“Get a sheet over her!” someone shouted, and the other shadowy figures worked to make it happen. A sheet was thrown over her immediately, and she saw her mam’s face before it came over her, and had the dim realization that her mam was, in fact, the one who’d done it.
The hits that followed were breathtaking. “Don’t kill her!” someone offered as guidance between the blows. She was screaming, crying, trying to fight back but not having an ounce of luck. She couldn’t see except dimly, through the cotton, and the hits—they kept coming, hard and fast against her sides, her back. Something broke, and the fight went out of Rose, and she lay on her bed, covered in a sheet, crying and sobbing, face trying to suck breaths through a cloth wet with her own spittle.
“Drag her out,” a voice commanded.
It was granddad’s.
Rose’s mouth was frozen open in a long, whimpering scream. It came in a low whine though, instead of a fearful, forceful cry. They carried her out, people on every side like it was a funeral procession, carrying her sheet as though it were to be her casket.
Dark thoughts swirled around her. Maybe this was the end. Maybe they’d had enough of her now, and they were going to just get over with the things they’d been thinking about behind her back for months.
It would almost…almost…be welcome.
They dragged her outside, the slight warmth of the house giving way to another round of cold chills that filtered through the sheet. She expected cheers of triumph and jeers of hatred from the assembled townsfolk when they brought her out. But it was silent instead, the quiet hum of any conversation simply dying when they brought her into the middle of the crowd and then pulled back the sheet.
Her mam was standing right there, one of her “pallbearers,” stone-faced and uncaring.
Granddad was at the other side, and his lips were pursed, face knitted with worry. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he meant it or not.
Rose was on her haunches in a sea of legs, a sea of people staring down at her. Her shoulders were heaving up and down involuntarily with her fear, her eyes darting to see implacable gazes shining down on her like beacons from above, watching, judging…
The hawk cawed once again, louder now that she was out in the open air, the frosty cold rolling across her skin, her shorts and thin tank top inadequate to protect her from the frigid late autumn weather.
“We’ve got her,” Miriam Shell crowed from somewhere behind her, and laughed like a great crone, some mixture of relief sprinkled in with…fear? Rose wasn’t sure she heard it right, her heart was pounding so hard.
Rose was crying, her nose running as the wetness froze on her cheeks and her lip. She tried not to show weakness but it wouldn’t be held back. Not even here, among these people who hated her. The pain and terror was pressing in hard, like razors against her, and all she could do was look around at them as they stood like forbidding statues, all of them looking down at her.
“It’s coming,” her granddad said, looking around in the darkness.
“Can you feel it?” her mam asked, face frozen like the chill had dragged it into a death mask, white as pale snow.
“Nae, but it’s about to happen,” he said, rubbing his hand against his chest. He glanced down at Rose.
The hawk called again, and it echoed over the village. Rose looked up, peering at the bird of prey. It was circling, and she wondered if it was a bit out of place here, and at this time of night.
Graham edged into view, not looking at her but for a brief second, and then he looked away. “I wish we could just get this over. If it’s going to happen—” He didn’t finish his thought, and no one else finished it for him.
Rose swallowed, feeling like a boulder was trapped in her throat. She wished it would get over with too. If they were going to kill her…
Her friends, her family, her neighbors—
…she wished they’d just be on about it. Hang her from a gibbet and be done. The chill was biting, and it wasn’t just the weather. She’d lived here all her life, and now these people—she’d once have thought her people—had turned on her.
To the last.
Her granddad tensed at her shoulder, and she looked back to see him stricken, his face a pained shade. A grunt behind her jerked her attention away, and then someone cried out.
“It’s coming!” Hamilton shrieked, and he lunged through the crowd at her, hand outstretched.
Rose let a little shriek of her own as he reached for her, hand open, palm extended. Someone else grabbed her from behind, landing a heavy, sweaty palm on the back of her neck. Someone seized her hard by the arm, someone else by the back, lifting her. Someone grabbed at her back, clawing at her. Their hand pressed against her and their nails dug in to rip her apart—
She was lifted high now, up in the air, and everyone wanted to clutch at her, to rip at her, fingers digging in like they meant to tear her apart. Her mam found purchase somewhere in there, she could tell by the cold fingers at the small of her back. Her shirt was ripped off without ceremony, there one moment and gone the next, and replacing the cloth were a dozen hands lifting her up, frigidly cold on the small of her back. They pulled at her legs, her arms, ready to tear her to pieces—
Rose screamed, and screamed, and—
She was held there, up in the air, above the heads of the crowd, the freezing night air biting at her belly and chest and throat and face and toes and fingers, and what felt like a thousand grabbing hands on her body as she was trapped there, lifted into the air with no power of her own. She kicked her legs and it did nothing; hands caught her again, anchoring to her as they came back down.
Rose let out another wild scream, and someone hit her in the back of the head. It was like the time she’d leaned over to see what was in the bottom of Granddad’s cedar chest, and the lid had come crashing down on her. She saw stars then, a flash in the cold night, just as she did now.
The back of her head ached where she’d been struck, and thoughts were slower to come. Her mouth was cottony dry and the hands—they were everywhere—clutching at her, grabbing at her, holding to her, her skin burning where they touched…
Burning.
Where they.
Touched?
Now other screams were filling the night, and the crowd was wild and surging, Rose carried on them, her voice blistered and raw. Her skin itself felt like it was on fire, and she looked over to see Mam staring up at her, mouth open in a scream of her own. Rose could almost feel her there, her presence, and then suddenly Mam’s eyes went dark and her body went limp. She reeled away, gone, somehow; Rose knew, could feel her—her entirely—inside the mind, now, and someone else stepped into the void and laid a cold, rough hand on Rose’s skin by her ribs.
They were falling away like dead flies now. She watched Hamilton’s eyes roll back in his head hard, death come for him, and he fell over. Graham’s eyes were flittering up, only the whites visible save for the peak of his spasms, when a tiny edge of the pupils could be seen, a hint of the brown which she’d once thought she could stare into forever. Then he fainted away limply and crashed, and someone else surged in, trampling over his body to lay hands on her.
“Had to be this…way…” her granddad said over the screams and cries, and she looked over at him just as he keeled over, and she knew he was dead too, his hand leaving her body as he fell. Her skin felt as if it were aflame, hard fire running over the flesh. She half-expected her skin to be glowing in the night like a midnight fire’s last embers, but she was as pale as ever, and nearer to the ground now.
A pitched cry came from behind her, and somehow she knew Miriam Shell had fallen, her day now done, and the stray thought passed through her mind—was that what she had sounded like with Graham?