Page 272 of Sinister

“I will keep this community safe, I promise you,” my father continues, “and that promise will start tonight. I want you to know that I will eradicate all evil from Ratcliffe—starting with my own family.”

There are some steps around me before a foul-smelling liquid envelops me. It takes me a moment to realize it’s gasoline. Isn’t it?

“The devil’s whore dies tonight,” my father intones.

And then the crowd goes mad, chanting the words ad nauseam: The devil’s whore dies tonight! The devil’s whore dies tonight!

It’s a chorus of condemnation. Of glee at my suffering.

And then the match is lit and dropped at my feet.

My mouth opens on another soundless moan. I cannot even vocalize anything anymore.

And yet I can feel it—first, my shoes, but then the heat continues, eating at my flesh, going quickly upward, burning through the first layer, reaching the second, the flames burning through my lower limbs and growing taller and taller, threatening to engulf me whole.

If the pain I felt before was bad, this is a thousand times worse. I’m screaming on the inside, even though I cannot on the outside.

I scream and scream.

And all I can think of is him.

Where are you, Sin? Where are you when I need you the most?

The fire continues. It stings and burns and eats at everything it encounters until I simply become numb to it. And that numbness slowly takes over my entire being. My feelings, too, become so numb until I don’t even realize what I am anymore—or if I am at all.

It’s like the more the fire on the outside burns, the more the flame inside of me is extinguished. Until only the smoke remains.

And the echo of one word: Sin.

I don’t know when the end begins, or when being turns into not being.

But I do know this: He was never here.

He abandoned me when I needed him the most.

74

THE RADCLIFFE HERALD

Reverend’s Own Child Burned at the Stake. Mystery Corpse Beside Her!

Citizens! The devil walks among us, and yesterday, he claimed his prize in the very heart of our town.

At the stroke of midnight, under a full moon blackened by billowing smoke, the daughter of our most venerable man of God was put to death before a throng so vast it choked the square from one end to the other. Her name is yet withheld, though every soul in town knows it and whispers it behind closed shutters. To speak it aloud is to invite a shudder.

Her crime? Not witchcraft itself, but the most insidious sin—she was the Devil’s own harlot. It is said she was in cahoots with the Devil and its flock.

Bound to the stake, the girl stood straight and unflinching, her hair hanging loose about her shoulders. The mark of the Devil is said to have been imprinted on her chest.

Yet she was not alone in her dreadful fate. Another body was turned to ash beside her, though no one knows its identity. Was it man, woman, or some unholy thing? None could tell.

Those with an ear for rumor insist that this second victim was the true leader of the Devil’s disciples. Others claim it was no human at all, but a familiar spirit, bound to her through wicked rites.

The Reverend himself was nowhere to be seen. Some say hidden away in prayer, others that he fled in disgrace before the torch was put to the pyre.

As the flames leapt high, the crowd’s roar rose with them, half in horror, half in triumph. Mothers clutched their children; men crossed themselves.

What is certain is this: The air in our town is thick with dread, and the Devil’s work is not yet done.