HEX

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

  Steve looked at his son and grabbed his hand. It could have been Tyler up there on trial. He could entertain all the fantasies he wanted about floating down the Hudson with his son, but if he didn’t appreciate what was at stake now, he might well forfeit his chances. So Steve leaned back … and said nothing.

  The rest of the trial passed by in a haze. Mr. Şayer made an emotional appeal. His house had already been destroyed; could they at least show mercy for his son? He spoke about building bridges and getting past ethnic differences. He spoke about humanity and decency. He spoke with a heavy accent and was dragged away by enraged onlookers as he wouldn’t stop speaking. A fight broke out, and Mr. Walker tore himself loose from its core, threatening to go to the media if they went ahead with their punishment. But neither the menacing looks of the townsfolk nor the councilman with his Doodletown were needed to reveal the obvious: that Mr. Walker was a broken man who would resign himself to the situation. And wasn’t there a hint of acceptance on his face? If it had been someone else’s son, he would have voted in favor.

  Griselda Holst also objected in tears. She was given the most time because the townsfolk liked her the most. Still, Steve understood it was just a formality and wouldn’t make a bit of difference. The people smelled blood and were eager to vote. The butcher’s wife reminded the crowd of Jaydon’s tragic history of abuse by his father and the emotional damage that had caused this atrocity, and she concluded with a plea to let her Jaydon be treated rather than punished. “Please, dear friends. We know each other, right? Don’t you all come to see me every week to buy your steaks? Your hamburgers? Your veal cutlets? Your chicken wings? Your pâté?”

  “Get that woman out of here before she starts listing the whole fucking meat department!” some smart-ass shouted. It was a tasteless joke, but the comedian got what he wanted: Griselda was led away, weeping uncontrollably.

  It was finally time to vote. The councilman asked all those in favor of the sentence to raise their right hands. Many hands went into the air, including those of three Council members. Then Mathers asked everyone who opposed the sentence to raise their right hands. Steve raised his hand high … and to his enormous relief he again saw many hands in the air. And now, too, there were three Council members among them—including Robert Grim, of course. Steve felt a spark of hope. The vote had been indecisive. It was impossible to tell which held the majority. That meant that a large group had had the common sense to silently turn away from this mockery, thank God.

  While the written vote was being prepared, Grim took the floor once again: “Folks, don’t be stupid. I know this is what the Emergency Decree says, but it’s a joke. Keep this in mind: If the moment ever comes that we are freed from Katherine’s curse, will you be able to look each other in the eye with this on your conscience? Will you be able to dance around the church and sing, ‘Ding-dong! The witch is dead,’ if there’s blood on your hands? Please be sensible!”

  Then began the endless, shuffling procession past the podium, where four packs of printer paper had been ripped out of their packaging, and people were given felt-tips to write down an anonymous “yea” or “nay.” Because they were up front, Steve, Jocelyn, and Tyler were among the first voters. Steve dropped his makeshift ballot into the voting box—the same box that had been used only a week earlier for the presidential elections. Last week they had been voting for who would get the key to the White House for the next four years, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. It was an absurd link with a reality that Black Spring had completely lost sight of.

  It took at least an hour before everyone, including those who had trouble walking, those in wheelchairs, and those who had been waiting in the cloakroom and up on the balcony, had voted. The sorting and counting of the ballots by Council members took another twenty minutes. Steve lost sight of Jocelyn, Tyler, and the VanderMeers and had never felt so miserable and alone, despite the fact that many townspeople grabbed hold of him and wanted to know exactly how events had unfolded. At a certain point he became aware of a sudden, hyperreal image: The people around him not only resembled but actually were people of yore, wearing rags that stank of mud and disease. If he were to walk outside, Deep Hollow Road would be a cart track, the bell in the steeple of an ancient nearby church would be chiming, and the year would be 1664.

  Steve was both relieved and dead tired when Colton Mathers finally asked for order in the hall. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. I shall test your patience no longer. With one thousand three hundred thirty-two votes for and six hundred seventeen against, the demanded sentence has been accepted.”

  A shock wave of horror shuddered through Memorial Hall as people realized how many of their neighbors and friends, in the safety of anonymity, had been seduced by sensationalism and gut feelings. There was cheering and there was anger, there were those who cried and those who screamed for a rebellion, but most were satisfied that justice had been done.

  The councilman continued: “The sentence will be carried out this coming Thursday at the place of the traditional All Hallows Burning, at the intersection of Deep Hollow Road and Lower Reservoir Road. It is the duty and responsibility of each and every one of you to witness the sentencing. I therefore suggest that we set the time at the first light of dawn, to reduce the impact on the public order and your own work schedules. Let us pray that we learn a lesson from all of this and put this mutiny behind us once and for all. Lord, our Father…”

  Mathers led them in prayer, and most of the community joined in. These were people who had known each other all their lives, who respected each other and loved each other in their own peculiar ways, as they usually did in small upstate towns. But Steve noticed that they had all undergone a radical change. He felt it even more strongly when they slunk away a little while later, silently and with averted eyes. A resignation had fallen over the townsfolk that Steve found even more uncanny than the earlier tension.

  They looked like people who knew they had done something dreadful, something irreversible … and something they could easily live with.

  TWENTY-ONE

  BLACK SPRING PREPARED for execution of the sentence as if it were a holiday. The original seventeenth-century cat-o’-nine-tails was taken out of the display case in the Town Hall’s small Council Chamber. It was a fine specimen: a nicely decorated rod with nine leather cords, each one two feet long with a knot at the halfway point and little lead balls at the far end. The instrument had not been used since 1932. Colton Mathers brought it to Dinnie’s Shoe Repair especially for the occasion and instructed her to impregnate the leather with oiled wax so it could stand up to vigorous lashes without snapping.

  Theo Stackhouse, who had been a garage owner and car mechanic the week before, eagerly accepted the office of town executioner and was summoned to the stables of the councilman’s estate on Wednesday night. He practiced first on a leather saddle, to master the art of flogging, and then on a floundering, bound calf, to prepare himself for the reflex of living flesh. That night before he went to bed he took two Advils for the intense aches in his upper arm, but despite the pain, he slept like a baby.

  Griselda Holst didn’t sleep at all that night. Even though her own flesh and blood was about to become the center of attention, she felt overwhelmed by a sense of submission. And she was not alone: All the people of Black Spring seemed to have succumbed to the same resignation. If he hadn’t been too painfully attached to the matter, Pete VanderMeer, as a sociologist, might have drawn similarities with countries in which people willingly submit to Sharia law. It was precisely for this reason that no one would stand up in protest or notify the authorities. Even those who had voted against the sentence thought perhaps it was all for the best. They just wanted to get it over with so they could get on with their lives.

  So instead of worrying about Jaydon’s fate, Griselda spent the night praying to Katherine. On her bare knees, on the little rug beside her bed, she asked for forgiveness for her apostasy. As penance, she tried to chastise herself by
whipping her back with Jaydon’s belt. But it all felt a bit clumsy and awkward and as soon as it really began to hurt Griselda thought, This is not my thing, and stopped.

  If instead of going through all that hassle she had been looking out the window, she would have seen her son, Justin Walker, and Burak Şayer being silently escorted through the cemetery by nine burly men. The accused were led into Crystal Meth Church, where they went down the same circular stairway that Griselda had taken so often to keep Arthur Roth alive. In the vaults, Colton Mathers read the sentence aloud. At first the boys thought he must be joking, but soon the screaming began—first startled, then frightened, then hysterical. It was a hideous screaming, a bone-chilling expression of pure human suffering and desperation. And as soon as the door had been shut with a bang, they found themselves alone underground with the dead of the surrounding graveyard, and it seemed as if the dead were screaming with them.

  The screaming woke the owls. It woke the weasels.

  And somewhere in Black Spring, the witch stopped whispering … and listened.

  The next morning, November 15, people began arriving before daybreak to assure themselves of a good spot. Just like at the Wicker Burning two weeks earlier, the intersection was blocked with crowd barriers that were placed in a circle around the wooden scaffold. The scaffold itself had been built by Clyde Willingham’s construction company: a six-foot-high platform, nine feet square, with something on it that looked like an A-frame swing made of wooden trestles. The crowds gathered far out into the rainy narrow streets around the intersection. It was typical overcast New York weather and they all wore ponchos and rain hoods that glistened in the light of the streetlamps, but they were considerate enough to leave their umbrellas at home in order to keep from blocking the view. Sue’s Highland Diner did a brisk business selling steaming coffee and cocoa from an outdoor stand to ease the pain of waiting. Those lucky enough to have friends living in nearby houses sat high and dry at upstairs windows. Many of the old and rich had gathered in the rooms of The Point to Point Inn, which had been made available at criminal hourly rates to compensate for the necessity of transferring Outsiders to out-of-town accommodations.

  Of course Robert Grim was in charge of the practical implementation of all of this. He had hermetically sealed off the town on all sides, put up fencing, and posted voluntary patrol officers at the borders. It was tricky, but with careful planning, the roads only had to be closed off for one hour before the first flush of rose began bleeding into the east. As all retailers had been ordered by the Council to reschedule or cancel Outside services, the roadblocks went almost unnoticed, and only a few cars had to be turned away.

  Robert Grim was disgusted. He was disgusted by all of it. He was disgusted by the people and their hypocritical, disguised lust for blood. He was disgusted by their opportunism and their treachery. He was disgusted by Mathers, by the executioner, by Katherine, and by the boys who had stoned her. And he was disgusted by himself, because he didn’t have the guts to stand up to this disgusting circus.

  At a few minutes past 6:30, the big moment finally arrived. Out of Crystal Meth Church proceeded the court, through the cordoned-off alley across Temple Hill Cemetery to the scaffold. Up front was Colton Mathers, imposing and severe, flanked by the two Council members who had voted in favor of the sentence. They were closely followed by a group of security guards led by Rey Darrel. Jaydon Holst, Justin Walker, and Burak Şayer were brutally dragged forward in iron chains, as inhumanely as they themselves had driven the witch a few days earlier. Their upper bodies were stripped bare, and panic was written all over their faces. Behind a second group of security guards the executioner rounded off the parade wearing a ceremonial hood to cover his face, although everyone knew who he was.

  There was no cheering. There was no uproar. There was only an uneasy, doubtful murmur that rose from the crowd. Now that the moment they all had been waiting for had finally come, now that they were able to see with their own eyes the monsters who had stoned Katherine, they all seemed to suddenly remember that, despite the terrible charges, these were also human beings, two of them still children—human beings they had lived with and with whom they would be forced to live in the years to come. Eagerness gave way to shame, excitement to uncertainty. Only when the procession reached the crowd standing at the bronze statue of the washerwoman, someone yelled “Murderers!”, and a number of no-brain cretins began to throw large pinecones at the prisoners did the crowd dare to look up … pale, but with glistening eyes.

  Now they had a show to watch and they didn’t have to reflect upon themselves.

  Screaming, the boys tried to dodge the pinecones, which left nasty marks on their naked skin. One of the security guards took a hit on the cheekbone. Without a moment’s hesitation, he and two others threw themselves onto the agitators to douse the fire before it spread.

  Farther on, at least forty yards back on the east side of the intersection, Steve, Jocelyn, Tyler, and Matt stood facing the spectacle. Not much of the disturbance reached them at that distance, but they did sense the unrest, which was rippling through the crowd like rings in water. Steve and Jocelyn had had an all-out fight. Immediately after the vote on Tuesday night, Jocelyn had taken Tyler home because the boy couldn’t take it any longer. She’d blamed Steve for not taking the initiative. Moreover, she was categorically opposed to having Matt attend the flogging. She had screamed at Steve—actually screamed—and Steve had screamed back that she had forbidden him to step up when the moment had been right for it. Now the sentence had been passed and all parents were obliged to bring children age ten and up to witness the frightening example being set. Skipping duty was a no-go.

  Steve was hurt, but he understood that Jocelyn’s anger and distress had to do with the situation. As she couldn’t fight that, she turned on him.

  Judging by the faces in the crowd, we’re probably not the only household in Black Spring where the dishes were flying through the kitchen yesterday.

  And so he threw his arms around his family and pulled them close, and he prayed—not to God, but to common sense—that they would get through this one way or another.

  Jaydon, Burak, and Justin were led onto the scaffold. Wild with fear, their eyes raced over the crowds for a last way out, a last hope, a last trace of humanity. The guards tossed the chains—locked to their wrists with tie wraps—over the wooden A-frame, and pulled the other ends so far down that the boys were forced to raise their arms up in the air and stand on their toes. Then they linked the chains to the railing and left the scaffold, exposing the prisoners to the crowd. Their wiry bodies were pale and blue in the cold air, their jutting rib cages wet with rain. Three all-American boys in sneakers and jeans, hanging like animal cadavers in the slaughterhouse.

  The Crystal Meth carillon began to play. The people in Highland Mills and Highland Falls would have thought there was an early morning funeral going on. The carillon played, and at the crossroads Jaydon screamed, “People, you’re not going to let this happen, are you?” He had purple hypothermic blotches on his cheeks, and saliva flew from his lips. “What kind of fucking freaks are you? Please, do something, while you still can!”

  But the crowd was unrelentingly silent as the executioner climbed up the scaffold.

  With long slow steps he circled the condemned, the rod of the cat-o’-nine-tails in his right hand and the lead-tipped leather cords in his left. The hood with its holes and his muscular build made him look like a hideous vision from a horror flick. Justin tried to scramble away from the mask like a frightened animal, but he only swung on his chains, legs kicking in a jig, and his wailing could be heard in the distant streets. Burak spat at the mask, but the executioner didn’t flinch and kept on going. With a yank of both hands he snapped the leather tails tight, making a threatening whipping sound that resounded through the crowd.

  And Jaydon spoke to the mask, so softly that even the people in the first row couldn’t hear, only the executioner himself. He said, “Theo, please. Do
n’t do this.”

  And in that one brief moment that he faced his executioner, that moment of utter darkness that would remain with him forever, he knew it wasn’t Theo behind the mask, but a torturer from bygone years, Katherine’s year; a torturer whose name and face he didn’t know and never would, because when this was over, when the mask came off, it would be 2012 again.

  The executioner walked around behind him.

  The carillon played.

  People licked their lips.

  People shut their eyes.

  People prayed.

  The cat-o’-nine-tails was raised.

  With brutal, terrible lashes that reverberated against the surrounding buildings, the naked backs of the three boys were flogged. The nine knotted tails sliced through their skin, and like claws the lead balls sank into their flesh. The second lash already drew blood. The boys screamed their lungs out in sounds that were unearthly and animalistic, like pigs being flayed alive with blunt knives. One by one the flogger went past them, one by one the cat-o’-nine-tails ripped them open, one by one that dreadful, excruciating pain, with no time to recover, to gasp for breath, to plead for release.

  The sound of the flogging rang out over the crowd, who looked on in terror. Each of them felt the lashes as if they had landed on their own skin. They rang out through the whole region, through the valley and down the river to the south. They caused molecules in the air to whirl for miles around. Even if you had held your ear against the metal skeleton of the Bear Mountain Bridge that morning you would have sensed the tremor of the lashes, as delicate as the flapping of butterfly wings. Yet nobody did, as nobody knew what was going on in Black Spring. The people in the daily rush-hour traffic between the towns of Highland and Peekskill were listening to WJGK and WPKF. On the road, on their way, on their phones, eating commuter breakfast bagels from paper bags. America was waking up. Good morning, America.