Witch of Embers

Part 2

Four hundred years later and safe from any witch burning or curse, Rebecca Nurse's fingers stilled, and she leaned back in her chair. She read her in-progress script aloud to Pluto.

"Too cheesy?" she asked her. "In my defense, I didn't give her 'the Witch of Embers' name."

Pluto didn't turn from the hotel window, but her tail twitched and her ears flicked back toward her owner.

The story of the Witch of Embers was exactly the type of tale Rebecca usually covered on her channel, and it was one her YouTube subscribers would lap up.

Rebecca's channel focused on urban legends, particularly supernatural ones from small creepy towns. Her videos were mainly Rebecca telling the story to her camera lens and Ring Light, but they also included interviews with town residents and footage of the places where the legends allegedly happened.

She used to love tracking down every town's horror story, and every town truly did have one. It only took a sleuth like her to track it down.

However, in researching her last few videos, she felt less like a sleuth and more like an intruder. A few weeks ago, a source called her days after she posted a video. The man's young daughter had watched it and now couldn't sleep in her home, not after knowing what was alleged to have happened in their house. He had begged her to take it down. Not only was his daughter scared, but she was facing the taunts of all of her peers who had seen it.

She didn't. The little girl's nightmares continued, and her supposed friends continued to offer jeers instead of reassurance.

There was the time a town's mayor had personally called her to ask her not to cover the town's ghosts and skeletons. The town was dying, the mayor told her. People's livelihoods depended on building up their reputation, not tearing it down.

After that call, Rebecca tried to convince herself that many people tour such haunted places. Perhaps the town would be helped by her coverage, not harmed by it. She kept the video up.

And then there was Mrs. Kline screaming at her for asking about the rumors swirling around a long-dead relative's connection to a mysterious death. Eventually, the woman's screams gave way to pleas. She ended by begging Rebecca to leave the story be. She said her family had only recently escaped the stain of the rumors and she wanted her kids to be free of it. A viral YouTube video would plunge them back into notoriety the living family members had done nothing to deserve.

The video on Mrs. Kline's relative had gone viral with views numbering in the millions. Rebecca felt like a monster, but she couldn't bring herself to delete it after seeing her stats skyrocket.

This story, the Witch of Embers, would be different, Rebecca told herself. The residents of Grover were extremely vocal about their story in a way that bordered on pride. They insisted the story was true and Bridget Bishop was real. They invited Rebecca into their town to tell it to the world.

The residents she had spoken to so far never strayed from the tale. Bishop was a witch. She was burned at the stake. She vowed to return.

And she did. Everyone she had interviewed and talked with was convinced not only of Bishop's otherworldly powers and unbounded evil but also that there was truth in her last words.

According to everyone she had spoken to, Bishop returned in 1952 in the middle of the Pullman Textile Factory. It was during that episode that she earned her "the Witch of Embers" moniker.

Rebecca looked at her notes. Many of those she'd interviewed had a vivid description of Bishop's appearance when she returned. She'd already written a bit about Bishop's return based on what she learned. 

Once again, she treated Pluto to a sneak peek of her work. Pluto meowed at her once in annoyance before curling up for a nap while Rebecca practiced the script.

...

The Pullman Factory employed half the town. Men and women alike filed into the factory at dawn, eager to earn a couple of pennies to live on. This would cost some of them their lives.

It started with an explosion.

It sounded like a clap of thunder emitting from the first floor of the building in the dead center of the factory. The building tumbled in on itself, four floors of machines and workers free-falling into hell.

Fire was everywhere. The explosion had launched flaming debris for hundreds of feet. In a matter of minutes, it created a fire that would take hours to put out.

Dozens of workers were trapped under fallen bits of the floor or ceiling or even by the same machines that had funded their livelihood. Those who were trapped and did not die immediately were forced to watch the fire grow until it stretched out to engulf them.

Later, the official cause would be written as a faulty boiler, which exploded due to some leaky part.

In reality, it was Bridget Bishop making good on her promise.

She reappeared in the exact location where they had burned her all those years ago. While her colonial dress had been reduced to rags, what was left was still burning with the same fire that supposedly killed her. Her skin was black and crackling, like a log left to smolder in a fireplace. Part of her shoulder had completely melted off, exposing charred flesh and bone without skin to conceal it.

It was not only her shoulder, though. The same effect could be seen on half of her face. One cheek and part of her chin had been gouged by the flame, showing only bloody flesh. Her hair was smoky and burnt, flames still dancing on the ends of her silver strands.

With all of her injuries, she still laughed. In the middle of all the chaos that she had caused, she laughed. Her laughter mingled with the agonizing screams of the workers and the roar of the flame.

And this time, her laughter did not give way to silence. Instead, she began shrieking so loudly that even people on the other side of the city could hear her.

The Witch of Embers shrieked so everyone in Grover would know what she'd done.