The Burning Time by David Mark

Author:David Mark [Mark, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Ingle feels the tiredness in his arms. Feels it across his back and at the base of his neck. His hands are numb. For three days he has been administering pain, an agent of righteousness: an implement of good locked in righteous battle against a force of demonic psychic energy. And still she fights him. Still she refuses to acquiesce.

He looks upon her, upon what is left. It takes him a moment to focus. The cluster of warts upon his brow adds a lumpy canopy to his vision. The other eye is cloudy, a ying-yang symbol painted in crimson and ivory, like a pearl dipped in blood. The room is thick with smoke. The fireplace is blocked up now and the curling white plumes billow back into the small, low-ceilinged space. The room smells of burned flesh and mildew. It smells of singed feathers. It smells of blood.

She’s waking up again. He has begun to recognize her mannerisms. She always wriggles and writhes before her eyelids flutter open and she tries, so desperately, to fix her gaze upon him. There is always a moment before memory returns: an instant of glorious incomprehension, before she places herself. Then the fear comes. Fear becoming terror. And then the rage. Rage as she fights him. Kicks and spits and bites and writhes and tearing the skin from her wrists and ankles as the rope gnaws at her pale, blood-speckled flesh.

He sits in his chair. Watches. She is tied to four iron stakes, each hammered into the soggy wooden floorboards. Her head points north, as the Book dictates. He reaches out with his own bare foot. Touches his grimy big toe against the soft whiteness of her calf. She flinches. Stiffens.

He wonders whether she will try to speak. She has a leather pouch inside her mouth, filled with his totems: feathers, stones, crystal, coin. The skull of a mouse, killed when she shape-shifted into her feline form, has been denuded of flesh and placed at the centre of the bag, wrapped in red thread. He wishes he had something more arcane to bind her mouth than the gaffer tape he has resorted to. But the Book offered nothing and he’d had to make do as best he could. The alternative was listening to her screeches, her pleas, her threats and lies.

‘Today,’ he says, as he watches her strain against the bonds. ‘Today you will reveal yourself, witch. Today you will break.’

She starts to mumble and whine, to screech against the gag. It’s an ugly sound. He picks up the hand mirror from the little table at his side. Considers his own reflection. There has been no change. His face still weeps. He is still a mess of sores and running wounds. He feels a sudden rush of anger. Has he not suffered enough? Has he not endured more than any man could stand? Has he not undergone the agonies of the true believer? And yet the wounds persist. The voices, too. He is still a victim of these unholy persecutions.

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