Page 44 of The Witch

But surely I won’t be there long. Likely, a trial will not be deemed necessary. Archie will speak with the sheriff, and this entire matter will be resolved tomorrow.

32

It is pitch-black by the time we reach the town jail.

The jailhouse is disturbing during the daylight hours, but it is much worse in the night. It is lit only by a torch at the front entrance, and I can’t even imagine how dark it is inside the building. I am about to find out.

Deputy Strickland transported me here in a horse-drawn cart, and now he helps me out of it, marching me toward the courthouse with my wrists still shackled in front of me. When I stumble for a moment, he doesn’t make any move to steady me. It’s almost as if he hopes I will fall.

And then we are at the entrance, with its foreboding wooden door. I shudder to think this was the last place Hitty stayed before she was hanged.

Strickland picks up the torch hanging to the right of the door before he unlocks it. It is just as dark inside as I feared—after he has gone home for the eve, I will be plunged into blackness.

“Please,” I say, ready to get down on my knees if I must. “I am no witch. Pray, do not lock me in here.”

Strickland grunts impatiently. “That is for Magistrate Putman to decide. Now go inside, before you make this worse for yourself.”

I cannot imagine anything worse than this, but I reckon the deputy has a better imagination than I do. Obediently and with my shackled wrists in front of me, I venture into the jailhouse.

The first floor is free of prisoners. The dim light of the torch reveals two desks—one for the sheriff and one for the deputy—and a few scattered chairs. Strickland leads me through the room to a heavy door at the other end. He pulls it open to reveal a long, dark stairwell.

“Move along,” he urges me when my feet do not budge.

I gape into the stairwell. By the light of the torch, I can only make out the next two steps. I have no sense of how deep it goes or where the stairs end, only that they are quite steep. There is no railing to hold on to, although it is not as if I could do that while my wrists are restrained in front of me. It seems impossible to climb down the stairs without falling. But Strickland is prodding my back, and I have no choice but to move forward.

I take the stairs as quickly as I dare. Too fast, and I will surely tumble to my death. Too slow, and Strickland will prod me until I lose my balance. Every time my foot makes contact with another step, I breathe a sigh of relief. I keep praying we must be at the bottom, but we keep going and going and going.

Are these steps endless? Is Strickland taking me on a journey to the depths of hell?

Finally, the torch illuminates the stone floor of the cellar. My legs tremble as I move forward, between the rows of metal bars containing what will become my meager living quarters. This floor of the jailhouse is completely silent—at least, at first. As my footsteps echo against the stone floor, I hear another noise coming from my left. The sound of someone—or something—moving.

Strickland shifts his torch to reveal the figure sitting in the cell to my left—its lone occupant. I should not be surprised to see the shadowy face of Jonas Reeve staring back at me. His eyes were dark in the light of day, but in this dank cellar, they are terrifying pits of blackness.

“You have company, Reeve,” Strickland comments with an amused smile.

Jonas Reeve says nothing, which is even more unnerving than if he spoke. ’Tis bad enough that I must be locked up in this awful place, but must it be with that monster?

“As she is a woman,” Strickland continues, “I am certain you wish to lay your hands upon her. Lucky for her, you are in a cage.”

Reeve again is silent. I can just barely make out the whites of his eyes by the light of the torch, and I do not believe he has blinked once. This man is not human.

“Move your feet, Mistress Eldridge!” Strickland barks at me. “I do not have all night.”

He leads me to one of the four cells available. It is the farthest one from Reeve but nowhere near far enough. I can see directly into his cell from mine, and if we each stretched an arm through the bars, they would touch. There is no privacy for prisoners, it seems.

Strickland releases my wrists from the shackles before he locks me inside my cell. That part, at least, is a relief. I notice that there is a torch mounted on the wall, so although it is very dark, I can still make out my hand in front of my face.

The ring of keys on Strickland’s belt jingles ominously as he turns to take his leave. Once he is gone, I will be all alone in this dank, dreary cellar with a man who has slain four maidens without a moment’s remorse.

“I beg of you, do not leave me here!” I cry out.

The flickering torch betrays the smile playing on the deputy’s lips. “What is it? Are you frightened of the Night Reaper?”

I do not answer.

“Fear not, Mistress Eldridge,” he says, chuckling. “Should he endeavor to approach you, all you must do is bewitch him.”

“Deputy Strickland!”