Hex

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

STEVE GRANT ROUNDED the corner of the parking lot behind Black Spring Market & Deli just in time to see Katherine van Wyler get run over by an antique Dutch barrel organ.

First line. It’s a fake to hide her during festivals.

“HER NAME IS Katherine van Wyler, but most of us call her the Black Rock Witch,”

People saw the signs everywhere. Stillbirths, strange natural phenomena, rapid putrefaction of the flesh, big birds…”

Every last grain of idealism would be sacrificed on the altar of safety.

In the vaults beneath the church it was always winter, and always night.

But Mathers was afraid, and fear overruled clearheaded reason. It made the councilman unpredictable, drove him into a corner. And like Steve Grant, Grim understood the potentially dangerous consequences: the primitive human urge to channel fear, transform it into rage … and find a scapegoat. It was a devotion bordering on fanaticism, and it was happening all over town. Who had mocked the witch? What had changed to make her want to punish us? Everyone looked close to home for some unusual recent event and made the obvious connection. The Wicker Burning. The coming of the Outsiders during the festival. The woman next door, who had painted her garden fence that ugly terra-cotta. Dr. Grant—because after all, it had been his dog.

The channeling of fear into rage and acceptance of superstition is a driver in the first half of the book. What they fear is their reaction, which is an interesting thing to consider since the witch is a supernatural entity. They fear a cliche reaction to witches that dates back to the 1600s.

But sometimes what lay buried came back … because buried wasn’t always buried.

Nice way of saying what is dead isnt always dead

Finally, his attempts bore fruit and Tyler began shuddering in his arms. The blind, boneless expression on his face began to thaw. His lips quivered and released a soft, stifled moan. His eyes opened wider and became moist. His hands moved upward, trembling, and fell helplessly back down.

Nice clinical reaction to his ordeal

He lay awake for a long time and listened to the soft hiss of the flame in his head. God, I hope I did the right thing. I truly believe my heart is in the right place. But love was a mysterious, deceptive force, and one of the few areas in which Steve didn’t trust his powers of judgment the full hundred percent.

So now the conflict has more layers. It isn’t about the witch but the family coverup that focuses on what Jaydon did as opposed to Tyler’s actions (starting Open Your Eyes).

The idea of the stoning was bad enough, but actually seeing it with their own eyes ignited their blind rage like burning phosphorus.

Like burning phosphorous

And somewhere in Black Spring, the witch stopped whispering … and listened.

!!! This is after the boys start screaming, reacting to their sentence of 10 lashings (20 for Justin because he’s an adult) and three weeks in Doodletown

Three all-American boys in sneakers and jeans, hanging like animal cadavers in the slaughterhouse.

How far from humanity and civilization we’ve gone

Even if you had held your ear against the metal skeleton of the Bear Mountain Bridge that morning you would have sensed the tremor of the lashes, as delicate as the flapping of butterfly wings. Yet nobody did, as nobody knew what was going on in Black Spring. The people in the daily rush-hour traffic between the towns of Highland and Peekskill were listening to WJGK and WPKF. On the road, on their way, on their phones, eating commuter breakfast bagels from paper bags. America was waking up. Good morning, America.

Despite the horror, we all move on, ignorant. One of the dichotomies in this book is how far Black Springs goes to remain outside society, but then in moments like this, it’s pointed out that society doesn’t care. It keeps moving.

AS IN SO many fairy tales, the cruelest part is often overlooked: It’s not the depravity of the witch, but the mourning of the poor woodcutter over the loss of his children.

Brilliant. And it switches the narrative around.

This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear the most.

We just went through three days without power. Thomas is on to something…

It was a well-thrown rock, and it hit Griselda-Katherine in the forehead, slicing the nipple like a box cutter. She flipped backward with flailing arms and tumbled into the web of swaddled children. A low zinnng! could be heard like the breaking string of a double bass, and suddenly children were being spewed from unwrapped cloths where the breast’s flank had been destroyed. Soon the entire structure gave way and the masterpiece crumbled. Four hundred children flew into the air as if they had been shot from catapults. Steve’s mouth fell open in a quaking hole of horror as he saw the sudden realization on their faces, heard their pitiful cries of fear and bewilderment. Their parents had failed their test, and now their children were crashing down on them in a rain of broken bones and clattering limbs.

Boom. This is it.

The town square was a surging horde of human abnormality. Now not hundreds but two or three thousand people were participating in the total pandemonium of bellowing, wailing, and brawling people. Everyone was there—all of Black Spring. And it was impossible to tell who was fighting what cause. Griselda’s Butchery & Delicacies lay in ashes; other buildings were burning as well, billowing fires that lit the mob, grazed the treetops, colored the bronze statue of the washerwoman at the fountain with a reddish glare, and reflected in the odd-shaped windows of Crystal Meth Church, giving it the surreal appearance of rising even higher and looking out over the unholy throng with the eyes of the inferno. Steve tried to recognize his fellow townsfolk in the features of individuals, but realized it was impossible: Their faces seemed rubbed out, without eyes and without mouths, and not a single madman’s face deviated from that of another. These were the faces of Black Spring, and Black Spring was at its darkest hour.

Again, those final lines in this highlight. Wow!

One by one they walked into the river, disappearing under the icy cold water where they were seized by the current. Many hours later, the sky over the Highlands flushed a blood red. And when daybreak finally arrived, hundreds of swollen bodies were seen floating languidly under the Tappan Zee Bridge on their way toward New York … giving the earliest risers a glimpse of somebody else’s nightmare. It was Christmas Day.

The end of Black Spring

There was a knock at the door. Steve gasped. He looked up. In the sunlight, behind the panel curtain, was a shadow. Only its silhouette was visible, waiting, motionless. The silhouette … of a boy? Steve sat in the hallway, paralyzed with fear. And he wished it would go away. Oh, God, please—if only he could make it go away. What awaited him there was not his son, and what he felt was not love, but a fathomless abyss that was opening beneath him and was much, much deeper than love. The knock came again. A slow, loud thud—only one. He saw the shadow of knuckles resting on the windowpane. Steve Grant picked up the needle and the catgut, and as the thing at the door kept knocking and knocking, he started on his eyes, hoping the loneliness of the eternal darkness would offer him a bit of comfort from the cold.

Last paragraphs. Doom for Steve as he becomes the next witch