by Wither
It came as a deafening roar. Wither finally raised her face, lifted her hands above her, reaching for the ceiling, but it was too late. Wendy ran full speed toward the window, choking on the clouds of dust rising around her. She raised her padded arm and dove through the window. She felt it burst out before her, prayed a sliver of glass wouldn’t slice through her throat, and heard the tremendous din behind her, then a sound like a sudden explosion before the concussion whumped through the window, blowing the remaining shards of glass out into the night. Wendy rolled down the hill on the far side of the ruined building, carried by her momentum into overgrown bushes. She looked back at the mill and saw that the entire outer wall had followed the collapse of the offices inward, piling tons of brick and mortar on top of the witch.
Minutes later, Frankie found her standing outside the shattered window, staring into the dark interior of the mill as the dust settled. They could make out one long, gnarled black arm protruding from a mountain of rubble. The arm had been severed, crushed paper thin at the shoulder. Black blood spread like crude oil, seeping out from under the stones, collecting motes of dust.
Later they poured gasoline collected from the Gremlin’s ruptured fuel tank through the window, over the pile of stones. When they lit it, another loud whump filled the night. The remaining windows flared golden.
As Frankie put an arm on her friend’s shoulder, Wendy crossed her arms and hugged herself.
She looked down and realized her fingernails had begun to return to normal.
EPILOGUE
The fires raged all night. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the hailstorm’s fury, Engine and Ladder Company Number 14 called in fire companies from neighboring townships to fight the multiple blazes burning throughout Windale. Ipswich’s volunteer firefighters converged on the fire that had engulfed Windale General’s Childbirth Wellness Center; while faraway Salem contributed two pumper trucks to douse the strange woodland bonfire off Old Winthrop Road. (Due to the absence of hydrants so far out of town, the Salem company was forced to draw water from a nearby creek to fight the raging fire.) Meanwhile, Windale’s Company Number 14 concentrated on controlling the blaze threatening city hall and several other municipal buildings. That fire, believed to have been started by power lines felled by the apocalyptic hail, was finally brought under control by 2 a.m., but not before it had claimed one municipal casualty: the historical society’s Witch Museum.
To those refugees of the storm huddling in storefronts and church foyers, the hail had seemed to cease with the stroke of midnight. As the survivors of the Halloween of’99 emerged from their temporary shelters and looked up in wonder at the dissipating clouds, they saw restored to the autumnal sky a scattering of twinkling stars. Dawn was still many hours away on this first day of a new month, hut already they tasted a difference in the air, like the acrid smoke of an extinguished wick, foretelling of an early winter.
At two-thirty in the morning, Windale General welcomed its second miracle of the season. Though several months premature, Hannah Nicole Glazer weighed nearly nine pounds at birth and scored a perfect Apgar. Despite her own injuries, physician Maria Labajo assisted at the delivery.
The miracle infant—who at one time hadn’t been expected to live through her first night—was kept for the first three days of her young life in Windale General’s neonatal unit, where she quickly established herself as the unit’s heartiest resident. By her fourth day she was relocated to a crib adjacent to her mother’s room.
On Hannah Glazer’s fifth day, she welcomed her first visitors. “She’s beautiful,” Art said from Karen’s bedside. He’d come with Abby and the sheriff, who looked uncomfortable on crutches. The little girl clung shyly to the sheriff’s air cast.
Art slipped an arm around Karen’s shoulders. She was surprised to find it felt comfortable there. “She has your eyes,” Art said. Karen looked down at the little bundle squirming sweetly in her arms and said, “No. She has her father’s eyes.”
It was true. Hannah’s eyes were deep and piercingly blue; Karen could see herself reflected in them as the baby studied her, processing Karen’s every expression in puzzled wonderment. She’d been born with a shock of black hair shot through with gray, though the nurses thought this would eventually grow lighter, like her mother’s. “Do you want to see the baby?” Karen offered Abby. The little girl approached the side of the bed gravely. “It’s okay,” Karen said, “You can touch her.”
Abby took the baby’s hand in her own, and showed a rare smile as Hannah’s fingers curled instinctively around her own. The thick, discolored nails of Abb/s right hand had fallen off two days ago, revealing new growth underneath, the cuticles pink and healthy. The sheriff’s wife, Christina, had painted Abby’s other fingernails with bright red polish, but this had already begun chipping as Abby played outside with the sheriff’s two young sons and his six-year-old daughter, who was already looking at Abby as if she were an older sister.
“It’s getting crowded in here,” Maria Labajo said from the doorway to the private room, her arm in a sling.
“Room for one more,” Wendy said, entering the room with an autumn-themed bouquet of flowers, which she set down on the bedside table.
“Thank you, Wendy,” Karen said, squeezing her hand briefly.
Maria Labajo checked to see that the infection in Karen’s arm was responding to the antibiotics she’d prescribed, then that Hannah’s umbilical stump was healing. She tickled the bottom of one of Hannah’s bare feet with her fingertip. The baby kicked vigorously at the air.
Wendy smiled broadly at how healthy the baby seemed.
“You know,” Maria said, “in the Philippines, breech babies are believed to have healing powers.” She leaned over the baby and laughed as Hannah rested one splay-fingered hand on her injured arm in the sling. “Oh yes, this one’s definitely got the Touch!” she said approvingly.
The baby startled at the unfamiliar sound of laughter around her, just one of the million human responses that lay ahead of her to learn. She was still months away from her first voluntary smile, and so she lay there now among these strange beings and gave them the only expression she’d perfected; rapt fascination.
A half hour later, Wendy stood near the nurses’ station, waiting there until Alex’s parents and his sister, Suzanne, took a break from their vigil to get something to eat in the hospital cafeteria. She had felt far too guilty to introduce herself to them.
She entered his room, wearing a green jogging suit, with a diagonal black stripe across the chest. Four days ago, she had lugged her exercise bicycle down to the basement, torn down the wall map of the United States, and traded in her cross-trainers for specialized jogging sneakers, which she wore now.
Alex looked peaceful. His color had returned, but his face was still mottled with bruises. She took his right hand in hers and said, “Hi, Alex. It’s me, again. Wendy. You’re—” She felt his hand squeeze back and she gasped.
When she looked up at his face, his eyes were open and focused on her. “Oh God! Oh God, am I happy to see you!” she said, tears of disbelief streaming down her face. “I—I’ll get a nurse. A doctor!”
“It’s okay,” he said, smiling. “They know. I regained consciousness this morning. I was dozing.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll come back later.”
He held her tight. “No, not yet. I want to look at you for a moment.” He glanced at her outfit. “You’ve taken up jogging?” She nodded. “Doc says I’ll need physical therapy, might even have a slight limp.”
She smiled, wiped away a tear. “So I’ll be able to keep up with you then.”
He chuckled. “That won’t be a problem.”
“Oh,” he said and reached into the bedside table’s drawer. “I have something of yours.” He handed her the bundle of cloth.
She opened the cloth, revealing the man-shaped mandrake root. But when she touched its coarse surface, it crumbled into ash, as if the protective charm had been burnt… or complet
ely used up.
She refolded the cloth carefully, covering the ashes.
Alex took her hand again. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, then smiled again. “Everything’s fine…now?
