The Wanderer & the Witchfinder

A Beginning

IN dead mid-winter in the year 1890 on a little, snow-dusted porch in Paris sat a basket, and in that basket, a baby. The porch itself belonged to an orphanage, and the woman who peered out of the door and into the basket was the wife of the owner. She was a short, plump woman with pink cheeks and rotted teeth. She was not what one would call motherly, but she tried her best. 

Bridgett - the owner's wife - gingerly stepped out of the door and around the basket, peering into the dark streets beyond. There was not a soul to be found, no hastily retreating mother, no young, dirt-stained father. And, to add further to the mystery surrounding the baby, no note. In the basket lay a simple grey blanket and around the wrist of the babe, a bracelet - a silver little thing with bells. Bridgett crouched down low and gently ran her fingers over the swaddled newborn. It made no sound as it opened its eyes, it made no sound as it drank in the woman that loomed over it. It made no sound as snowflakes landed like soft kisses on its cheeks. 

Being a Matron, Bridgett had seen many things come through the doors of the orphanage. But as she stood in the gloomy light that streamed through the open door, she could swear on the Lord Almighty that something about this child was not quite right. Perhaps it was the way the shadows danced close to the basket, as if reaching out to steal the babe away. Or perhaps it had something more to do with the way its skin was the shade of ice on a deep, freshwater lake. Or the way its eyes seemed too bright and alert for a newborn. Whatever the reason, Bridgett dismissed it as being a trick of the light, the weather. 

The following years would be full of turmoil for the Director and his wife, and the orphanage itself. With influenza sweeping its halls, bells chiming at all hours, dead birds in the courtyard and mirrors without reflections. One by one the inhabitants of the orphanage would fall to sickness - or madness - until only one child remained. 

In the late summer of 1904 on a quiet, still evening, the orphanage began to burn. They say the fire burned for days, with flames as black as pitch. No water could quench it, nor the winds tame it and on the final day, although unmanned, the bells began to sing. 

Some say it was witchcraft, or Lucifer himself marking the end of his purge, but only one child knows the truth. Had she perished that lone and cold night in 1890 perhaps the orphanage would not be dust and ash, perhaps the quite sobs of the cursed children would not haunt the street on which the building once stood. Perhaps Bridgett would have lived a long and happy life. Perhaps the prophecy would have been broken and the man with hunger in his eyes and in his heart — his mind dark and full of vengeance — would not have been poisoned by magic.

But hindsight is a very significant thing.