Maggies grave, p.1
Maggie's Grave, page 1
Maggie's Grave
David Sodergren
Also by David Sodergren
THE FORGOTTEN ISLAND
“A blood-drenched love letter to Lovecraft, handled with impressive authority and confidence."
James Fahy, author of The Changeling series
NIGHT SHOOT
"Night Shoot is wildly entertaining. If you’re not laughing, you’re scared out of your mind.”
Sadie Hartmann, Mother Horror
DEAD GIRL BLUES
“It takes guts to write a book like this and nail it in the way Sodergren does.”
Matt Redmon, Night Worms
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Afterword
About the Author
This book is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to to names and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author.
Cover illustration by Trevor Henderson
Graphic design by Heather Sodergren
Copyright © 2020 David Sodergren
All rights reserved.
ISBN:9798680192276
To mum and dad,
for letting me watch all those horror films.
See, I told you it would all pay off one day.
1
October 4th 1657
Maggie Wall watched through the thin slit of the window as the six men arrived on horseback.
They had come to kill her.
It was written in the lines of their faces, in their posture, in their collective silence. Groups of men riding together are never quiet — they laugh, they sneer, they brawl. But not these men. Their faces were grim, their expressions severe.
She was going to die today.
There would be no trial, no chance to defend herself. But what did that matter? The trials were a sham, a cruel mockery of justice. She had witnessed many herself.
Bind her wrists and ankles and throw her in the river. If she floats, she’s a witch. If she drowns…she’s innocent.
It was hopeless. One time, several years ago, she had ridden past the Laird’s house late at night, pausing to listen to the screams of young women as their “confessions” were tortured out of them.
Justice, aye? There was no justice. Just men with a perverse pleasure in the destruction of women’s bodies. Maggie noticed her hand was fidgeting, and she gripped the edge of the table to stop herself.
The horses whinnied as the riders dismounted, the steeds retreating fearfully as the men advanced on her meagre stone dwelling, ruddy hands twitching over the hilts of their swords.
She should have left days ago, when the rumours had begun to spread.
She’s a witch, little Timmy Cochran had said, and that was all it took. Three words from the mouth of a wretched pubescent were enough to damn her. She was surprised they hadn’t come sooner. People talked, and there was nothing more suspicious to small-town minds than a woman living alone.
What does she do up there all by herself?
Why hasn’t she taken a husband?
So many questions, each more banal than the last.
A pot boiled atop a fire beside her, the kindling snapping and hissing as it burned in the small alcove cut into the stone wall.
My cauldron, she thought, and laughed miserably. It was soup. No leg of frog or eye of bat, just chicken and herbs. It smelled delicious, yet she knew she would never taste it.
The men approached, false bravado imprinted over their cautious faces.
‘Careful, men,’ one of them said. ‘My Timmy saw her turn a man to ash before his very eyes. She’s in league with the devil!’
Maggie shook her head sadly. Lies. It was all lies. She had caught Timmy Cochran sneaking into her chicken coop with a devious glint in his eyes. As she chased him from her property, the runt had tripped and fallen. She had skelped his arse for his troubles.
Foolish.
This was why she kept to herself, grew her own vegetables, reared her own stock. This was why she had moved as far from other people as she could possibly manage.
‘There!’ cried another of the men. ‘In the window!’ His pitch rose to a feverish delirium. ‘The witch has seen us!’
The way his façade cracked, Maggie thought he might piss himself in terror. On a different day, it may even have been funny.
‘Don’t look directly at her! Steel your hearts, men, or she shall pluck them from your chests and devour them.’
The men held their hands up to cover their faces as if squinting into the sunrise. Maggie abandoned her post at the window and scurried across the room to the front door, peering out. It seemed quiet. The wind howled through the trees, shaking branches and dislodging pine cones. She looked closer, at the bushes that rustled unnaturally, at the brief flashes of colour through the dried grass and heather, and knew she was surrounded.
‘We mean you no quarrel, Maggie,’ shouted Timmy Cochran’s father in his Irish lilt. ‘Come out and face trial.’
Maggie hurried back to the window.
‘There’ll be no trial, Cochran,’ she said. ‘You know as well as I.’
‘That may be true, Maggie, and yet still I beseech you. Is it not better to die with dignity?’
Her fingers tightened, long nails gouging shallow troughs in the wooden table. The corners of her lips curled expectantly.
Cochran took a tentative step closer to the cottage and then disappeared from sight, the ground opening beneath his feet and welcoming him to its earthy bosom. He screamed in agony, and Maggie imagined the man at the bottom of the pit, impaled on the row of sharpened stakes that she herself had placed there.
She didn’t mean to, but she laughed.
‘My God,’ shouted one of the men. ‘The ground itself carries the witch’s curse!’
‘Be not afraid! We must stop this devilry! It’s an affront to God!’
Cochran’s wails emanated from the bowels of the Earth. His would be a slow death, and an excruciating one. More men appeared from the forest that cocooned Maggie’s cottage, Cochran having apparently brought all the menfolk in town. They continued onwards, stabbing at the ground in front of them with their sticks and swords like weary travellers.
She heard a faint creak and turned to see the door groaning open, a moon-faced man entering, eyes stricken with terror. Maggie recognised him as George MacKenzie, the butcher. His brow furrowed beneath the glistening bald dome of his head. Despite the icy wind that shrieked across the mountain, he was sweating.
‘I am inside!’ he cried, no doubt hoping the others would follow with haste.
‘Look at me,’ said Maggie, but he refused to meet her gaze. ‘Look at me!’
‘No, you foul, unearthly being,’ he said through gritted teeth, averting his eyes. ‘The children have seen you cavorting naked with the devil. It’s unholy!’ His sword swung loosely from his leather belt, and he reached for it with hands that trembled like a frightened hare.
The sword screeched as he unsheathed it, and Maggie grabbed the boiling pot from the alcove and rushed forwards, the metal searing her unprotected palms. Ignoring the pain that flared through her, she hurled the contents of the pot into MacKenzie’s face. The liquid drenched the man, chunks of chicken slopping at his feet, and he brought both hands to his face with a roar of agony as steam rose from the bubbling mess. His rigid hands raked over his skin, globs of flesh dripping from his fingertips.
‘Begone!’ shouted Maggie. ‘Or I shall curse you all!’
She had no choice but to play along. Maggie was no more a witch than the sun was a potato, but fear of her “powers” was her only chance of survival. It had worked before, years ago on the west coast, when she had bought herself enough time to escape. But today was different. Her hand shot instinctively to her swollen belly.
This time there were two of them.
She wondered if Malone was one of the men surrounding her cottage. It was his child she carried. She had found him drunk by the side of the road on one of her increasingly rare excursions into town, face down in the freezing mud. Fearful for his health, she had stuffed him in her cart alongside two squealing pigs and brought him back to her cottage. There, she had lain him in her cot, draped a blanket over him, and brewed an old remedy her mother had taught her, God rest her soul. The next morning Malone had risen, grateful for her assistance. They made love once, before he ventured home to his wife and four children.
It was the last she had seen of him.
A voice jolted her back to reality.
‘Fear not, men! The light of our lord and saviour will guide us!’
‘I renounce your pitiful god,’ screamed Maggie, struggling to be heard over the cries of the faceless man writhing at her feet, his skin coming away in thick slices. She watched the butcher crawl blindly across the floor, his face a weeping scarlet horror, and felt sick to her stomach. Regardless of whether she had been defending herself or not, she had destroyed a man, robbed him of his face, his eyes, his livelihood. Shame seeped insidiously through her veins. She never wanted to hurt anyone…but why were they so intent on hurting her?
The door flew open and two men entered, crucifixes clutched in their hands. They rushed her, careful not to make eye contact, and dragged her to the ground.
‘We have her! We have the witch!’
Maggie thrashed her limbs, but the men were too strong. More entered, crowding round her, until her cottage was fit to burst with the sheer amount of occupants. A cockerel crowed outside, the orange light of the morning sun muscling its way through the trees and into the cottage. The men formed a circle around her, a weapon in each of their hands.
‘Pluck out her eyes!’ screamed one of them, his face contorting madly as he spoke, spittle flying from his mouth. The others looked towards the man with the crucifix. He gripped it tightly, kissed it, and solemnly nodded.
Hands groped for her face, thick thumbs finding her eyeballs. She pressed her eyes shut, but the probing digits forced their way in, tearing through the thin membrane of her eyelids and exerting tremendous pressure until her eyeballs could take no more and popped inside her skull.
‘The deed is done!’
Maggie tried to speak, to scream, to beg for mercy, but speech deserted her.
‘My God,’ a tremulous voice said. ‘Look at her belly.’
She recognised the voice. It was Malone.
‘Strip her,’ one of them said. ‘Let us see what lies beneath her cunning disguise.’
Unseen hands went to work, clutching at her homemade dress, the stitches splitting as they tore it from her body, ripping it off and casting it aside. She lay naked before them, tears of viscous matter dribbling from the hollow craters of her ruined eyes. The men continued to talk, their voices blending into one hopeless cacophony.
‘The fiend is with child!’
‘It will be an abomination!’
‘But what if the baby is innocent?’
There was a moment of silence. She imagined the minister holding his crucifix the way a child clings to a doll. Fury boiled within Maggie’s breast. They could do what they wanted with her…but they dare not touch her baby.
They dare not.
‘The child must face trial,’ said the minister with dreadful certainty. ‘Only God may judge the innocent.’
‘But the witch cannot be allowed to live!’ That was Malone again. The fear in his voice filled Maggie with a strange yet delicious sense of satisfaction.
‘True,’ said the minister. ‘Then we must cut it out of her, free the abomination from the shackles of its mother’s hellish womb.’
Maggie whipped her head back and forth in a frenzy, finding her voice once more. ‘It’s yours, Malone! This child is borne of your seed!’
‘The creature lies!’ said Malone. ‘Is there no depth of depravity to which this witch will not sink?’
‘It’s yours! It’s yours! It’s yours!’
There came a sharp blow to Maggie’s face, a vicious kick that broke her jaw, but she barely noticed. Her mind started to crumble, piece by piece. Soon, there would be nothing left. The men pinioned her arms to the ground, others unsheathing their weathered swords. They drove the blades into her open palms, and she welcomed the sweet relief of agony. Calloused hands parted her legs, and as the veil of madness descended, she let her body rest, awaiting the inevitable.
When she smiled, the men fell silent.
‘A curse!’ she said. ‘A curse on you all. On this very town, and all who dwell within.’
‘Where is the holy man? Bring him here!’
She laughed, a shrill, ungodly sound that caused more than one of the men to back away. ‘A curse! A blood curse on all your children!’
‘She admits it! The witch has confessed!’
‘So be it, weak-minded fools!’ she screamed. ‘I give myself over to thee, Satan! I give thee my body and my soul!’
Something penetrated her stomach, cold and sharp and deadly, and her lamentations turned to blood-soaked gurgles.
As Maggie faded, she heard something over the sounds of torn flesh and cracked bones. She thought it was a baby crying.
She smiled.
‘A curse,’ she whispered, and then Maggie Wall was no more.
2
October 4th 2019
Aside from drinking, fucking, and bowling, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do on a Friday night in Auchenmullan. The town — if you could call it that — was dead, and had been for years, ever since the sawmill closed back in 2013. Once a small but thriving community in the Scottish Highlands, Auchenmullan was all but abandoned now, a ghost town, and forty-seven people were all that remained within its borders.
It sat in the shadow of a mountain, empty houses decomposing on deserted streets like toys outgrown by children, wildlife setting up home in the dank undergrowth of long-untended gardens. Some of the doors were unlocked, and in one place on Pine Street the TV was still on, two years after the MacDonalds had left for pastures new.
Even the electricity board had forgotten about Auchenmullan.
There was a church, and a small building that doubled as a police station, its single cell unoccupied for over a year. No shops remained, Ian’s Hardware and Electrical Store being the last to close its weary doors about six months back. No one saw Ian leave, or knew where he went, but that was the way of Auchenmullan these days. People just drifted away like fine grains of sand on an autumn breeze.
On this particular Friday night, town history was the last thing on Beth Collins’ mind as she rested both hands on the jukebox of Spring-heeled Jack’s Tenpin Bowling Alley. She slammed in fifty pence and perused the selection of songs, flipping through the racks as if somehow she would find a new record on there. She knew she wouldn’t. The jukebox — like the paint and decor — hadn’t been updated since the alley had opened before she was born.
She flipped past Don’t Stop Believing, which had been playing when she took her first sip of alcohol in this very room, and flipped some more. Be My Baby. She had lost her virginity to Grady Cooper to that song four years ago, up against the door of the last cubicle in the women’s toilet. He hadn’t even lasted the two-and-a-half minutes of the song, but neither of them had cared. She looked over at him now, in his faded Pearl Jam shirt and long hair — which was in danger of becoming a mullet — goofing off in front of their friends, or what remained of them.
Four teenagers. The youth of Auchenmullan.
Four desperate, lonely teenagers.
There had been talk of building a school once, before the fire destroyed the mill and, with it, the livelihoods of the residents. Things could have been so different.
‘Choose a song, Beth!’ shouted Grady, and she responded with a half-hearted thumbs-up. She hadn’t noticed the silence. In Auchenmullan, you got used to it.
You had to.
She selected Leave A Light On For Me by Belinda Carlisle. Behind the counter, Spring-heeled Jack himself polished unused beer glasses, looking as tired as Beth felt. How long had he worked here, how long had he owned this place? Did old Jack have dreams too, dreams that were crushed along with the rest of the town? The alley used to really rock on the weekends, kids and adults mingling together and having fun, but now the bowling alley was the last remaining business in Auchenmullan, and the four of them had free run of the place. Jack sold beer and basic groceries alongside the moth-eaten bowling shoes, and the condom machine in the men’s room was always well stocked, but anything fancier was a thirty-seven mile ride into Inverness.
