocent enquiry, “Did the earth just move for you?” produced the inevitable reply, “With a wand like yours, get lost!”
And so was born Hallowe’en, when the restless dead, unable to get to sleep from the incessant giggles, walk in protest at the tales told.