THE WITCH FINDERS
It was a time to fear the darkness, a time when the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped
It haunted her, of course, looming up in her dreams
Beth pulled her cloak tightly around her. It was the very last day of October and the air was damp and chill. Dead autumn leaves lay in deep piles in the woods and smoke curled into the night air from her cottage.
Not far to go now. She bent her head, fear knotting in her stomach, knowing what she had yet to pass on the lane.
The party in town had turned riotous. What had started out as simply ghoulish fancy dress, cut-out gourds and innocent applebobbing had quickly escalated into terrible ghting when the witch nders arrived; 1645 was a very dangerous year for young girls who were not married, and two who had been selling small corn dolls had just been dragged away from the market place.
They had the devil’s marks on them, apparently. And the witch nders were said to have heard of them from a reputable source.
One had a mole on her neck, and the other had been spotted conversing with a ‘familiar’ – a large black dog – in the elds near her cottage. The crowd had gasped, closing in around the girls as they were led away screaming their innocence.
Who would tell such awful tales about young girls to the merciless witch nders? Surely they knew the fate that awaited the poor youngsters. Scores of young women in these counties had been burnt to death in less than a year.
If you didn’t bleed then you were a witch, they said. If you had renounced baptism the water would reject you, so a witch would oat. Of course, anyone else would drown.
Amid all the masks and the smoke, witch costumes and beer-swilling, Beth made a quiet escape, leaving her father and brother behind with the pony and trap. Not far to go. Not far to go. Breathlessly she emerged from the shortcut through the woods and onto the lane that led to the family home. Just the spooky scarecrow to pass – the one that stood alone in the long-since harvested elds with its leery grin and apping limbs.
Why couldn’t their farming neighbours just take it down? Instead they left it there in its ragged clothes for screeching crows to perch on. The monster’s head would twist and turn as she hurried past. She broke into a run.
Don’t look at it, she thought to herself. Don’t look at it. It isn’t alive – it’s just straw and old clothes.
The October mist had settled on the lowlands like a blanket of soft grey down, thickening the night air. It was hard to see more than a couple of footsteps ahead, and the light from her lantern glowed a woolly yellow. She kept her eyes rmly on the cottage lights ahead, stumbling on determinedly towards the glow of a re in the downstairs room, and a lamp left burning in her bedroom window.
After all, it was Halloween. Only fools left themselves and their homes unprotected. By midnight Samhain would begin – two full days during which the lines between the living and the dead overlapped and the dead came to life. The only way you could protect yourself was by wearing costumes and masks, lighting bon res and hanging lanterns. Confusion was all. By midnight, a girl must be home.
It was such a huge relief to push open the cottage door and bolt it behind her. There was something about that scarecrow. Her father said she was being ridiculous – that her imagination was out of control. He’d
painstakingly shown her how to make her own scarecrow for their small vegetable plot. And yet, there was just something about the one on the lane…
It haunted her, of course, looming up in her dreams as she dozed in front of the re with the cat purring on her lap – arms of straw scratching at the windows and slashed-out eyes peering through the glass.
Someone’s there! She woke with a start, suddenly completely alert. Her cat was meowing as it prowled restlessly back and forth across the window ledge. Something was outside – it hadn’t just been a dream.
She strained her ears. Dull, scraping footsteps were coming nearer. It was almost midnight. The scarecrow. Of course – the scarecrow had come to life as she’d always known it would. Beth’s heart banged against her ribs as, with shaking hands, she picked up her father’s heavy musket. Then midnight chimed. Samhain had begun. Her poor father and brother would be coming home, dull-witted with drink, relying on the old pony to trot along the familiar route. The monster would kill them both – Beth was sure of it.
Trembling, she leant against the barred door and listened to heavy, laboured breathing, like an old man with a bad chest, and footsteps that sounded like a lame
man dragging one leg. They were getting louder. There was also the smell of wet straw and rotting leaves. She waited, expecting the lightest of taps, or a toothless dead-eyed face staring through the window.
Instead, the door was suddenly pounded with iron sts, making it rattle on its hinges. She ew backwards.
She knew the bolt would not hold. Over and over the unseen force pummelled and kicked, until at last, the wooden door splintered. There seemed no choice left but to lift up the heavy musket and re. Begone horrible scarecrow, begone!
In the silent seconds that followed, Beth picked up her lantern and discovered not a scarecrow on the ground, but two grown men. The witch nders. They’d been sent to arrest her – a 13-yearold girl.
One of the men groaned and she reached for the iron kettle, still hot from the re, and swung it against his skull. To think that all this time she had been frightened of a stupid scarecrow, ring blindly at a bundle of sticks come to life!
But who had sent them? It seemed there were people in this town who had called in the witch nders and chosen for her a certain death. Well, they had better start praying – because she’d hunt them down and make them pay.
From the elds opposite, the scarecrow swayed a little and drooped from its post in the darkness. The young girl in the nearby cottage had her hands raised and her face held up to the night sky as she chanted.
Samhain. The time for the dead to rise, although he was sorely weakened in his guise as a scarecrow. He’d done what he had to. He’d warned the girl by scratching at her door and windows.
A girl with a cat. A girl who cast magic circles and made potions – a witch who would now wreak revenge!
Good, he thought. Confusion reigned – let Halloween commence.