Prologue
JACK
1875
Smoke billows into the room from below filling my lungs. It burns my eyes and throat. They have us surrounded as the fire grows, eating away at our home like it’s a meal to be devoured. My children and wife huddle together on the floor in a coughing fit as I search desperately for the tonic. I know it’s in here somewhere.
“There’s no escape!” I hear someone shout from outside. The crowd they’ve brought with them laughs in response as they watch our house burn with myself and family inside.
Sick fucking bastards.
I’ll make them pay for this.
The desk I’m searching in is empty. No tonic.
Maybe I left it in the kitchen below.
“Jack, please, don’t,” my wife begs as she holds our children to her chest.
Little Mary and Nathaniel cling to her with tears in their eyes. It breaks my heart.
“Papa. I’m scared,” Mary cries then coughs.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay,” I lie, because what else do you say to your daughter when you don’t know how you’re going to make it out of here?
There’s no time. The fire is spreading quickly.
“The cellar, Jane. It’s our only option.”
She nods, trying to gather the children, but then we hear a sharp crack and I topple backwards as the house shakes. The floorboards that hold my wife and children splinter and crumble before my eyes and they plummet through the crack. I hear their screams and then a sickening thump.
I crawl to the edge and see their bodies splayed out and engulfed in flames.
A scream like I’ve never known rips free from my very soul. My family. My wife. My daughter. My son. All gone.
Taken from me by the bloodthirsty mob outside that’s so hellbent on their greed. That greed has consumed them to a point that they would do such a thing to others. Just so they could have my land.
Then I see it. The tonic gifted to me by the town witch, Melinda Ruttelidge.
“For desperate times,” she had said. “May it save you when you have no other options.”
I scramble to stand and carefully make my way to where it’s perched on the shelf in a tiny glass bottle. My hands find purchase around its slim, small exterior. The cork top pops off easily and I stare down into the contents that look like black sludge.
“For desperate times,” I whisper before chugging it back.
The moment it hits my tongue I feel paralyzed with pain. It crawls down my neck and into my limbs with such ferocity that I feel like it’s killing me. Nerve by nerve is set alight with pain like I’m being made and unmade.
That witch poisoned me, I think. But at least I’ll be with my family if I must die. I can join them in the afterlife.
But death does not find me.
Instead, I feel my body shift. It morphs and what was once bones turns into vines. I feel as if I’m being ripped apart and stitched back together as my house is consumed by the flames.
It burns down all around me and when I open my eyes, I’m standing in a pile of embers, staring at the crowd that’s surrounding my property. They have torches in their hands and horror in their traitorous faces.
My neighbors.
People I once called my friends.
