The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,13

but for bigger things you had to give up something important.

“Even though she did spells, she wasn’t a riding-a-broom and warts-on-her-nose witch. She was more powerful than that. And smart, too. Women sometimes went to see her not for spells, but about regular problems. She would give ways to fix them, ways without using magic. But when the women talked to their husbands, the men would say the ideas were theirs. The men didn’t know they were really the Red Lady’s because the women were careful, so it was okay for a while. See, the men were afraid of the Red Lady, afraid of her power, but they left her alone because they were afraid of what she might do if they didn’t.

“Some of the women decided they didn’t want only the men to be in charge because that wasn’t fair or right, so they asked the Red Lady to help. At first she didn’t want to, because if the men found out they’d blame her, but the women wouldn’t stop asking. So she agreed. But since the spell she had to do was complicated, her price was that they had to send their oldest daughters to her to learn magic.”

“Cool,” Gia said.

“Right?” Becca said. “Except the parents had to give them up completely. The girls would live with her and be her daughters. The women said okay, but one of the women was only pretending.”

“Like a spy?” Rachel said.

“Exactly,” Becca said. “She told the mayor’s wife about the deal, and the wife told the mayor, and he hated the Red Lady more than anyone.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because when he was younger, he liked her but she didn’t like him back. Ever since then, he’d been trying to figure out how to get rid of her but was too afraid to do it by himself.”

“Jerk,” I said.

Gia looked over at me and said, “Big time.”

“So the mayor got all the men together but twisted the story around, saying the Red Lady wanted to kill, not teach, the girls, and that she wanted to be the one in charge. And they believed him,” Becca said. “So they arrested her and they held a trial. She reminded everybody about the spells she’d made for them, even the ones they didn’t want anyone to know about, and all the other ways she’d helped, but they didn’t care. They found her guilty.”

“Why didn’t the other women help her?” I said.

“They couldn’t. The men wouldn’t even let them go to the trial. If they stood up for her, they’d be put on trial, too.”

“But weren’t they her friends?” I said.

“Maybe, but they were scared,” Becca said. “And it was way different back then. Or maybe they weren’t her friends enough. Maybe they didn’t care what was going to happen because it wasn’t going to happen to them.” Becca leaned back, palms flat on the floor, arms straight. “Anyway, they found her guilty and sentenced her to die.” She glanced at us one by one. “By being buried alive.”

Rachel shuddered, Gia bit her lower lip, and I curled my toes tight and gnawed at a cuticle.

“That’s not even the worst part. First, they dug a deep hole right in the middle of the village. Then they stripped off all her clothes, tied her ankles together, and cut off her hands with an ax.”

We squealed.

“Because a witch needs her hands to make potions, right? And to dig herself out of a hole. Then they cut out her tongue.”

Rachel moaned. “Why would they do that?”

“They were afraid she’d say the spells and use her magic.”

“And everyone went along with it?” Rachel asked.

“They did,” Becca said. “The Red Lady was quiet the whole time, even when they cut off her hands. She couldn’t say anything after they cut out her tongue, but she didn’t even moan or cry.”

I ran my tongue around the inside of my teeth, wondering how it would feel to have a stump there instead. Would you be able to eat? Make any noise at all? Would it slip down and make you choke? I rocked my hips and slid my hands under my thighs, pressing them hard into the carpet.

“They put her in the hole, threw her hands and tongue in, too, and took turns filling it in. They made the women and even the little kids drop some dirt in so everyone would be part of it. And the Red Lady watched them the whole time. She didn’t move, not even when the dirt started