Hugh Centerville

The Witch in the Sycamore

 

She heard them coming and she was annoyed and might not have bothered getting out of bed if not for James’s sake. She knew how upset they made him -- the last time they came, he became so aroused, it had taken nearly all of her wiles to calm him and she hoped now to spare both of them the aggravation.

 

She got up and she was naked. She was more wood nymph than witch, and nymphs slept in the nude.

 

She smiled down at James, sleeping, his youthful face relaxed in the dim light off the candle on the shelf.

 

She went out, going stooped down the crooked hallway, her elbows brushing the walls on either side and it was dark but she saw well enough with her green, cat’s eyes. She exited the tree, stepping onto the limb, twenty feet above the ground, her toe claws clinging to the bark while she held with one hand to another, slightly higher limb.

 

The torch-lit commotion came around the last bend in the road, the crowd boisterous and larger than any of the previous times, a collection of nearly one hundred townsfolk, irate men with pitchforks and axes, indignant matrons with kitchen knives and rolling pins, gay blades and maidens on a lark, children and dogs.

 

The mob arrived beneath the tree, the folks with their faces turned upward, scanning the thick foliage, and although the witch made no effort to conceal herself and was actually quite brazen with the way she glared down at them, they didn’t see her until the moon rose and its first beams touched her.

 

There was a shout, then a boisterous cacophony and with the dogs in a frenzy of barking, the folks gaped up at the naked witch. The men and boys craned to see, the women shielded their eyes and the eyes of the younger children.

 

“Harlot!”

 

“Jezebel!”

 

A heavy-set, middle-aged woman shook her fist up at the witch and spoke with indignation:

 

“Give me back my boy!”

 

“He’s sleeping,” the witch said, "and he's not a boy. He’s a man. I’ve seen to it.”

 

There was laughter, the matron’s face reddened and her husband, knowing he’d pay dearly if he failed to side quickly with his wife, raised his pitchfork and shouted up to the witch:

 

“Send him down or by god…”

 

“Or by god what?” the witch said.

 

“We want our boy!” the man said.

 

“He’s content to be here with me," the witch said.

 

“Liar!” the man scoffed, again with his wife on his mind. “He’s a good boy!”

 

“Indeed he is,” the witch said and in a catlike purr that was carried below. “Very good, indeed.”

 

There was more laughter.

 

“Let him go or we’ll burn you out!” someone said, and there were shouts, “burn the witch!” and the children and some of the men began gleefully gathering faggots and leaves and downed branches and piling it all in a ring around the base of the tree.

 

“No!” James’s mother said. “Burn the tree and you burn my boy!”

 

“Go home, then,” the witch said. “Leave us be and we’ll be gone before morning. I’ve had about enough of your disturbances.”

 

The crowd milled about, uncertain. There was plenty of disappointment, many there had come intent on seeing a burning, James be damned.

 

“Burn her!” a man shouted. “It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

 

He tossed a torch onto the detritus.

 

The mother retrieved the torch and flung it aside but more torches were thrown, the fire growing quickly, the flames crackling, rising.

 

A shot rang out and a magic bullet whistled upward through the leaves and struck the witch in the breast. She clutched herself, her blood spurting.

 

“Fools!” she said. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

 

“Exactly what I promised them I’d do, did they show me your hiding place,” a man said, stepping out from behind a tree, and it was the old scout, a tall, lean, leathered woodsie clad in buckskins and holding a smoking musket.

 

“You!” the witch said.

 

“Did you think I’d lost your trail?” the scout said, shrill triumph in his voice. “Did you think I wouldn’t follow you to the ends of the earth? It turned out not to the ends of the earth but it was far enough and now I’ve done it, haven’t I, and after all these years.”

 

“Yes, you’ve slain me,” the witch said, gazing down mournfully at her hand, pressed against her wound, the blood seeping through her fingers, and with the fire and smoke rising up toward her.

 

“Hallelujah!” the Reverend Mister Black said. The reverend opened his psalm book and began singing, and with the folks joining in.

 

“My son,” the mother said. “I beg you. Give me my son before he's lost to me."

 

“Foolish woman,” the witch said. “Do you think he’s not already lost?”

 

“Come out, boy!” the reverend said.

 

“Yes,” the scout said, laughing. “Come out!”

 

James emerged presently, crouching out of the truncated, arched egress, and balancing on the limb, a hulking farm youth, shirtless and barefoot and in loose fitting trousers with a rope belt.

 

“Son!” James’s mother said.

 

“It’s not your son,” the witch said. “It’s the husk of your son.”

 

“Liar!” the reverend said.

 

“I’m slain,” the witch said to James.

 

James grinned stupidly and gazed at the witch’s flowing blood.

 

“James!” his mother screeched. “Come down! The reverend can fix whatever enchantment she’s put on you.”

 

“Will you think well of me?” the witch said, smiling up at James. He was much taller than she was. “Will you think at all of me? Can you forgive me for imprisoning you for so long?”

 

He nodded. Yes, he forgave her.

 

“Imprisoning you,” she said, “didn’t mean I couldn’t love you, and I did love you, and you loved me.”

 

He was impatient now ─ yes, yes, and despite the love, if there'd been any, he felt no sorrow. What he felt was the old urge, resurgent. He leaned down and pulled her hands to his mouth and licked the blood, and he slurped from her flowing wound, and as he consumed the blood, patches of dark fur began sprouting along his hulking frame and between the patches was raw, pink skin, like lesions or welts.

 

“Son, no!” his mother screamed.

 

James finished gorging himself and he released the witch's corpse and it tumbled down through the leaves, into the smoke and fire. Fur framed James’s face now and he had a flattened, pig snout and sharp pink ears, an animal countenance, and on the countenance was a grin that was still clearly recognizable as James.

 

“Shape-shifter!” someone said and there were shrieks of terror.

 

“Fly, boy!” the scout shouted up to James. “Fly to your mother, now the witch’s enchantment is no longer on you!”

 

James lifted his arms over his head and stood erect on cloven feet, poised, and wrapped now in what first appeared to be a dark cape but was soon enough revealed to be wings of a bat-like nature. He flapped the wings, leapt off the limb and plunged with a whistling speed and with talons, down toward the mother.

 

“Aaaaieee!” James’s mother screamed as the shape-shifter alighted on top of her and enfolded her in its wings. It attacked her throat with the eviscerating, slobbering tusks of a boar, and with animal grins toward those who watched.

 

The people fled, no one stopping to help the doomed woman, not even her husband or the reverend. The scout was laughing still, so hard his coonskin cap slid off his head and down into his face, revealing a set of three-inch protrusions, devil horns behind each of his ears.

 

 

 

Hugh Centerville is retired and spends his summers at a cabin on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Hugh had a really good curveball in Little League and still brags about it. Hugh is a bit of a curmudgeon now and relives the past on a 4’ by 8’ sheet of plywood in his basement. Hugh hates cats, and blogs with his siblings at http://hughcentervillesblog.com