Nightmare Fuel #33: Burn the Witch 2: A Book For Blood
01:06:04 Share

Now more than ever, Lowe's knows you don't just want a low price. You want the lowest price. And with our lowest price guarantee, you can count on us for competitive prices on all your home improvement projects. If you find a qualifying lower price somewhere else on the same item, we'll match it. Lowe's. We help. You save. Price match applies the same item. Current price at qualifying retailers. Exclusions and terms apply. Learn how we'll match price at Lowe's.com slash lowest price guarantee.

Hi, it's Martha Stewart. You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about dirt. At 3 a.m.? At all hours of the day, really. What people don't know is that not all dirt is the same. You need dirt with the right kind of nutrients. Miracle-Gro Organic Raised Bed and Garden Soil is so dense, so full of nutrient-rich, high-quality ingredients. Miracle-Gro is simply the best.

Welcome to another edition of Nightmare Fuel Creeps and Peepers. I'm Dan Cummins and I will be sharing another original short story of the fictional horror variety, a continuation of the previous Nightmare Fuel. Will Brad Collins get away with his proverbial deal with the devil? I highly recommend noise cancellation headphones for the best experience, but I also recommend

Hope you enjoy this new nightmare. Time now for the tale of Burn the Witch 2, A Book for Blood. 2008, 10 days after Brad Collins' final automatic writing session. Crystal Putnam was exhausted. It had been a long day in a series of long days. She'd been having bad dreams for over a week, the details of which she couldn't quite remember.

dreams involving an old angry woman's face an old dangerous woman who wanted to do her harm for reasons she could never recall once she woke but she thought it had something to do with her blood it was so strange she'd never had recurring nightmares before when she talked to her co-worker daryl at the residence inn in bridgewater across from the nip where she worked he asked if she'd been especially stressed out recently that maybe that was the cause of her bad dreams

Her friend Tanya had then said the same thing. Yes, yes, of course, she had been stressed lately. She was a 20-year-old single mom of a three-year-old whose sperm donor deadbeat dad would apparently rather go to jail than ever pay child support, working a job that didn't pay enough to cover daycare, a job that offered what had to be some of the worst health care with the highest deductibles in history.

She was driving a beater with bald tires and almost 200,000 miles on it. And she couldn't seem to meet a guy to save her life who could even check all three of her most basic bare minimum dating requirement boxes. Employed, no upcoming court dates, and not addicted to drugs or alcohol. But it's not like her life had suddenly gotten more stressful. She couldn't ever remember it being not stressful.

One of her first memories was of being at a funeral for her Aunt Becca, a mother of three who drank herself to death by the age of 41. Her two teenage kids, still living with her, had come to live with Crystal and her half-brother and two stepsisters after that. A couple years later, Crystal found out that her mom, the woman who had left her dad and abandoned her family when Crystal was still too young to remember her, had died in Florida in some sort of boating accident that sounded suspicious as hell.

and no one was surprised. She'd been hanging around bad people ever since she had left Massachusetts. Not long after that, one of Crystal's cousins had tried to sexually assault her. And when her dad found out, he ended up going away for a while on assault charges after beating the pedo half to death. Then Crystal lived with a stepmom who made her life hell until she finally ran away at 15. Not long after she'd left home, she'd gotten pregnant. She dropped out of high school not long after that.

Then her dad had gotten out of prison, gotten a job at Acorn Manufacturing in Mansfield, and within six months, he'd lost three fingers in an accident while he was making some sort of custom cabinet knobs. Now he lived on disability, tried not to let his drinking get out of control, and watched his granddaughter, Crystal's daughter Serenity, while Crystal worked at the hotel. Oh, and Serenity, who thankfully was an angel, was born with a congenital heart defect and was constantly in need of some sort of medical care.

Fuck my life was the closest thing Crystal had to a slogan or a motto. It felt like she was cursed, like she'd been born into a cursed family, and her family had lived in Massachusetts for so long, someone probably was cursed once upon a time when that was more of a thing, she often thought.

But at least at the moment, as tired as she was, Crystal could push her stress aside for a few minutes and try and relax. She was home. She was away from work, away from the world, not on another shitty date, not feeling guilty that she was spending too much money out having drinks with friends. She was inside the apartment in Bridgewater she shared with her dad, who was already asleep.

Serenity was down for the night too. And Crystal was laying on the couch in the living room, watching John and Kate plus eight, enjoying some solitude. Or at least, she was trying to. Something was wrong with the faucet in the bathtub. It wouldn't stop dripping. And it was also weird. She didn't have the TV on that loud. She didn't want to wake up her dad or her daughter. But it wasn't as if it was super quiet either, since they were both asleep in rooms down the hall with the doors shut.

and the bathroom also down the hall and around the corner, its door was shut too. And yet, she could still hear that faucet drip. And more than that, once she first noticed it, she couldn't ignore it. Because with each drip, it somehow got louder and louder, until it was so loud it became hard to hear what was happening on the show. Eventually, it would get so loud, Crystal worried it was going to wake up Serenity.

The first time she'd heard it, she'd gotten up pretty quickly, thinking of course that her dad hadn't properly turned off the faucet after he'd given Serenity a bath. But then, after she'd made sure she'd turned it off, she'd heard it again. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. She assumed she must not have twisted the faucet as tightly shut as she thought. So she'd walked back down the hall and she'd turned it off again. She'd paid extra close attention this time.

She'd made sure that she'd sealed it closed as tightly as she could. And then she'd sat on the toilet and watched it for maybe 20, 30 seconds. Nothing. Not a drop. It was done. But less than five minutes later, there it was again. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. So back Crystal went. It had somehow loosened up again. Crystal didn't know how that was possible, but it had.

This time she'd placed a washcloth beneath the spout so that if it started to drip again, she wouldn't have to hear it. She'd tell her dad about it in the morning and he could tell their landlord. While she placed the washcloth down at the bottom of the tub, the hair stood up on the back of Crystal's neck. It felt like someone else was in the bathroom with her, hovering in the doorway, watching her. The feeling was so powerful. When she turned around, she was prepared to scream and her right hand was balled up into a fist.

Crystal wasn't big, 5'3" and no more than 110 pounds. She was scrappy as hell, but no one was there. She turned back around to see if water was dripping from the spout onto the washcloth, and then she felt it again. That feeling that someone was watching her from the doorway. Stronger this time, but again when she whipped around, no one was there. Now she felt on edge, worried that someone else was in the house. She quietly snuck down to her and Serenity's room, gently cracked the door open, peeked her head in, listened and looked around.

There was no one in there but her daughter, and Serenity was sleeping peacefully in bed. Crystal carefully closed the door, walked over to her father's room, and placed her ear up against his door. Nothing. She could hear her sweet father peacefully snoring away. Just like always. No matter what was going on in his life, no matter how stressful or terrible it might seem to others, Jimmy Putman always slept like a baby. One of life's great mysteries.

Crystal smiled, felt a bit better, and returned to the living room where she laid back down on the couch. It was getting late, she was irritated, and she desperately wanted to relax by herself for just 20 or 30 minutes before she went to bed. She took out her iPhone, her most prized possession, and opened up Facebook to see what her friends were up to. But before she'd even finished reading the first post, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,

"'Oh, my God! Seriously? It's relentless!' she sighed before swinging her legs back off of the couch and then getting up and walking back down to the bathroom. This time, when she reached to grab the faucet to turn it back off for the fourth time, it opened up further on its own. And now water, so, so much water, more than Crystal had ever seen come out of the bathroom faucet by far, started gushing into the tub.'

Her mind whirled, trying to understand how this was possible. For a moment, she accepted that there had to be some kind of plumbing problem behind what she was witnessing that she just couldn't comprehend.

But then, after she saw that the water wasn't draining, after she tried to open the drain but couldn't, after she tried to twist the faucet back off but couldn't, when she felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck again and the feeling of being watched by someone behind her return, stronger than ever, Crystal worried that something very different and much worse than a simple plumbing issue was behind what she was experiencing.

and she began to wonder what possibly could be happening. As her mind just barely began to wonder if her apartment was haunted, she heard the door quietly shut behind her, immediately followed by the sound of it locking. Her stomach sank as she spun around and started to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She wasn't able to make any noise when she next tried to scream even louder, when she began to experience true terror when she saw what looked like an old, glowing, yellow-eyed witch standing inside of the bathroom door, blocking her escape.

She was so confused. Her mind couldn't even begin to comprehend what was happening to her. And then the old woman, the witch, spoke. "Trial by water. Will you or won't you float? If you never gave your soul to the black man, no, you won't. If your soul was pure, they'd watch you drown. If your soul was sold, you wouldn't sink down.

You'd be saved from the water, then paraded before town, and they'd cheer as the hangman's rope to your neck was wrapped tightly round. Innocent or guilty, you'd die all the same. It was never about us. It was always but a deadly game. That is what your blood once did to women like me. Women who dared to live free. Women your blood would never let be. So now I've returned to settle an old score.

Your blood I must take, and then I'll take one more. When the old woman finished speaking, after her hands paused in their strange movements, after Crystal had no choice but to watch and listen to every strange word, unnaturally frozen in place and still unable to make a sound like when you're trapped in a state of sleep paralysis, she felt herself being pulled back into the tub and then submerged beneath the surface of the water.

as she struggled to escape and breathe with her vision clouded by both the water she could thrash around in but not lift up out of as the air bubbles rising out of her lungs were being replaced by water. Crystal Putman saw the old witch's spirit looking down at her over the edge of the tub. She saw her smile and then whatever force had pulled her into the tub and pushed her down to the bottom released her and she floated up to the surface where she was again still unable to make a sound but she continued to hear everything.

She could hear the drain open up. She could hear the water drain from the tub impossibly fast. And she could hear the witch say, The girl doesn't drown, but floats instead. Because she's lived, she must now become dead. Guilty of a pact with the father of lies. She must burn, burn, burn before our eyes. And in the ball of fire the witch had built between her moving hands, incinerated young Crystal Putman in the now dry tub.

burning her both viciously and silently down to nothing but bone and ash, while never staining the fiberglass or the walls around her, never setting off the smoke alarm, never causing her father and child to stir in their slumbers as they slept peacefully just a few feet away. Four days later, Brad Collins sat alone in his house in Norton, 15 miles from where Crystal had been torched.

After staying up late on the night he watched Deidre, the spiritualist, be choked and then burned alive by the spirit of Marina Hartz, a woman who had been burned alive herself 300 years earlier, a vengeful wraith who had given him his new book, titled, not coincidentally, Burn the Witch. Brad Collins had spent every night the past two weeks up late and glued to his computer. The first thing he had done was proofread the remainder of his book, and he'd loved it. It was the best thing he'd ever written.

Only because you actually didn't write a single word, his mind reminded him. Bullshit, he argued with himself. Maybe it was Marina Hart's story, but she had chosen him to write it because she trusted him, because she'd known that he knew how to craft a good horror story. They'd written it together, but it would be his name and his name alone on its cover. Rat had spent the next few days typing it all out, and then he'd send it over to his agent, Drew, a fully completed manuscript.

Drew had gotten back to him the next morning, gushing over it. He said it was so terrifying it actually had made it hard for him to fall asleep. He kept waiting for the witch to show up and burn him alive in his bed. He kept using the word real. He said the story felt real. The spirit felt real. The deaths felt real. And that it all really gave him a nightmare. Drew told him it was hands down the scariest thing he had ever read.

He said there was just something different about it. Something more than just the type of story it was or who the characters were or what the twists were, etc. that made it so damn terrifying. There was something hypnotic, almost magical about it. Something real. Drew would send it along to Tamara at Simon & Schuster the morning after he'd finished it. And within the week, she'd send back an offer with a great back end and in advance of...

$400,000, twice as much as what Drew had originally thought was the high end of what they'd get. Not only was it a lot more money up front, it was a sign that the publisher thought it was going to sell very well. And that meant they'd actually put a substantial marketing budget behind it, a good indication that a lot more money might be coming. Drew had also passed it along to fellow agent Steve Wilson, who was now actively negotiating with the people at Blumhouse for a film adaptation. It was incredible.

Brad Collins was having his moment. At long last, he was about to become the it guy in horror. Drew's direct deposit of $360,000, his money minus Drew's cut, had hit his account yesterday. This was happening. But still, Brad wasn't exactly celebrating. Not yet. He'd also been glued to his computer because he was constantly searching for news about Deidre Quinn's death. Did the police think she'd been murdered? Did they have any suspects?

He wasn't able to find much information, only a short article about how a spiritualist in Salem had died in a fire. Brad poked around on Deidre's Facebook and MySpace, and it was obvious that her friends didn't really know what had happened to her. Clearly, the police were hiding details of her death because they were worried about public reaction to the truth or to what they thought was the truth.

He guessed they were worried about a potential serial killer on the loose, some psychopath who was somehow burning people alive where they lived and where they worked, but in a way that didn't set their surroundings on fire. Brad assumed, and assumed correctly, that law enforcement were struggling to understand how that was even possible. Brad had also been busy online the past few weeks looking into deaths in the area that fit the way the final two people had died in the book to complete the blood payments needed to help bring Marina Hart's back to life.

So far, he'd only been able to find details on one, the death of Crystal Putnam, and it was heartbreaking. He'd thrown up when he'd seen the picture of the young mother and read about how she'd left a three-year-old daughter behind. And then he'd thrown up again when he watched a news clip where her father, Jimmy, had spoken about everything his daughter and their family had been through as tears rolled down his cheeks as he held little Serenity in his arms. The police didn't mention many details of her death either, only again that she'd been burned.

No mention of how. Jimmy had clearly been coached by law enforcement to not share details that could hurt the search for his daughter's killer. The police and Jimmy both were also careful not to say that Crystal had been murdered. They only reported that they were still investigating the circumstances surrounding her death. On both Crystal's and Jimmy's social media profiles,

There was a lot of speculation that Crystal had been murdered, though. But so far, no one had connected her strange death to the eerily similar deaths of either Sally Wood or Tommy Payne or Deidre. Still nothing regarding the fourth death. Nothing that Brad had found, anyway. In the book, the fourth person to die was a man named Colin Hargraves, a beloved college professor happily married with two kids and five grandkids living in Brockton, not far from where Brad had gone to high school.

But if Colin's death followed the others, the name would be similar but not quite match up. Same for the details of his life. Brad wanted to set up Google alerts for all sorts of similar names and for all sorts of variations of burned, burned alive, fire. But he worried about the criminal implications doing that would have if his search history was ever examined. Finally, Brad had also been busy online doing his own investigation into who the hell Marina Hartz really was.

He pulled up every death of every woman accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. All he could find. All the victims of the infamous Salem witch trials. Bridget Bishop, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Howe, Susanna Martin, Sarah Wilds, Martha Carrier, and many others. All killed in 1692 or 1693. All executed nearly two decades before Marina said she had died in 1708.

And there were so many others. Margaret Jones in 1648, Anne Hibbins in 1656, Anne Glover in 1688. But he couldn't find any information about anyone being executed in 1708, or even between 1700 and 1707, or in 1709 or afterwards. He assumed that not every death was made public, that lynch mobs had killed so-called witches, and their deaths had fallen outside of the historical record.

but he couldn't even find a record of anyone named Marina Hartz living in Massachusetts in either the 17th or the 18th centuries. He began to suspect that that wasn't her real name. But why not? Why would she lie? Doing some additional digging into the occult, he wondered if him knowing her true name would leave her vulnerable to harm somehow. Could he maybe get away with not fulfilling that last part of their bargain, he wondered.

Could he still get his fame and fortune, but not have to father a child whose body Marina would take over on her 16th birthday? What he'd already been complicit in had been so dark. But to raise a child, his daughter, only to have her soul ripped from her body, to be murdered for all intents and purposes, once she turned 16, well, that was a special kind of evil. But also, if he tried to renege on the deal he'd made, a deal he'd signed in blood, Marina would kill him.

and he imagined that how he would die would somehow be even worse than being burned alive. So that was what Brad Collins had been up to lately, for the most part anyway. Getting incredibly good news from his agent, but also worrying that his involvement in a dark pact with an entity he'd been hesitant initially to believe was real was going to somehow lead to his arrest, or to some kind of downfall that would prevent him from enjoying the good fortune that had already come at the price of three people's lives. Four.

His mind corrected. Deidre's blood was on his hands as well, and soon to be five. And then, of course, there was the matter of the child. And right now, there was also the matter of his best friend, Blaine. Outside of his agent, Blaine was the only person he'd sent a copy of the manuscript to. Blaine had always been so supportive of Brad's career. Since the very beginning, it felt wrong not to share it with him.

Brad wanted his buddy to know he'd finally notched another win. He wanted to celebrate with someone who had been along for the whole ride and seen all of his many ups and downs. Blaine was overjoyed to hear about Brad's publishing deal. He wanted to take him out for celebratory drinks at first. But then, once he'd actually read the manuscript, instead of calling Brad to tell him how wonderful it was, he'd simply texted, finish the book. We need to meet somewhere and talk right away. Shit. He knew.

Brad's stomach sank when he read and then re-read the text. Clearly, Blaine knew that Brad's book was somehow connected to the strange deaths of four people in the area who had recently been burned alive. Brad had quickly invited Blaine to come over to his place to talk, but Blaine suggested Kelly's place instead. Brad realized he might be reading into things, but was his friend, a friend he had known for almost his entire life, actually worried that he was a killer? Worried that they needed to meet in a public place because he might kill him? But...

"'Aren't you a killer now?' his conscience, what was left of it, asked him. "'You might not have known what you were getting into at first, but you certainly knew before Crystal died that by bleeding on the page again you were sacrificing two more lives. Had you walked away, Crystal Putman would still be alive, wouldn't she? Jimmy would still have a daughter. Serenity would still have a mother. But she would have killed me! She would have burned me alive where I sat, just like Deidre!' Brad protested against his own internal judgments."

She might have, his conscience acknowledged. But does saving your own skin justify sacrificing a stranger? Two strangers. Two more strangers. Brad didn't have an answer for that. He knew his conscience was right. It did not justify it. But here we are, he thought. So what now? He texted Blaine back that he'd be happy to grab lunch with him at Kelly's place the next day. And then he wondered if Blaine did try to get in his way.

If he did pose a real threat to his new career opportunities, would he kill his best friend? Would he try and have Marina Harts kill him? Brad shivered. Walked into the bathroom, leaned forward over the sink, and stared hard at the man in the mirror. Did he know him anymore? He didn't like what he saw. He didn't like what the answer to his concerns clearly was. Before we meet someone new in this story, it's time to take our mid-show sponsor break. This is an ad by BetterHelp.

It can be hard to say that you're struggling. We don't want to appear weak or incapable, especially as us guys. We don't want our family and friends to worry about us. Many men don't seek out mental health support because it feels counterintuitive to the messages we have been fed about what it means to be a strong man.

It actually hurts my heart to think anyone might be feeling like it's not okay to address their feelings. I am so grateful that in 2025, we as a society are really pushing forward and pulling back the curtain on mental health and how it truly takes bravery to seek out help. I carry a fair amount of stress as a husband, father, business owner, and person living in this crazy world.

While it did take me some time to come around to the idea of therapy, I'm so glad I did. BetterHelp has given me a space to let it all out, to dig deep into my insecurities, and to heal old wounds. Therapy is not for the weak.

It is for those of us who want to be stronger. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash scaredtodeath. That's better, H-E-L-P dot com slash scaredtodeath.

As a quick reminder, in my previous life, pre-podcast, my job title was literally shopper. And I had the joy of shopping for all kinds of TV shows, movies, and so on. So as an expert shopper, I am here to tell you that you cannot sleep on quints. Everything they offer is half the cost of luxury brands, so you can look chic, on-trend, and

and not break the bank. Because of your expert shopping, Lulu Marie, I am the proud owner of many Quince items. This summer, I'm really excited to show off my new Ultimate Commuter Shorts. With their four-way stretch and quick-drying fabric, I know I will be comfortable no matter how hot it gets this summer. Those shorts fit you like a glove, baby. I am pumped for my new European Linen Popover Maxi Dress, a classic summer staple. Give your summer closet an upgrade with

with quince go to quince.com scared for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns that's q-u-i-n-c-e.com scared to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com scared do your summer plans include getting burned by your backyard barbecue what no well then why would your plans include getting burned by your cell phone bill

You can have an epic summer full of fun plans without getting burnt. With Mint Mobile, plans start at just $15 a month, leaving lots of money left over for your summer adventures. Since switching to Mint Mobile, we've noticed quite a few extra bucks in our bank account that allow us to buy extra treats at our weekly farmer's markets and buy the really good expensive sunscreen that I love so much. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy and totally burn-free.

Hopefully, just like you and your summer. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your summer savings and shop premium wireless plans at mintmobile.com slash scared. That's mintmobile.com slash scared. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month, five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

Thanks for hearing out our sponsors. And now let's meet Calvin. I think you're going to like him. I do. Later that afternoon, 70-year-old Calvin Hubbard put away his gardening supplies in the shed behind his home on Lake Ridge Drive that backed up against Lake Sebastia in Taunton. He lived in a beautiful two-story home situated on nearly a full acre with a private dock, a home that he and his wife of 46 years, Fern, had had custom built nearly 20 years earlier.

shortly after their youngest had left home to attend college in New Hampshire. Calvin now had more time than ever to tend to the property after retiring from the history department at Wheaton College, where he'd worked as a professor for over 30 years. He'd loved teaching history, but when he left, it was clearly time for him to go. He was still just as interested in history as ever, specifically New England history, but he was far less interested than he'd ever been in dealing with the Nips, as he called them. Nip as in N-Y-P.

Not yet a person. For Calvin, that had come to mean just about everyone under the age of 25. In his estimation, this demographic had gotten much less focused on receiving an actual education over the past few years and much more focused on their new phones and new social media platforms of MySpace and Facebook and on watching and talking incessantly about reality TV or video sewage as he thought of it.

He felt like he'd done his civic duty and inspired plenty of young minds. And now he wanted to spend more time cultivating and caring for his own. To spend more time digging further into his own interests. Maybe write a book. Maybe write several. And finally finish tracing his family tree back to England, before they'd sailed on over to Massachusetts in the late 17th century. It'd be nice to spend more time with Fern, too. After nearly half a century, they actually still liked each other.

Calvin loved her more than ever, in fact, and he'd already loved her a whole lot within months of meeting her. Fern had been pestering Calvin to do more traveling, a lot more, since before he'd left the college. They'd had the money to go exploring for years, but they'd never had the time, and Fern had been getting worried that if Calvin waited much longer to slow down and retire, soon they'd have the money and the time, but not the health to make it happen.

The two of them had recently gotten back from spending two weeks in northern Italy and Croatia. They'd taken a break from dreary November New England weather that Calvin didn't realize how much he had needed. They'd filled up on sunshine and pasta, even did some snorkeling, and toured Roman and medieval ruins. It was a wonderful vacation. But by the last few days, Calvin was itching to get back home. To his home, to his yard, and to his lake. The backyard that sloped down to the lake was Calvin's happy place.

Even though the weather was cold and the sun was largely hidden behind a thick blanket of cloud cover, there was no snow on the ground yet and still a fair amount of fall leaves on the trees. It was so scenic, so peaceful and quaint. With most of his view being of the water and of the woods, Calvin enjoyed imagining how the land had looked back when his ancestors had first settled in the area centuries earlier.

He wanted if some great-great-great-grandparent of his had looked out over the same body of water with the same amount of awe and appreciation. After finishing planting a late addition of tulip bulbs, raking up some leaves, and then putting his supplies and tools back in the shed, Calvin had eaten dinner with Fern, leftovers from a pot roast she'd made the night before.

And then after reading a bit more of The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Younger, a book he'd picked up at the airport in London on the way back home, while Fern read Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm, Calvin decided to head back outside and sit by himself out on the dock, smoke his pipe, a nasty little habit Fern absolutely despised, but reluctantly accepted he wasn't ever going to give up and enjoy the nighttime air and the sights and sounds of living on the lake. He was also curious if he'd see it again.

The past few nights, Calvin had kept catching glimpses of something out on the surface of the dark water. Flickers of movement. A shadowy shape seemingly standing out in the shallow lake. Two tiny yellow dots he assumed were its eyes. He wondered if it was a crane, an egret, or some other large bird. He'd never heard of them milling about in the center of the lake after the sun had gone down for the night.

But he also knew that animals could be just as unpredictable and puzzling as humans, and behave in strange and unpredictable ways. He hoped he would get a better look this evening, because he wanted to put whatever had been gnawing uncomfortably at the back of his mind to rest. Every time he'd seen whatever he'd been noticing out in the darkness, it had been accompanied by a peculiarly ominous feeling. He felt spooked. And spooked wasn't a feeling or even a word he believed in.

Having that feeling, honestly, embarrassed the hell out of him. Calvin Hubbard had long loathed superstition. He considered it the enemy of intellect. And the words paranormal and supernatural were definitely not a part of his normal lexicon. He knew what they meant, of course. But he also thought all that hooey was a bunch of silly bullshit. And not harmless bullshit like so many others around him seemed to think either. Not at all. It was dangerous.

Superstition, a true belief in the paranormal and the supernatural, it got people killed. Departing from the logical and scientific realm led to terrible, unfounded beliefs. And those beliefs led to terrible decisions. And those decisions too often led to terrible laws. And those laws too often ruined people's lives or got them killed. A fact his historical studies had reminded him time and time again. Calvin sat out on the dock and smoked his pipe in large part because he wanted to take a good, hard look at whatever he'd been seeing.

So he could confidently say that it was nothing more than an errant sandhill crane, or a stray white pelican, a lost great blue heron, hell, maybe even a rabid turkey vulture. And then he could stop thinking about it, and he could laugh at himself for feeling so spooked, and move on with his life. There was that dreaded word he hated again. He made a mental note to never, ever tell Fern. That was how he'd felt. Good God, he'd never hear the end of it.

after sitting and scanning the lake for a little over 30 minutes. Calvin remembered that there was a pint of Ben and Jerry's fish food in the freezer that certainly wasn't going to eat itself, and he smoked up the last of the bowl of tobacco he'd packed. It was also, even with the heavy winter coat he had on, getting a bit too cold for his liking on the dock as a cool breeze coming off of the water began to turn frigid. So he stood up from the chair he'd been sitting in to head inside, and just as he turned around, he saw a flicker of movement coming from deep out on the lake.

Goosebumps erupted on his arms. He felt it again, spooked. What are you? He curiously mumbled as he strained his eyes to see. He'd never had the best night vision, and it had gotten considerably worse over the past decade. Despite his inability to ascertain exactly what he was looking at, he could tell it was coming closer, which was a first. Probably flapping its wings and preparing to take flight, he thought. But then why couldn't he hear it?

Why did he continue not to hear it as it steadily approached closer, closer, closer still? And it wasn't merely headed towards his side of the lake. It was heading directly towards him. He felt more spooked than ever. Perhaps more than he'd ever felt before in his life. You getting soft in the attic in your old age, Calvin? He muttered, trying to sound brave and unafraid and failing. Once the object was within 30 or so yards of Calvin. While he still couldn't tell exactly what it was, he knew it was no longer a bird.

It was far too big and the wrong shape. So what was it? Someone on a boat? Impossible. They were moving too fast and far too quietly. Still wasn't making any noise he could detect. But its eyes, its bright yellow eyes, were growing in size and looking like they emitted their own light rather than reflected it. And then shortly after he noticed that, he thought that its shape was human. Not just human. A woman. A woman with long hair floating fast across the water? Impossible.

"Am I having a stroke?" Calvin wondered. But then the outdoor light coming off the back of his house began to illuminate her. If he was having a stroke, it was producing one hell of a hallucination. He could see an old woman wearing a simple dark brown linen dress, wool stockings, an apron, and simple leather shoes. A woman with long, gray, unkempt hair that fell down around and below her shoulders. A woman with a face that reminded him… of a witch? He would have laughed if he hadn't been so scared.

Run, he started to think. Now was not the time to take a stubborn stance against the supernatural. Now was the time to run. Run now, Calvin. God damn it, run!

Calvin turned and moved with surprising speed for a septuagenarian. He still, for the most part, refused to accept that whatever he was seeing was supernatural. He still believed there was some rational explanation for what was happening. There had to be. There always had to be. Maybe some former students were, what did they call it, punking him. Maybe he'd fallen on the dock, had a heart attack, lost consciousness, and this was some strange sequence of images being projected by his subconscious. But still, he ran.

He ran as a surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline pumped through his veins. He ran faster than anyone would have ever expected he was capable of running. But then he slipped. Calvin cried out as he rolled his ankle after he overstepped one of the paving stones on the path from the dock to the back porch. He sank his foot into a small dip in the lawn, then fell forward, partially broke his fall with his hands, but sprained his right wrist and jammed his left shoulder in the process. He grunted and grimaced and rolled over onto his back, only to find himself staring at the impossible.

The old woman, the old woman who looked like a witch, was holding one of his paving stones out in front of her chest and grinning as she stared at him with her bright yellow burning eyes. And then as he wondered how she could have possibly both pulled that stone up off of the ground and also caught up with him, he felt something cold and damp begin to wrap its way around his forearms and calves. Roots, what looked like the elastic but strong as wire roots of some shrub had erupted from the ground and quickly encircled his limbs.

He instinctively tried to wriggle away and they immediately coiled tighter in response and settled around his wrists and ankles. They pulled him down flat against the ground. They stretched his limbs fully out to his sides. He was so shocked by what was happening, he didn't even think to scream. By the time he did try to yell for help, it was too late. More roots had sprung from the cold earth and wrapped themselves around his neck. Roots that didn't choke him so much he couldn't breathe, but were tight enough to ensure he couldn't make a noise loud enough to alert anyone to help him.

not that they'd necessarily be able to. As Calvin laid on the ground, bound perfectly still, more in shock than in pain, he heard the old woman, still holding the stone above him, begin to speak. "'Through your studies you have learned that witches of old were more than burned, hanged and drowned, strangled and beaten, sometimes pressed not far from Wheaton. Do you now believe there is more to life than what is known?'

"'Now that it's time to smash your flesh, to turn your body to ash and bone.'" The eyes of Professor Calvin Hubbard, one-time history chair of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, a man of science, scholar of the written verifiable record, were wider than they'd ever been before in his life.

As he watched the old witch carefully place a thirty-pound paving stone upon his stomach, after still more roots had erupted from the ground and crisscrossed themselves around his waist, his thighs, his ribcage and shoulders, constricting tighter and tighter to ensure he couldn't tilt his torso even an inch to topple the soon-to-be-built pressing tower of stone above him.

He watched, still hoping to wake up, be it on the dock or in a hospital emergency room, as she gathered a second stone and stacked it upon the first, and then did the same with a third and a fourth. And now the cumulative weight began to make it a bit harder for Calvin to breathe.

She then placed a fifth and a sixth before she began to build a second stack directly next to the first upon his chest, the stones now nearly reaching his throat. And on that second stack, she placed five more stones for a total of 12. 360 pounds now rested upon a body never known for its physical strength. Still, Calvin could breathe, but not without struggle.

Two more stones were then placed upon the rest, four hundred and twenty pounds. His breath now came just barely in short, rabid, ragged gasps. The witch then loosened the roots holed around his neck, but not in some gesture of mercy. She only wanted to prolong his agony and to be able to have a final brief conversation with another one of the descendants of her long-dead tormentors. She wanted to hear him beg for his life.

What am I that moves so fast and controls the earth, Professor? She hissed. I don't know. Calvin croaked. Wrong. She scolded as she scowled. Admit to yourself that I exist. She then placed two more stones upon him, 480 pounds now in total.

"'Two of Calvin's ribs fractured in response, as did his sternum. "'Another stone, maybe two, and his ribcage would collapse "'and bone fragments would tear into and destroy his still defiantly beating heart. "'But still, for the moment, he could draw breath. "'Last chance for mercy.' "'The witch above him barked as she began making strange patterns in the air with her hands, "'and a small glowing ball between them was conjured and began to grow.'

"'Calvin was no longer interested in posterity. "'He no longer cared what anyone thought about his beliefs. "'He only wanted to live, to be away from this thing, "'whatever it was, and to never see it again, "'to be spared by this witch. "'He so desperately wanted to be with Fern again, "'to travel with her, without complaint, "'wherever she wanted to go, to hold her hand in bed, "'to run his fingers through her hair "'and see her smile lovingly as she looked into his eyes "'on some hotel balcony overlooking "'some picturesque Mediterranean beach.'

So he said what he believed the monster above him wanted to hear, and he hoped she would indeed show him mercy. "'You're—' he panted out, just barely above a whisper. "'A witch?' "'Yes.' She smiled with satisfaction before she replied. "'I was once but a woman, and the kin you so loved to study. They killed my child. They killed my husband. They turned me into this, and they burned me alive!'

And with that, the old witch masquerading as a woman once named Marina Hart incinerated the nearly crushed body of Calvin Hubbard. A man unable to get enough oxygen into and out of his lungs to form a final scream. As his wife set down her copy of Bodily Harm, after reading about Rennie being put into a cell, as she worried about Rennie surviving the revolution, she wasn't worried at all about Calvin. Not yet. Not yet.

He had long loved to smoke his pipe for an extended period of time out on the dock, even on a cold night. Soon, though, right before she had planned on crawling into bed, after she had brushed her teeth and put on her nightgown, she did begin to worry. A bit. And then, when she stepped out onto the back porch and didn't see him sitting in his chair down on the dock, but then did see a stack of paving stones piled upon the embers of something burnt, she worried quite a bit more.

And finally, after she approached the stones, after calling out multiple times and hearing no reply, after she'd put her coat on over her nightgown and walked over to the pile of stones and looked down at the burnt skull of what she didn't want to believe but also knew somehow was all that was left of her husband and the only man she'd ever loved, Fern Hubbard did more than worry. She fell to her knees and wailed in anguish.

The following afternoon, Brad showed up 20 minutes early for his lunch date at Kelly's place with Blaine. He'd wanted to already be seated and facing the door when his friend walked in. He wanted to get a feel for his mood. To help prepare for what he might need to tell him, Blaine, ever punctual, walked in right on time. And immediately, Brad knew he would not be in for a pleasant conversation. He did his best to play dumb. "'What's up, Blaine? Everything okay?'

Brad asked with the most genuine, hey buddy, it's me, your lifelong best friend and we love each other, remember? Smile. He could muster. He hoped it would lighten up the tongue lashing he looked like he was about to get a little bit. It didn't. What the fuck, man? Blaine snapped before he even fully sat down. Are you fucking kidding me? Blaine wasn't averse to profanity, but out in public, especially in the Norton area where he'd worked for many years as a child and family therapist and constantly ran into past and present clients, he usually kept it clean.

Or at least he kept it quiet. Right now, he didn't seem to care who overheard him. And numerous people did. And they were now staring. Jesus, Blaine. Brad said much more quietly than his angry friend. People are watching. People are watching? He grinned in disbelief. That's your response? I shouldn't even be meeting you. I shouldn't be talking to you. I should be talking to the police. Blaine! Brad hissed, now looking angry himself. Please, lower your voice. Maybe we shouldn't talk about this here.

"'No!' Blaine hissed back, but a bit quieter now. "'No, no, here we'll have to do. "'I'm not meeting up with you anywhere private. "'I'd rather not end up being burnt to a crisp.' "'Brad's response was cut short when their waitress, Sheila, "'who they'd both known now for years, "'brought them some waters, asked if they were all right, "'and took their orders. "'Blaine ordered his burger and fries to go. "'Once she'd walked away, Brad, looking a lot more red in the face "'than he'd been a minute earlier, sounded hurt when he said, "'Seriously?'

You think because I wrote about people getting burned to death by a witch in a book that I'm going to burn you to death in real life? Don't do that. Blaine sternly responded, shaking his head. Don't treat me like I'm stupid. Don't make this sound less than what it is. I'm not here because you wrote about some people being burned alive by a witch. I'm here because four local people were burned alive who sure sound a lot like the four fucking characters in your book who were burned alive. Four people having burned alive around here? Radass. Genuinely surprised.

He hadn't read about Calvin's death yet. Still hadn't hit the papers. Five, actually. Blaine responded coldly, never taking his eyes off his friend. Keeping him in his sight at all times as if he was a coiled snake who could strike at any second, he said. Five, including the father of a friend of mine, Calvin Hubbard, a retired Wheaton professor whose poor wife found his burnt remains buried under a pile of paving stones in his backyard last night.

I'm sure you can read all about it in tomorrow's paper. But you don't need to, do you? You already wrote about it. It's exactly how Colin Hargraves, a 70-something happily married college professor living in Brockton, dies and burned the witch. Brad gritted his teeth as he took his tongue lashing, concentrated on not letting his face show his guilt, and waited for his rightfully angry and accusatory friend to stop speaking before he said, Blaine, are you telling me that I'm responsible for someone dying in a way like a character died in my book after I wrote about it?

"'So what? I write this book, and then I hurry out "'and start killing people in a similar way? "'To what end? That's crazy.' "'Blaine nodded. "'It is crazy,' he agreed. "'And I've been thinking a lot about why you would do that. "'And honestly, I don't know. "'But I don't need to know. "'People kill for crazy reasons that make no sense all the time. "'People who've been able to compartmentalize "'and hide that terrible part of themselves for years, "'from their spouses, from their children, "'from their best friend.' "'Brad winced.'

Blaine's words stung, stung in a way that only an uncomfortable truth can. "'So what? So what? Now you think I'm a serial killer?' Brad asked, doing his best acting job to convey not just the hurt feelings he really had, but also frustrated disbelief. "'Well, are you?' Blaine asked, genuinely wondering. "'No,' Brad replied matter-of-factly, now doing his best to look insulted and indignant. "'Of course not. I'm as confused as you are. It's a terrible series of coincidences.'

It sure is, Blaine said, and then his eyes began to tear up. Give me a good reason not to email the book you sent me to the police and go talk to them. Okay, Brad replied softly. How about you don't do that to save your own reputation so you don't look like a paranoid and delusional crazy person and possibly irreparably damage your reputation and hurt your business and the only community you've ever known?

"'How are the police going to arrest me?' "'Based on fictional writing, Blaine. Think about it for a second. I'll be able to prove easily, based on cell phone tower ping, security camera footage, etc., that I was not around any of these people when they died.' "'No? Not even Deidre?' Blaine said accusingly as he locked his jaw and glared at his friend. "'What? Deidre?' Brad asked as his stomach sank. "'Fuck,' he thought. "'How did Blaine know about her?'

He took a drink of water and hoped Blaine didn't notice how the glass slightly shook in his hand. Blaine leaned across the table for what he said next. "'Do you not remember texting me about her months ago? When you first considered seeing a spiritualist to try your automatic writing experiment?' Blaine took Brad's stunned silence as proof that, no, he did not remember. And he was right. Brad had completely forgotten about that now important and damning detail.'

I'm not surprised, Blaine continued. We never really talked much about her. But when I read about the spiritualist getting burned in Salem, which I only found out about because I'd become morbidly fascinated with the other fire-related deaths in the area, deaths that I now know very specifically mirrored deaths in your new book, I looked up your text. It was the same lady. And curiously, there was no equivalent to her death in the book, which made me think maybe she figured out what you were doing and she confronted you about it and you killed her.

"'Blaine, that's crazy!' Brad spat. He wanted to scream at his friend. "'Just stop! Let it go! Don't fuck this up for me! Don't make me put more blood on my hands, goddammit!' He wanted to grab him and slam him up against the wall and make him listen to reason. Instead, he just sat and hoped that whatever Blaine still had to say, he didn't say it too loudly. "'Is it crazy?' Blaine asked."

Will your security camera footage and your cell phone pings and whatever other bullshit you just mentioned, will it all prove you weren't with her on the night she died? Have the police already found your name in her appointment book? Are they already following you, waiting for more evidence against you to make an arrest? Evidence like, I don't know, the book I could send them. Fuck, this was bad, Brad thought. This was really, really bad.

He didn't think the police had found Deidre's appointment book yet. Maybe she had one that was digital and they hadn't been able to figure out what her computer password was.

Maybe the witch had erased his appointment from her records. He didn't know, and it didn't matter because the cops hadn't talked to him yet. But if Blaine spoke with him, if they then connected him to her on the night of her death through his fingerprints, DNA left behind near her body, security camera footage, his cell phone location, and more, and then Blaine also gave them a copy of Burn the Witch and pointed out how wildly similar the characters and manners of death were to the four other people in Massachusetts who had died in such scandalous

strange fire-related ways over the past several weeks. They'd arrest him. They'd charge him with something, if not multiple murders. At the very least, word would get leaked to the press that he was the main suspect in all those deaths. And that would get back to William Morris. And as excited as his agent was about the book, he was still a small fish in the very big, lucrative pond of the large talent agency's roster, and they would drop him immediately. He

"'He might be able to keep his advance, "'but most of that money would be eaten up by legal fees. "'The book would never actually be published. "'There'd be no film adaptation. "'No one would ever take him on as a client again. "'He'd be done. "'After everything he'd been a part of, "'after getting so much blood on his hands, "'it would have all been for nothing.' "'Blaine, please,' he pleaded. "'I know it all looks bad, but you know me. "'I'm not a killer.' "'Blaine shook his head. "'Do I know you? "'I'm not so sure anymore.' "'He paused and looked down for a moment "'before what he said next.'

"'I'm very good at what I do, Brad. "'I don't really ever talk about it with you like this, "'or with anyone, but I am. "'I'm a damn good therapist.' "'Yeah, yeah, of course you are. "'I know that,' Brad said. "'But do you know what makes me a good therapist?' "'He asked. "'Brad shook his head. "'It's not all the education I got. "'It's not even all the experience "'I now have under my belt. "'It's instinct. "'I'm really, really good "'when it comes to everything other than my love life "'at reading people.'

and knowing when they're lying, when they're hiding something important. He paused again, shook his head, and took a moment to steady his emotions before he continued. And you're lying to me, Brad. You're hiding something. Something big. And if you don't call me and come clean later today and make me understand how you're not responsible or complicit in any way in any of these deaths, I'm going to the police tomorrow.

Blaine didn't wait for Brad's response before he got up and left. He didn't even bother asking the waitress for a to-go box for his burger before he walked out the door, got into his car, and drove away. As Brad watched Blaine's electric car zip down East Main Street towards I-495, he felt his future slipping away along with it. He had to do something to stop him, and he had to do it tonight.

Blaine pulled his Prius into the garage of the townhouse he had in Mansfield, near the Rumford River, turned it off, sighed heavily, and sat and rubbed his temples before getting out of the car. What a day. He felt guilty for only being half-present at best for his clients. He'd been so damn distracted ever since finding out about Calvin's death. It was such an odd and very specific way to die. Outside, burnt to a crisp,

Body buried under a pile of stones. That was the nail in the coffin for Blaine. That combined with Deidre's death, a woman he knew Brad was connected to. And he could tell by Brad's reaction that his friend had been with Deidre the night she died. His only hesitation in not going to the police, the only reason he hadn't already talked to them about his friend, was how all these people had died. Brad had never exhibited any signs of being some sort of pyromaniac.

Not even when they were both delinquent teens and some of their friends were prone to wanting to watch something burn. Brad had never cared at all about fire, as far as Blaine could remember. Hell, Brad wasn't even any good at barbecuing. How could he now be some sort of wizard when it came to fire? Someone capable of burning people alive in ways that seemed impossible. Brad had also never been violent and had never seemed to exhibit any sort of concerning criminal behavior.

He'd never committed any serious crimes that he knew of. In fact, when they were around 12, Blaine had convinced him to shoplift some Punisher and Batman comics from the local bookstore, and Brad had felt so guilty, he'd snuck whatever he'd taken back in the next day. And to Blaine's knowledge, he'd never stolen anything ever again. It didn't make sense that all of a sudden, well into his 40s, Brad would suddenly not only turn violent, but murderous. However...

Blaine knew all too well from his thousands of hours of counseling sessions that people did uncharacteristic things when they felt desperate and Brad had been feeling desperate lately before his big advance he confided in Blaine that he'd burned through most of his savings and that he was worried about how he didn't have a resume outside of creative writing to fall back on and get a decent job Blaine shook his head and got out of the car it was also damn confusing

But also, it wasn't his job to make sense of it. That was for the police. And unless Brad was able to convince him otherwise, the police were who he was going to be talking to the following day. Huh, weird. Blaine almost face-planted against a door that led from the garage into the house. It was locked, and he never locked it. He immediately had a bad feeling about it in his gut. He thought about getting back into his car and driving away, but then he wondered if maybe his mom had been over?

She sometimes surprised him by dropping off some casserole, a favorite meal of his in the fridge, complete with a note about what a great son he was or how proud of him she was for this or that. He'd hit the lotto in the mom department, which was maybe why he was still single, he sometimes wondered. No one could come close to measuring up to Kathy Murphy. Still, he hesitated before he unlocked the door. What if it wasn't his mom? What if it was Brad?

What if his friend really was a serial killer? And he just threatened him hours earlier with going to the police. What the hell was he thinking? But Blaine hadn't seen Brad's beat-up, distinctive forerunner parked anywhere nearby. And Brad wasn't ever much of a walker. He was the guy Blaine had teased about driving literally one block to the mini-mart if he needed to grab some milk or beer or whatever. And Blaine felt like, worst case scenario, he could take Brad in a fight. Neither one of them were exactly physically intimidating.

But he at least lifted weights at the Y a few times a week and played noon ball on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, Blaine unlocked the door, quietly, and cautiously stepped inside his house. He squeezed his keychain in his fist and pushed his house key in between his middle and pointing fingers, as if hitting someone with a Prius key would do more damage than a fist. Probably wouldn't. But it made him feel better to hold it that way. Made him feel like some poor man's version of Wolverine. "'Hello? Mom?'

Anybody here? He called out after walking into his kitchen and shutting the door to the garage behind him. Blaine stood perfectly still and held his breath for a few moments before he moved again, so he could hear even the quietest sound someone else in the home might be making. But there was nothing, and he also didn't feel the presence of anyone else nearby. Other than the door being locked, nothing felt off.

Still, just to be extra careful, he pulled a butcher's knife out of the knife block on the counter next to the microwave, kicked off his shoes so he could move about quietly, and he slowly paced around his home, cautiously checking each and every room. After about five minutes, he felt satisfied. He was alone. He put the knife back in the block, checked the fridge for a meal and a note from his mom, was bummed not to find anything, but happy to still have leftovers from a new Thai place in Attleboro.

He put some noodles on a plate, threw it in the microwave, walked into the living room to turn on the TV. And then he, bam, took a baseball bat to the back of his head. Blaine woke up less than a minute later to Brad finishing tying him to a chair that son of a bitch had hid in the pantry, the one place he'd forgotten to check. Blaine's head was pounding. He was seeing double. And he had the worst headache of his life.

"'Sorry, Blaine. It had to be done,' he heard his friend say. He was still feeling too disoriented to respond. His vision had yet returned to its ability to properly focus, and it felt like he was hearing Brad speak while he was underwater. "'I didn't want to do this,' Brad continued. "'But I knew if I just called you and told you the truth, you'd hang up on me.' Blaine said nothing. He was on the edge of passing back out. "'Can you hear me, buddy?' Brad asked as he leaned in for a closer look at his friend, whose head lolled around in a daze."

"'Sorry for this, too,' he said about 30 seconds later, after Blaine heard what sounded like an ice maker on his fridge and the faucet running. "'Flash! Ow! What the fuck?' A big bowl of ice-cold water fully woke Blaine back up. "'Can you hear me now?' Brad asked. "'Fuck you!' Blaine shouted. He could see and hear him clearly. "'I know, I know,' Brad replied calmly. "'I feel the same way. But please, actually listen to what I have to say.' "'Or what?' Blaine snapped. "'Or you'll kill me, too!'

Brad initially said nothing as he grabbed another chair, pulled it close to Blaine's, and sat down facing him. I haven't killed anyone, he finally replied flatly, which technically was still true. Now don't make me tape your mouth shut. I really need you to listen. What I'm about to tell you is going to make me sound like I have completely lost my mind, but I swear to you, every word is true. Blaine wanted to protest, but what would be the point? If his friend was going to kill him, there was nothing he could do to stop him now.

But also, his bullshit detector was not going off. In his gut, he thought that Brad might actually be telling him the truth. So he did listen. And Brad told him everything, sparing no details. And he was honest. He told Blaine how he'd felt desperate for another hit book to save his career, which Blaine already knew. He told him that, yeah, he had met with Deidre Quinn in Salem. He'd met with her three times, and the third time was the night she died. He admitted to Blaine that he had watched her die.

He shared with Blaine that on all three occasions, they had contacted the same spirit, a spirit claiming to once be a woman named Marina Hartz, who had been executed for witchcraft in the Norton area, burned alive, in fact, 300 years earlier in 1708. He talked about how she wanted to come back, how she needed to kill with the help of him physically writing down her words in a packed seal with his blood to complete some sort of sacrificial ritual. The descendants of four of the men who had burned her

and that after those four people had died, she would need a bit more help of his to return. In exchange for a book that would transform his career and give him fame and fortune, he would need to impregnate a woman in a ritualized ceremony in the spirit's presence. Marina would ensure that the child would be a girl, and when the girl turned 16, one final ritual would give her possession of the girl's body, and she would then have a second chance to live the life that had been stolen from her so long ago, and Brad would now be free from her.

When he was done, Blaine spoke. So, let's just say that all the crazy shit you just told me is true. Did you know from the beginning that your book was going to get four people, I guess five including your daughter, killed? No, not at first. Blaine quickly replied. But, he added...

After the second session, after the deaths of Sally Wood and Tommy Payne, I was suspicious. But I told myself that vengeful spirits killing people from beyond the grave is impossible. That no one was helping me write the book. That everything was coming from my subconscious. And that the deaths were merely coincidences. Or at most, that I was having premonition somehow. But I still didn't believe I was doing anything to cause the deaths. I didn't think that was possible. Blaine again felt like Brad was telling him the truth.

And the story did seem plausible. I mean, who would think that what he was saying was possible? But also Blaine worried that Brad had had some sort of psychotic break. In fact, he strongly suspected that was likely the case. That he'd done some really terrible things. That he couldn't accept what he had done. And that his mind, to protect him from the reality of the disgusting truth, created this elaborate and far-fetched fantasy that he now actually believed.

There was no point to confronting Brad with this possibility. If true, Brad would kill him before he accepted what might be the truth. It was best to just play along, to treat his story as if it were true, and within the confines of Brad's new reality, to try and reason with his friend to do the right thing. But before Crystal and Calvin died, Blaine now said carefully, you did know that some kind of dark magic was at work, right?

"'And you still went ahead with it, "'knowing they would be sacrificed?' "'Brad went to speak but stopped. "'His eyes watered up with emotion, "'and he had to take a few moments to compose himself "'before he reluctantly admitted, "'Yes, yes, I knew.' "'Blaine shook his still throbbing head. "'How, Brad?' he asked. "'How could you do it? "'How could you let them die? "'No book is that important.' "'I know!'

Brad exclaimed loudly in shame and frustration as he quickly stood up and started pacing back and forth as he continued. Believe me, I know. I rationalized it. By the time I knew what the fuck was going on, two people had already died. And I thought, he said in a voice so desperate for understanding if not approval, I thought that it would be wrong for them to have died for nothing. And that I should have something to show for the blood that was already on my hands. Blaine very worried when he first came to after being knocked unconscious that there was no way he was getting out of this situation alive.

Brad, he said softly. That's evil.

and you're not evil. You don't need this book. I know you want it, but you don't need it. It's not worth what you're talking about doing, what you've already done. Fuck, Brad shouted. Fuck, man, I know, but you haven't seen her. You haven't seen Marina or whatever her real name is. You haven't seen the way she kills people. If I cross her now, it's over for me. She won't let me live. Let's say that's true, Blaine told him. Let's say that you'll die.

Is saving your skin really worth sacrificing your own daughter? Is it worth ruining Michelle's life? I thought you still loved her. Bam, bam, bam. Brad hammered the drywall with his fist and started sobbing. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm scared. I'm scared, man. I'm in way over my head. I know, Brad. I know. Blaine said in his most soothing and empathetic therapist voice. He wasn't angry with his friend anymore. He wasn't afraid of him either. He felt sorry for him.

He was sick and he needed his help. Untie me, he said. I'll go with you to the police station. After we talk to a lawyer, you're going to tell them everything you've told me and we're going to figure this out. Like you said, you haven't killed anyone. They won't arrest you. There's no motive. You're not going to spend the rest of your life in prison. And you can always write a new book. I've got you, man. I love you. Brad stared at his friend in silence for a few moments. In obvious contemplation, you write about monsters, Blaine told him.

You don't become one. Brad broke down into sobs again. After about a minute of crying while Blaine tried to comfort him, he suddenly stopped, looked Blaine in the eye, and coldly said, Fuck it. What's done is done. He then grabbed the same butcher's knife Blaine had held as he walked around the house earlier, and he cut his friend loose. When Blaine was able to stand up, Brad fell into his arms, sobbing again, saying, Please help me. You gotta help me. Over and over as Blaine hugged him and patted and rubbed his back,

When he'd calmed down enough to stop crying, Blaine said, "'Come on. Let's hop in my car and drive over to Foxborough. There's a lawyer there whose marriage I helped save. Without me, he would have gone through a divorce that would have cost him millions. He owes me. He's the best around. He's going to know how to handle this.'" Brad's shoulders slumped, reluctantly nodded, while Blaine, after rubbing the tender knot that had formed on the back of his head, turned and opened the door to the garage.

The spectral, yellow-eyed, shadowy form of the old witch stood in the darkness of the garage. Before she was done speaking her first few words, Blaine had already fallen to his knees and reached for his throat that felt like it was being strangled by invisible hands. While he choked, the witch looked past him and spoke directly to Brad.

Once again, Rad Collins watched someone next to him be burned alive.

Marina let Blaine breathe again just before the fireball hit him, just so he could scream as he died in agony, just so Brad could hear his death wails and note for certain what kind of fate awaited him if he didn't hold up his end of the bargain. He would give Marina her vessel, or he would suffer as much or more as his now smoldering friend. And that's it for this week's Nightmare Fuel. Hope you enjoyed today's tale of Burn the Witch 2, A Book for Blood.

I'll wrap up this story arc in the next edition of Nightmare Fuel. Then maybe, if you want, we'll meet Marina at some point further down the road. Travel back to the late 1600s, early 1700s. Find out who she once really was. How she became the monster you've met. Today's tale was written by me, Dan Cummins, and scored by Logan Keith. 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 all show-related merch, and stay scared. Bad Magic Productions.

What's up, podcast listeners? It's Tanks, host of the It's Me Tanks podcast. Join me weekly on It's Me Tanks as I dive into topics like relationships, why it's okay to feel lonely, fighting summer comparison, and pop culture's hottest takes. I

I don't shy away from getting candid about my personal experiences and I want to share all the advice I have learned with you. I'm even joined by some of my friends like Claudia Oshry, Connor Wood, and Amanda Hirsch each Friday for our new Office Hours episodes. You can listen to It's Me Tings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss an episode.

If you're frustrated with low sex drive, Vyleesi can help. Vyleesi or Bremelanotide treats low sex drive in women with no daily medication, no alcohol restrictions, and no hormones. Vyleesi is clinically proven to increase your interest in sex.

Take control of your sex life on your terms and visit ByLisi.com to schedule a telemedicine appointment. That's V-Y-L-E-E-S-I.com. ByLisi is a prescription medicine used to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HSDD, in premenopausal women who have not had problems with low sexual desire in the past and have low sexual desire no matter the type of sexual activity they have.

situation, or partner. The low sexual desire is troubling to them and is not due to medical, mental health, or relationship problems, or medicine or other drug use. Do not use Vyleesi if you have uncontrolled hypertension or known heart disease. The most common side effects include nausea, flushing, injection site reactions, headache, and vomiting. Consult your healthcare professional for more information and see full PI at Vyleesi.com or call 800-922-1038. Go to Vyleesi.com for a telemedicine appointment to find out if Vyleesi is right for you. That's V-Y-L-E-E-S-I.com.