“They wonder where, they wonder when, they know how.”

18. The Stigma – Trevor Hoyle

Regression therapy, Branwell Bronte, a giant black dog who will not shut up about how it wants to fornicate…all of these things are big parts of The Stigma. I also took a long time to understand what the title meant despite having read enough about witch hunts to know better; it seems the concept of being stigmatized for more figurative things than those “fleshie teats,” to borrow from a later witch hunting pamphlet, was too ingrained in me. And, due to educational choices, I have heard of this particular witch trial in person at the very castle the Lancashire witches were hanged at. It’s still a prison in addition to having a museum and being a castle directly in the middle of town. It’s on a big hill too.

Anyway, Alizon Davies will not be denied. She had eyes going two directions, which somehow helped her be so confusing to people that she had to be accused of witchcraft and was a real witch too. Her familiar was a giant black dog named Tibb, who talks – mostly about fornicating to women who do not want to fornicate with a giant demon in the shape of a dog – and she wants to live forever and has the skills. What she does not have is the cooperation of all her descendants. Elizabeth Strang’s father, Greville, was not cooperative, but we don’t learn that till later. Mostly we have Elizabeth, who seems depressed and has nightmares we know are real, and her psychiatrist, Quinton, and at first I was worried this book was not going to get going like ever.

It does take off, finally, it seems it takes a minute for a witch from 1612 to get her strength going so she can kill people and give her dog a chance to threaten women before quite the ending. Like, seriously, the resolution to Elizabeth’s ancestory was really something.

 

Peregrine definitely had certain skills; unfortunately, living forever wasn’t one of them. If only she’d leaned in to being a pigtch early on.