The Town That Cried Witch

Once upon a time there was a small, quiet town in the countryside. And in those days, a great fear was beginning to grip the land, and in more and more settlements, peace was being interrupted by a very vocal threat. It was a Satanic threat. As time went on, more and more people began to believe in the existence of witches - women from their own ranks of society who were in league with the devil himself, committing foul acts by cover of night in exchange for otherworldly power. People reacted in fear, and though the evidence was largely circumstantial, the punishments for witchcraft were brutal and permanent. As a result, some men began to realize that calling out a witch proved to be a very convenient, if underhanded, way of denouncing a woman who had wronged you. It may seem extreme by today's standards, but life was cheaper in those days, and survival for any much less guaranteed.

In our small town, the first accusation of witchcraft came from a middle-aged farmer. He had been growing distant from his young wife over the recent years, and had begun suspecting her of conducting an adulterous affair. She would leave the house at night and slink through the woods for her illicit trysts, arriving home shortly before the cock's crow. After months of this behavior, she fell pregnant, and while the farmer could not be sure, he had a suspicion that the child was not his. The thought tore at him, and he spent the months in agony, until finally the child was born, and he was of mixed race. The evidence was clear, and in the farmer's rage, he accused his wife of bedding the devil during midnight rituals deep in the woods. The proof was in the genes of his wife's newborn child. The villagers were very sensitive to claims of witchcraft at that time, inspired by stark - and, frankly, exaggerated - stories from nearby villages. So they killed the allegedly bedeviled child in mercy, and had its mother burned at the stake to protect the town from the devil's influence.

Time passed with little incident, and few regretted the deeds that had to be done in defense of the town and the rest of its villagers from the threat of Satan, disturbing though the experience was. People were very religious in that town, and they saw the presence of Satan in many facets of life, as if the devil were constantly hounding them, tempting them away from the path of God, looking for moments of weakness in which to strike. So any accusation that the devil's power had taken hold and turned one of them from their devotion to God was taken very seriously. There was, however, one family that felt the town's divine furor was in excess, and that was, of course, the family of the woman who had - wrongly, they believed - been burned at the stake. And then, of course, there was the man she had been having an affair with, who dared not come out and admit to his deeds, yet was nevertheless very much a man, and not a devil in the least.

But they made up a very small and compromised minority of the town, so when the second accusation of witchcraft arose, few were of a mind to protest the drastic measures that needed to be taken once again. This time, it was a young man accusing his mother-in-law of being a witch, and what served as convincing evidence was the fact the man's wife stood by him and joined in the accusation against her own mother. Those in the town who had known the elderly woman had known her to be a rather shrewd and disagreeable woman. Possessed of their reasoning faculties, they might have considered the possibility that the married couple were simply trying to get rid of a thorn in their side, with the added benefit of an inheritance to be left in the wake of her destruction. But in their cloud of superstition, they hungrily ate up the couple's story that their mother was the high priestess of a Satanic cult, an important leader figure in the devil's besiege of this once peaceful village; and to protect that [now conspicuously missing] peace, they had the old woman beheaded.

But in the wake of this latest atrocity, people's fears did not subside. They saw devils left and right and could not understand why eliminating the high priestess did not severely maim the devil's hold over the town. Some of them began to question the wisdom of their approach, and wonder if they were not being rather hasty in offing women at the mere threat of witchcraft. But those who did were too afraid to speak up against the prevailing attitude, lest they be labeled as being in league with the devil themselves. And after all, they were not certain, and were still afraid - what if the devil really were wreaking havoc in their small town? They could not let their guards down, and they certainly could not take a chance on being wrong - that's the moment the devil would surely slip in.

This is the attitude that preceded the third accusation of witchcraft, which was the most disturbing yet. A pharmacist in town one day observed a little girl in rags trying to steal some goods right from off his shelves. But he caught her, and in his haste to attribute every criminal misdeed to the influence of Satan, compounded by frustration at his shrinking profits due to the villagers' growing fear of dealing in "unnatural" potions, and his eagerness to prove quite vocally that despite his work, he himself was not part of the Satanists' plot, he cried witch. The little girl was a thief and indeed a beggar; she belonged to a very poor and struggling family, half of which was wracked with various illnesses they could not afford to treat.

For once, the villagers were divided in their decision of how to treat this last in a string of witch accusations. Half of the townsfolk had already suspected the pharmacist, and so questioned his motive, and the veracity of his claim. Yet, the girl's body was marked with pocks, which were speculated to be the devil's marks, or perhaps God's pestilent retribution against those who ally with Satan. Yet some began to wonder if it were not in God's power to smite His enemies without human intervention. Thus, it was with confusion and uncertainty that many watched the allegedly bewitched child plunged into the river to drown. Some reminded themselves that the girl was both poor and sick, and that if they were wrong about her allegiance with the devil, then her death was perhaps a mercy killing. But even then, a twinge of guilt settled into the backs of their heads.

And so after that most unsatisfying event, the town's religious fervor was splintered and weakened, and people began to view stories of witching deeds with skepticism. The most religious among them viewed this as sure evidence that the devil's influence was growing very strong, even though, from a logical perspective, skepticism is a far cry from evil and violent acts. But they were now in the minority, and most of the villagers wanted to return to the peace they had before the insistent fear of the devil had descended on their town. It was at that time that an unfamiliar gypsy woman arrived at the village, and set up camp just outside the border of the town. As she had been traveling through the countryside, the townsfolk were hopeful that she could assuage their Satanic paranoia, and she reassured them that in her experience, folk tales about witches were greatly exaggerated - a fact that many of the villagers had already begun to suspect. But just as they were about ready to lay their fears to rest, the religious leaders in the town interrupted them with one last fervent cry of "witch!"

For those few who believed, it was a straightforward case. The gypsy woman was a stranger, she had an unconventional lifestyle, and she seemed to want to make the townsfolk disbelieve in the existence of witches. Among all of the poor women that had been sentenced throughout the hysteria, the gypsy was the most suspicious of them all. But the majority of the townsfolk were no longer inclined to believe in the hysteria, and they couldn't take the guilt of putting another innocent woman to death out of ignorance and fear. The religious leaders saw their own influence over the town waning, and worked hard to condemn the gypsy, hoping it would reunite the town against Satan. But the gypsy was outspoken and charismatic, and criticized those who held her down and called for her death. The town's conscience won out, and the gypsy was forcibly released from custody. She returned to her camp just outside town, but she was less friendly from that point on and spent less time engaging the villagers.

In a week, the new moon had risen, and that night was as black as any. The villagers retired early that night, as there was an ominous feeling in the air. They locked their doors and shut their windows tight. A few were unable to sleep, and found themselves alone, nursing small fires in their homes around midnight, when they began to hear the howling of wolves from deep within the forest. If any had been brave enough to step outside, they would have seen a faint orange glow on the horizon, in the direction of the woods. But had they the courage to do so, they may not have lived to see the dawn. Though perhaps that would have been for the better, as the townsfolk awoke the next morning to find that all of the village's children had been slaughtered in their beds overnight. Blood splattered the walls and stained the sheets under which small bodies lay torn apart, organs missing. There was no sign of forced entry into any of the rooms or houses. It was the darkest day the town had ever seen, but not the darkest that was yet to befall it.

The townsfolk immediately suspected the gypsy stranger, but she was nowhere to be found after that moonless night. Her camp lay deserted, as if she had just disappeared. But she didn't return over the following weeks. Steeped in sorrow, the people in the town tended to their emotional wounds, and couldn't be bothered to worry about protecting themselves from further tragedy. When a fortnight had passed since that terrible night, the full moon rose on an equally ominous night, but with a different atmosphere. Few were sleeping soundly in those days, and the moon lit that night almost like day. Some were out sobbing in the streets, with little left to comfort them. So it was when the full moon was eclipsed and turned to a crimson red. Screams were heard in every direction, accompanied by loud, throaty growls and a gnashing of teeth. When the eclipse finished and the moon returned to its formerly luminous state, the town was covered in blood and bits of scattered flesh. Only a single living soul remained; it was the gypsy woman, and she carried a torch. As she strolled through the town, admiring the devil's handiwork, she muttered an incantation at intervals, and each time her torch flared up and another house was consumed with fire. As she packed up her things in the growing light of dawn, the town burned to the ground, and she left it a smoldering wreckage.