Page 86 of The Witch

“Yes!” Now he is speaking dangerously loud—loud enough for the deputy to easily overhear as his footsteps grow closer. “She told me that you are a witch!”

The air feels as if it has been sucked out of my body. No—that cannot be true. “She…she told you…”

“She told me about how the two of you hexed the townsfolk together!” he continues, his eyes wide and sincere. “How you conspired to turn Elias Fenn’s meat foul. How you have lain with the devil together.”

“No! I did not do any of those things! ’Tis a lie!”

His voice lowers into an ominous growl. “She also told me how you caused people to have fits. That the devil told you to do it if they refused to sign his book. She had great admiration for your skill and witchery and said you were a much more powerful witch than she.”

“That is preposterous!”

As I cry the words, Deputy Strickland enters the cellar holding the two plates of our dinner. He beholds Jonas shouting at me and my pale face. Surely he has also heard Jonas’s accusations.

“You are a witch!” Jonas points a shaking finger at me. “Everyone knows it’s true! Why will you not admit it?”

Tears fill my eyes. It was awful enough in that courtroom, but somehow Jonas shouting the accusations at me is even worse, because he genuinely seems to believe it. Did my friend Hitty truly confess these things to him on the eve before her death? And if so, why did Jonas help me the other day? Could it be because he feared me? It did not seem so at the time.

“I am not a witch!” I protest weakly. “’Tis a lie!”

“Deputy Strickland.” Jonas’s eyes are large and brimming with fear. “Mistress Eldridge has been mumbling hexes at me. She means to bewitch us both!”

Whether the deputy believes in witchcraft or not, the fear on Jonas’s face is genuine. Strickland hesitates, as if unsure how to respond to this accusation. “What did she say?”

“She is summoning the devil,” Jonas gasps. “She said…”

And then Jonas freezes, as if having fallen into a trance. I take a step back, my head thrumming. As the two of us watch, his entire body goes rigid.

It is a repeat of that terrible day when I rushed to Judith Hatch’s bedside. Jonas goes stiff, then his body drops to the floor with a dull thud. He starts to tremor, as if an invisible entity shakes his body.

Strickland whips his head around to fix his gaze on me, his eyes filled with the same fear I beheld in Jonas’s visage. “Cease this forthwith!” he commands me.

But the shaking does not cease. It grows ever more violent, and it seems that the entire room trembles. My body has become numb with fear. This is just what happened with Judith Hatch. I convinced myself it was her fever that caused the tremors, but was I wrong? Was it I who caused Judith to have those terrible fits?

Hitty told Jonas that I was a witch. Is it possible that she was right?

Jonas’s fit is terrifying, and there is no doubt anymore that it must have an otherworldly cause. Strickland has dropped our plates on the floor, and his own hands shake violently as he reaches for the key ring on his belt. He unlocks the door to Jonas’s cell, meaning to help the bewitched man.

Then, as abruptly as it started, Jonas’s fit ceases. His body goes still for a moment, then he reaches out with his right hand and grabs a large stone from the floor, which he dug free using his boot buckle. And that’s when I realize what he has been doing at night.

Jonas wasn’t trying to carve out a path for escape after all. He was only trying to make himself a weapon—a sharpened rock. And now he brings that weapon down on Strickland’s skull.

The deputy drops to the floor, blood dripping from the side of his head. Jonas does not waste a moment. He snatches the ring of keys that fell from Strickland’s fingers, exits his cell, and then locks it behind him, trapping Strickland inside.

Then he turns around, his untamed locks falling over his face. His beard nearly cloaks his lips, but I can see that he is smiling, a grin that chills me to the very marrow.

The Night Reaper is free.

64

PRESENT DAY

JULIA

I drive over to the museum in the afternoon.

I’m so anxious about the whole thing, I end up taking a wrong turn, traveling the scenic route through most of Woodhaven, ending up in the next town over. I finally acknowledge I’m completely lost, and I pull over in the parking lot of a cheap motel, trying to get the GPS in my phone up and running. Unfortunately, it seems like the entire area has terrible reception.

I get out of my car, holding my phone up to try to get the map to load. Why are the roads in Massachusetts so nonsensical? It feels like I ought to be able to travel to a place I’ve been several times before without getting hopelessly lost. I heard a rumor that the roads in this state are all based on cow paths, and I believe it. Stupid cows.