The following is a chapter from the follow-up to Hunting For Witches — Salem’s Burning
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.
—Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
Under a silver moon, Nancy Truegood stared despondently at the empty storefront. The interior was cloaked in gloomy darkness, and a “For Lease” sign was hanging in the front window.
Ruins—her life was in ruins, and she had no one to blame but herself. It was two seasons earlier, at the end of spring, when she engaged in magical warfare with her former protégé. Now it was fall, and everything seemed to be falling apart at the seams.
“A sad day for Little Salem,” a voice said.
Nancy started tearing up as Priscilla crossed over to comfort her. “Oh, honey,” Priscilla softly cooed. “I know how much the yogurt store meant to you. And how much Mary Sue loved that horse.”
Nancy dried her eyes as she took one last look at her once-flourishing family business. “At least she can still visit him at his new home on the weekends,” she said. “Too bad I can’t say the same about her father.”
“You poor girl,” Priscilla sighed. “So you’re really splitting up. And Wilbur? He’s just going to...?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know…”
Nancy turned from her loyal friend and gazed at the charred remains of the Black Death Tavern across the street. Months had passed since she sparked the blaze that destroyed the aging Victorian, but the burnt-out skeleton remained. Since that incident, the local townsfolk had been avoiding going anywhere near the place, wishing to steer clear of any reminders of the radical coven that had terrorized their idyllic community and essentially ending all business for the frozen yogurt shop across the way. The sharp drop in profits led to an escalation of problems for Nancy at home: heightened tension with her daughter, more fights with her husband, and finally, separation. The failure of the yogurt store seemed to be the lynchpin that set these disastrous events in motion. But Nancy knew that her actions during her war that past spring were really what was responsible for the sorry state of affairs she was now burdened with.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Nancy remarked. “How quickly everything seemed to change after Ada returned to town. Ada and McAllister... Seems like they got their revenge on Little Salem after all.”
Priscilla forced a weary smile onto her face. “C’mon. Chin up. You’ve got the blues, hon. Ada and McAllister... With those two, there was always sure to be—what? Madness, total chaos. Times like these, one should take solace in knowing that somewhere, it’s always worse for someone else.”
Nancy contemplated Priscilla’s words while frowning at the moon above her head. She knew there were plenty of others dealing with pain and hardship; she simply lacked the details to know anything about these wretched experiences. She had no knowledge of the broken friendship between the two tourist boys who had visited Little Salem and became famous after capturing footage of the entities haunting the surrounding woods. She had no idea that one of these boys was spending his last sleepless night in the apartment where the love of his life had disappeared or that the other was struggling to find a glimmer of comfort while in the company of a brand new group of friends. She knew nothing of the ongoing trauma and heartache being suffered amongst the coven of witches that had been left in shambles; one member gone mad, another abandoned, another dead. She was utterly clueless that this gruesome death had lit a dark fire in the heart of their leader who had grown more adamant than ever to punish those she held responsible for this tragedy. And when it came to the lives of total strangers, this is where she remained truly ignorant of the pain and suffering that dwarfed her own by a huge margin, not knowing how less than a hundred miles away in the city of Boston, a frightened young woman was about to make a run for her life.
Black storm clouds were looming above an old industrial building by the waterfront that was surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. Deep in the bowels underneath the warehouse, a soft scratching could be heard—something scraping away at the lock on a heavy iron door at the end of a dark hallway lined with decrepit pipes and moldy concrete walls.
A loud crash of thunder accompanied the sound of a skinny teenager with disheveled copper-colored hair toppling through the door, a rusty fork clutched between her fingers. The girl’s clothing was little more than rags, her frail body shivering from the bitter cold sealed in with her callous prison.
With her eyes wide and her teeth chattering like broken turn-cranks, she gazed down the hallway, straining to see beyond the sea of shadows that awaited her. After verifying the coast was clear, she rushed down the hall, banging on all the doors and igniting a chorus of hushed whispers in Eastern European dialects until a panicked voice rose above the fray, speaking in Russian.
“Are you crazy? What are you doing? They’ll kill you!”
“I’m getting us out of here!” the skinny teenager whimpered. She pried her fork into the lock of one of the doors, but the voice on the other side objected.
“No, Micca! Save yourself! Bring help!!”
Micca bit her tongue in frustration, knowing her friend was right. If she wanted to save the others, first, she would have to succeed in her daring escape.
As thunder continued to rumble outside like the bellow of a revived giant, the skinny teenager dropped the fork and took off at full speed. She sprinted down the hallway and up the stairs to the main floor of the darkened warehouse. With her heart beating in double-time, she glanced all around her, noticing that the vast room was empty except for a small pile of furniture and a tattered white tarp handing on the back wall.
Guided by the light streaming through the dirty, grime-stained windows high above her head, Micca rushed to the main door and reached for the handle, jumping at the sound of male voices. She heard a key being fitted into a lock and knew she had to act quickly. Spying an open window, she hauled a broken office chair to right below it, balancing on the back as she pulled herself up to the window and dropped to the ground outside.
Landing hard on her feet, she winced at the discovery that she had twisted her ankle. But she didn’t have time to let herself be slowed down by anything, the sound of barking driving her to limp through the pouring rain to the rusty chain-link fence that barred her path to freedom, grasping the metal loops in her hands and planting one foot firmly in front of her when she felt the beam of a flashlight across her face.
Eyes brimming with terror, she spun around to observe the dark silhouettes of three figures. One of them held the flashlight while another clutched the leash of a German Shepard, growling at the shivering fugitive. Most intimidating of all was the one who stood in the middle—a hulking bulldozer of a man who was much taller and broader in the shoulders than his lanky subordinates.
Micca started shuddering more fiercely when the man that frightened her most of all opened his leering gator-like mouth to address her. He spoke in a voice that seemed to carry a Russian accent, but it was hard to say—it possessed an unusual quality where the words that he uttered sounded completely unnatural no matter what language or what accent was attached to them.
“Where you think you’re going, girly?” the man said—right before tapping his associate and the leash was released, the dog barreling into her while she screamed bloody murder and lightning illuminated the faded writing on the side of the warehouse:
FANTA-SEA STUDIOS.
The next morning, Micca’s wounds from the dog bites were still bloody, but she was back at it—desperately trying to escape. This time, she was using the end of an old spoon to pick the lock of the heavy iron door that kept her imprisoned, struggling with every fiber in her being to pry it open.
“Micca! Give up!” her friend insisted amid the persistent scratching. “They will kill you if you try to escape again! Micca!”
The heartfelt pleas didn’t stop her, but the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs brought her actions to a halt. She quickly hid the spoon in her waistband and scrambled to a shadowy corner of her gloomy makeshift prison, shaking with fright as a lock was released and the heavy door swung open.
Squeezing her eyelids shut, Micca prayed under her breath as three men entered—the same ones from the night before. The largest of the three looked as intimidating as ever as he stared down at her, the dim light of the room casting an oily shine through his greasy slicked-back hair and a faint sparkle amongst the layers of gold chains around his neck and the bulbous rings on his fingers.
“Micca Micca Micca,” the man said in a deep and resonant tone. “You’ve been a naughty girl.”
Her body was still shaking when she lunged for her captor. The end of the spoon was aiming for his eye, but he swatted her away like an insect, causing her to smack into the wall and crumble to the floor.
Sighing lazily, the man stretched his limbs and cracked his neck. “You shouldn’t have done that, Micca.” He made a gesture, and one of his goons handed him a thick leather belt covered with nails. “Some girls must always learn the hard way.”
The scrawny teenager could already predict the stinging pain she was about to receive. But what made the experience even more traumatizing was how when she looked up to face her oppressor, with his enormous stature and ogre grin, she thought she caught a glimpse of something massive attached to his back. She wasn’t able to see it directly, only noticing it from the shadow being cast on the wall. The thing looked like a giant parasite—something with skinny arms and a sagging belly—and the sighting was accompanied by a chilling burst of laughter that was definitely not of this world.
This thing, this creature; one could only imagine where it may have originated, but Micca felt certain that it came from a place that made her present ordeal seem positively quaint by comparison.
A demon from hell.
She felt sure that this was the only thing the creature could be. And the insides of her head turned to TV static as the belt was raised upward, and she released a piercing scream.