Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

Ireland at the head of them. Urged by his fellows, he called her an old witch and a whore and asked if she would gobble on his winkle for a farthing.

I have never seen her in a mood so bloody as when she got home that night. She did not speak a word, but went into her room where first, after a silence, I could hear her making noises as if she were frigging off, and then could hear her talking in a low voice, though to what I did not know. Some time went by before she would open the door, at which she was revealed stood naked with the sleek white weasel creature whispering in French as it coiled there about her heels, before next darting from the room and thence the house, gone from our sight.

We did not see the Imp again that night, and Mary told me that she had instructed it to journey up the dark and empty lanes and find the Irelands’ house in Southwick, where it was to worry at the boy’s insides, afflicting them with gripes and pains. The thought of his discomfort took the edge from off her wrath, and both of us believed that was the last of it until the evening after, when the baby-fingered creature came once more to us.

It paced and chattered in a multitude of tongues before our hearth, and seemed at first to sulk and then become enraged when we did not set work for it to do. It glared at us with hateful eyes or tugged our skirts with hot, soft little hands and would not leave despite our pleas and our commands that it should do so. Next it started up to rail at us in English, when it told us that we must now call it Jelerasta, and that it would not permit us sleep until we found a task in keeping with its nature.

In the small hours of the morning, with my spirit at its lowest, I begged Mary to contrive an errand for the beast lest I go mad and, weakening to see my weakness, she consented. Suck-My-Thumb (or Jelerasta) was once more sent out to nibble on the bowels of the unlucky child and, as we later heard, cause him to utter noises like a dog. When on the next night following the creature came to visit us again it was more big and more persistent, leaving us no choice but to direct it once again to Southwick and the Ireland home.

This time it came back almost straight away, within the hour, and seemed both furious and vexed. It told us, sometimes falling into other languages out of exasperation, that the parents of the child, no doubt advised by interfering busybodies, had filled up a stone jar with the boy’s pee into which they had dropped pins and needles made of iron before they buried it beneath their fire-hearth. Suck-My-Thumb, for reasons that the Imp could not explain, was stopped from going in the house by this protection, and had so returned to us to keep us up all night with horrid tweaks and tugs and foreign phrases of complaint.

Next day, we both went bleary and contrite to see the mother of the boy, where we confessed our crime and begged her dig the bottle up and give us it which, foolishly, once we had promised that her son would afterwards be left uninjured, she agreed to do. That night the white Imp Jelerasta killed Charles Ireland in his bed while we slept sound as newborn babes. We used the pins and needles that we’d found inside the jar of piss to see to Mother Wise that following week, whereafter Suck-My-Thumb seemed satisfied, so that we have not seen him since that time.

Those were our murders. Those I will lay claim to, but no more. We did not kill the Gorham child, nor strike the Widow Broughton lame because she had denied us peasecods. No more did we strike down John Webb’s carthorse when he said that we were witches, for his horse died long before we first met with the Black-Faced-Man. We were not witches then, nor were we called as such, but only whores. Aside from that the horse was old and rotting where it stood. Who would exhaust themselves by using Sorcery to kill it, when a strong wind would as well suffice?

Mind you, when Boss and Southwel came to call on us we readily confessed to all these things, as if we had a choice in it. They shoved us both about and made us cry and told us that if we did not confess we should be killed, whereas if we would own to ‘Lizbeth Gorham’s murder and some others we should be set free. Though we did not believe the last part of their promise, we believed the first and so made full account of all our deeds, both real and otherwise.

In time there was a sort of Trial, though so great was the bad opinion raised against us, with Bob Wise and Charlie Ireland’s mother wailing from the gallery, its outcome was made plain before it had begun, whereafter matters were concluded with an undue haste and we were taken to Northampton Gaol there to await our burning.

By that time, we had not any reason to pretend, nor call our Power to rein, and while we were locked up we cursed and laughed both day and night, and brought about the most alarming scenes.

There was an afternoon when visitors were let into the gaol to see the sights; to thrill and shudder at the inmates in their wretchedness. A man called Laxon and his wife had come especially to view the famous witches who were to be burned. Both of them stood some time outside our cell and, though the husband had not much to say, his wife was full of good advice. She made some very pious talk about the error