Burn, Witch, Burn!

by Abraham Merritt

  I took startled note of his pallid face, his twitching fingers; I said, hastily: "But of course, Ricori, you realize that all I have been quoting is legend? Folklore. With no proven basis of scientific fact."

  He thrust his chair back, violently, arose, stared at me, incredulously. He spoke, with effort: "You still hold that the devil-work we witnessed can be explained in terms of the science you know?"

  I stirred, uncomfortably: "I did not say that, Ricori. I do say that Madame Mandilip was as extraordinary a hypnotist as she was a murderess—a mistress of illusion—"

  He interrupted me, hands clenching the table's edge: "You think her dolls were illusions?"

  I answered, obliquely: "You know how real was that illusion of a beautiful body. Yet we saw it dissolve in the true reality of the flames. It had seemed as veritable as the dolls, Ricori—"

  Again he interrupted me: "The stab in my heart… the doll that killed Gilmore… the doll that murdered Braile… the blessed doll that slew the witch! You call them illusions?"

  I answered, a little sullenly, the old incredulity suddenly strong within me: "It is entirely possible that, obeying a post-hypnotic command of the doll-maker, you, yourself, thrust the dagger-pin into your own heart! It is possible that obeying a similar command, given when and where and how I do not know, Peters' sister, herself, killed her husband. The chandelier fell on Braile when I was, admittedly, under the influence of those same post-hypnotic influences—and it is possible that it was a sliver of glass that cut his carotid. As for the doll-maker's own death, apparently at the hands of the Walters doll, well, it is also possible that the abnormal mind of Madame Mandilip was, at times, the victim of the same illusions she induced in the minds of others. The doll-maker was a mad genius, governed by a morbid compulsion to surround herself with the effigies of those she had killed by the unguent. Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, carried constantly with her the embalmed hearts of a dozen or more lovers who had died for her. She had not slain those men—but she knew she had been the cause of their deaths as surely as though she had strangled them with her own hands. The psychological principle involved in Queen Marguerite's collection of hearts and Madame Mandilip's collection of dolls is one and the same."

  He had not sat down; still in that strained voice he repeated: "I asked you if you called the killing of the witch an illusion."

  I said: "You make it very uncomfortable for me, Ricori—staring at me like that… and I am answering your question. I repeat it is possible that in her own mind she was at times the victim of the same illusions she induced in the minds of others. That at times she, herself, thought the dolls were alive. That in this strange mind was conceived a hatred for the doll of Walters. And, at the last, under the irritation of our attack, this belief reacted upon her. That thought was in my mind when, a while ago, I said it was curious that you should speak of the dark wisdom turning against those who possessed it. She tormented the doll; she expected the doll to avenge itself if it had the opportunity. So strong was this belief, or expectation, that when the favorable moment arrived, she dramatized it. Her thought became action! The doll-maker, like you, may well have plunged the dagger-pin into her own throat—"

  "You fool!"

  The words came from Ricori's mouth—and yet it was so like Madame Mandilip speaking in her haunted room and speaking through the dead lips of Laschna that I dropped back into my chair, shuddering.

  Ricori was leaning over the table. His black eyes were blank, expressionless. I cried out, sharply, a panic shaking me: "Ricori—wake—"

  The dreadful blankness in his eyes flicked away; their gaze sharpened, was intent upon me. He said, again in his own voice:

  "I am awake, I am so awake—that I will listen to you no more! Instead—listen, you to me, Dr. Lowell. I say to you—to hell with your science! I tell you this—that beyond the curtain of the material at which your vision halts, there are forces and energies that hate us, yet which God in his inscrutable wisdom permits to be. I tell you that these powers can reach through the veil of matter and become manifest in creatures like the doll-maker. It is so! Witches and sorcerers hand in hand with evil! It is so! And there are powers friendly to us which make themselves manifest in their chosen ones.

  "I say to you—Madame Mandilip was an accursed witch! An instrument of the evil powers! Whore of Satan! She burned as a witch should burn in hell—forever! I say to you that the little nurse was an instrument of the good powers. And she is happy today in Paradise—as she shall be forever!"

  He was silent, trembling with his own fervor. He touched my shoulder:

  "Tell me, Dr. Lowell—tell me as truthfully as though you stood before the seat of God, believing in Him as I believe—do those scientific explanations of yours truly satisfy you?"

  I answered, very quietly:

  "No, Ricori."

  Nor do they.