Child of the Witch

The shop windows of Orwell Steel flared bright red. Inside, men in charred denim jackets, some wearing thick leather vests or aprons, stared with black reflective goggles into coal fires and blazing welding torches. Classic rock tunes played loudly from an old brown speaker mounted in a high corner of the shop. Men on duty gave complete attention to their work, never looking up from the screaming torches in their thick gloved hands.

Catcalls and whistles signaled an end to the second shift. Welding masks were removed, revealing the soot soaked, tired-eyed faces of men. Leather welding uniforms were stashed in lockers, tools cleaned, and workspaces prepared for the night shift workers, now starting to shuffle in.

Beers were tossed around in the locker room. The forge workers had a miniature celebration after each shift. Another day had passed in the heat of the steel factory, and drunkenness was in order. Most of the factory workers gave no real thought to their paychecks or their work life. They all escaped into this giant furnace, masochistically enjoying he heat, the noise, the burns and poor pay. They were all working men, most alcoholics.

John Winthrop was one of them. An alcoholic since twenty-five years old, John never wanted to leave his job at the steel mill. It was menial and discouraging work, but it made beer taste sweeter at the end of the night, and nobody dared mess with a man who worked for Orwell Steel. The bars became safer once one started a job at the steel mill, and in a town like Hawthorne, the bar was a second home to most residents.

“Lance is gettin’ laid tonight, aint ya buddy?” Don Keel stripped off his sweaty blue work shirt to reveal a thick black nest of wild chest hair.

“I bought her dinner yesterday,” said Lance Drummer, a scrawny, balding man in his thirties, his body soaked in tattoos. “We’re goin’ out again tonight for pool and pizza.”

“Nothing better than pizza and pussy.” Don Keel took a hard swig of beer and roared with laughter. The rest of the men in the locker room snickered.

“What about you, John,” said Don. “Are you pleasing that new wife of yours?”

John Winthrop was a staunchly quiet man, and never spoke unless spoken to. “Well, she likes me enough. I don’t ask her too much about it. She seems happy enough.”

“Happy enough with what,” said Don, beer streaking down his bushy mustache.

John began putting on a clean, dark blue button up, paused, looked down at his feet, and smiled. “Happy enough with me, I guess.”

“Happy with the sex?” Don let out another of his signature gruff laughs.

“Must be. I aint heard a complaint about it.” John buttoned his shirt, staring into the chipped tan paint of his locker.

“Well, you tell your sweetheart if she ever wants to cuddle with a bear, I’m right down the street.”

These casual comments were as common as missing teeth in Orwell Steel. John wasn’t offended. The company culture, and his job security, didn’t allow the interruption of personal feelings. Every jest, however serious, was fair game.

“I’ll let her know,” said John calmly. Images of Don Keel’s head bursting under the pressure of the shop’s largest steel press came into his imagination. The private thought made him smile.

John Winthrop pulled into his potholed driveway, candlelight flickering in the windows of the house. He sat in his truck smoking a cigarette, finishing off his fourth beer before he went inside. John felt suddenly ashamed when he realized that he had never once rushed into the house after work to greet his new wife. He had never turned down the offer of a cold beer in the locker room after his shift. He had never come home sober. Maybe he should have bought her flowers and the sweet wine she liked. Troubled by the realization, John’s only concerns were a decent dinner and a relieving episode of sex before bed.

The house was dark and stunk of cigarettes and incense. Candles flickered in every room. John walked quietly into the kitchen where a single gas burner flickered beneath a large steaming pot.

“Crystal?” John laid his dirty denim jacket over a chair and began removing his boots. There was no response, the house was silent.

“Crystal,” he shouted again after having trouble with the laces on his left boot. “God dammit,” he mumbled, walking to the fridge for a beer. The crack of the beer can hit John mercifully like an innocent verdict in a trial. He took a long chug, belched, and drew into the cramped living room where firelight flickered.

John plopped heavily into an old, stained armchair and drew out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He inhaled deeply and blew a thick stream of smoke towards the ceiling.

“What are you doing sitting here in the dark?” He spoke to the dark figure crouched near the fire. “What the hell are you wearing? When did you start wearing dresses? We’re not getting married again, are we?” John chuckled to himself and took a hard swig from the can.

“Crystal? Come on now. What’s the matter with you?”

No response. No movement.

“What’s cooking on the stove,” asked John, sitting up in his chair. “Silent treatment. Okay. Fair enough.”

John went to the kitchen and stared down into the boiling pot on the stove. He wafted the steam towards his nose and gagged. It smelled like a dead animal left to rot in the road.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What the hell is this, Crystal? Don’t tell me you ate some of this. I’ll do us a favor and order some damn pizza.”

John cracked himself another beer and lit up another cigarette. The house was uncomfortably warm, and the lingering scent of Crystal’s dinner made him nauseous.

“I’m gonna have to get a hotel room. This is foul.”

He grabbed the pot from the stove and walked towards the back door. A cold winter wind blew into the house, sending a shiver up the chimney flue, blowing strongly into the fireplace. John emptied the putrid stew into a snowbank outside the house, craning his head away from the splatter. It steamed and sputtered in the snow, whining like a distraught infant. The heap of goop was black and bubbling, dissolving around little bits of what John thought to be cubed beef. He didn’t care if it was lobster tails and ribeyes soaking in the snow. The smell was caustic and dizzying. He left the pot on the porch and went back inside.

John thought the long hours in the steel mill and the continuous drinking might be making him hallucinate. Large shadows passed by in dark corners of the house, little flashes of movement in the corners of his eyes. He was exhausted, anxious, depressed. He thought the troubles the result of deprivation. There were ways a man could live, and there was living. The former, John got on with well enough, but his stance with the latter ashamed him.

“Are you just gonna sit there all night? If something’s wrong, you can tell me.”

The fire flickered calmly. John lit a cigarette and cracked a fresh beer.

“You might as well take that ring of your finger right now. I don’t have time for another round of “I’m sad, I need more, me, me, me, me!”

He flung his beer can into the fireplace. The can splattered on the hot logs and sizzled. He stood over the hunched figure by the fire, his hand trembling, the beer provoking violence. He remembered his father, a mean drunk, a laborer like himself, always yelling, always squaring up against his mother, sometimes swatting her across the cheeks repetitively while John and his siblings huddled and watched.

“Hell with you.”

John flicked his stubby cigarette onto the stack of sizzling, wet logs and went to bed.

John had been married before he met Crystal. His previous wife weighed over three-hundred pounds, chain smoked unfiltered Paul Mauls, and went on frequent binges where she suffocated herself in daytime sitcoms, potato chips, microwave meals, cheap wine, and marijuana. Her name was Shannon, the daughter of Hawthorne’s only used car salesman, Kenny Finn. She begged John for children every day they were together. Endless sexual trials resulted in negative pregnancies, and when Shannon cried to John, longing for a suitable reason to remain unemployed, he simply said, “I tried,” his despondence deeply rooted.

When Shannon died of a heart attack two years into their marriage, John paid for the funeral costs and arranged the burial himself. He was gutted by Shannon’s father who refused cremation and demanded the most expensive casket the funeral home had. Kenny Finn even had police investigate John’s role in Shannon’s death, claiming:

That boy was never any good to my girl. She had a heart of gold and he melted it down into nothing.

When John met Crystal, he was hardly heartbroken from Shannon’s death and quick to get hitched. The wedding was brief and the afterparty inconsequential. Crystal was thought by most to be a good woman with positive character and a good smile. She worked and had income. In Hawthorne, this was akin to accepting a grand medieval dowry. They married in the summer, a hot wedding with loose tongues and flagrantly drunk people.

Immediately after the wedding, John tried for a child with Crystal. The same negative results lit up on every pregnancy test Crystal took, and John assured her, in defense of his pride, that it was she that had the defect. He watched her grow melancholy and distant after the third negative test. She hid behind magazines and books after work, hugging her knees beside the fireplace every night, not speaking, not eating. The encounter John had before bed clarified his decision to become a bachelor once again, lording over his own home and agenda.

He would leave Crystal, he thought to himself, smoking in bed, and the heavy installment of children would no longer weigh on his thoughts. Paternity didn’t suit him, as the image of his abusive father still clung to his memory like a blood-sucking tick. The worst part about this, John thought, was that he still regarded his father as an archetype of man- a laborer, a drinker, and it worried him that he ostensibly missed his father’s violent presence.

John was behind on his usual bedtime drunkenness, feeling quite sober and tired. He lay in bed staring up at the dark ceiling, the green glow of his alarm clock the only light in the windowless room. He drifted into a shallow sleep, he wasn’t sure for how long, but was awoken by soft caresses on his stomach and legs. Soft, thin fingers drew swirls on his chest, brushed through his hair, and fondled him until his heartbeat rose and his blood got hot. He was mounted sturdily and pleasured for what seemed like an hour. His entire body tingled and radiated with heat, and when she dismounted, his entire body went limp, like a boned fish, and he drifted off into an inescapably deep sleep.

The next morning John awoke with energy he hadn’t felt in years. White morning light poured in through the kitchen windows and hurt his eyes. It had been a miserably dark winter so far.

“Crystal?”

The house was still and quiet. Outside, birds chirped happily. John filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil. He opened the back door to relieve himself and let some fresh air into the house. Looking down into the snowbank he urinated on, he remembered the foul-smelling pot of stew he threw out last night. The pot was no longer on the porch and the crater the hot soup had made was no longer there. It could have snowed overnight, thought John, and Crystal probably washed the pot this morning. He was sure to ask about the soup, its smell still clinging to his memory intrusively.

He made fresh coffee, sipped tiredly, and flipped through an old Auto Trader magazine that had been on the kitchen table for two months.

The front door of the house screeched open, letting in a gust of cold wind.

“Crystal?”

“Mornin’,” said Crystal. She entered the kitchen carrying two overfilled grocery sacks. “Hi honey. Sorry I’m late. Had to run to the grocery store to get a few things.” She wore her faded red nurses uniform and had her hair tied up in a stiff ponytail.

John smiled at her, relieved that he no longer wished to leave her. After last night, he didn’t know how it was possible not to love her. She put him to sleep like a baby after the tender episode, and he was looking forward to more.

“Last night was incredible,” he said, looking into her bright eyes with a smile.

“Oh? What happened last night?”

John chuckled and retrieved a clean cup from the cupboard. He served Crystal coffee and helped unload the sacks of groceries onto the table. “So modest,” he said. “You put me straight to sleep after that. I’m gonna work on being better to you from now on. More dates and flowers. More time with you. I love you.”

Crystal sipped her coffee and started emptying cans of soda into the refrigerator. “What on earth are you talking about? Didn’t you get my note? Ah, yes, here it is.”

She pulled a large yellow sticky note off the refrigerator and passed it to John.

It read: Hi Honey! Hope you had a good day. Leftover meatloaf in the fridge. I will be at the hospital all night-Susan got sick! See you tomorrow morning. Love, Crystal.

John’s smile vanished, and he stared at the note in disbelief, a worried frown collapsing his brow.

“Are you playing games with me,” asked John seriously.

Crystal sipped her coffee delicately and said nothing. She appeared helpless and confused, like a student staring down into a dreaded math test loaded with a mess of indecipherable equations.

John refused to belief her. He threw the note in the trash and poured himself more coffee, his face stern and quizzical.

“You’re telling me you weren’t here last night,” asked John. “How much did I drink,” he mumbled to himself, pacing the kitchen.

Crystal cautiously put groceries away, walking on eggshells as John fussed.

“What about that horrible soup! What was in that? It smelled rotten. I chucked it out into the snow. Sorry if it was something special.”

“What soup,” asked Crystal, her confusion mounding into tired despair.

“Oh come on!” John shouted and made crystal jump. “The soup! The black gurgling mess I dumped out over the porch. It. . .” he paused, looked down at his feet, and marched to the laundry room where he stored all of his crushed beer cans in a fifty-gallon plastic trash can. Nothing seemed unusual. The can was only half full, exactly what it had been yesterday evening, apart from the measly five beers had drank last night, which were meaningless to a drinker like John.

He dug out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and smoked in the kitchen.

“I’m not buying it,” said John after some time spent in silence. “You’re just playing games with me, aren’t you.”

He reflected on his words very hard for a few seconds, and spoke again, calmer, weakly, “Aren’t you, Crystal?”

Crystal took a cigarette from his pack and lit it. She smoked quietly for a few minutes while John stared pensively over her shoulder, smoke rolling from his lips.

“Maybe you need to start seeing somebody about your drinking,” she said politely, sincerely.

There were occasions when John’s drinking made him forget things, like little forays into rough bars, or motives behind bloody fist fights, but he didn’t think he could ever forget what happened last night. It was the best sex of his life, unnatural sex. It wasn’t some sobering exotic dream. His groin still tingled with the memory of his spectacular climax.

John felt strange for the rest of the day. He didn’t speak to anyone at work, and was glued to his work station for a solid ten hours. He took no breaks, and when his shift ended, he took none of the beers he was offered in the locker room and drove straight home.

Crystal was in the kitchen chopping vegetables and listening to the radio. John threw his jacket on the couch and slid out of his boots. His heart was racing, and his urge for sex was unstoppable. He pulled Crystal away from the stove and into his dirty arms, kissing her strongly until she let out little gasps of pleasure. He carried her into the bedroom and pulled her under the warm blankets. He made love to her, rather forcefully, but she gripped at his skin and writhed in complete ecstasy the entire time. The episode was hardly a replica of what John had experienced the night before, but it made him feel more at peace and alive with a newfound passionate energy.

Maybe it was a dream, he thought to himself. The sex didn’t tire him. If anything, he felt more awake and alert. He wanted that same drowsy numbness to overtake him, but it did not come.

Crystal resumed chopping vegetables in the kitchen, glowing and singing quietly to herself while John smoked a cigarette in the living room.

For the next three weeks, John and Crystal were intimate every chance they got. John no longer felt romantic love for Crystal, but kept returning to her, as he put it, trying to fill the gap left by the fading memory of what he thought the most pleasurable moment of his life. It was a feeling alcohol could not mimic, drugs could not replace, and the now regular sex couldn’t compare with.

“I’m pregnant!” Crystal pounced on John as he sat on the ripped couch. “I can’t believe it! I’m finally pregnant. We did it. Aren’t you happy?”

John’s heart stopped and he choked on his words, managing to nod repetitively and smile awkwardly. “Yes, yes,” he finally choked out. “That’s great. I wonder what took.”

They cuddled and swooned over each other for an hour that morning before John left for the steel mill. John felt a confidence that he hadn’t felt before. His guns were loaded after all, his wife was happy, and he started drinking much less.

His days at the steel mill felt useless and wasted. Something recovered inside him, like an aging splinter festering in a swollen finger, finally dug out. His anxiety lessened, his depression didn’t suffocate him. He thought of the child he was to have, and what kind of father he wanted to be when it arrived. John had always wanted to work wood in some way. He imagined quitting Orwell Steel and setting up a small woodshop in his garage. He could build furniture. Maybe his son, (he hoped), would help him when he got old enough, and the two would go into business together, expand the workshop, establish a solid customer base, send their pieces across America where they would furnish the homes of wealthy bankers and complacent desk jockeys. There was no clear path ahead, but it wasn’t littered with gripping mental bouts and fear. John, for the first time in his life, felt what he thought was the gift of clarity, soundness of mind.

In February, the weather turned treacherous. The roads of Hawthorne, no matter how often the plows hit the streets, were a thick mess of ice and snow. There were accidents every day, and most businesses were shut down. John thought this was a good time to quit his job at Orwell Steel and start woodworking. He started lifting weights in the garage, going on walks, smoking less, and he brought himself down to three beers a night.

It had been over a month since Crystal declared her pregnancy. She was constantly lifting her shirt up in the bathroom mirror, examining her stomach for the first sign of a bump, but nothing appeared. Her appetite remained the same, her mood was stable. When Mother Nature called on her in early March, John found her weeping on the bathroom floor, asking, “Why? How?”

Blood ran down her legs, and she held a fresh pregnancy test in her trembling hands.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she whimpered to John. “Positive. Look for yourself.” She held the stick up to John and resumed crying.

It was the fourth test she had taken that day, and each one came out with a bright purple plus sign.

John spoke very little, Crystal’s mood easily agitated, fragile. They decided she should go into the hospital for some tests. John would be there with her, as he quit his job at Orwell Steel earlier in the week and had an uncomfortable amount of free time.

“You’re definitely pregnant,” said a buxom black nurse with huge green eyes.

“I know that, Dee,” said Crystal. “But why aren’t I showing? There hasn’t been any sickness, no mood swings, no cramps, bloating, nothing. And my belly is as flat as a spatula.”

“Some people just take longer to develop,” said Dee.

“Its been over a month. We should be able to see my baby on the ultrasound. There’s nothing here.”

The nurse moved the gelled transducer around Crystal’s stomach, keeping an eye on the screen for any sign of movement, abnormal shapes, and fluids. She shook her head, disbelief apparent in her eyes.

“You say you took how many tests?”

“I took over ten, and every time it came out positive.” Crystal lowered her head and cried.

“Honey. It’s okay. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this. Don’t cry now. You want me to get your husband in here?”

“No,” sobbed Crystal. “It’s gonna upset him so much. I know it will, and he was doing so well.”

The nurse was silent for a moment, continuing to scan Crystal’s stomach with the transducer. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said quietly to herself.

That night, Crystal stayed hunched near the fireplace, flipping through a magazine she bought a week ago called Motherhood. It was a publication for new mothers, with advice from veterans, containing heartfelt stories and photos of smiling woman cradling soft, sleeping newborns. Crystal wiped tears from her eyes as John came in periodically to stoke her back, offer her a hamburger he made. She ate nothing. She spoke very little.

“Can I get you anything,” asked John.

Crystal shook her head no and tossed the magazine into the fireplace. It burned slowly, flaming deep green and blue.

“John. I need to tell you something,” she said fearfully.

He sat next to her, stroking her back. “Go ahead. What is it?”

She wiped tears from her eyes, stiffened her neck, and began. “I’ve wanted a child for so long, and. . .” she sobbed intensely for a moment, regained her composure, and continued, “We wanted a child, right?”

She glared at John with swollen red eyes.

“Yes. Of course. And we’re having one. Just like you want. Everything will be fine.”

“We tried for so long before. I couldn’t handle another negative test. So I called on someone my family used to know. She runs a private practice. Not many people know about her.”

“What are you saying? Someone else’s child is inside you? That artificial insemination type of deal. Don’t tell me this.”

“No,” she shouted. “It’s nothing like that.” She paused and looked strangely into the fire. “It’s nothing like that at all.”

“But it’s my baby, right!” He grabbed her hard on the shoulder. She puckered and tears fell onto the floor. John loosened his grasp on her and stroked her back. “I’m sorry. Just tell me what’s going on here. I quit my job. I stopped drinking. I needed this. Don’t tell me somethings wrong.”

“I don’t know what’s going wrong. All I can think is that the baby is growing, but it’s not inside me. It’s my baby, I know it. I can feel it, but it’s not inside me.”

John looked puzzled and tried to hide his anger. “What are you saying? You’re not making any sense.”

Crystal straightened her posture and took a deep breathe. “You came home late last month and found someone in our house. Someone you might have thought was me. It wasn’t.”

John’s blood ran cold. He remembered the figure, hunched, dark, and quiet beside the fireplace. There was an unsettling twinge in his groin that passed up into his stomach and made his chest cold.

“But I asked you about that night. You told me I was crazy! You lied to me. It really happened! And. . .” John paused, pushed Crystal aside, stared remotely at the wall, the realization settling in. “Then who was it?”

“We always called her Miss Sally. She was like a medicine man, but. . .not a man. She’s lived at the dead end of Harlow Road for as long as I can remember. You know where it is. Just at the mouth of the forest? She saved my brother from poisoning one time. She cured my mama’s arthritis. I brought her all my pets when they were sick.”

“So she was a nurse?”

“Not exactly. She was more of what people call a hedge witch. She used herbal remedies to heal people, animals, anything. When doctors couldn’t give an answer, people always called on Miss Sally. This was a long time ago, John.” Crystal took a moment to look at John, who was staring deep into the fire. “And she didn’t look like she’d aged a day when I saw her again.”

Crystal stared with tear filled eyes into the fireplace. Her lips trembled as the tears dripped down her cheeks.

For the first time in over a month, John’s thoughts diverted harshly from the clear, driven scheme of living he created in his head. His hard-fought purity and purpose had vanished, and the only thing he could think of, involuntarily, was a drink. He missed the numbness it gave him, tricking him into living for another night.

Months passed. John begged the foreman at Orwell Steel for his job back, and it was given to him, two dollars knocked off his hourly wage. He resumed drinking, went out with other women, renting cheap hotel rooms and staying away from home for days a time. Crystal showed no signs of pregnancy other than the torn shoebox full of positive tests she collected and hid in the bathroom cupboard. She stopped going into work, feeling weak at all hours. Her body became thin and frail. She wouldn’t eat. She could only sleep for two hours every night. John would return home late after a night at the bar, and find her seated near the fireplace, gazing into the flames, craning her head at odd angles, her eyes questioning and dark.

John refused to believe what Crystal had told him. Miss Sally must have been some desperate savior Crystal created, the make-believe incarnation of her longing for a child. It was a story from a delusional young woman, thought John. But what if it were all true. It was worth investigating. John couldn’t return home to see Crystal in a state of despair anymore.

Numb from whisky, sitting in a high tattered bar stool at Floyd’s Pub, he resolved to visit Harlow Road and see Miss Sally for himself.

The night was silent and cold, the sky teeming with bright stars. Harlow Road was a narrow dirt lane that ended at the mouth of Hawthorne Forest. John knew the road, having once visited a friend from the steel mill that rented a rundown one-bedroom house half a mile away from the dead end. John’s truck tires crunched over gravel and snow as he turned onto Harlow Road, empty of streetlamps, sound, anything alive. His headlights lit up a small, ramshackle cottage nestled into the edge of a thick forest, the trees looming overhead like massive, tangled shadows. A flicker of fear flashed inside John as he approached the cottage, the truck idling, ghostly smoke leaking from the tailpipe into the cold night air. The house looked abandoned, its green shutters hanging sideways, some of the front windows smashed and foggy.

John laughed drunkenly to himself. “A witch,” he remembered Crystal saying. “What the hell am I thinking. My wife’s a lunatic.”

He threw the truck into reverse and sent gravel and snow flying from the back tires. He glanced back at the dark cottage, his vision starting to sway from the whisky. He slammed on the braks, the cottage barely lit up by his dim headlights, and stared out the windshield, his hands firm on the steering wheel. He was certain he saw movement. Not a person, not an animal, but a white shadow rising above the cottage. He traced it down from the wide skeletal treetops, and down into the crumbling brick chimney of the cottage. Smoke. He was certain of it. Smoke leaked from the chimney. Someone was within.

He toyed with the idea of knocking, of what would answer the door if he did. There was no evidence to him that the being inside the cottage was a witch. That was superstitious nonsense. In a man’s world, thought John, there was only flesh and blood creatures, nothing he couldn’t hit, destroy, maim. If all that waited inside the cottage was an old kook, he favored his odds in a confrontation.

Resolute, and roaring drunk, John sped up close to the cottage, his headlamps giving full light to the front of the home. It looked worse than it had before, slightly leaning to the left, the slate roof tiles cracked and missing entirely in spots. The forest beyond appeared to pulse, but John blamed this on the whisky as he trudged through shallow snowbanks towards the front door.

He thumped heavily on the door with his fist, standing back, a hollow lurching in his stomach. A strange scent wafted from the cracked window to right of the door, a sickly smell, something familiar. John felt dizzy, his body swaying, the front door rolling and wagging, the floorboards of the dilapidated porch shaking beneath him. The door opened slowly, releasing the same caustic, rotting stench from the stewpot weeks before. It sickened him. He staggered back, snagging the cuff of his pants on a protruding floorboard, and tumbled backwards into the snow. The trees above him expanded their distorted limbs like monstrous hands, reaching down into his face. The dark night sky squirmed and swirled. His head spun, the sickly smell from the cottage boiling the fiery whisky in his stomach, making him lurch and heave in the freezing snow. The vomit stung his nose and throat.

On his hands and knees, his fingers stinging from the cold, he looked up to see a dark figure in the doorway of the cottage, the silhouette large and hunkered. Beyond, flickering in stale darkness, was a small fire.

“Who are you,” said John, shivering uncontrollably. “My name is John Winthrop. I’m here about my wife. Who are you,” he demanded, standing up on wobbling legs.

The figure was eerily motionless.

“My name is John Winthrop,” he said again, softer. “I’m here about Crystal. I want to know about my child. Is it true what my wife tells me? Who are you!”

The next moment of silence terrified John. He couldn’t understand the fear the crept into his mind, like a giant worm had wrapped around his brain, sucking his blood, releasing toxic chemicals that made him afraid. “Who are you!” He screamed.

The figure moved slowly backwards into the cottage, leaving the door open, and reached out a white hand, signaling John to follow.

The inside of the cottage was suffocatingly warm. The holes in the roof and the windows seemed to release none of the heat the small fire gave off. John followed the figure as it walked nearer to the fireplace, the dark flames giving some color to its outfit. It was a woman, John noticed, his head spinning. Her long black hair shimmered like oil in the firelight. She wore a dirty, thick cloak, wrapped around the waist, and held tight with a thin, tattered, leather belt. The woman, her back hunched in an extreme angle, slid an old wooden chair across the room and positioned it firmly in front of the fire. The face of the woman was deathly pale and wrinkled, her eyes like two little shimmering coals locked deep within thick wrinkled folds of skin, penetrating, terrifying.

John, wobbling and nauseous, took a seat on the chair, his movements feeling controlled and not of his own will, like a marionette. The fire warmed his body instantly. The numb stinging in his hands became thick pulsating warmth. A large heavy blanket was thrown around his shoulders. It smelled like an old horse blanket used to cushion a stiff saddle, but it was very warm and comforting. The cottage felt somehow familiar, like a childhood home revisited after many years of absence. John, locked in a strange stupor unlike anything he’d ever felt from alcohol, looked around the room. Above the fireplace hung an odd abstract painting of single objects, floating in a void of dark, glistening canvas: a spherical white ball hovering above an upside-down pyramid. The objects in the painting had weight to them that John felt in his head, like he was somehow holding them. He could feel the smoothness of the sphere, the strict, sharp edges of the yellow pyramid. Together they seemed to strengthen him like a mother’s assurance to her child that everything was okay.

The dark woman entered the room holding a steaming tin cup in her hands. She held the cup out to John, and he took it steadily, looking up into her beady, glaring black eyes. The smell was the same-rotten, repulsive, but it took John differently this time. Instead of making him gag, the liquid soothed him. He drank from the cup slowly, licking the thick oily syrup from his lips. He drank until the cup was empty and looked around for the old woman, who had vanished.

The stew had a sobering, calming effect on him. His body was warm and comfortable near the fire, the blanket thick and protective. The strange painting above the hearth drew him in. Cosmic, endless, the painting pulled gently on John like it was sucking his body up through a straw. The shapes began to vibrate, the white sphere bobbing up and down, suspended above the yellow pyramid, which was now rotating, showing changing shadows on all its dimensions. The objects bobbed in space, side by side, began spinning, then came forth from the dark background, bumping lightly against each other, hovering in front of John’s face. He reached for them, wanting to feel the smoothness of the orb. As he reached to touch them, the objects lowered themselves and disappeared into his chest. He felt their weight pass through his body, the pyramid settling in place of his heart, the sphere shifting positions in his stomach. There was a rumbling, and the soft dispersion, or scattering, of the objects, like the pieces had dissolved, their force tingling in his skin, his mouth, his fingers.

Cold white fingers traced his lips and cheeks, stroked his hair. A hushed voice broke the stillness, repetitively chanting inaudible phrases. It seemed to be a lullaby. John’s eyes flickered, slowly shut, and he was asleep, immediately dreaming of a vast inescapable cosmos where he was held in suspension, unable to move.

Hawthorne Journal: February 25, 2021

Local Man Found Guilty of Hit and Run Murder.

At approximately 6:05 a.m on February 24, Linda Sutton, 32, was found dead at the intersection of Harlow and West Honeytown road. Officials responded to three calls reporting the deceased’s body was found in a ditch on Harlow Road. First responders declared the victim dead at the scene, and have transported the body to Pilger Rue Morgue for an autopsy.

A later anonymous call revealed a potential suspect of the hit and run murder, John Winthrop, 30, in custody and awaiting trial. Sheriff Al Sweeney held a brief interview with reporters, revealing that Winthrop’s Ford was found with physical evidence enough to suspect a hit and run murder. Sweeney says that Winthrop will be available for comment after the first trial, due to take place on February 30th.

John Winthrop was convicted of manslaughter, driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole after nine years. Crystal sold their house and moved in with her mother two months after his conviction. She visited him regularly, her stomach expanding every week.

During the initial interrogations with law officials, John begged for blood tests that would reveal he was drugged. He spoke of the cottage on Harlow Road, the woman who lived there, her association with his wife and his unborn child. After the test results came back, and the house inspected, John gave up hope, spiraling into a destructive depression.

“John,” said a young inspector in a tan baggy suit, “You had an overwhelming amount of alcohol in your system. Unless you can claim that you were forced to drink, you have no case.”

“What about the cottage on Harlow Road,” he asked. “That woman in there did something to me that night. Get her in this room. I want to see her.”

The police inspected the cottage, leading to a separate criminal investigation.

“How long had you been going to the cottage before the accident,” asked the inspector.

“I’ve never been there before in my life,” John insisted. “It was just one night. One awful night and here I am.”

“You know nothing about the drug charges on the man that owned the house?”

“No idea.”

The inspector took a breath and rubbed his dark eyes. “That was one of the biggest drug operations we’ve come across in my time. Don Keel was making meth in there. You worked with him at Orwell Steel, right?” He flipped through a crisp stack of white paper wedged into a manilla folder.

“Don wasn’t in that house. The only person cooking anything in that house was her! What can I do. What else can I say?”

The inspector appeared slightly sympathetic, confident John was roaring drunk that night and had been taking drugs in the cottage before driving home, smashing into Linda Sutton on the way.

“Can you describe her,” he asked patiently.

John trembled at the thought of the woman’s eyes, hauntingly dark, piercing, and fierce. “She wore black. She didn’t speak. I couldn’t really see her face. I can’t remember. I’m telling you she put me out. She fed me something.”

“Is there anyone else who could testify to that? Anybody you know that’s seen this woman too?”

John spilled everything he could about Miss Sally. He ranted about his inability to have children, his passed wife, Crystal’s longing for a child, and the measures she took to make it happen.

“So, it was witchcraft?” asked the inspector. “You’re telling me you’ve had a run in with a witch, she put a spell on you, and now you’ve landed here. This doesn’t sound good, John.”

“Ask my wife,” he pleaded. “Can I see her, please. Bring her down here. She’ll explain everything.”

The inspector stayed with John in silence for a few minutes, placed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the heavy steel table in front of him, and left the room. John chain-smoked until he was dizzy and the room was foggy.

John was never allowed to speak to his wife in person, apart from through the glass of the visitor’s window in the penitentiary.

“I can’t risk anything right now,” she told him. “We’ve got a baby coming. If they suspect me of anything. . .,” she paused, adjusted herself, and spoke confidently. “I’m not giving up this child. I’ve waited too long.”

“Just tell them about Miss Sally. I’ve seen her, Crystal! I know she’s real. I know you two tricked me. You know what you’ve done. They think I’m insane! Help me.” John sobbed through the plastic phone, his hand dragging helplessly down the glass between them.

Crystal left without a word, leaving John to weep alone.

Five months passed and John had become a stationary, mute prisoner. He spoke to nobody unless he had to and refused visits from Crystal. As time passed, his memory of the events that took place in the cottage on Harlow Road became worn and faded, so much that he rested easy with the verdict that he had been odiously drunk and was high on the drugs that Don Keel was busted for the night he killed Linda Sutton.

Three years later, Crystal called for a visit with John at the penitentiary. She had given birth to a baby boy in late September of 2021, and he was now walking on stiff little legs, and speaking full sentences.

John accepted the request he had been waiting years for, and at 3:05 p.m, he saw his son for the first time. He cried when he saw the little boy in blue denim overalls, holding his mother’s hand, walking up to the parting glass. John smiled at him, put a hand up to the glass. The boy gave John nervous little glances, biting on the strap on his overalls, hiding behind Crystal’s leg.

“Billy,” said Crystal. “Do you want to say hello to your father?”

She sat on the stool in front of the glass barrier and put the plastic orange phone up to Billy’s ear.

“Go on. Say hello.”

“Hello,” said Billy, his voice light and curious.

“Hey pal,” said John, fighting back a mess of tears and sobs. He put his head down for a moment to squeeze his eyes and regain some composure.

His eyes scanned everything on the boy’s body; his hair, his shape, his little hands gripping the large phone. It was a complete miniature of himself.

“What else do you want to say, honey,” said Crystal, nudging Billy’s back, stealing glances at John, who had lost considerable weight and grown out a stiff beard. She suddenly began to cry, turning her head away so John and Billy couldn’t see her.

“I just need some air,” said Crystal. “Will you stay here and talk to your Daddy while I go make a phone call?”

Billy nodded, she placed him on the stool, stood silently for a moment, then left the two of them alone. Billy turned and watched her leave the room, curious and nervous.

John held the phone up to his ear but could not speak. Aware he was making Billy uncomfortable by the silence, he thought of the first thing that popped into his head.

“Do you play baseball yet?”

Billy hunched his shoulders and bit his lip.

“Maybe you’re too young to play, but I promise when I see you outside of here, we’ll play. I’ll teach you to throw a curveball. Do you know what that is, son?”

Billy was silent, his eyes nervous. John was fretting, licking his lips and staring unknowingly hard into Billy’s eyes, worried that he was ruining the first visit with his son. The penitentiary had stifled much of his natural emotion. He had forgotten how to think, how to feel.

Crystal came back to them, hand on her hips, standing over Billy with a concerned look on her face.

“Okay honey? We have to get going. Did you have a good talk?”

“No, no…,” said John. “Time’s not up. Give us a while longer, Crystal.”

Crystal sighed heavily, looking guilty, yet stern. “John, something came up, we have to leave. We’ll come back soon.”

John set the phone down and rubbed his beard, his breathe quickening with each stroke. He nodded and pursed his lips in understanding.

John watched them walk away, wanting to know what Billy’s small hand would feel like in his.

Billy stopped and turned back to John, tugging at his mother’s black purse. She smiled down at him, unzipped her purse and handed him a folded piece of paper. Billy ran back to the glass window and John’s hands shook with joy. Tears fell down his face when Billy took up the orange phone. John cradled his phone close to his ear, holding it delicately as if it were a piece of Billy he could touch.

“I drew a picture for you, daddy,” said Billy, sliding the folded sheet under the thin gap where the glass met the counter.

John grabbed it, his hand shaking, still crying. Billy tried to smile, but his father’s crying frightened him, and he ran back to his mother. John held the phone to his lips and squeezed it tight in both hands. Crystal and Billy walked out of the visiting room doors and disappeared.

John was escorted back to his cell by a heavyset guard named Riley.

“Was that your son,” asked Riley, uncuffing John’s hands, which held the paper Billy had given him.

“Yes,” said John, a mixture of sadness and pride in his voice.

“Handsome little guy. Congratulations.” Riley shut the cell door and left John in silence.

His cell was sparse and tidy. He kept no possessions other than some old magazines and his toiletries.

He stretched out on his cot, adjusted the pillow behind his head, and opened Billy’s drawing.

Three guards stood at the far end of a long corridor of jail cells, smoking cigarettes they had stolen from an unruly inmate, when they heard John Winthrop scream at the top of his lungs, as if he were being tortured.

They sprinted down the corridor, one already calling for backup on his radio, expecting he would have to detain an inmate wielding a shank fashioned from God knew what.

John squirmed and thrashed in his cell, high-pitched screams leaving his mouth in explosive, short bursts. The guards looked around for another inmate, someone to blame for John’s painful wails, but they found him alone.

They pulled him up, thrashing and kicking the air, scowling at the guards, spit flying from his mouth. Cuffs were strapped to his wrists as a guard’s radio squawked and the other inmates across the corridor catcalled and hollered out of their cells, celebrating the screams, excited for the action.

John was drug away into a padded cell where he continued to thrash and scream.

News of John’s strange outburst was brought before the prison warden, who asked to have John inspected after his violent fits had subsided. He inspected John’s cell immediately, searching for weapons or illegal substances.

“Where was he before he came back to his cell,” asked the warden.

The guards shook their heads cluelessly. The warden grew angry.

“He was visiting with his son,” said Riley, the heavyset guard, walking up behind the rest. “I brought him back. He was fine then. That was less than an hour ago.”

“Did he bring anything back with him,” asked the warden, checking under the tiny steel sink, the pillows, and cot itself.

“Just that,” said Riley, pointing to a folded piece of paper on the ground near the toilet. “His son must have given it to him. A drawing or something.”

The warden picked up the paper and put on a pair of thick-lensed glasses. He unfolded it and stared for a while, shaking his head after a minute. “Nothing here. Maybe there were drugs folded in the paper? Riley, you’re meant to check for that. Did you?”

“No sir I didn’t,” said Riley, swallowing hard. “John’s been a quiet man ever since he got in here. Never gave anyone trouble. He hasn’t had a visitor in over a year. I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, it was the first time he saw his son, and…”

The warden cut him off, “Great. Nice work Riley. Get a doctor in here. We need to run a blood test on this guy. Find out what he took.”

The guards dispersed, leaving the warden alone in John’s sparse cell. He looked around, flipped through the old magazines near the toilet, and placed the piece of paper on John’s bed face up, the image drawn in colored pencil. The warden glanced down at the drawing before leaving the cell, his face uncertain. On the page were two objects, three-dimensional and centered afront a grey background of charcoal shading: a white sphere hovering above an upside down, yellow pyramid.