Page 26 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“The bitch,” Percy threw off sarcastically.

“And then there was the old…” Charlie tilted his head downwards with an odd blinking of his left eye.

“Erectile dysfunction,” Vaila whispered over her drink. “One man said, after he slept with her, he never could get it up again.”

“And that was her fault too, was it?” Joe muttered.

“Well, that’s what happens when a woman lays with the devil,” Charlie replied, failing to hide the touch of irritation he was developing for Joe’s evident distaste of the island’s sordid history. “She’s no use to any man once she lays with the devil. And a man should know what he’s getting into before he goes in that.”

“That?” Joe flared, sitting up straight.

Percy reached for his hand, drawing it down off the bench and onto his knee. “Shall we go see our room?”

“No.” Joe withdrew his hand and snapped open Percy’s golden cigarette case, lighting another smoke. He forced a smile that fooled everyone but Percy. “It’s a fun ghost story. I want to hear more. How did they get her to confess?”

A communal sigh wafted around the little group.

“They did get a confession, didn’t they?” Joe pushed.

“Of course,” said George. “But Molly put up a fight.”

“They asked her nicely at first,” said Vaila. “As they always do. But when she lied to them, well, they had to start with the cashielawes…”

“What’s that?” asked Percy.

“It’s an iron cage.” Joe spoke through the same smile, but his golden brown eyes were downcast and far away. “They put it tight around the legs of the accused, and heat it until it sears the flesh off the body.” He said it as matter-of-factly as if he was reading the bus timetable, giving everyone except Percy the idea it was fine to carry on with the vile conversation.

“Two days, she lasted on that,” said George, with a slow shake of his head.

“Because of her supernatural powers,” Maisie added.

“All the skin burned off her legs, it was,” George went on. “She would pass out from the pain, so they’d have to revive her to go again. She wouldn’t give them a thing but her screams, so they were forced to turn to her family.”

“They placed stones on the husband right there in front of her until they almost squashed him flat,” said Maisie. “She didn’t give an inch.”

“Brought her little boy in and smashed his feet to pieces with a hammer,” said Charlie. “And not a word.”

“But it was the little girl that eventually broke her,” said Vaila, shaking her head sadly.

Maisie took up the story with a softening of her voice and a glistening of her eyes. “For all the terrible things she’d done, she must have had a heart in there somewhere. They put that little girl’s fingers in the pilliwinks, and crushed them right in front of Molly’s eyes until Molly cried out that she truly was the Devil’s own bride.”

Joe, by this time, had fallen into silence, an unmistakably sickened pallor having taken over the usually bright cheeks.Percy gently drew his hand back, wrapping it in the nook of his elbow, where Joe let it remain this time.

“It was a dreadful business,” Vaila said quietly.

“But itwasfour hundred years ago,” George added.

Maisie cast her eyes over Joe, over Percy’s watchful gaze on him, and said gently, “This little skull couldn’t scream like it does if it weren’t true that she was a witch. I can’t agree with what they did to get the confession out of her, but she wasevil.”

Joe remained still, reflective, then stubbed his half-smoked cigarette out with a sudden and decisive jab at the heavily laden copper ashtray. “How much?”

Maisie looked back over her shoulder at the rows of bottles on their little wooden ledges. “How much for what?”

“For Molly,” he said. “I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”

Vaila laughed in surprise, Charlie laughed along with her, George’s mouth dropped open, and Maisie chided, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Two thousand,” said Joe, his knee beginning to tap as his mind went to work trying to figure out where he was going to get his hands on that sort of money.

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