Hexenhaus

by Nikki McWatters

  To my great distress, the evidence given by the leading medical practitioner was convincing and the ripple of assent through the crowd testified that he had persuaded them, at least, that the girl was suffering not from a worldly disorder but a supernatural one.

  ‘I have seen naught like it in all my years and with all my extensive experience,’ he told the room.

  The Reverend James Brisbane gave his evidence of having witnessed the strange behaviour of the girl almost from the beginning until it stopped recently when each of the seven accused were imprisoned. He described it as very demonic and unnatural behaviour. He produced a handful of the pins and hair as evidence, and speaking as a man of the cloth with fire and brimstone at his disposal, he roused an emotional and passionate plea to the good and pious folk of Paisley and those from outer Renfrewshire, telling them that he had never felt more in the presence of true evil than he had during this case.

  On the heels of Brisbane’s delirious rant, a minister delivered a fiery sermon to the commission, which was common enough during a trial of witchcraft. He spoke with emphasis about the clear and unarguable presence of the witches’ marks on the bodies of the accused. He gave the examples of myself and my mark between my back blades and Agnes Naismith who had two: one each on her right arm and leg. I felt myself blush as they discussed my body so openly.

  James Robertson called two other doctors to the stand and questioned them until they admitted that there may have been more natural explanations for such marks and for a moment I felt a tingle of hope.

  But with a sinking heart I listened as the commission gave the final word to the preacher.

  ‘These doctors may say such and such things of these witches’ marks. The truth, however, is that we know not upon what ground they came to be. It may be that the doctors have been budded and bribed to say such things.’

  The people in the stalls let out a storm of applause at the clergyman’s words and had to be brought to silence once more. I looked about the faces, searching for any jot of sympathy or doubt at the charges but I found none and could not see John who had been swallowed up by the crowd. The room was filled with superstitious anger, a bonfire lit by the clergyman’s fuse.

  The head of the commission called Christian Shaw, who walked to the witness box alone and with her head held high. She answered the questions gently delivered to her with grace and poise and spoke well. She was adamant that she had been visited by the accused in spirit form, all of whom had begged her to kill her newborn sibling and demanded that she deny her baptism. She explained that her faith in God had given her the strength to resist the demands. I noted that the girl’s eyes were occasionally given to drifting toward the Reverend Brisbane for encouragement. It was overt and despicable. The child was clearly his puppet and with my eyes I implored for my defence to address this and the pamphlet from Salem that had been read to the girl before all the nonsense began. He stayed silent and would not meet my eyes but delivered another nervous look toward John at the back of the room.

  As the girl left the stand and walked back to her seat she shot one small penetrating look at me. I held it for a moment and examined it. I was absolutely sure that the tiny gem of a look contained a grain of remorse, a peppercorn of guilt, and I knew in that kernel of a moment that Christian Shaw was trapped in a game from which she could not escape. The girl knew in her heart that I was not a witch. She knew I was innocent!

  The day was long and hard and hot. Testimonies were read. The three children, Elizabeth Anderson and the two Lindsay boys, did not appear but their loose-tongued and foolish testimonies were read to the rapt audience. They told of flying through the air, eating babies’ livers, making wax effigies and sticking pins into them. The fury and anger and hysteria was thumping like a panicked heartbeat in the room and by the close of the day I felt that there could only be one outcome, one verdict. With such hostility poisoning the proceedings and every little lie compounding another, the contest was anything but even. Not one of us accused was permitted to speak in defence of ourselves.

  The final address from the prosecution came with a tail of fire, like a comet, always an ill omen.

  ‘To the jury we say that if you acquit these defendants you will be an accessory to all the blasphemies, apostasies, murders, tortures and seductions whereof these enemies of Heaven and earth shall hereafter be guilty when they get out.’

  The crowd began to holler and whoop and the tipstaff banged his rod on the wooden floor loudly, stopping proceedings and threatening to have them all arrested if they did not maintain silence. Once they had settled back to a rustling calm, the defence gave a lame summation of his case. He was putting no backbone or any muscle into the chore. As I knew that John was wallowing in new wealth and could have outbid any bribe the man was offered, this was unsettling. He had not bought my freedom and I had the sinking feeling that he had not even shared the pamphlet evidence with the defence counsel.

  The jury of fifteen, a simple mix of local villagers, left the room to confer. It was late afternoon, warm and airless in the crowded courtroom and as the jury filed back in within a small fist of minutes, giving a group nod to the men sitting on the commission, a still and expectant hush fell over the room. There had been little or no deliberation. It would be a unanimous and uncontested verdict.

  I found John’s face, framed between the shoulders of two other men at the rear of the room, and our eyes met. A cage full of his loyal supporters, those who had kept his name and identity a secret, even under torture, stood awaiting their fate. We were proud Jacobites who had not been broken down. Only the very innocent Margaret Lang was free of that secret charge. Did John feel any shudder of guilt, I wondered? Did he feel responsible for any of what had befallen us? Did our loyalty mean anything to him? Did I mean anything to him or was he in the court, not to support us but to be certain that none of us broke down and named him as our own ‘grim leader’? Was he simply there to ensure that his own flesh was safe from the execution pyre? Although I did not want it to be so, the brutal truth taunted me and left me feeling like a foolish girl who had been used as a plaything and was now a body shield, a sacrifice, to ward off the attention from himself. He had betrayed my heart with such cruelty that it made the tortures I had endured in the Tollbooth pale.

  I watched the members of the jury take their place as one of them went to the Laird Blantyre to deliver the verdict. Not one eye or face turned toward us, the accused, trembling in the dock, and that’s when I knew for sure. I held onto Margaret’s hand, my bladder filling with terror as the verdict came down in a booming voice.

  ‘All of the accused. Guilty. Of all charges. And in accordance with the law they are hereby sentenced to be executed by being hanged and burned on the Gallow Green on June tenth of this year 1697 of our Lord between the times of two and four in the afternoon.’

  There was nothing. Cold. I saw John Erskine slip out through the heavy double doors, giving a nod to the guard who saluted him as a nobleman and I felt myself dry retch, bending double, producing nothing more than acidic spit. I knew then for certain that I had made a mistake in loving John Erskine, Earl of Mar.

  PAISLEY

  BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, PRESENT DAY

  These days I hear whispers or imagine them wherever I go, particularly at school. Ben and I are lying on the cool grass on the oval, forehead to forehead, sharing snappy little kisses and whispers, ignoring the tittering of other students walking by. Stuff them. I look at them and know that they are all rallying together on social media to post evil, cruel rubbish about my mother and me. I see the smirks and know they’ve seen the image of the broomsticks. Everyone knows and many of them are contributing and making up more gossip. As fast as Dad manages to shut one post down, another pops up like a bad case of warts. Most people think it’s funny. I don’t.

  ‘So she was totally chill with it?’ Ben asks again, still not quite believing my answer.


  ‘Not exactly chill,’ I smile, ‘but she was really just grateful that none of us were hurt and that the house didn’t get burned to the ground. There wasn’t too much damage and loss, all up.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad they’ve charged Liam. He had that coming,’ Ben says, rolling over and looking up at the grey sky. ‘And while he made bail like the others, he’s nearly eighteen so he’ll be facing a full-on sentence if found guilty.’

  ‘Apparently Lara has admitted to setting up one of the sicko Facebook sites and the police talked to her parents,’ I tell him. ‘Mind you, I only heard that from someone who told someone else so that might be gossip, too. It’s awful how everyone jumps in anonymously to have a bash at me and Mum. It’s such a lame and cowardly thing to do.’

  The bell screeches from the loudspeakers and a collective groan from the student body shows that it’s time for the afternoon session. As I brush the grass from the back of my skirt, the first rain appears as a soft drizzle.

  Lara and Liam are sitting in the back row of the class and Ben and I sit at the front as close to Mr Hogan’s desk as possible. We figure being in the teacher’s direct gaze might offer us some meagre protection from the wrath of the evil duo.

  Chairs scrape on the wood and the zippers on bags add a melodious percussion section.

  It’s biology and we’re studying the lifecycle of an oak tree. Really? I am going to have to be armed with this information when I’m a bona fide adult? Why? Ben and I sit close enough that his long thigh is touching mine.

  When Em asked me earlier today how my mother was coping and whether she’d had a nice weekend away in Terrigal, I’d given her a short answer and I think she knew I was editing. The truth is – and it’s disturbing, though not in an awful way, just in a warily uncomfortable way – my mother, acting more like the teenager, as usual, had snuck off to Terrigal for a romantic getaway with my father. Yes. My father and mother. Together. It just sent me to mental places I did not want to go. Parents going away for a mini-break was as normal as cereal for breakfast. Emily’s parents had just vacationed in Hawaii. But my parents were not a unit, they were like twin-share, not a double. And they’d done it behind my back.

  After Mum returned and we’d sorted out the shop, cleaning up and dealing with the police paperwork, she had sat me down in the kitchen, always the kitchen table, and explained the situation. It was the first time since preschool that my mother had even vaguely resembled something akin to a parental authority figure. Of course she had to tell me because I’d busted her when I rang Dad after the drama. She explained that she and Dad were taking tentative steps toward some kind of reconciliation. They didn’t want to tell me until they were sure there was a shot that it might work out. They didn’t want to get my hopes up.

  Now, to be honest, they have tickets on themselves because it has never ever occurred to me that my parents could or even should get back together again. I have never fantasised about it. I have never ever given it a second thought.

  ‘But you are chalk and cheese.’ I’d shaken my head incredulously at Mum. ‘I can’t imagine two more incompatible people. I’ve heard that opposites attract but this is ridiculous … you’re almost separate species. A Nordic stormtrooper and a rainbow-coloured Celtic unicorn?’

  ‘Nice analogy, Paise,’ she had laughed. ‘But he’s melted a bit, the old ice man, and frankly I’m not as ethereal and air-headed as you like to make out.’

  But I hadn’t told Emily because, firstly, it felt too weird to say out loud and, secondly, after lying in my bed last night watching the silver lines of moonlight on my bedroom walls, seeping through the venetian blinds, with Ben Digby never far from my thoughts, I was captured by the sheer romance of the idea. Star-crossed lovers, separated by the life of the seventeen-year-old daughter they shared. He, Paul Muller, melting down from his ice statue persona and she, Kirsten McLeod, letting her mermaid tail grow legs to walk on solid ground. As I’d drifted off to sleep I’d let the crazy rom-com parent movie filter through my dreams and I’d woken up feeling strangely refreshed by the possible reunion.

  ‘Lara! Liam!’ Mr Hogan hollers down the classroom, his voice hitting the far wall and ricocheting back over our heads toward him like a verbal boomerang. ‘What are you fussing about? Focus and shut up and sit down.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I hear Lara yammering. ‘It’s revolting. Oh yuck. Oh no.’

  Everyone in the room turns around to see leggy Lara undoing the buttons on her blouse, and Liam is standing beside her, lifting his school shirt to show off a chiselled set of abs.

  ‘We’re not in gym, guys,’ Hogan sighs. ‘If you want to get naked do it on your own time. It might be biology but this is ridiculous.’

  Ignoring the teacher, Lara continues to hop on the spot, clawing at herself while making yelping noises.

  ‘I’ll be disfigured,’ she begins to cry. ‘It’s so itchy. Gross.’

  Hogan strides purposefully down the aisle and, stopping in front of them, hands on hips, begins speaking in a low voice to the pair. They stay there for a minute or two while the rest of us shrug and roll our eyes and laugh behind fists.

  Lara and Liam, looking distressed, pick up their schoolbags and walk to the front of the class with Mr Hogan who turns to address us using his well-worn superlative projection.

  ‘Miss McDermont and Mr Chandling appear to have contracted some kind of rash. It looks to me a little bit like chicken pox,’ he tells us. ‘It’s quite nasty and it might be highly contagious so, you two, Liam and Lara, off to the office. Get your scabby bodies out of my classroom.’

  He’s being funny. Hogan’s like that. Everyone is laughing now. The idea of Liam and Lara covered in an unsightly rash is kind of funny. Lara looks devastated and I can see that even in the minutes since class started the spots are coming up on her face. I laugh a little to myself and with wide eyes she points a wavering finger at me.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she gasps. ‘It was you. You pointed that thing at us the other day and now we’ve got some random skin disease. Just like that. You hexed us. You did this, you little freak!’

  I look at Ben and we explode into laughter and put our heads into folded arms on the desk, but I look back up and both Lara and Liam are looking at me with sheer terror. In this very moment I think they actually believe I did something to them.

  At home I tell my mother the story and it’s one of the few times I’ve seen her laugh, really laugh, since this whole ordeal began. The idea of me casting a spell to infect my tormentors with something spotty is just so randomly medieval.

  ‘So what’s happening with Dad, then?’ I ask her, wanting every single update now that I know what’s going on. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing. You’ve been really traumatised and he’s lost his wife and kid to some Frenchman. You’re both vulnerable right now and, well … I don’t want you rushing into anything. I don’t want you to get hurt again, Mum.’

  ‘Who’s the adult here?’ she pouts.

  ‘Well, that’s been a very fluid arrangement since I was about five,’ I lob back at her. It might actually be nice to hand the baton to my father for a while because I’ve got other things on my mind. For example, Ben Digby, who has ear-wormed into my brain and sits there like a goofy obsession, and then there is the Winter Solstice Festival.

  ‘I’ve filled nearly all the stall places now,’ I tell Mum. ‘The publicity is set to go and the four of us are doing an interview on the local radio station and, oh … yes … we’ve booked a band for one night at the local showground and Brent’s dad knows a pyrotechnician so we might even have some fireworks. Cool, hey?’

  ‘You are the best, Paisley,’ she says and gives me a big hug. ‘I love you to pieces. This is going to be wonderful but I can’t stop thinking about the Hooper boy. I hope he’s okay. I’ve done some rituals and, deep down, I know he’s all right. I just know it.’

  While I cook dinner
, my mother takes advantage of the afternoon rain and pulls her hair up into a ponytail on her head, dons a pair of purple gumboots and her polka-dot gardening gloves and goes to weed the herb garden. I watch the grey sky begin to curdle into night as I stir artichokes into the buckwheat pasta on the stove.

  Later that night I lie in bed, listening to the patter of rain and I wonder where Isaiah is, if he is alive, if he is hiding, if he ran away, jumped off a cliff or whether his parents really did kill him. It’s been a fortnight. They’ve had the dogs out looking for him and his bank account hasn’t been touched, but like all disappearances there have been sightings of him from Byron Bay to Tasmania. The cops try to follow up these leads but they inevitably fray into unlikely tatters. I feel sad that this boy has up and vanished and no one but his parents knows anything about him. He’s the proverbial invisible man. I have spent two years in this little two-horse town and yet Isaiah has never really registered on my radar. The locals never bullied him or excluded him, we just ignored him and I think maybe that’s somehow sadder and more tragic.

  My mother’s business stays shut and I wonder how we’re going to survive.

  The rain soothes me into sleep and I dream that I am flying on a broomstick like the green witch in The Wizard of Oz and I am skywriting in grey smoke ‘Surrender Liam and Lara’, while cackling at the top of my lungs, swooping and diving. And in that strange dream-time fictitious persona, I know, right down to my chalky green bones, that I totally did hex them with that rash.

  I wake to a cool breeze waltzing through the window. With a big smile on my face I lie there, drifting in and out of consciousness beneath the duvet, grateful for the seasonal drop in temperature and listlessly wondering if there’s a spell I could use to make Ben Digby my love slave forever and ever and ever. And maybe another one for my parents. And actually Brent and Emily would make a nice couple as well.