Chapter Thirty-Nine
THIRTY-NINE
My head is spinning and the stones around my neck are so heavy they pin me to the earth. My footsteps drag over the grass. I experience moments of strange clarity punctuated with flashes of nothing, lost time. A small, distant part of me knows it is a reaction to the shock. My mind is reduced to rubble, smoking craters and scorched earth. It retreats.
—FLASH—
The night is inky dark, humidity pressing close to the skin. Smothering us. Sam, running his hands through his hair, walking beside me, long shadowed, pleading. He is still clutching that shoe to his chest, glassy eyes deeply socketed. Distant thunder over the moors, a pall of hazy smoke across the green. The crackling PA system, which plays over speakers hanging from the branches of the trees; a waltz, the tune slow-moving and drowsy. Children running through the dark laughing and playing pixie in the dell, holding sparklers aloft and streaking embers like comets. The stones hanging around my neck are rubbing the flesh of my neck raw. Paul and Lisa beside the bonfire, their features corrupted by shadows so it looks as though they have holes for eyes.
—FLASH—
Bert is cloaked in smoke and darkness.
—FLASH—
Sweat warm and salty on my lips. The bonfire is a spirited wraith in veils of orange and gold, logs split and crackling and throwing up sparks and I’ve never felt more beautiful. I let the heat press against my skin, the fury of it. Crowds of people stare with wet, moony eyes: the woman with the dog that pissed on the gate; teenage boys on their bikes; young girls in tank tops and eyeliner, glossy lipped, unafraid; a man with a round face and upward slanted eyes shouting something, spraying spittle all over me.
—FLASH—
Someone shouts, “Good Riddance,” and throws something at my feet. There is a bang loud enough to make my teeth rattle and a cheer goes up from the crowd. A scorch of lightning flickers blue and silver in the sky to the east. The dress billows around me.
—FLASH—
A sea of pale faces.
“What do we do with witches in this town?” Bert calls, dark and smoky. The reply, massed voices lifted to the sky, heads up.
“Run them out!”
“Run them out!”
“Run! Them! Out!”
The last is distorted by screaming, straining necks, heads lifted to the sky. The bonfire flames are sinuous, mesmerizing. The crowds are cheering and catcalling, voices so loud they drown out the crack of thunder. The wind is picking up, stripping petals from my crown. Someone is shrieking and clapping. Excitement or fear, it’s hard to tell. People are holding hands and linking arms, lifting glasses of cider and cloudy beer, voices raised. There is Sam, standing slightly apart from the group, his face set miserably in the flickering light. He is looking at me with eyes like frozen puddles. I see a small huddle of children—the eldest can’t be more than ten years old—running in circles around the fire, throwing handfuls of grass at each other. Faces shiny with excitement. A small figure detaches from the group and walks toward me. I know her. It’s Stevie. She is holding the same plastic gun she’d had the day Sam and I had arrived. Her hair is tied in bunches and when she smiles I see she has lost another tooth. She looks up at me, pointing the barrel at my head.
“Bang!” she says, and pulls the trigger.