Nightmare Fuel #32: Burn the Witch
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Welcome to another edition of Nightmare Fuel, creeps and peepers. I'm Dan Cummins, and today I'll be sharing another original short story of the fictional horror variety,

I know many of you wanted a continuation of the previous tale of the House of Hurt, but I'm just not convinced we should explore that world any further. At least that's how I'm feeling at the moment. Maybe it'll change in the future. Right now, I kind of like not knowing for sure what will happen to the house's remaining terrified victims. I had originally planned on telling a story set in the Dark World this week. I know it's been a while since we visited that place.

But then Lindsay shared a fan submission on a recent episode of Scared to Death that got me thinking about how terrible it would be if someone's fictional horror story wasn't so fictional after all. And here we are. I highly recommend noise cancellation headphones for the best experience. Hope you enjoy this new nightmare. Time now for the tale of Burn the Witch. November 2008. Sally Wood, an exhausted 36-year-old nurse, woke up screaming again.

She was covered in a cold sweat, alone in the lone bedroom of her small condo at the Riverbend Condominiums on Old Colony Avenue in Taunton, where she'd only fallen asleep an hour earlier after another long shift at Morton Hospital, where she worked as a nurse. Sally was a Taunton native.

as were her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. And before them, multiple generations of her ancestors had been born and raised in various towns in the area of Bristol County, going all the way back to the mid-17th century, back before Massachusetts was even a state, when it was still called the Massachusetts Bay Colony, even before Salem's infamous witch trials. Witches had been on Sally's brain a lot lately.

And not because she'd taken some college friends from Colorado to Salem who had flown in to experience the madness and people-watching that is Halloween in America's witchiest town. Witches had been on her mind because of her nightmares. Nightmares that had been bleeding over into her waking hours the past week or so. From what she could remember, the recurring dream was always the same. She was old and dressed like she was some woman living several hundred years earlier.

She was running as fast as she could, which, due to her advanced age, wasn't fast at all. But she had the advantage of knowing the terrain. She moved through like the back of her age-spotted hand. She was moving as fast as she could through the swamp at night, a swamp that looked like it could be nearby. Sally wasn't sure she recognized it, but it definitely appeared like it could be somewhere in Massachusetts. She was frightened. An angry mob was chasing her, and they were gaining on her.

but she made it to a small cabin, not much more than a shack, out in the boggy marsh. She ran inside and locked the door shortly before the chorus of angry voices surrounded her. They banged loudly on the door. They used what sounded like both fists and clubs to beat against the thin wooden shutters that barely protected the cabin's lone window and stood in place of where glass would be in more modern times. She cried out and begged them to stop, to go away, to please, please just leave her alone, but they wouldn't relent.

They wanted blood. They called her a witch. And soon, someone started yelling that they should burn her. More voices echoed the horrible sentiment. A large rock smashed through her window shutters. It was followed by a lantern. Burning whale oil spread out across the crude wooden table in the center of the cabin and spilled onto the floor. Bowls atop the table full of dried roots, herbs, powders, and leaves of all sorts were quickly engulfed in flames.

She grabbed a wool blanket from the cabin's small, lone bed and began to beat down the flames. But then something else, thrown through the now-open window, hit her in the back and knocked her flat under her stomach. She cried out from the pain to the blow, and then began to scream from the far more painful, panic-inducing flames that had quickly spread across the back of her body, from her knees all the way up to her neck. She was on fire. Someone had thrown another lamp.

She could hear the mob cheering outside, more burn the witch cries and similar bloodthirsty sentiments. As she rolled around on the ground in a desperate attempt to put out the flames that burned both her clothes and her skin, she heard the mob break down the door. Moments later, someone was grabbing her by the hair and pulling her outside. She became momentarily stuck on something in the doorframe, getting caught long enough for whoever was dragging her to end up ripping a clump of her hair out with some of her scalp coming off with it.

While she'd managed to roll some of the fire out and more of the flames had been extinguished by the act of her being dragged, parts of her were still burning as more hands grabbed her arms and hauled her the rest of the way outside. Moments later, someone smashed another oil lantern into the ground beside her. New, hot, burning oil splashed across the front of her body. When she instinctively tried to roll onto her stomach, the kick of someone's boot returned her to her back, and then she fell to stones. The first hit her in the neck.

The next fractured her skull. Another knocked loose several of her teeth and tore open her lip. The pain was excruciating. She tasted blood. She could smell her own burning flesh. She was being kicked, stoned, and burned in a frenzy of mob mentality bloodlust. The pain of her burning flesh and broken bones built to an agonizing crescendo. And when it peaked, she'd finally wake up from the nightmare. But then, she'd feel like she wasn't alone. Like someone else was in the condo with her.

And two nights prior, four or five after the dreams had begun, she saw the shadowy shape of a woman when she woke. A woman she felt was the woman from her nightmares, the woman she had been. The first time she saw her, she disappeared a moment after Sally first noticed her. But then the next night, she stayed. And this time, she wasn't entirely composed of shadow. Sally could see her eyes. They were yellow, the color of fire, and glowing ever so slightly. And then she vanished.

But then she was back the next night. Each night, the old witch's eyes glowed a bit brighter. Each night, Sally saw a bit more of her. Her long gray hair, her wrinkled, weathered skin, her crooked, dirty teeth, her gnarled fingers and long, filthy nails.

and each night Sally felt this old woman's ominous, threatening presence more concretely than the night before. She felt the woman's hate for her, and the old witch would remain visible for a bit longer, standing and staring at Sally from across the room, but eventually as Sally watched frozen with fear from her bed, she'd always fade away until this night. This night, instead of fading from sight, the old witch spoke while making strange motions, as if drawing imaginary letters or symbols in the air.

And then she moved away from the wall and approached Sally's bed. Sally so desperately wanted to move, to scream, to throw her sheets and blankets aside and sprint from the room, keep running on out of her condo. Instead, all she could manage to do was cry, to beg, barely above a whisper, Please, please leave me alone. Please don't hurt me.

as the old witch lurched closer and closer still as she continued to draw her strange symbols in the air. And then in between her continually moving hands, Sally saw something glowing, something steadily growing brighter. A small ball of fire. It grew in both size and brightness as the witch continued to move her hands and mumble words Sally could barely hear, words spoken in a language she didn't recognize. Sally's voice finally returned to her fully, and she was able to shout, "'Leave me alone!'

right before the old witch shouted something that coincided with her making a pushing motion and the ball of fire shot across the room. At best, Sally thought the fireball was nothing more than her imagination or the product of a dream she was still dreaming. At worst, some ghostly apparition. But then she burst into flames.

In addition to now having her voice fully back, a voice that began to scream such a terrible pain scream, Sally could finally move. She rolled off of the bed and onto the floor as she tried in vain to extinguish the flames that raged across most of her exposed skin and her highly flammable thin cotton pajamas.

as she burned, as she hoped that at any moment she'd wake up from what was nothing more than an especially terrifying, lucid dream. Sally heard the witch laugh, louder and louder, until the pain stopped as her body went into shock, and then the world fell silent as she lost consciousness, shortly before she died as the flames melted and blackened and erased her skin, as smoke from her own soon-to-be corpse filled her lungs. Hey, did you hear about that nurse over in Taunton?

Blaine Murphy asked his lifelong friend, Brad Collins, before taking another sip of his watered-down, lukewarm coffee. The two men, both in their mid-forties, had been friends for nearly four decades. They'd graduated high school together in nearby Brockton in 1981, after both growing up down the street from one another in Norton. No. What happened? Brad asked after taking a bite of his hot turkey sandwich. He lived less than ten miles from where Sally had died.

He and Blaine tried to grab lunch together at least once a month, and they usually met up at Kelly's place, where they were now. The menu was expansive, they'd grown up with some of the waitstaff, and the food was generally delicious. "'Prudel stuff,' Blaine told him. "'She was burned alive in her bedroom.' Brad set down his fork and stared intensely at his friend. It took him a moment to get his thoughts together enough to speak. "'Burned alive? Like, the building caught on fire, and she didn't get out in time?' he asked before taking a big drink of his water."

His mouth had suddenly grown bone dry. No, actually, Blaine answered, which made Brad feel a bit lightheaded. He dreaded that he already knew exactly what Blaine was going to say to him next. The way the article wrote about it, Blaine continued, sounds like she was burnt to a crisp in a room, but that nothing else was damaged. The rest of her condo was fine. It's like somehow she was the only thing in her place that was ever truly on fire. Isn't that crazy? Brad's mind was reeling.

How is this possible? He wondered. How could he write about someone dying exactly like that, in such an incredibly specific way, and then hear about it in real life? It had to be coincidence, he told himself. A terrible, strange coincidence. Yeah, that is crazy. Brad agreed. When did it happen? He asked after placing both of his hands on the table in front of him to steady himself. Uh, I guess it would have been the night before last. Are you okay? Blaine asked, looking a bit concerned.

"'Yeah, just been having weird dizzy spells here and there.' He lied. "'I bet it's just something with my blood sugar. I've already set up a doctor's appointment.' He lied again. "'You've had that off and on since you were a little kid, right?' Blaine commented. "'Exactly. I'm not worried. It's just annoying.' Brad told him, forcing a smile. And he wasn't worried. Not about his health, anyway. His blood sugar had been fine ever since he'd finally stopped eating all the sugary, simple, carb-heavy food he'd grown up on. His mom loved through food.'

and almost none of that food was healthy. How he'd remained skinny was one of life's greatest mysteries. He was worried, very worried, about the woman's death, and he took out his phone to look up some additional info on her. "'Sorry,' he said. "'I can't hear that and not look it up immediately.' "'Right?' Blaine said. "'Reminds me of some stories of spontaneous combustion I read about in some weird book of strange phenomena my dad had when I was a kid. I always thought they were made up. Now I wonder.'

You ever heard of anyone just bursting into flames? It sounds like something you'd write about. It is something I've written about, Brad thought. He had to work hard to hide his reaction to seeing the dead woman's name, Sally Wood. The name of the character he wrote about who had died in that same way? Sandy Williams. What the hell? Sally and Sandy. Way too close for his liking. And both their last names started with the same letter. Sandy wasn't a nurse, but she did work at a hospital. This didn't feel good.

This didn't feel good at all. He wasn't able to find much additional info online about her death. Basically, only what Blaine had already told him. That the woman had died, and that her condo hadn't suffered the kind of damage you would certainly expect when someone had been burned to a blackened skeleton inside of it. One local news site described her remains as, Jesus.

Thankfully, Brad's conversation with Blaine soon shifted away from Sally's death and moved on to Blaine and Brad's standard monthly topics. How things were going for Blaine at his practice, he was a child and family therapist, and work was busier than ever. How Blaine's dating life was going, which was always entertaining. He was wildly dysfunctional for someone who counseled others on their relationships.

He was currently dating a woman who had a serious opioid addiction, who was trying to get custody of her kids back, a woman who wanted him to bite her hard enough to leave marks on her breasts during sex, and a woman who had shared a fantasy the last time they'd hooked up about how she would love for him to tie her up and place her in the trunk of his car and then drive her out into the woods as if he was going to kill and bury her. Rad was constantly left thinking, where do you find these people? When they talked about who Blaine was dating.

They also talked about Brad's love life, which was generally less weird and just, well, sad. Michelle, a great woman he had been dating off and on for three years, had dumped him. Again, she was 10 years younger and her clock was ticking. She really wanted to settle down and have kids. She wanted Brad to, quote, "'Shit or get off the pot.'"

And while Brad cared for her, deeply in fact, and was also open to having kids even though he worried he was getting a bit old to start a family at 47, he still didn't have the career stability he felt he needed before he could consider getting married and starting a family.

He'd been able to work exclusively as a fictional author for almost 20 years, since he'd said goodbye to his last bartending job when he was 29, and while he was very proud to have been able to pay his bills year after year with nothing more than the money he made writing stories, horror stories specifically, it wasn't going well at the moment. It actually hadn't been going well for quite some time.

He didn't share with Blaine exactly how worried he was. He didn't want a pity party. But he was starting to think his run as a professional creative was about to come to an end. His last few books had not sold well. Actually, each book he had written had sold fewer copies than the one before for the past 18 years.

His debut novel, The Quiet Kind, about a family of vampires moving to and feeding on a small town in Nebraska in the 80s, had gotten him a publishing deal, some great reviews, and made it onto the New York Times bestsellers list. It had gotten him an agent with William Morris, the agent he still had. It had gotten picked up for a feature film adaptation. But then, after he'd gotten his development money, the film ended up lost in development purgatory and was never made.

His second book, Last Exit, published two years later in 1992, was about a man missing his freeway exit and then driving into a strange fog and ending up in a town that didn't technically exist after he took the next exit, the last exit. It narrowly missed the bestsellers list, but it did get picked up for development into a TV series with Fox. A pilot episode was shot. David Duchovny was the lead.

But then it didn't test as well as they'd hoped it would. A new president took over at Fox, and he scrapped the project when he wiped the current development slate clean and replaced everything with his own projects. And in the 16 years since, he'd written six more books, but no more bestsellers, no more adaptation opportunities, and sales at a drop so low that now, after completing his most recent publishing deal, it was going to be real hard to get a new deal. He badly needed another hit, a Hail Mary.

And if he didn't get one, his career as a full-time author was going to be over. He'd managed to buy a house and a new car with the money he had made from his first two books primarily, but now he was having to dip into his savings to make his mortgage payments. His 1993 Toyota 4Runner had over 200,000 miles on it and was looking rusted and rough.

He needed a new car. He needed to fix his roof. The big 5-0 was approaching fast, and he had no retirement accounts, a dwindling savings, no kids, no wife, and a fading career. He was feeling the most desperate he had ever felt. And it was that desperation that had led to him trying something new, something experimental. He'd gone way, way out of his comfort zone in an attempt to fire up his creative juices and create something truly terrifying.

And now as he drove home, after finishing his lunch at Kelly's place with his buddy Blaine, he wondered if his little experiment had worked too well in ways he had never intended. Brad, is this a good time to chat? I've got some great news to share. It was Drew Blatt, Brad's literary agent with William Morris, the man who had stuck by Brad and had continued to believe in his talent, disappointing book after disappointing book, year after year of commissions that probably didn't even cover William Morris's electric bill.

Drew's loyalty and unwavering belief in Brad's talent as an author was such a rarity in the literary world. Just about any other agent, especially a good agent at a good agency like Drew, would have dropped Brad off of their roster long, long ago. In addition to desperately wanting a bestseller to resurrect his career and keep him from having to apply for a new job as a waiter or a bartender in his late 40s after two decades away from the service industry, Brad also wanted a win to validate Drew's belief in him. He felt like he owed him.

Yeah, Brad said as he stood up and walked away from the computer he'd been on, where he'd been trying to find more information about Sally Wood's death an hour after getting back from his lunch. This is a great time. Perfect! I'm very pleased to say that Simon and Schuster...

loves the proposal for Burn the Witch, Drew said excitedly. Like they really, really love it. Tamara, like I've told you, is still a huge fan. And her whole team loves the angle of an author from Massachusetts sharing a horrifying story about the spirit of a witch burned in the 1600s, coming back to exact revenge on the descendants of the Puritans who killed her. Wow, that's great. Do they love it enough to give me a new deal? Brad nervously asked as he sat back down. His knees felt a bit weak.

This was starting to sound like the kind of call he had truly been starting to believe he would never receive ever again. He tried not to get his hopes up. Yes, Drew said enthusiastically. That's why I'm calling, dude. Tamara read the sample chapter you sent over immediately about the woman Sandy being burned alive by the witch from her nightmare, and she said it gave her full body chills, that she felt unsettled after reading it. She said there was something really special about it that, quote, the story felt alive.

And are you sitting down? She already floated a preliminary offer out. A new three book deal with a $150,000 advance on Burn the Witch. And I think I can get that number up to at least 200K. Brad was sitting down and he was stunned in the silence. 200K would get his roof fixed, rebuild his savings and put him in a new car.

And if they're willing to give that kind of advance, that meant that they would actually be putting some promotional muscle behind it to recoup their investment. And if it sold well, 200K was just the beginning. But you'll have to keep writing a book that just got someone killed, he thought. A book that might get more people killed. Bullshit, he told himself. Books don't kill people. Not like this. It was a coincidence. A really unfortunate, terrible coincidence.

Brad, you still with me? Drew asked. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm just, wow. I'm stunned. I wasn't expecting this. He stammered. I told you, dude. I told you you were due. I knew this day would come if you just stuck with it. I knew it. And I'm not done. Drew teased. Seriously? Brad asked, incredulous. I don't even have the book written yet. What other news could you have?

I bounce over your proposal to Steve and our film and TV department. He specializes in adaptations and has a great reputation in the horror space. He replied, and he fucking loves it.

Thinks it has serious potential as a film. He even used the word franchise. He's not blowing smoke either. He already mentioned it to some contacts over at Blumhouse and they're stoked. They can't wait to see the finished product. I'm telling you, dude, if the rest of the book is as good as that first chapter, and I know it will be because it's you, you're going to get a bestseller and a film out of this. Maybe even a film franchise. This is your fucking moment, Brad. This is your moment.

Dreams full of dollar signs and becoming a legitimate name in horror and not just a one hit and mostly forgotten about wonder pushed any concerns over the nurse's death out from Brad's mind. Feelings of dread and worry were completely replaced by excitement and elation. Brad Collins was back and his future was looking better than it ever had. Oh, my. Oh, my God, man. Wow. This is crazy. I don't know what to say. Brad gushed.

"'How about you tell me when you think you'll be able to finish it?' Drew said. "'You know I don't normally like to add pressure to your creative process, but business-wise, we've never been in this spot before. We need to strike while the iron is hot.' "'Uh, yeah, no, of course.' "'Thirty days,' Brad blurted out. "'I have no distractions,' he added. "'My life is going to be this book for the next month.'

Yes, Drew exclaimed. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Hell yes, dude. All right, call me if you need anything. I'll keep you updated on the deal with Simon and Schuster. I bet we can wrap that deal up before you finish. You just write, write, and write your spooky, skinny ass off. Can and will do, Drew. Thank you, Brad beamed.

"'You're most welcome,' Drew replied sincerely. "'You're a great writer, Brad, and a great person, too. "'Go get it. "'Can't wait to celebrate when all of this has been inked. "'Talk soon.' "'Brad hung up and put his phone back in his pocket, "'poured himself a big glass of cold water and gulped it down. "'He stared at his computer and thought about the next chapter he'd already written, "'the one about the banker, Tim Kaine. "'He wondered for a moment if the horrible death he'd written about for that guy "'would be mirrored in the real world, or if it already had.'

He walked over to his desk, picked up the business card for Deidre Quinn, the spiritualist at the Raven's Coven in Salem, and entered her number into his phone. He had a bad feeling about returning to her for some more spiritual assistance with his book, but he didn't know if he could continue writing it without the help of Marina Hartz, the spirit of the dead woman who had given him the idea for Burn the Witch and used him as a vessel to write what he had so far. He tried to tell himself that Marina wasn't real.

that there was no spirit, that the seance and everything that came with it was all a bunch of woo-woo bullshit, that everything he had written so far had come from his subconscious. But he was having a hard time fully believing that. And also, he thought, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Even if it was coming from his subconscious, would he be able to tap into it without Deidre's little ritual?

With so much at stake regarding finishing the book and finishing it quickly, he didn't want to risk messing with the winning recipe. Subconscious, not subconscious, didn't matter. He needed to stay the course. So he dialed the number and hoped that no more terrible coincidences would be revealing themselves anytime soon. But what if they're not coincidences? He wondered. Would you stop writing the book?

He wanted to believe that, yes, he would absolutely stop writing a book that was cursed somehow, a book that led to real innocent people dying and dying horrifically at that. Was that true? Or would he sacrifice more innocent people to keep his career alive? Before we move forward and meet the next character in this tale, it's time to take our mid-show sponsor break.

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And now it's time to meet the next person to encounter the old witch. Tommy Payne was working late at his financial planning office in downtown Attleboro on Union Street. He wasn't happy about it. He wasn't happy about all the late nights he'd been pulling over the past year and change. And the previous month and a half had been the worst by far. Prior to all that, he'd loved his job. He thought he was good at it. Very good, in fact. Built his own firm on a reputation of being some sort of financial wizard.

He'd thoroughly enjoyed working with clients and helping them with their retirement planning It was truly so rewarding watching their portfolios grow and watching his own wealth grow right along with them when they won He won it felt great when they were able to retire with more money than they'd hoped for Or retire earlier than they thought they'd ever be able to All because he'd done such a solid job of guiding their investments, but that ship had sure seemed to have sailed My had it ever

Financial growth had gotten real, real hard to come by, almost impossible to come by, in fact, in the bear market the U.S. had experienced over the past 13 months.

Tommy could talk to his clients until he was blue in the face about sticking to the plan and weathering the storm. And he had. He could prattle on and on about how their portfolios had not been shrinking nearly as bad as the overall market, that comparatively they were doing great, that the miracle of dollar cost averaging plus investing in the world's number one economy would still take them to the exact same place they wanted to be. They might just have to wait an extra year or two to get there.

But none of that mattered. When people were seeing 10 or 20% less money in their retirement portfolios than they'd had the year before. When they were panicking and highly emotional. Sure, they knew rationally that the entire market was down.

But still, they wanted someone to be mad at, some person, not a situation, to blame. And since he was the guy in charge of their money, he was that person. He was the one getting yelled at. He was the one getting fired by clients, fired by people he'd worked with for over two decades in some cases. He even got fired by a guy he'd went to grade school with. He'd been at the man's wedding, for Christ's sake. Both of them.

He was the one getting phone calls from people literally crying and telling him they didn't know what they were going to do, how they might have to sell their house or go back to work. People who sounded suicidal in a few instances. It was awful.

And the real estate bubble popping less than two months ago had made it all so much worse. People were losing their asses on the money they'd put in the market and on their properties. They'd saved, they'd invested, they'd done everything the so-called right way, and they were getting clobbered for it. It was the worst time to be a financial advisor in almost 80 years. And since Tommy didn't own a magic crystal ball or know where to find one, he had no idea when it would finally end.

All of this negativity brought on by market volatility had really been taking a toll on the 56-year-old's health and well-being. He'd put on 30 pounds over the past year, and he'd been at least 30 pounds overweight before that. He hadn't been sleeping well. He'd tried various medications, but nothing seemed to work. It left him feeling too groggy and even less capable of doing the job he was currently failing at.

His marriage had been fragile back when the market was kicking ass thanks to too many years, spending too many long days at work, disagreements over how to raise the kids, meddlesome in-laws and his wife framing him reconnecting with an old friend from high school as an emotional affair. Damn it. She was probably right. And now the loss of both income and his own retirement portfolio tanking right when he and his wife's youngest kid was about to join the older two in college really hurt. All three had gotten into private schools and not one of them had gotten a single scholarship.

All of that had led him to drinking the most he had drank since back when he was in college. And on top of everything else, the old building he had his office in, the old brick monstrosity built back in the late 1800s that had been his sanctuary for the past 23 years, his home away from home, his happy place, it had been starting to creep him the hell out. And it had been getting harder and harder to point to his increasingly fragile mental state as to why he'd been seen and hearing the things that were getting harder and harder to reason away.

He'd heard the building was haunted back before he'd ever moved in, and he hadn't thought anything of it. He'd grown up in Attleboro, as had the previous six generations of his family. It was an old town for America, first settled in 1634, and according to some people, damn near every building in town was haunted. Very haunted. There were plenty of people he knew that seemed to believe the entire state of Massachusetts was haunted, but Tommy had never believed in any of that crap.

His wife and kids believed it, though. They thought their house was haunted. All four of them had claimed to have heard footsteps in the attic, footsteps in the hallways, doors opening and closing on their own, whisperings in the wall, and all that other cliched baloney. Tommy hadn't witnessed any of that crap. They claimed to have felt watched. His youngest, even swore a shadow person, whatever the hell that was, had appeared at the foot of her bed a few different times in the middle of the night when she was in junior high.

A few times that just happened to coincide with her and her friends starting to watch horror movies. Tommy didn't think she had seen Jack Squat. He'd never seen a ghost or anything else he couldn't easily explain, not once. Not until maybe recently. The last few nights he'd stayed at the office, after it had gotten good and dark out after 7 o'clock, he'd heard and seen some things that were making him really question his beliefs. Things that had really been getting under his skin.

and it all started when he'd walked down the hall to use the bathroom four nights back. The lights had flickered out for a few seconds. That alone didn't scare him in some paranormal way, just made him feel scared that he wasn't going to be able to get his work done. But then while they were out, at the end of the hall, he thought he saw the dark shape of someone, and that scared him in a new way. By their size and shape and what looked like long hair, he assumed they were a woman, but they couldn't have been a woman because they had yellow eyes.

eyes that looked like they burned like flames. That just wasn't possible. When the lights had come back on, whatever it was he had seen was gone. Tommy wanted to believe it was anything other than some type of spirit. He racked his brain trying to figure out what had happened, and all he could settle on was that it had to have been some sort of trick of the light. Maybe some headlights from a passing car below had reflected off of something and bounced their way into the building. He really wanted to believe that.

But whenever he'd thought back on what he'd seen, it kept giving him the willies. Still, it probably wouldn't have stuck with him, and he definitely wouldn't have attributed it to the paranormal if it had been an isolated incident. But the next night, he thought he'd seen a reflection of that same shadowy woman with the fiery eyes in his computer monitor. It had startled him so bad, he'd choked on his drink and damn near sprayed his desk with bourbon. When he'd spun around, there was no one there.

He wrote off that occurrence, mostly, to him dwelling on seeing what he was still trying to tell himself had been a trick of the light the night before. He figured he must have been thinking about it so much that he had projected it onto his computer screen through the power of his imagination somehow, even though he'd never been a particularly imaginative person. And still, if it had stopped at that, if there would have never been another occurrence, he would have been able to shake it all off and move on with his shitty life.

But then the next night, the third night in a row something strange happened. He'd heard her. Or at least, he'd thought he'd heard her. He'd heard what sounded like an old woman saying, Your blood will feed me. It happened when he was again sitting at his computer. The creepy voice sounded like it had come from out in the hallway. He'd stood up and walked out there to check, and when he did, all the damn lights flickered off again. And this time they'd stayed off for longer than they had the first time. And sure enough, there she was.

Down at the end of the hall, the same woman with the yellow burning eyes. And this time he'd felt a strange compulsion come over him to walk towards her. Fortunately, he was able to resist due to how overwhelmingly afraid he also felt. For the only time he could think of, he'd felt genuinely deeply terrified of something he didn't understand. If he had thought it was a real living woman in the hallway, even one who had genuinely said that creepy thing about his blood, he wouldn't have been even a little afraid. He was a big guy with a bigger voice.

And if yelling at her didn't send her running scared, he would have called the cops and kept his eye on her until they had shown up. Problem solved. But in this instance, while he didn't know exactly what she was, he knew she wasn't a living woman. And that bothered him. And when the lights had come back on, she had vanished again. How was that possible? He just couldn't figure it out. He'd left the building after that and had gone home before finishing what he had hoped to.

That night, he slept even worse than he'd already been sleeping because now, on top of everything else, he couldn't stop thinking about ghosts and monsters. And then yesterday, for the first time ever, he had been scared to stay late at his own office. As a grown man, how embarrassing. He had to force himself to stay just to prove to himself that he didn't really believe anything paranormal was happening. But he did. He did believe, even if he wouldn't fully admit it to himself. And then last night, things got even worse.

He'd heard her again. She'd said the same thing she'd said before. Your blood will feed me. And again, it sounded like it had come from out in the hallway. But this time, when he whipped around, she was there. She wasn't in the hall. She was standing in his office, less than 10 feet away, blocking his only exit. He saw her so clearly. She didn't look like a ghost. She looked like an old woman from another time. She wore a long, simple, dark brown linen dress with what looked like another old linen garment underneath it.

She'd had on wool stockings, an apron, and simple leather shoes. Her hair, long, gray, and unkempt, fell down around and below her shoulders. Her face, while weathered and heavily wrinkled, looked human, almost. Human except for those eyes. They looked like they were on fire. They were yellow and glowing, as if something burning and bright was inside her skull and emanating out from her sockets. Tommy had seen her for probably no more than two seconds before she had vanished into thin air once more.

But during that time, he had seen her clear as day and that, that had really rattled the hell out of him.

That had made it very difficult to believe he wasn't being haunted by some paranormal entity, one that felt dangerous. He tried to reason it all away. He told himself that the months and months of long nights, the poor sleep, the stress of working in the worst bear market since the Great Depression, not having had sex in almost a year, worrying more and more about a divorce that was starting to feel inevitable, the added weight, the never working out, the income drop, the kids being more expensive than ever, the drinking. It was all finally catching up with him.

And he was cracking at the seams. He wondered if maybe he'd had a little series of strokes or something. He made a doctor's appointment for Wednesday afternoon of the following week, just five days away. But deep down, he knew that wasn't going to help him, that something doctors wouldn't understand was going on. But what was he supposed to do about it? Never stay late in his own office ever again? Let whatever that thing was ruin what was left of his business, ruin his life? No. He was stronger than that, damn it.

So he decided to pull one more late night, just to prove to himself that he could. That he wasn't too scared to work in his own office after dark. He also made up his mind to be done with the late nights for a little while after that. He'd take the weekend off and do his best to relax. Start working out again. Start eating better. He just needed to wrap up a few more important things on this Friday night. Then he'd get some needed rest and figure out how to deal with whatever this was.

All that is what had led to Tommy Payne, founder and head of Payne Wealth Management, LLC, choosing to stay late and work on a Friday night despite all that he had seen that had terrified him the four previous evenings. And on this Friday night, when the clock struck eight, he was almost done and about ready to head home. He hadn't heard or seen anything unusual yet. He was starting to relax and think that maybe, whatever it had been, it was behind him. But then he saw her again.

One last time, when he'd headed out of his office to use the bathroom down the hall, the lights had went out. Yet again, he'd seen her standing at the end of the hallway, and he'd felt compelled to walk towards her. Like the previous instance, he just stood there and stared, too afraid to walk forward. He waited for the lights to turn back on, but they didn't.

and the compulsion to walk towards her grew and grew the longer he stood until it was simply overwhelming, until he felt like he needed to find out what was happening. He had to, despite his terror, understand what she wanted from him. He'd convinced himself that if he just approached her, she'd get whatever it was she needed from him, and then she'd move on. She'd leave him alone, and it would finally all be over. And so he began to walk towards the old witch.

and when he'd made it almost to the end of the hallway, she'd beckoned him with a gnarled finger to follow her as she turned and walked down another hallway towards the corner of the building that held the stairwell in what had felt like some sort of trance, what Tommy imagined sleepwalking must feel like. He'd followed her all the way to the entrance to the stairwell, then down four flights of stairs, and then into the old building's basement, and once down there,

The metal door slammed shut behind Tommy. The lights turned back on. The old witch disappeared and Tommy was released from his trance. And now he felt a new level of fear he had previously never known. Before him, a noose made a thick old rope dangled down ominously from the center of the ceiling, almost touching the floor. Just off to the side of it was a small pile of smooth stones roughly the size of baseballs. Tommy turned around and grabbed the door to the stairwell, but it wouldn't budge. Help me! Someone help me! He screamed.

But if there was anyone else left in the building, he hadn't seen them. And the cleaning staff, if they were there, typically had their headphones on anyway. Or they were working with noisy equipment. Tommy pulled his phone out of his pocket, but just as he'd assumed, he didn't have any service down beneath the big building surrounded by brick and concrete. Your blood will feed me. He heard her hiss from behind him. He spun around and the witch was back, standing near the noose. What are you? Tommy shouted. Something old, but soon.

Something new again. The witch cryptically sneered. To be reborn, I require the blood of those who've tormented me. I've never tormented you. I don't even know you. Tommy protested. No, but your blood does. The witch smiled coldly before bending down and grabbing one of the stones.

Tommy wanted to protest further or to run and hide behind the building's old boiler, but before he could say anything or move anywhere, the angry wraith sent a rock hurtling towards him like a fastball. It connected with the front of his knee, fracturing his kneecap, buckling the joint and sending him sprawling and groaning to the floor. Stop it, please! He wailed.

"I too begged for mercy. Your blood showed me nothing." The witch growled. Tommy tried to crawl now, dragging his busted leg behind him, but another stone then hit him in the shoulder. Tendrils of pain shot out and down towards his hand, and Tommy fell forward as his arm gave out. He was about to beg for mercy again when a third stone connected with his jaw. It broke it, and also burst open his lip and pushed a few of his teeth through his cheek, leaving him unable to coherently speak.

He now moaned and whimpered as warm blood poured out of his mouth. A fourth stone then smashed a hand on his good arm against the floor, and he howled. They stoned us. They hanged us. The witch hissed. She then grabbed Tommy by the hair atop his head. It was just long enough for her to be able to hold a handful of it, and she dragged him over to the noose. She forced it around his neck.

She then pulled on the rope, lifting him off the floor until his toes were just barely touching before she tied the rope off to an old pipe hanging down from the ceiling. Tommy was now being strangled, but not enough for him to die quickly. He frantically bounced and spun himself around as he pushed against the floor with his one good leg while he choked and gurgled on the blood from his broken jaw and smashed lip. "'They would hang us and burn us both!' the witch shouted, and then she began to move her hands and draw symbols in the air."

In the space between her continually moving hands, Tommy saw something begin to glow, something that looked a lot like her eyes, something that steadily grew brighter. A small ball of fire. It expanded just like it had before with Sally, in both size and brightness as the witch continued to move her hands and mumble words spoken in a language Tommy didn't recognize. The last thing Tommy thought before she sent the fireball into him and he burst into flames was how foolish he'd been the past year.

Work had been down, but so what? He'd still had enough money. He'd still had his family. He could have focused on his marriage and worked things out, or at least gone down swinging. He could have still been happy. His problems weren't as big as he'd made them out to be. He'd still had hope. But now all that was gone. Now all he had was fear and pain. And then the old witch shouted words that coincided with her making a pushing motion, and Tommy lit up like he'd been soaked in gasoline. And the fireball went off.

He screamed a muffled, muted scream, the noise mostly cut off by the rope around his neck. He spun around frantically, his body desperate to move away from the pain that engulfed him. A minute or so later, all that was left of financial planner Tommy Payne, founder and head of Payne Wealth Management LLC, was a blackened skeleton with some melted remnants of flesh and fabric attached to the bone, still hanging from the noose that had impossibly not burned off of his neck.

lightly swaying to and fro near a small pile of smooth stones. Just like with the death of Sally Wood, the police in the corner wouldn't understand how it was possible for someone to have died in this manner. But someone else would. They'd already written about it. As Brad gathered his things to drive over to Salem to write some more chapters of Burn the Witch on a Saturday afternoon, he got a text from his buddy Blaine. Have you seen this shit? What is going on?

and below that there was a link to a blog dedicated to news in Bristol County. In that blog, someone wrote that, according to a friend of theirs in law enforcement, a man's body had been found in the basement of the old Daggett building downtown, burnt to a crisp, yet hanging from a noose that somehow hadn't been burned at all. And just a few feet off to the side of the corpse, there was a little pile of rocks. "'No!' Rad gasped. "'No fucking way!' He quickly sat down. Life suddenly seemed much less steady and real than it had a few moments before."

That's impossible, he huffed in frustration. No, he said again. That just can't... No! He texted Blaine back. That's so crazy. What's going on? You know what's going on, he thought. You're writing about people who are really dying. At the very least, you're seeing into the future. Or I'm somehow deciding what's happening in the future, he mumbled.

But it's not really you deciding that, is it? He thought. It's your new writing partner, Marina Hearts, the real author of Burn the Witch. That's fucking madness, Brad shouted alone in his home. There's no other author. There's no spirit. There's just me. I don't have the power to predict or cause shit. Then why don't you cancel your appointment in Salem, he thought. Why don't you stay home and work on the book here? No, he answered himself aloud. The new gimmick is working, and I'm not going to fuck this up.

"'I deserve this book. I've earned it.' And with his resolve to not stray from the current and increasingly troubling course, Brad grabbed the notebook that he had been using to write the first drafts of his new book by hand, and he left his house to drive to Salem. "'Hey, Brad, how have you been, hon?' said the middle-aged woman named Deidre Quinn, who looked a bit like Stevie Nicks if she'd put on an extra 30 pounds and dressed like an amalgamation of a witch and a tarot card reader. So, dressed exactly like Stevie Nicks, actually."

You know, pretty damn good, Deidre, said Brad as he stepped into the back room of the Raven's Coven, Deidre's spiritualist shop tucked along the little historic alley of Salem's Liberty Street. My agent is pretty excited about this new book, he continued. And that makes me pretty excited, too. Did you tell him how you're writing it? She asked with a grin. No, Brad replied with a smile of his own. I think I'll wait on that.

If it starts to sell well like he thinks it will, then I'll tell him. Right now, I think it would just, well, let's just say he'd be concerned about me. Deidre laughed and wasn't offended in the slightest. Although she'd worked as a spiritualist in Salem for almost 30 years now, she was still a practical woman. And it wasn't lost on her that what was considered normal in her little witchy woo-woo bubble of Salem was considered anything but normal in the views of most others. She was glad to see Brad. Very, very glad, actually.

If he hadn't called to set up another appointment, she would have reached out to him, which she had almost never done with a client before. Deidre was a true believer. But she was also, although she would never voice this out loud, not to anyone actually, a bullshitter when she needed to be, which was frankly most of the time.

She provided a supernatural experience for all of her customers. But in almost every case, she was the one generating all of these supernatural elements. She embellished. Embellished to the point that most would call lying or even grifting. And that didn't bother her conscience one bit. She didn't see it as a bad thing at all and still considered the services she provided to be very authentic. People came to her primarily because they wanted or they needed

Proof of life after death, that there was more to the world than meets the eye, and she saw it as her sacred duty to provide them that proof and reassurance. If they really wanted to contact their grandmother, for example, and believe that she was alive and happy out there somewhere, if they needed to hear about how she still watched over them and that she was waiting for them to join her when they died, then what real harm was there in giving them that proof?

Even if it involved some theatrics such as secretly pushing some buttons under the table with her knee that sent a blast of cold air into the room or made the lights flicker out and the like. If she had to do some cold reading or needed an assistant to moan or speak from their hiding spot behind a fake wall with a little hole drilled into it to carry their voice clearly into the room, then so be it. What really made her feel okay about all of that was her knowing that she didn't always fake it. Not every single time.

She didn't always have to because sometimes the presence of something from the other side really did show up. Sometimes the lights flickered out when she hadn't pushed the button. Sometimes she and her client heard the voice of someone when her assistant wasn't even in the building. And the voice revealed information that convinced her client it really was their dead relative. Information Deidre was totally unaware of. Sometimes the air got cold on its own. Sometimes she'd felt something that she couldn't see touch her and on and on.

She truly had undeniably experienced the paranormal on many occasions. She had authentically convened with the dead, but she had never experienced what she'd experienced with Brad before. Her two sessions of automatic writing with him, induced by seances, had provided her with the most powerful proof of the supernatural that she had ever witnessed. She wanted more. When she had held that first seance, and she had asked if any spirits were near them, that had any stories they would like to share with a professional horror author for his next book,

The temperature quickly dropped. The candles flickered with a strange, swirling wind before they dimmed. And they both heard a disembodied voice whisper what sounded like a poem, but what felt more like a spell. "Blood must pay for a story such as this. Blood that will raise it from the great abyss. Blood that will bind your tale to mine. Blood spilled into the earth. Blood spilled for my rebirth. Crick your finger with the blade. Stain the page with drops of red.

You'll record all I've conveyed before I must rejoin the dead. It was an incredible moment. And what followed was even more incredible. Raz's eyes had lit up. He looked at Deidre like she must have been faking it somehow, but he was impressed rather than upset. She had smiled and played along as if this was just what she did. And then he had looked around the room, eyes darting to and fro, trying to locate the source of the voice before he asked, Do you have a knife? She did.

She'd kept one hidden under the table for years after she'd had a problem with a guy who had put his hands on her and scared her. And now she took it out, handed it to him, and without hesitation, Brad used the tip to prick the end of his middle finger of his left hand, and then he dripped some of his blood onto a new, untouched moleskin notebook he had brought just for their session after setting it up with Deidre over the phone. And then, it had felt like a bolt of invisible lightning hit the room.

While Deidre's hair stood on end, Brad's spine had stiffened. His eyes had rolled back into his head. His arms had fallen limp to his sides. His head had tilted up towards the ceiling and his jaw had fallen slack. And then without another word from Deidre, without doing anything to encourage the spirit to use Brad as a vessel for automatic writing, the author's physicality had changed again. His spine had relaxed. His head had tilted back down and swiveled on his neck until he was looking directly at Deidre. But with eyes that remained rolled back,

and he had grinned at her before turning to look down in his notebook. And then he had begun to write at a furious pace, and he didn't stop for a full 75 minutes. Their session was only supposed to have lasted an hour, but there was no way she was interrupting it. It ended as dramatically as it had begun. The candles returned to their normal luminosity, the temperature increased to where it had been, and Brad dropped his pen as his eyes rolled back down out of his head.

He had then stared down at his notebook and had almost fallen out of his chair when he had suddenly jumped up, startled and shouted, Holy shit! Did I do that? Deidre assured him that he certainly had. And she told him everything she had seen as he began to look through his pages. His eyes grew large and he started to mumble stuff like, Oh, this is good. Oh my God, this is really, really good. And then he saw what time it was, apologized for going over, and hastily and giddily took off, promising to reach out soon and set up a second appointment.

He had called the very next day, said it was the best writing he had done in years, and he wanted to try it again. So they did, and the spirit had returned, entering the room just as it had before, and speaking to them again with the same words. But this time, Deidre had asked for its name, and the voice had replied, Marina Hartz. When Deidre asked how long Marina had been dead, she said she had died near Norton, Massachusetts, 300 years earlier in 1708.

But then before she could get any more information from her, such as how she had died, Brad had pricked his finger, his blood had dripped onto the next open page of his notebook, and then he had fallen into another trance and had began writing at a furious pace which lasted even longer than it had the first time, just over 90 minutes. Once again, he had been overjoyed with what he had written. And that was what had led him to returning for his third appointment. Ready to do it all over again? She asked. Am I ever? Brad beamed.

♪♪

"'I don't know what all of this really is or does,' he added while he waved his hand around the space Deidre used for seances, "'but I know that this is the best writing I've ever done.' "'I'm so glad,' Deidre smiled, and she was. She felt honored to be able to witness a novel being written by a dead woman. She hadn't been in a hurry to die before this, but this experience had made her even less afraid of death than before, and more grateful than ever that she got to do the type of work she did.'

She burned some cedar to help clean this space. She'd always felt sage was for amateurs. And then she lit her candles, and she and Brad sat down next to each other at the table, and she said her opening Wiccan prayer. In the name of the great goddess and the horned god, we gather here tonight. We call upon you, great ones, to bless this gathering and to guide our spirits. We ask for your protection and your wisdom as we reach across the veil.

We welcome back the spirit of Marina Hearts to communicate with us, to channel her spirit to the body of Brad Collins, to share more of her story through his vessel, and we ask that she do so with kindness and respect. We call upon the elements fire, air, water, and earth to surround us and to protect us from any harm. We call upon the energies of the unseen world. May they come to us with love and understanding.

Let this seance be a safe space for communication and connection, and may it bring us healing and wisdom. Blessed be. Right on cue. The temperature quickly dropped. The candles flickered with a strange, swirling wind before they dimmed, and they both heard a disembodied voice. But this time, it whispered a new spell. Two lives have already been taken. The score is settled when we take two more. Blood is paid for my story in part, but to finish it I'll need a piece of your heart.

Give me a child whose soul I'll replace in her sixteenth year, and in return fame and fortune is yours when you share my tale for all to hear. "'Brad, wait!' Deidre suddenly shouted. "'Don't spill any of your blood! Look!' she said as she pointed across the table. Sitting in the darkness with them was the old witch, Marina Hearts. Her features were little more than shadow apart from her intense, burning eyes. Two fiery orbs in what looked like an old woman from another time's skull.'

Brad felt the most conflicted he'd ever felt in his life. Two lives have already been taken. The score is settled when we take two more, she'd said. He wasn't the only one writing this story. The entity across the table from he and Deidre, the one Deidre had just pointed out to him because she saw it too, was clearly not something from his subconscious. And even more upsetting, his story was killing people. And in order to finish it, he would need to kill two more.

But if you don't finish it, the first two people it killed will have died for nothing. His mind reasoned. That thought immediately made Brad feel dirty. But it was also true, wasn't it? But was it enough to justify killing two more? He knew it wasn't. He knew that just as he knew his name was Brad Collins. But damn it, if he didn't move forward, he would have blood on his hands and nothing to show for it. His career would be over. And then he thought an even more disgusting thought. Who would ever know?

Who would ever know other than Deidre what he had truly done? No one. And he told himself, if this thing didn't use him to do its murderous bidding, wouldn't it just use someone else? So what good would it do to stop now? And with that questionable reasoning, the decision was made.

Brad took the knife that he had brought with him this time and went to slice his finger. "'Brad, no!' Deidre cried out, and she knocked the blade out of his hand and onto the floor. And then she began to recite some sort of banishment or protection spell. "'Spirit of Shadow! Spirit of Strife! You are not welcome in my home or my life! I name you now! I see your face! I banish you from this sacred—' Before Deidre could get the next word fully out, she held her hands to her throat and started to choke as the old witch stared at her from across the table.

"'Die a real witch's death, fake peddler of charms.' The old witch hissed. The witch's fiery eyes burned brighter as she watched Idra's face turn red and then purple as her eyes bulged and then the capillaries burst. She gasped, and right before she slumped forward, she threw her hands out to try and grab at Brad, desperate for him to somehow save her. She missed him and face-planted onto the table in front of her before suddenly gasping for air. She wasn't dead.'

But then, the witch, who'd been moving her hands in the darkness and mumbling strange words, shot a fireball across the table that lit Deidre up like a Roman candle. Brad stood up and backed away from the table as he watched her silently be burned alive. The fire burned so hot it singed the hairs on his arm from over ten feet away. It also burned itself down quickly, transforming Deidre from a living person of flesh and bone to a skeleton of mostly ash in less than a minute's time. And as Deidre died, she was afraid.

Any comfort she had felt moments earlier about what lay beyond the veil was gone. If this monster lived in the great beyond, what else was out there? When it was over, when Deidre's corpse was no longer burning and just smoking, everything else in the room was fine, unharmed. Nothing else had been damaged, not even the chair she had sat on. Just like with the witch's other victims, Rad stared at the old witch now, the old witch who terrified him but also whose promises excited him.

His eyes teared up thinking about the deal he was making with what might be some sort of literal devil. But he also thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. And so he sat back down next to Deidre's blackened corpse. He bent over and picked up the knife she had slapped from his hand when she had tried to save him, as the witch silently stared at him now with her still burning eyes. He sliced the tip of his finger open, bled upon the next blank page of his now half-filled notebook.

And then his mind went blank as the witch took over his body and finished the dark, sacrificial tale that she hoped would bring her back to be continued. And that's it for this Nightmare Fuel. I hope you enjoyed today's tale of Burn the Witch, and I really hope you're looking forward to hearing more of it. Today's tale was written by me, Dan Cummins, and scored by Logan Keith, who continues to rock scoring these episodes forever.

If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic Productions catalog. Time Suck every Monday at noon Pacific time with little short sucks on some Fridays and these nightmare fuel episodes on some Fridays as well. And new episodes of the now long-running paranormal podcast Scared to Death every Tuesday at midnight. Please go to badmagicproductions.com for all your bad magic needs, including show-related merch, and stay scared. Bad Magic Productions.