45 -The Case of the Misaccused Witch

"The witch trials in America were long over and done with when Dagon's Hollow rose from a railroad camp," Roberta said. "That is not to say that people had ceased to believe in witches or witchcraft, but the law would not persecute them. Those who felt afflicted and pointed fingers would have to take matters in their own hands. Once, that happened in Dagon's Hollow. And I call this...

THE CASE OF THE MISACCUSED WITCH

Oliva Blankenship could read and write. That by itself was an unusual skill for women in Dagon's Hollow at the time, and made her position as schoolmarm secure. However, she could read and write Latin and Greek; had gone to school at some private academy back East. There were rumors of a scandal in that, which is how she ended up in a small town in the West, but I have found nothing definite. After she arrived, she spent much time on the Westside, and learned some Japanese.

Her diaries and letters with Asa Thothson are preserved in the Dagon's Hollow Historical Society, where I have picked through her neat, precise script, and the slightly grander looped scrawl of her longtime friend and roommate. They give a fascinating account of the town through the eyes of one of the most educated residents, which is at times quite in contrast to the back issues of the Hollow Herald newspaper for the first time.

It was the Hollow Herald that first mentioned the affair, a kind of blight that afflicted many men in the town. What exactly "Black Pecker" was is not explicitly clear. Perhaps Doc Grumman knew, or his counterpart Kane Ito on the Eastside. The editor of the Herald only said that the "Afflicted were forbidden at the House," and that the ladies would not receive them. It may be imagined that this struck those young men very poorly. They were frustrated; they had money, but it was no good.

Blankenship wrote then:

"The mixed-race girl, Salome, has set up in a shack within stone's throw of the school. Since the house refused them, a steady stream of those Afflicted have gone to her at sundown. I see her sometimes as I dismiss the children for the day. She is free, twenty-one, and might almost pass for white, in the right light. I cannot say anything to her about her business, but I do worry. Some of those men are unlovely to look upon, and rough of manner. Sometimes, late into the night, I could hear them. The beastly congress. The exclamations of joy. Like a succession of wedding-nights, though I will never know such pleasures. Nor, perhaps, would I care to with such beastly men."

There is no listing for a Salome in any of the town records of the period, nor on any of the stones in the three cemeteries. I cannot say who were her parents or how she came there. Perhaps she was transient. Yet Blankenship noted:

"Her shirt is torn, her breasts bare. There is a mark there, like a crescent moon, between her full, ripe breasts. There are men gathered outside her cabin. They are angry and yelling, but she will not let them in. I can see the black splotches on their necks and hands, where the skin is bared, and they each look thin and haggard. By Asherah and Lilith, it is like some terrible reverse leprosy. I thought it bad enough when Salome would let those men into her shack, to do who knows what with them, but now I fear for her life. I must stop now, and run for the deputy. I fear to witness what will happen."

In the Hollow Herald the next day, the editor wrote as the last item on the back page: "A Witch Was Burned In Her House, By Those Afflicted, In Hopes Of Breaking the Curse."

Olivia tells the rest of the tale:

"Too late. It was ashes and smoke when I arrived, and too far to the well for water. It has been dry and the shack went up quickly. Deputy Reynolds will do nothing. I gathered her bones, every piece of her that I could find. There are books I have not shown you yet, books entrusted to me which cannot be read by those who have not learned the arts to read them. They made a witch of a poor young woman who had nothing in this world but her life and the body with which they spent their lusts, and I swear, by the Nameless Mother, there will be a reckoning, though they be near enough to **** as it is. Please, come at once, and bring that ring you bear. Tell you husband whatever you must, only come quickly."

In Asa's diary, one page has been scribbled over in black charcoal, but I was able to borrow the multi-spectral imaging unit at the university, and was able to read a part of it:

"[...] rendered down into a black soup. Olivia's hands are bloody up to the elbows, her best dress ruined, but I have never seen her like this. So terribly passionate. What did Salome mean to her? Did she see a part of herself in the young woman's struggles? Did it remind her of that ancient pain that she fled westward from? I let her hold my hand onto the carven skull, slick with gore. The black ring grows hot. I do not know the words she speaks, but her eyes are rolled back now, unseeing. Stiffly she took up the skull and scooped a mouthful of that black awfulness into her [illegible, several lines crossed out] on her back, gravid form swells with each breath. I have torn off her bloomers and something crowns, pushes it past her lips. It is a skull. A black skull, pushing its way through, the form behind it misty, like ink in water, the shadow of a young woman. I must pray but I can think of no prayer the Almighty would hear."

The newspaper kept a steady roll of the dead daily. There were fifteen deaths in the two weeks that followed, and twelve of those were marked by a black star next to their name. Those names appear on no cemetery marker, nor in any record book. Three years ago, when excavating for a parking lot not far from the old school house, workers found a mass grave. Twelve men, their bones jumbled up in a layer of black earth...and another skeleton that could not be identified. The skull, at least, belonged to a young woman, about twenty years of age. Carved with unfamiliar signs and words. The other bones, similarly marked, were not entirely human.

It is after the last account in Olivia's letters and Asa's diary that a new addition was made to Dagon's Hollow folklore. The skull-faced woman, who stands at the railroad track at night, a crimson moon between her breasts. Dozens of people have seen it, though only alone, on nights when the train does not run and the moon is not full. Some say if a man presses a silver dollar into her palm, she will show you delights; others claim if a man does not cross her palm with silver, she will take their soul.

"There are more curious legends about what happens if a woman sees the Witch of Dagon's Hollow," Roberta added. "But my researches are incomplete on that matter as yet."

So saying, she blew out the candle.