Skin Medicine Page 13

  Year by year, then, less and less sought out the Widow’s wisdom and expertise. No more charms and talismans, love potions and cure-alls. Her shack became a shunned place and she became ostracized to the point where she could not even buy her goods in the village.

  A month before the first child disappeared, a group of men tried to burn down her shack. When that failed—the wood refused to catch fire—she was publicly stoned in the market square. Raising her hands to the sky, the bloodied and broken Widow Hagen said loud enough for all to hear: “A curse then, breathern…on ye and yer ways!”

  Then the children began to disappear.

  Village livestock were plagued with nameless afflictions.

  Weird storms raked the countryside.

  Crops withered in the fields…practically overnight.

  And no less than four village women gave birth to stillborn infants.

  So when the children turned up missing on top of everything else, there could only be one possible miscreant: Elizabeth Hagen.

  Witch.

  ***

  She was duly arrested by High Sheriff Bolton and a posse of deputized men and placed in the Procton stockade: a windowless, insect-infested sweatbox with dirty straw on the floor where the accused lived in his or her own waste and was fed perhaps every second day. The crude walls were scratched with supplications to God above.

  And the investigation, as it were, began.

  Sheriff Bolton was in complete agreement with Magistrate Corey and the learned members of the village General Assembly—it was all superstitious rubbish.

  Then, Widow Hagen’s shack was searched.

  Upon entering, the posse smelled a vulgar, nauseous stench as of spoiled meat. And no man who went in there that windy, misting October afternoon would soon forget what was uncovered. There were soiled canvas sacks of human bones—children’s bones, still stained with blood and plastered with stringy bits of sinew. The skulls were soon uncovered buried beneath the dirt floor. As were the maggoty and headless bodies of the infants. All of which bore the marks of ritual hacking and slashing. And at the hearth in a greasy black pot, some pustulant and ghastly stew made of human remains.

  But in the root cellar below was found the most gruesome and unspeakable of horrors, something swimming in a cask of human blood and entrails. Sheriff Bolton later described it as “something like a fetus…a hissing, mewling mass of flesh…a blubbery human fungus with more limbs than it had any right to possess”. It was shot and brought into town wrapped in a tarp. The village physician, Dr. Lewyn, a man of some scientific background and possessed of a microscope and other modern equipment, dissected it. Bolton’s observations were proven correct, for Lewyn’s inspection revealed the creature to be human in form only. It’s anatomy was terribly rudimentary, reversed from that of a normal human child and was entirely boneless, unless one wished to count the “rubbery, fungous structure within”. The cadaver gave off a hideous, fishy odor and was immediately burned, the ashes buried in unconsecrated ground.

  It was said the Widow Hagen screamed from her cell when that particular blasphemy was given to the flames.

  The preceding evidence was more than sufficient for Magistrate Corey to form a Court of Oyer and Terminer, much like others that had governed over many another witch trial. Elizabeth Hagen was first examined by Dr. Lewyn. Though a man possessed of scientific reasoning, it did not take him long to give the court the very thing it wanted…physical evidence that the Widow Hagen was indeed a witch. For three inches below her left armpit was found an extra nipple…the so-called “Witches Teat”, the seal of a pact with the Devil. Through this nipple, a witch supposedly fed her familiars.

  No one was more shocked than Lewyn.

  He told the court that supernumerary nipples weren’t unknown in medical annals, but his argument was flaccid at best. Even he didn’t seem to believe it. And nothing he could say could allay what came next—Elizabeth Hagen was tortured to elicit a confession or, as it was popularly known, “put to the question”. During the next week she underwent the ordeal of the ducking stool and the strappado, the heretic’s fork and the witch’s cradle. She was burned with hot coals, cut, beaten, hung by her feet and thumbs. The needed confession came within a few days…a might too quick for the court’s henchmen.

  But come, it did.

  She admitted freely to the practice of witchcraft, of hexing the village, of conjuring storms and blights. It was enough. The morning of the trial she was dragged from her cell, wrists bound and tied to the rear of a farm wagon. She was pulled by oxen through the streets in this way, her jailer lashing her with a whip the entire way through those muddy streets to the courthouse. The locals lined up to pelt her with rotten fruit and stones. On her belly then, she was dragged up the steps and before Magistrate Corey and his associates, Magistrates Bowen and Hay.

  She was bloody and broken, sack dress hanging in strips, her back raw from the whip, her face slashed open from “the blooding”, her scalp missing patches of hair from “the knotting”. A metal cage known as a Scold’s Bridle encircled her head. The jailer removed it, tearing the bit from her mouth that pressed her tongue flat.

  She begged for water and was given none.

  She begged for food and was ignored.

  She begged for mercy and the assembled crowd laughed.

  Then the questioning began. The court had already assembled a lengthy list of evidence, not all of which was found in the Widow’s shack. People, certain now that she had been emasculated by the law, came forward with tales of horror and wonder. A young woman named Claire Dogan admitted that Widow Hagen had tried to seduce her into the “cult of witchery”, promising her riches and power. Dogan claimed that she had witnessed Hagen mixing up “flying ointment” which was applied to a length of oak, upon which, Hagen flew through the air, dipping over treetops and harassing livestock in the fields, laughing all the while.

  A farmer named William Constant claimed that, in order to gain control of his neighbor’s holdings, he contracted Widow Hagen to “witch” the man. He said he watched her tie the series of knots in rope known as the “witch’s ladder”…and soon after, his neighbor was taken ill, dying shortly thereafter. Another farmer, Charles Goode, said that he—“while bewitched by the old hag”—had asked her to kill his shrewish wife. Hagen had taken a bone covered with decaying meat, sprinkled it with unknown powders, said words over it “which withered my soul upon hearing them”. The bone was buried beneath his wife’s window and as the meat rotted from it, so did the flesh melt from his wife’s skeleton. She died soon after of an unknown wasting disease.

  A group of village children admitted that the Widow had taught them how to avenge their enemies: another group of children who had teased and tormented them. She showed them how to gather hairs from the other children and press them into dolls made of mud and sticks. The words to say over them. And whatever they then did with the dolls happened to the children in question. When one doll was thrown in the river, one of the offending children drowned. When a doll was thrown into a fire, its namesake’s cabin burned to the ground. The court recognized this as sympathetic magic. The children also said that when Mr. Garrity chased them bodily from his apple orchards, they said “strange words” taught to them by Widow Hagen and Garrity’s prize milking cow keeled over dead on the spot.

  And more than one farmer came forward to say that there was always trouble during midsummer. That it was the time of the Wild Hunt—the legendary flight of the witches. That Elizabeth Hagen and her fellow witches would take to the air with a coven of demons and evil dead and by morning the unwary had been carried off and livestock went unaccounted for. That on nights of the Wild Hunt, wise men stayed indoors for it could be heard coming—a barking and hissing, screaming and churning.

  So the evidence, as such, was not lacking.

  High Sheriff Bolton told his wife in secret that if the Widow were to be “put to flame”, the entire village should burn with her. For there were preciou
s few that had not encouraged her wild talents, had not called upon her in times of need. If she had gotten out of control, then who was to blame for empowering her? When there was trouble, her council was always the first sought. And that she had cured more ills and delivered more babies than any thirty doctors, there was no doubt.

  But, even Bolton, after what he had seen at Hagen’s shack, had no sympathy for her.

  ***

  On the first day of the trial, the horrors were heard.

  Magistrate Bowen: Elizabeth Hagen…do you admit, then to being a witch?

  Hagen: I admit, yer lordship, into being that which is called as such.

  Magistrate Bowen: You admit to bewitching this community then?

  Hagen: I admit I have my ways. I admit I use them against those what have done me wrong, yer lordship. I was stoned, was I not? My cabin was near-burned, was it not? I have been driven away by those who I have helped numerous times. And now…look upon me! Beaten and bloodied…have I not a right to avenge meself?

  Magistrate Bowen: Yours is a crime against, God, lady. Yours is a crime punishable by death. Do you admit then to the worship of Satan?

  Hagen: Satan? Satan? A Christian devil, yer lordship. I have no truck with him.

  Magistrate Bowen: Then who have you struck your filthy bargain with?

  Hagen (laughing uncontrollably): Bargain? Bargain, do ye say? Why with him, is it not? With him that crawls and him that slithers. Him that lords over the dark wood and the empty glen, him that commands from a throne of human bone.

  Magistrate Bowen: How do you call this devil, this despoiler?

  Hagen: Call him? Him that is She and She that is Him? Him That Cannot Bear Name? The Black Goat of the Dark Wood? She with a thousand squirming, screaming young? Him that calls yer name from the dead and lonely places? Aye! He and She that are It cannot be named! Cannot be held nor bound by such.

  Magistrate Bowen: Say the name, witch, in the name of Christ Jesus!

  Hagen (laughing): Jesus do ye say? A Christian charlatan! My doings, right and proper, are with Her, with Him, with It, the ancient Writher in Blackness!

  Magistrate Bowen: Then you admit to entering into a pact with this nameless other?

  Hagen: I do, if it please your honor. This I then do.

  Magistrate Bowen: Do you admit, also, of that abomination in your root cellar? That you were growing it? Bringing it to term, as it were, a horror that would torment the community?

  Hagen: You ruined me simple fun! What a lark that thing would have been, sucking out the bones of the good and proper!

  Magistrate Bowen: I command you, lady, to name this devil who you have had commerce with. That which gave you power over man and nature.

  Hagen: Ah, ye wish I hang meself, do ye? Ye wish I speak of commerce with them from the hollow places? Them that hop and jump and crawl?

  Magistrate Bowen: You already have, lady, you already have. Tell us, then, of the children. Confess in the name of Jesus Christ.

  Hagen: I will confess not in the name of a false god, yer lordship. The children? The children? Aye, I took their lives and laughed as I did so! I drank their blood and stewed their meat, didn’t I? Just as I loosed him what stole them babes, him that devoured their soft heads and picked his teeth with their tiny bones…it is only the beginning, the beginning! Do ye hear? Do ye hear me, you fat stuffed piggies of Procton? Only the beginning…

  Magistrate Bowen: Your days of evil are at an end.

  Hagen: Are they, yer lordship? Are they indeed? I think not! Stoned, I was. Tortured, I was. Eye for an eye, they say, and eye for an eye I shall have in His name! At an end? What I have called up, brought to me side, will be known for ages! The legacy will not end, this I swear by me mother’s soul which burns in the dark, cold place. Even now, yes, even now I have sewed the seeds. Even now there are three who bring hell into this world…

  ***

  And so it came to pass.

  While Elizabeth Hagen languished in her prison cell, the most peculiar thing happened: three village maidens became pregnant. And each were the daughters of town ministers—Hope from the Congregational Church, Rice from Christ Church, and Ebers from the Presbyterian Church. The girls declared themselves virgins and examinations by Dr. Lewyn proved their hymens to be intact. Virgin births, then. The village was joyous…yet horrified, considering who and what was currently being held in the stockade.

  And in her cell, Elizabeth Hagen chanted and sang songs and spoke in unearthly voices throughout the night.

  A week into the trial, for more and more witnesses kept coming forward, the three girls—Clarice Ebers, Marilynn Hope, and Sarah Rice—all in their sixteenth years, began to exhibit the physical characteristics of women in their fourth months. Their bellies were oddly swollen and this, seemingly overnight. Dr. Lewyn admitted it was impossible, that even one such case stretched the fabric of credibility…but that three surely canceled out the possibility of coincidence.

  And it grew worse.

  On the same night, all three girls underwent violent seizures. They fell into violent fits in which they attacked anyone nearby, screaming and cursing and destroying anything at hand. They scratched madly at their skins, as if trying to free themselves of something that burrowed within. Sarah Rice actually peeled a great deal of flesh from her arms and thighs. All three had to be restrained so as not to harm themselves or others…and to keep them from running off in the woods, to someone, they claimed, that beckoned to them and filled their heads with “horrible noises”.

  Of course, it just got worse day by day.

  They would not eat, claiming they could only consume blood and raw meat. They profaned their mothers, fathers, and anyone within earshot. Objects moved about their rooms, things were ripped from walls, timbers groaned and splintered, furniture toppled over. The girls spoke in tongues, in the voices of the dead. They told of hidden secrets that they could not possibly know of. Black, reeking fluids were discharged from all orifices. Profane melodies were heard emanating from their swollen bellies. Polluted, noxious smells seeped from them. And more than one person fled in terror when they heard voices whispering from the girls’ vaginas.

  There was no doubt: the girls were possessed of demons.

  Demons, no doubt, loosed by the hag herself, Widow Hagen.

  Exorcisms were attempted by the ministers and all were glaring, horrendous failures. Minister John Rice of Christ Church battled with Marilynn Hope for hours upon hours, trying to wrest her soul from the malignancy that had consumed it. He read scripture over her and demanded she…or whatever lived in her…submit to the will of Jesus Christ. But the girl would only laugh and bark and writhe, speaking in various tongues and languages. She demanded meat and blood be brought her. She demanded the flesh of children. Minister Rice underwent physical attacks from objects flying about the room and from “a malefic force as of a cold wind that threw me about.”

  The demon in Marilynn spoke in the voice of Minister Rice’s long-dead first wife, telling him in graphic detail how she was being sodomized in Hell. How his father and mother were there, fornicators and child-eaters, and to prove this she spoke in their voices…very often at the same time.

  After some twelve hours of psychic, physical, and spiritual attacks, Minster Rice was led away…a beaten, broken man, his soul laid raw like a festering wound. Ebers tried next, for Marilynn’s father had not the strength to look upon his own daughter in such an obscene condition. Things went well at first and it seemed that whatever dwelled in the Hope girl was relenting. Marilynn began to cry and pour out her wracked soul over the macabre torments she had undergone. When Ebers bent forward to listen to her whispered confession…she licked his ear, said something only he could hear. Something which sucked the color from his face. Something which made him run from that room in that cursed house until he reached his own and was able to press a pistol against his temple. And end it.

  It was hopeless.

  The three girls were locked in the grip
of a seemingly omnipotent evil that owned them body and soul. Whatever it was, it was malicious, perverse, and toxic to any who dared toy with it.

  ***

  The trial of Elizabeth Hagen ended and she remained locked in the stockade. The Magistrates were unable to decide on her fate. If she were executed would the evil in Procton only get stronger? Or would it be purged? These were dangerous matters and ones, they decided, not to be considered lightly.

  But public opinion ran high and strongly, so there was little choice in the matter. Elizabeth Hagen was dragged from her cell, lashed to a wagon wheel and rolled through the streets before a jeering, hateful crowd. In a clearing known to locals as Heretic’s Field for it served as a makeshift graveyard for “suicides, heathens, and those kin folks were ashamed of”, Elizabeth Hagen was burned. The wheel she was lashed upon was tied to the trunk of a blasted, dead oak and set afire.

  But even this was no easy matter.

  Though heaped with kindling and engulfed with flame, she would not die. She burned for hours…burned, blackened, crisped and curled, but refusing to die. She called out curses upon all present. The wagon wheel finally collapsed under her and the roasted, charred thing she became continued to shriek and wail and scream.

  It was dragged from the coals with billhooks and twined tight with rope and chains. The Magistrates had it placed back in the stockade where it continued to howl and screech and profane all things holy. The cremated cadaver lived for days…until enraged locals dragged it out into the light and hacked it to bits with axes. Then it finally died. The pieces were buried in separate locations and the evil was at an end…or not quite.