Drown Witch: Generational Revenge

It has been nearly half a century since her death, but once again the drowned witch stood in a forest she’d once known. Though it had changed much, cut farther back to harvest for profit. Though that practice had long since ceased. The village was all but dead now. The small village had known little of what she’d done to ensure their survival. A healer through remedies long lost, and without them the pox slowly snuffed the fire of the village, one by one, day by day, year by year, fewer people were still alive, now all that remained, a few holdfasts, too sick for travel, but not too sick to have the luck for death to take them, and the local gravekeeper, prepared to stay until his own death or until no one was left to bury. Or so was his plan.

The men who entered the town on his fateful night were the Inquisition. They were atypical of the normal Inquisition, a special force formed for clearing towns like this. Glorified and gilded muck rakers. Welding cleansing fire, burn the plague way, and build something new on the ashes.

The witch stood in the dark of the tree cover, body twitching like a marionette in the hands of an amature, tangled strings and spastic movements. Her head moved in a jerky tilt like a confused animal. “G-gra…Grimsby…” her vocal cords hissed, like drawing a fiddles bow across a saw.

He was not the Original, but his son. And the apple didn’t fall far. He carried himself with the same pompous air of superiority only his father could.

“Spread out.” Grimsby jr said, his tone pretentious. “I do not wish to be in this pig stye for longer than required.” he said waving for his five other men to fan out. The orders to ‘deal’ with anyone sick, and ‘remove’ anyone healthy…unfortinately for anyone remaining in the town…they were all too sick to move. Or that’s what the reports would say.

“Rite sir…” one of the men said in a thick accent. “You louts heard ‘em spread out.”

The five men all went in other directions planning to work from the outside in. Jars of Cleansing Fire hanging from their belts.

The witch waited until they were separated, skulking through the trees, just out of reach of their torch light, until one was distracted, pounding on the door of an empty house. The snap of a branch, and his head whipped from side to side. Trying to see into the lightless void beyond the reach of his fire. “Oi. who’s there. Show yourself.” he said, swinging the torch trying to show the source of the sound. “Probably just so dumb animal.” he told himself about to start pounding on the door again with pain so intense shot up his body he forgot to scream. Before collapsing he looked to the ground in confusion, not seeing his boots, or his toes. Shock hit him first, falling to the ground he could not see, to his horror his feet were backwards, the warmth of bloody compound fractures filled his boots, his body almost finally remembered to scream when something appeared over him. At first he thought it was one of his compatriots, to his horror it was a woman, with greyish skin and glowing green eyes, one arm stuck in a stockade, she raised, her free arm in a shaking, broken twitchy manner putting a finger to her lips, hissing a “ssshhhh.” before she snatched him but one of his ruined ankles pulling him screaming, and dragging his nails into the dirt, pulling fingernails and leaving eight long lines, speckled sparsely with blood into the tree line, where he let out one final inhuman shriek of fear and pain, cut abruptly.

Slowly, methodically the witch moved around the town, moving like a wraith. Finally finding her next victim as he kicked down the door of an empty house and rushed inside. The witch followed behind a moment or two later. The man was ransacking the place. Taking what was left from the people who’d moved on from this place, a handful of jewellery from the looks of it. He was talking to himself, letting out little laughs, pleased with himself as he stuffed the loot into his pockets. Something heavy slammed into his neck, as the witch swung the broken section of the stocks around her head and left arm. The man crumpled to the ground. He rolled over looking around for who was bold enough to attack him seeing nothing, then a hand slowly crept over his face, from the blind spot behind him. Clammy fingers wrapping around his face, as she leaned in making long eye contact.

The screams of pain drew another Inquisitioner, before he could come through the doorway a flashing glow, as if a lightning bug the size of a small dog had flashed once. Roots snaked up the man’s legs, wrapped up his torso, forcing its way down his throat. He choked and gagged, before his body shuttered, and the root burst from the man’s guts and he went limp. Leaving a macabre effigy at the doorway.

She slipped out the door, leaving the man tangled in roots, and the mutilated body inside the house to be found by the remaining men. She moved in a loping walk, finding the last remaining men. They had grouped up, guarding the door of the town elder’s house that Grimsby had held up in until the job was done. Now his last stand.

The witch stepped into the light so the two men could see. Twitchy, disjointed movements, like she was moving on tangled strings. She slowly tilted her head to the left, then the right. “Gr…Grims…beee.” she rasped. The men drew their swords, clumsily, fear causing one to nearly drop his sword.

“H-ha–hault.” One managed to say, his mouth gone dry.

The other held his sword out in front of him, the tip wavering as it shook in his hands.

The witch flicked her freed hand, a thin tendril of green light connected to the outstretched blade like a lighting rod. The man wavered the sword falling to the ground, as the man started vomiting the contents of his stomach onto the dirt, eventually giving way to a torrent of dark silt filled water, contents of the lake behind them. Til he fell to his knees and eventually his side, unmoving, eyes starting at nothing. The other man, seeing this he ran, dropped his sword, but the moment he passed into the tree line screams filled the air.

The witch shambled up to the door, fumbling with the knob for a while before pushing it open. Grimsby was sitting at a desk, obviously thinking all was well and he was safe, a bottle of wine uncorked, and a glass half enjoyed.

“I presume you have dealt with the individual causing commotion?” The man’s gaze snapped up to see who had entered when they didn’t respond.

“Gr…imsbe…” the witch said again.

Grimsby shot with a hand crossbow, the bolt sticking in her upper chest, but she kept charging. And was on him before he could reload. Knocking him behind the desk, pouncing on him. Slamming his head and neck into the floor until he stopped thrashing and long after, and his body was starting to get stiff, before she stood.

Letting out what could be only a sigh of relief she slinked off heading back to her grave in the lake.