A Devil in Mayfair

Twenty minutes later she woke up. Darkness now approached Mayfair.

She tried to move, but couldn’t. She was still restrained, now more so than before. When her vision cleared she realized that she was still inside the church. The skeptical townspeople that were once her friends, were now a furious mob of self-righteous monsters, fueled by superstition and fear and bent on shedding heathen blood for their Lord.

The Pastor approached her once more.

“You, Miss. Mary Belle Rose stand accused of the practicing of witchcraft.”

He motioned for someone standing in the back of the church to come up to the front. He was holding something and she couldn’t tell what it was. But as he got closer, she could see that it was a small cage. And inside it there was a cat. Her cat.

“You see this, Miss Rose,” the Pastor interrogated. He opened the cage and reached inside, forcefully pulling the feline out.

“You see what I hold here in my hands?”

Her cat hissed and growled, trying to coerce its maddened captor into release his grip on the nape of its neck.

The Pastor turned to the mob.

“You see, everyone, this cat, this black cat was found inside the home of the accused. As you all know, witches take in the company of the Devil’s beasts. These familiars are used to spread their plight, their curses upon the town with the intent of contorting its residents’ innocence in an attempt to destroy their lives and tempt them from the Lord. You may even see shadows, shadows that take the shape of ungodly things, coming from these seemingly loving, endearing companions. But be warned, the Devil and his minions can take on the most pleasing shapes, like a harmless kitten, or a beautiful woman such as is the accused you see before you. But as the Devil makes his mark, the Lord also makes his.”

The Pastor looked out at the mob once more, then spoke again.

“It is now for the sake of all of us, in that we must know beyond a doubt of a doubt that the Devil has in fact marked this woman.”

The Pastor handed the cat to a man beside him, who, like the Pastor, grabbed the struggling feline by the nape of its neck. The Pastor then grabbed Mary Belle’s nightgown and tore at it with eager fingers. He threw the torn pieces of garment to his feet and examined her naked body, stopping just below her right breast.

“Aha! You see,” he said, grabbing a candle and holding it so close to her skin that the heat began to sear it.

“Look,” he pointed to a spot on Mary Belle and several others rush up to see it.

“It’s true, she’s been marked,” one of the witnesses proclaimed.

The mob started to jeer, to shout and to grow wild with the possibility of the promise of sacrifice.

“It’s there upon her,” the Pastor proclaimed. “The mark of the Devil. He pointed to a small, brown circle; an ordinary birthmark.

The Pastor motioned for another man holding a candle to come closer to him. He opened his bible and his assistant illuminated it.

“And the Lord, God said, “ ‘I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.’ ”

The Pastor turned to the mob and shouted.

“And what is the wage of such a sin?”

He looked down at his bible once more and began reading.

“The Lord tells us, “ ‘A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.’ ”

Mary Belle now pleaded to a mob without reason, conscience, or rationale.

“Forgiveness, forgiveness for these accusations you place upon me. Cannot you forgive as the Lord does?”

The Pastor turned to her.

“Forgiveness? By delivering you to the Lord, have we not shown you that we are full of it? Forgiveness? Yes, we will show you this by granting you the serenity one may only find through his righteous judgment.”

He stops and smiles, teeth clenching behind his cheeks.

“May our forgiveness be as worthy as his.”

The Pastor looked to those on the left of him, then to those to his right. Suddenly, Mary Belle’s face was hit with something wet, someone splashed something upon her. As she shook the excess liquid from her face she could see couples handing out boxes of rocks.

“They’re going to stone me,” she thought. “They’re actually going to stone me!”

The Pastor once again began to speak.

“ ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so the condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.’ ”

The Pastor looked at Mary Belle, who was still tied to the wooden post.

“It is by the verdict of this court that we find you guilty of practicing witchcraft, a punishment worthy only of death by stoning. If you have any last words, make them short.

“Yes, I—.”

But before she could finish, she was distracted by the candle that one of the clergy held. She witnessed it break off at the end, weakened by the flame, and fall to the ground before her. The candle rolled and came into contact with the liquid that she had been dowsed with and that now pooled in the corner behind her along the wall. When the flame came into contact with it, the liquid ignited and set the wall ablaze. Just then Mary Belle realized what they had thrown on her. Lamp oil.

The townsfolk screamed and shot out of their seats. In a struggle to go for the door, they tripped, fell, and trampled each other in their desperation to save themselves. Mary Belle’s cat hissed and screeched, twisting enough to tear into both its captor’s and the Pastor’s faces. It dropped onto the floor and, to Mary Belle’s observation shot out of a back entrance hidden behind curtains. The rest struggled to break out of their holy sanctuary, which now began to weaken greatly in the growing, cleansing inferno.

But the townsfolk could not escape. The door wouldn’t budge. And the windows, too narrow for even the most slender of them to fit through, further protested their attempts to escape by lacerating flailing limbs with glass as they broke before desperate, clawing hands. The Pastor stood there momentarily, staring in disbelief as the fire brought heat and wood and stone upon the members of his righteous town. And in this observation, he heard a growing sound above him resembling the growling of a most unholy might. As he turned his head up, he saw the great suspended cross above him snap and buckle under weakened beams. It broke off, and swung above him before momentum finally released it and sent its jagged edge down upon him. It made contact and forced him to his knees, locking him into place, leaving only his fingers to claw at the floorboards beneath them. He tried to breathe but could only suck in meager, desperate gasps of burning air. He looked down at his chest to where he was most numb. The cross had impaled his lung and had pierced his heart. The Pastor lurched forward, pinned under the inverted crucifix that subdued him, and watched sacramental oak burn brightly with the color of the crimson that now poured out from him.

In that act, Mary Belle was knocked clean of her device. And, in a moment of clarity, she found the door behind the cloth that concealed it. Outside she found a place on a hill where she was nearly clear of the townsfolks’ horrific screams and peals of pathetic, demoralizing prayers. Now only the tender roar of the flames and the gentle sway of breaking board and beam came to her ears. And just then she heard the loving purr of her black cat. Then a nudge came beside her. She picked him up and placed him upon her lap, where he, too, eagerly watched. A few moments later he looked up and batted something that rested around her neck and nestled between her breasts. She pulled it out and looked at it. INRI it read above the etching of a man stretched out upon a cross. She tore it off and threw it out into the field, hoping it too would reach the flames. And at the sound of a great snap she looked up to the church one final time to see its steeple fall into its scorched bowels. The bell contained within crashed upon the floor inside and let out a resounding bong that pierced the stillness of the air as if proclaiming a new, defiant age.

Mary Belle ran her fingers down the back of her familiar’s neck and smiled at the promise of a new night.

END