The Witchfinder's Apprentice E-Book

Cora Buhlert

• Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Massachusetts in the Year of the Lord 1695: Matthew Goodson, eighteen years of age, is apprenticed to a team of experienced witchfinders, who travel from village to village and town to town to uncover witchcraft, examine the evidence, interrogate suspects and stamp out evil.

When a wave of mysterious illnesses and deaths hits the town of Redemption, the witchfinders are called in and quickly arrest a suspect, a teenaged girl named Grace Pankhurst.

Matthew has long been having his doubts about the witchfinders and the righteousness of their mission. The interrogation of Grace brings those doubts to a flashpoint. But is Grace truly innocent or has Matthew fallen under the spell of a comely witch?

This is a historical horror story of 5500 words or approximately 20 print pages by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert.

Leseprobe

The Witchfinder’s Apprentice

by Cora Buhlert

Bremen, Germany

Copyright © 2021 by Cora Buhlert

All rights reserved.

Cover image © Fotelia, Dreamstime

Pegasus Pulp Publications

Mittelstraße 12

28816 Stuhr

Germany

www.pegasus-pulp.com

The Witchfinder’s Apprentice

Autumn had painted the dense forests surrounding the town of Redemption in Massachusetts Colony a riot of fiery hues, transforming the woods into a natural cathedral as glorious as any in the Old World. But the crows flew in clouds of black across the grey sky and the fog rolled in from the sea and settled among the tree trunks, heralding the arrival of the witching season.

There were other signs as well, signs that evil was afoot in Redemption. A shipment of rye that had only just been delivered by a trader named Jeremiah Church turned black in the storehouse. Bread went mouldy in the kitchens and the milk turned sour in the can. Chickens would not lay eggs and finally fell from their perches, quite dead. Horses went lame in their stables and in the meadows, cows collapsed in lethal convulsions.

At first, the evil that had come to Redemption confined itself to animals, but then the effects spread to the human population as well. A most pious man named Elijah Gibson went mad and chopped his wife Rebecca in half with an axe, claiming that she was possessed by the Devil himself. Two young girls, Elizabeth Hammond and Mary Osborne, collapsed in church, their bodies writhing in strange convulsions. A newly-wed wife named Margaret Proctor collapsed in her kitchen while baking bread and suffered a miscarriage. An old man named Ebenezer Woodbridge slipped on a chestnut on the way to church and broke his leg. And a widow named Hester Broughton came down with a mysterious fever and a sore and swollen throat. Pus-filled lesions appeared all over her body and she passed away three days later.

The good people of Redemption knew what that meant. There was a witch living among them, a witch working her devilish craft to harm the god-fearing people of Redemption. If this witch was not found and hanged soon, then the whole town would suffer as had happened in nearby Salem two years before.

However, witches were cunning and not so easily identified. Therefore, the magistrate did what was the most prudent course of action in such situations. He asked for outside help.

And this is how the witchfinders came to Redemption on a foggy October morning to cleanse the town of evil.

There were four of them. The leaders were two tall gaunt-faced and dark-haired men and black and sombre garb. The only thing that distinguished them outwardly was that one had curly hair that fell to his shoulders and the other wore his hair cut short. There was also an apprentice, a boy on the cusp of manhood with an open face, inquisitive eyes the colour of hazel and brown hair that fell to his shoulder in gentle waves. Finally, there was the executioner, a tall and muscular black man with a shaven head and a scar on his cheek.

When this sombre procession emerged from the foggy woods and walked into Redemption, they set up camp in the courthouse. Then they went to work.

The logical suspect was the trader Jeremiah Church. After all, the problems had begun when he came to Redemption. And so the witchfinders tracked Jeremiah Church to the nearby town of Salvation, where he was found in bed in the local inn, quite dead, his body covered in pus-filled lesions. Jeremiah Church was not the witch, but yet another victim.

So the witchfinders began questioning the womenfolk of Redemption. Because everybody knew that women, being the weaker sex, were more susceptible to the seductions of the Devil than menfolk.

It did not take long for a suspect to emerge. Abigail Hathorne, daughter of the local blacksmith, seventeen years of age. She was too pretty, too ambitious, too wild and had been seen sneaking off into the woods on more than one occasion. It was clear that Abigail had to be the witch, for what else could she have been doing in the woods all alone?

So Abigail was arrested and questioned. And as always, when one witch was identified, more accusations and arrests followed.

For the witchfinders would not rest until all evil had been exorcised from Redemption, even if that meant hanging every woman or girl in the entire town.

Matthew Goodson, eighteen years of age, sat on a plain wooden chair in a small room adjacent to the courthouse of Redemption. His quill scratched across the parchment, as he hastily scribbled down the record of the interrogation of a suspected witch.

Accurate records of interrogations were important, as Master Gideon Jacobs and Master Caine Hopkins always stressed. Master Gideon and Master Caine were a team of experienced witchfinders, travelling from village to village and town to town to uncover witchcraft, examine the evidence and the suspects, convict and execute the guilty. It was an important mission, for Satan never rested and witchcraft ran rampant across the land.

These past three months, Matthew had been apprenticed to Master Gideon and Master Caine. He accompanied them on their travels, did errands and odd jobs and learned the trade of the witchfinder, how to identify suspects, conduct interrogations and elicit confessions.

The suspect in this case was a girl of about the same age as Matthew. She was pretty, with rosy cheeks, cornflower blue eyes and ringlets of unruly red hair that escaped from underneath her bonnet.

Red hair, the colour of the Devil, as Master Gideon always said. Just as it was always the pretty girls who were witches, for Satan had made them pretty to seduce righteous men into sin.

Though ugly women could be witches, too, Master Caine added, their outward appearance reflecting the ugliness of their soul. “Remember, lad, any woman can be a witch and likely is. Women are truly the sinful and fallen sex.”