Dead Trees

by Brent Saltzman

  There was a squeak and Hopkins felt a small prick of pain. When he looked down, he saw a large gray rat scurry out from between his feet and make its way to the corner of the room, where a figure stood in the darkness.

  “Who are you?!” Hopkins yelled into the shadows as he examined his arm in the spot where the rat had bit him.

  There was already a red rash forming.

  “I can be whatever you want me to be,” came a female voice that Hopkins immediately recognized. “That’s what people do, right? They see what they want to see? They believe what they want to believe?”

  The figure stepped forward, into the ray of moonlight that streamed in from the fractured ceiling. Rebecca West, with that sweet smile of hers, stared down Hopkins, who suddenly felt even sicker.

  “You…” he whispered. “You stole my journal.”

  “I’d hardly call it a journal.” Rebecca chuckled. “More like a prop. To get people to see what you wanted them to see. Dunking. Pissing in bottles. Shoes in chimneys. You were making all of this up as you went along, pretending it was in some book.” She shook her head. “You clever son of a bitch.”

  Hopkins smirked. “You caught me.”

  “You got smart, too.” Rebecca smiled. “The trick with the priest, John Lowes. You held on to the winch and kept him above the water, then slowly lowered him down until he confessed. And you got away with it because no one was looking at you.”

  “I actually feel bad about the priest,” Hopkins said. “But I needed to send a message to your friend, John Gaule. I’d say one life was worth the cost.” Hopkins started to feel woozy. He looked down at the rat bite on his arm. Something very strange was happening to it…it seemed to be changing shape right before his eyes.

  “I know a thing or two about feeling bad about killing,” Rebecca West said. “I do still feel a bit guilty about the child...”

  And just like that, everything came into focus. The bite on Hopkins’ arm had formed the shape of a six-ended star. An asterisk.

  Just like what had been seen on John Rivet’s child.

  And on Henry Reade.

  And on his own father.

  “You!” Hopkins exclaimed, feeling faint. “It was you! Your rat killed the Rivet child!”

  “Hey, hey, I didn’t ask him to do anything. He was foraging, and the child scared him with his cries. Most healthy people are strong enough to fight off the infection that comes with his bite. Henry Reade was young and strong. It vanished after a day.” The rat climbed up on her shoulder. She pet it gently. “But an infant is too weak to fight.”

  Hopkins felt his legs give out beneath him. He fell to the floor, crawling on his stomach, struggling to breathe.

  Rebecca West knelt down in front of him. “You really are a pathetic creature, you know?”

  “Fuck you, witch!” Dribble had begun to fall from Hopkins’ mouth.

  Rebecca shrugged. “Don’t be silly. Witches use magic. I prefer something in between.”

  “Henry Reade…my father…how did you…”

  “Mine isn’t the only rat in the world nor does it have the only infectious bites.” Rebecca laughed. “Or perhaps there are some who are just angry Familiars, now lost because their host witches have been killed by one Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General.”

  “You’re lying…you’re a witch…”

  Rebecca smiled. She reached down and tilted Hopkins’ weakened head up so she could meet his gaze. “A great man once told me that there is no more dangerous combination than ego and ignorance.”

  As she spoke, the walls seemed to slowly start to come to life. There appeared to be movement behind them. And sounds. Hopkins thought he was hallucinating.

  Rebecca continued, “And you, Mr. Hopkins, are the living embodiment of both. All of this world’s evils are caused by men like you. Ones who believe that this is their world and that we must follow by their rules. But I have something to tell you, Mr. Hopkins.”

  Rebecca leaned forward as Hopkins struggled for breath. She closed her eyes and kissed him on the forehead. “This is not your world.”

  Squeaks emanated from the walls. Then, like a deluge, dozens, if not hundreds of rats emerged from the rotting wood of the inn and began to converge on Matthew Hopkins.

  “It’s mine.”

  Rebecca stood and watched with a cold gaze as Matthew Hopkins was swallowed by the sea of rats. His screams were muffled and he writhed and struggled. She jammed her foot onto the back of his neck and held him in place as the rodents went to work, chomping off pieces of flesh, bit by bit, wearing the man down to a skeleton.

  “And I intend to do with it as I please, Mr. Hopkins,” Rebecca said as she removed her foot from the writhing mass of creatures below her. She couldn’t even see Hopkins anymore. He was trapped beneath a hundred rats, screaming as they picked away at his body.

  Rebecca West didn’t want to watch the man end. She left the room and closed the door, hearing his screams slowly fade as she descended the stairs of the inn and walked out. By the time she stepped outside, she could hear nothing but the rain hammering the inn. She opened her hands and dropped some chunks of spare bait on the ground. Almost immediately, rats began to emerge from the ground to feast.

  He will die thinking I’m a witch.

  Skipping happily toward her horse, Rebecca climbed on and then let it take her down the road, away from Manningtree. She sang as her horse galloped through the foggy countryside that, even in the summer, was dotted with the remnants of dead trees.

  “The enemy threw him over, for on the deck he died. It was here the man drifted, with the flow of the tide. And sank to the bottom, of the Lowland Sea. Because he refused to give up, his Golden Vanity.”

  About the Author

  Brent Saltzman was born on July 29, 1988 in Fairfax, VA. He graduated from Radford University in 2011.