I watched the movie The Witch for about the third or fourth time, but it’s been a few years. I felt my daughter was finally old enough to check it out and I had recently purchased the 4K blu ray version. Did this inform my chioce? Probably. I wanted to tell something a little less fantastical when it came to witches, make the setting much more like the film, an alternate history of sorts with magical realism.
If you haven’t watched the movie, I highly recommend it. It embodies what any historical horror film should, and it is one I’m sure you’ll come back to again and again. Just like me.
I hope you enjoy the story.
Artwork by Eren Arik
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mqPDYv
Eren’s Artstation profile
https://www.artstation.com/erenarik
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.
She didn’t struggle, though she knew they wanted her to. Hands of shackles, elbows of knives, spittle dripping from sneers. More feral than the dogs they were, eyes hungry for her to whimper, to lash out, to plead. Fighting, begging, it didn’t matter. That pleasure she would not give.
The women had. Poor girls. Limp as the boughs that mourned them. Their fight was gone, the fight that had fueled the men who held her now. The only thing she gave them was the burden of weight, letting go of her body, scraps to keep them itching for more.
The dogs buried their noses in the muck, ears slick against their heads. One found something, and when its muzzle revealed the prize to the other, it snapped at it. The hand of the slightest girl. Cut it off herself just as dawn broke, to free herself of her chains. But she had two hands shackled, and the sun gave her away. The hand had been given to the dogs by the cloaked man as a plaything. Impressively they had kept it mostly intact, only a few windows of bone visible though miles had been traveled.
“Heel,” the cloaked man breathed, and it was enough. The dogs stopped their game, sitting with eyes locked to his, not a tongue visible to pant despite their chests expanding with exertion.
The cloaked man approached his handiwork, the final rope coiled in his hand. Her rope. But he did not turn. His head titled to the side, then up slightly. She couldn’t argue with the sight. It was something to behold. Light swam through the branches, rimming the three girls who did not stir. The air was as dead as they were.
Closer, the men brought her. She trudged along with them, giving them a sliver of a fight. What sane woman wouldn’t at this juncture?
“She smells it, Rev,” the one in the lead said, adjusting his slipping rifle with a shoulder shrug.
Rev. A man of God. A man close to God. Closer than these two, though God-fearing they were. The stench of Christ wafted from their pores, stirred in their bowels. A serpent ready to be freed.
Rev didn’t answer. He still admired the melancholy beauty, hung like the prizes from a hunt. They were, she supposed, prizes. But not for him.
All of them, pale of flesh and soul. She could smell it heavier than the belief coming from these men, from Rev, as she was within touching distance now.
“Bring her,” Rev said.
They did. And she pulled a little harder, hard enough to earn a punch to the gut. The pain a fraction of a fraction. She had no serpent inside her.
“Your sisters,” Rev said. “They are with God now. The Devil has lost their scent. It is not too late for your repentance. Theirs I held before I released it to our Lord. Are you now ready, quiet one?”
She didn’t speak, for that was the pleasure he wanted. Not the pleasure of pain. Yet.
A knee to the ribs she did not anticipate, and she sputtered a sob. A charade of course. The girls, before they had died had shown her what she needed to know. She had studied them. Their quivering lips, drawn brows, tears when they squeezed their eyes shut, tears when they opened. A mechanism not unlike a well’s pump.
“Rev asked you a question,” the man behind her grunted. “You best answer.”
Rev finally turned, beard unsullied by all the mud, face clear of lines, eyes as clear as the sky none of them had seen for days. “Child, there is no shame. Let me guide thy–“
She spit a bucketful onto that pretty face that desperately needed to be dirtied. She thanked his patience that had given her enough time to find so much.
He didn’t flinch. A slow inhale, then exhale, his breath leading his hand into his cloak from which he produced a kerchief so white she squinted. Carefully, he mopped up her mess. Four strokes only it took before he folded it neatly and put it back.
When she looked back up to his eyes, she noticed the rope he had been holding now leading to her neck, and she finally felt the weight. Her chest hitched. What power does he wield?
“Though you turn your back on Him,” Rev said, “I shall not turn my back on you.” He motioned to the two men. “Give her wings.”
Carnal sounds came from the two. She felt them grow hard as they pressed themselves close around her, gripping her shoulders, one man’s hand going between her legs in secret. When her rope was over the branch, her weight not yet given back to her, the secret was told as the rifle man sniffed his fingers before dragging them across his lips, delicately, before plunging them into his mouth.
The trees sang to her, the mud. Even the air now had song. All of it carried with it the words she needed. From above. From below.
Rev performed a ritual of his own, fingers marking his torso with old signs, words too low for her to hear above the ones that rose and rose and rose.
“Let her fly,” Rev said.
Her weight was given to her, to the rope. Rev did not lie. He did not turn from her. His eyes holding a sadness for her. Not the sadness that had plagued the poor girls, the innocent girls. A knowing sadness.
Toe and heel met resistance though not grounded, and she spread her arms as wide as their Christ.
Rev’s eyes were the only thing that changed on his face. Not going wide in fear. Glistening. For he knew.
The two men were already running, light breaks in the forest shroud painting waving arms and kicking legs.
To the girls, she looked. A touch. Vigor filled their flesh, their souls, now hers. “You hear him, my loves. Fly.”