Witch (The Cursed Manuscripts, #1)

by Iain Rob Wright

Ashley dared take another step. The woman flinched like a cornered animal. She had stopped thrashing at her chains, and they now lay slack against the stone floor. Ashley looked for a keyhole but couldn’t find one. Then, suddenly horrified, she realised the chains were attached directly to the woman’s flesh.

Ashley saw pleading in her bloodshot blue eyes. The woman had clearly been through hell. Ashley had no doubt about the cause. A man. Only a man would do this.

“Take me home. With any luck, I’ll only get grounded for a year.” Worse luck, and my dad will chain me up like that woman in the farmhouse. She was there. She was real. We saw her.

Ashley was leaning against the kitchen counter, staring at her bare feet and twinkling her toes. “I’ve told you,” she muttered. “It’s the truth. There was a woman in the woods.”

said we were wasting police time. But we weren’t lying. The woman was real. She needed help. She needed our help, and we left

The mother marched over to the children and pulled something from underneath her skirts. The object flashed in the sunlight but moved too swiftly for Jude to identify. Is that…? Is that a knife? Jude recoiled in horror as the mother started stabbing her children. The scene was more realistic than any he’d ever seen. Blood spurted into the tall grass. The children’s old-fashioned clothes darkened with leaking fluids. The mother’s face was expressionless as she stabbed them again and again and again, a hundred times each. By the time she finished, their bloodless bodies had melted into the earth.

The fires of yesterday are ashes today. Destiny dies and renews every second.

“If there are any witches or psychopaths in Devil’s Ditch,” he said, “then all we have to do is run faster than them. Simple.” “No. All I have to do is run faster than you.”

“We’re here to help you,” said Jude. “We’re sorry we left you yesterday. You must’ve been so—” The woman lunged forward, yanking at her chains, which were still attached through her ankles and hands. The bonds tugged at her flesh and caused the wounds to bleed. She bit at the air, jaws snapping closed over and over.

Ashley cleared her throat. “I need to escape from what?” The woman looked at her with an expression of pity. “Your chains.” “What chains?” “The ones that bind all women. The ones that stifle us and imprison us and force us to obey. You are strong, Ashley, I see that. A strong woman like you deserves to be free. You should fear no man.”

“Stay! Release me so that you and I may leave here. Do not allow me to be rescued by so-called good men. There are no good men in this world, Ashley.”

They were about to press a rich person’s buzzer and ask about a witch named Rose who lived in the woods on the other side of town. Even if they didn’t mention Rose, they still planned to ask about a ruined old farmhouse that had been forgotten fifty-odd years ago. Suddenly, he couldn’t see a scenario where this went well.

“Please,” said Jude. “We need to know about Rose. She’s… I’m not even sure how to say it.” “Oh, I know exactly what Rose is, lamby. She’s a monster. If you two have had a run-in with her, I expect you already know that. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Ashley asked, “Why was Rose chained up in your family’s old farmhouse?” Rita shivered, shoulders bony and uneven. “Because I put her there. In times I can barely remember.” Ashley raised an eyebrow. Rita didn’t look strong enough to put anybody in chains against their will. “You chained her up? Why?” “Because she murdered my brother and his children. They were Rose’s children, too, as it goes, but she was never much of a mother.”

Maybe if she’d met the bank manager first, the darkness of my past would be brighter. As things turned out, Rose decided she didn’t want to be a wife to my brother or a mother to her children anymore, so one day, casually as you’d like, she stabbed the three of them to death and burned their bodies in the pigsties.

The locket around her neck is cursed. It gives her eternal life. Eternal suffering. If I had just killed her, her wickedness would have been at an end, but my darkness demanded more. I let it win out over my conscience.

Age is a funny thing. Gets to a point where the past is unbelievably long and the future terrifyingly small. My days left on this Earth are few, but I’m glad to have lived this long.”

“The magic inside this locket can be undone only in the place it was forged. You must return it… to… to its birthplace and bury it beneath wood, stone… and flesh. Nature must reclaim it.”

What type of person do you want to be?” Jude took several laboured breaths, still winded. Several cars passed by and hit them with their headlights. After a couple of minutes, he straightened up and gave himself a shake. “Once again, the warrior princess shows no fear. Her trusted mage is honoured to be by her side.”

“Girl,” she whispered. “I knew the moment I met you that you would be the one to free me. I visited you in the night, calling out for your return, and you did return. I see you. I see the darkness inside of you. The rage, it is exquisite. Let it feed.”

“Men made this world, but it is for women to inherit. We must give birth to our power and make manifest our rage. We shall not be servants and whores any longer.”

As a final defiant act, the dying woman threw out her arms like Christ on the cross and stared up at the night sky. “Let the devil take me, but no man will shall own me. I shall make Hell tremble.”

It’s just something we’re going to have to live with. Maybe that’s what growing up is.”