WARNING: Descriptions of scars and injuries
The first day of school. Terrifying, right? You don’t know anyone, you can’t talk to people, the awkwardness eats you from the inside out. Thankfully, I wasn’t the one that started the first conversation of the day.
“Hello, I’m Mary Scott, I think you’re in my history class.” She spoke softly.
“Oh, hey. I’m Psyche.” I responded.
The first thing I noticed about this girl was her layers of clothing, especially her coat. It was bright red with embroidered flowers and swirls on it near the train and pockets. She was a short girl, the coat floated around her shins, covering the rest of her outfit. She had a pair of matching gloves on her slender hands. It wasn’t cold that day, so I wasn’t sure why she was wearing the coat. But people are people, and they can be cold sometimes.
“I like your coat.” I said.
“Oh thank you! I got it from my mother before she passed. It’s been passed on to the women in my family, essentially. My mother got it from my grandma, my grandma got it from my great-grandma, and so on.”
“Oh, sorry for your loss. Alright then, it was nice talking to you. I’ll see you soon, alright, Mary?”
“Okay, bye, see you!”
She was a cheery girl. A very colorful personality. It came off as a little odd to me. I remembered her grandmother’s name. It seemed familiar to me, not sure how.
It’s a little creepy that I did this, but I looked up her grandmother when I got home that day. I know I had heard the name before. I did.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been obsessed with witchcraft, I even own a few crystals myself. The first link that popped up from searching up “WITCH WITH THE LAST NAME SCOTT”, bit of a bold stretch, but it led me to a PDF of a newspaper article that read:
“SORCERESS FROM 250 YEARS AGO RETURNS”
I read the 1942 dated article.
“In Fall, around 1693, were the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. They were heard all over the world. Now, people theorize that they are back. One notable person, Margret Scott, was suspected of witchcraft. She pleaded not guilty, was found guilty, and was burnt at the stake, one of the most notable punishments for witchcraft.”
“The year is now 1942, those days are very far in the past now. However, people from Massachusetts have claimed to see spirits and specters in their homes resembling these victims, claimed by the flames, appearing charred and scared all over their bodies. Their hands being covered in splinters and with rope scars around their wrists. We now have an eye-witness account of one of these encounters.”
“Yes, I saw the beast that was so-called “Margaret Scott” with my own eyes!! She appeared right in my hallway while I was on my way to the lavatory. And before you ask, I only know her name because a fellow of mine was in a cult worshiping these goddamn things!”
“That was all we gathered from one of the many people witnessing these ghosts. They want to remain anonymous for the time being.”
“She said that she was a Scott, right?” I thought I must have misheard her when she spoke to me in a whisper.
The next few days turned into a week, a week to a few months, and we grew our friendship. I saw her last period during passing, the same place we met for the first time in September.
“Hi again, Psyche.” She spoke. Her coat was a darker red than rhe previous day. Odd. We weren’t in the dark or anything, but it was darker. It was more of a crimson red than a bright red.
“Hey, weird question, your last name is Scott right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh nothing, just wondering.”
“What about? Nothing bad happened right?”
“No no, not at all! It’s just that I’ve heard that name before.”
“Where?”
“What if I just show you?”
“Oh alright. Do you-”
The school bell rang, the last one of the day.
“Shit.” I mumbled under my breath.
“Okay, what if you come over to my house after school? It’s Friday after all.”
“Yeah sure, I’ll text my parents.”
I followed her to her house after school. She led me down the winding paths of grass and dirt towards her house. Bugs flying every which way as we wandered down and into the vast dark forest.
Once we got to her house, it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was a quaint cottage peering over a large river. It had a dark shingled roof and dark side panels, which I think were oak wood. It looked rickety and old, but I didn’t say anything about it.
“Alright, let’s go inside. I can smell my parent’s cooking!”
She grabbed my hand and ran to the door. She took out an old-looking key from one of her many jacket pockets and inserted it into the rusty door handle. We entered her house. Her father was cooking dinner, and her mother had her back turned to the fridge, getting a cup of water from a pitcher.
“Oh, honey your home, and you brought a friend, how wonderful!” Her father spoke. He looked almost proud of Mary for making a friend.
“Welcome to our abode, I assume you’re this “Psyche” we’ve been hearing about?” Her mother spoke. She turned from the fridge, her face grinning wide.
Her mother was a little bit of a different story. She was a thin lady, looked around 53, and had darker spottier skin than both Mary and her father. I didn’t question it.
“Yes I am, nice to meet you both.” I spoke shyly.
“Alright, let’s go up to my room and uhm… do our homework, c’mon.” She coughed. She spoke like she was in a hurry and dragged me up the stairs again, gripping my hand with great force. Did she see something?
Once we were in her room, it was dark and smelt damp. She locked the door behind her.
“Okay, uhm.. Before we do anything, I need to show you something. I knew this would come up one day, so why not show you know, right?”
She took off her rain boots and then her gloves. Once she took off her gloves, it was clear what she meant.
Her hands were covered in cuts and burnt skin. No burnt as in tanned, burnt as in layers of skin and flesh were gone from her hands. They looked around third, or even fourth, degree burnt. It was very bad. They looked glossy and botched. Her fingernails were almost completely gone from her fingers, what you would even call fingers. She had what looked like really bad rope burn scars on her wrists. From this I knew what she was.
She was a witch.
She paused, took a deep breath, then spoke.
“You have heard my name before. One of my very distant relatives was Margret Scott. My family was once involved in very bad cult-like activities. This was something that we had to do to be initiated, so to speak. When I was younger, my mother was involved in the cult. All of the women in my family are involved in this rite of passage. They all..”
She was on the brink of tears, shivering with fear.
“T-They all had to be b-burnt to be initiated. W-When I was a child, m-my mother gave me up to the l-leaders and they dunked me into lighter fluid instead of baptismal water a-a-and t-they..”
She fell to the floor, sobbing. I ran over to her and took her in my arms.
“Hey hey, look. It’s okay. If you thought that I would make fun of you for this, I would never do that. If you don’t want to show me-”
“No, I do. I have to show you. I need to show you.” She silently said, snuffly.
“Okay, take your time though. As much as you need.”
She stood up, unbuttoning her coat.
When she did, she was wearing a tank top. It revealed her entire upper body, her arms, chest, shoulders, everywhere was just burn scars galore. It was painful to look at. Her skin was red, dry, and pulled tight compared to her pale face, which was completely fine. From what I could see, her arms looked like they couldn’t move, if they did, it would crack the skin and bleed. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t participate in class..
Her shoulders looked charred and almost black, they had healed blisters and were covered in flaking dry skin. She did have to sit out in gym all the time.
“Well, the concept that t-the leaders went for was re-enacting the death of Margaret. Being b-burnt at the stake, like an actual witch. Then you would be accepted into the cult. Its fucking horrible, but it was so many years ago.”
She took another deep breath, then went to her closet to what I assumed that she was going to get a shirt, or a pair of pajamas.
“I’m almost 17 fucking years old, I have moved on. I want to get back at these idiots who caused all this harm to the women in my family, once and for all.”
I was wrong. From her closet, she took out a book from the top shelf. It was a dark purple and had intricate designs on the spine. I couldn’t read what it was, I couldn’t even identify the language. Then a blue-purple light emerged from her hand. She began to levitate off the ground and into the air, then spoke.
”àtinrete’lla onif amina orol allen àrramir otseuQ.
eznereffos ,ainoga ,iroloD…
oi otitnes oh ehc olleuq onnaritnes erutuf inoizareneg ertson eL.
amina’llen e oproc len erolod onnaritnes ehc illeuQ..
iggo arocna eviv ennod ,erevlop ni erevlop id e ,erenec ni erenec iD..“
A bright red light emerged from the book and it shot into the sky, it broke her roof and pulsated in the air.
I can’t explain what happened next, it was too unfathomable, so to speak. All I knew was that this red orb of some sort of magic caused something in this specific universe.
Universes across space and time were not affected, just this one. Traveling from place to place isn’t so hard, once you’ve got the hang of it.