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Anger cracked beneath Vera’s heated skin. “You told me that women built this town, made it what it is today. You left out the detail about you being a part of the group responsible for its murders.” Lizbeth’s smile reminded her of the way Deputy Butler spoke to her. Like a child who couldn’t yet comprehend what was happening.
“You can hardly blame me for that. We have work to do and we couldn’t have you and Teddi getting in the way. I did try to warn you to leave.” Vera bit her tongue, wanting to scream at the woman for saying Teddi’s name. “It’s easy for you to see these deaths as something evil. You come from a world structured around a kind of morality Sylen does not honor and does not believe in. I told you that violence is as natural as the black of our forest and it’s true.” She dipped her chin at the other women. The hollows around her eyes made her look skeletal as the wind whipped the flames tightly into the circle, the furious tips of their blaze nearly touching high above them. “We are mothers and creators, and with creation must come destruction. The men of Sylen have been allowed to violate us for far too long and it’s time to do what our ancestors were unable to for all that was committed against us.”
Her head throbbed as Vera came to kneel. That chained animal of rage and injustice woke within her, its piercing eyes locked at the extent of their disillusionment. She’d seen the bodies firsthand. The extent to which they beat, sliced, silenced, and blinded them was beyond any means necessary to defend themselves. It was retribution. It was a reckoning through blood.
“I assume you’ve seen the wood structure in the town square, yes?” The woman behind her stepped forward, coming into view. The copper of her curly hair framed her wide face like a halo. She was petite with wear to her skin that spoke of the kind of hardship that went beyond age. Vera watched her closely, only slightly comforted by the lack of weapons in her open hands.
“I’ve seen it. It looks like a hitching post.”
“I think we all wish it was a hitching post. Lizbeth told you of the men that came and took over Sylen. For over one hundred years, on every other Sunday that post has been used to subjugate the women of Sylen to correction.”
A heavy foreboding told that she would never be able to forget what she was about to hear. “Meaning what?”
“I mean there’s a reason public executions and punishments have been used throughout history repeatedly. Shame can do wondrous things to keep a person in line in a society gripped by control and oppression.” Hands steady, the woman lifted her gown. The mud and grass caked up to her mid-calf were nothing compared to the sight on her too-thin thighs. Scars two inches long were hatched across her skin. Marked in tallies of five, the angry lines ran up her leg to the edge of her underwear. Like a piece of butchered meat, they were innumerable. Some were aged with shining white scar tissue while others were pink and puckered. Fresh.
“What—”
“My husband likes to keep count.”
Swallowing the bile that filled her throat, Vera could only look away from the brutal sight when the woman dropped her clothing.
A man capable of marking another human being—his wife, the woman he was meant to love and protect—wasn’t a man at all. Countless hours of pain and suffering. Tending to the bleeding, possibly needing stitches more than once. Vera blinked away tears. “Who’s your husband?”
“Deputy David Stocker.” Vera took her in. Defiance filled every inch of her weathered face, her dark eyes dry. There was a vague familiarity about her now that she knew her name. Becca Scott, now Becca Stocker. Married twelve years with no children. She taught science at the only school in Sylen. “The structure in the center of our town is called The Pedestal. No one knows who named it, and I guess it doesn't matter now that we’re here. It’s been used since the late 1800s by the men in Sylen to correct us women.”
“Correct what?”
Becca turned to look at the others as she gestured to them. “To correct our behavior, of course. Burning, beating, leaving us outside for hours on end no matter the weather. Nora’s back is covered in over sixty percent burn scars.” Nora lifted her chin. “Danielle had her ribs broken seven times, along with a few fingers made unusable by her husband’s well-aimed right foot.” She closed her fist and her pinky stood out at an unnatural angle. “Alice Grennan was subjected to bleeding on her Sundays. Hours of giving her tiny cuts across her abdomen, waiting for them to clot just to reopen them to watch her suffer. Violet Reade was regularly beaten with a belt when she was punished before she passed.”
“That’s why Scott had that belt left around his neck.” The sanguine pieces began to slide together as the grotesque puzzle took shape. The belt, Maller’s missing foot, the stabbings across Jackson Grennan’s torso. “You’re giving them what they gave you,” she uttered in shock.
Danielle lurched forward. “You’re goddamn right we are. I cut Adam’s foot from his body while he screamed for his fucking life. Do you think he ever let up when I screamed? When he tied me to that post for everyone to see, week after week and year after year? When I’d done something that he saw as a slight against him and he punished me? When he kicked me so hard my ribs shattered and I couldn’t breathe without searing, vomit-inducing pain?” Her eyes were wild black pits that nearly swallowed her irises whole. “He didn’t give a fuck and neither did I. And before our husbands, it was our fathers doing what their fathers taught them with their mothers. The torture is endless,” she seethed. “It’s re-birthed generation after generation, home to home, passed down as a rotten fruit of knowledge plucked from a poisoned tree, never to be stopped or stood against.” Heaving, she stepped back onto her platform, encapsulated by the other women. The women who witnessed her abuse. Who experienced it next to her. The women who watched their mothers and their mothers’ mothers suffer the same fate.
Vera was held hostage by her madness as it latched onto the rage she kept buried within herself. Thick lightning split the dark sky, making her flinch.
“What about Deputy Gunson?” A chorus of scoffs and smiles danced around the circle.
“Little Deputy Gunson got off easy, losing what he did. Taking his hands could never give back what they took from others. You sit there on your knees judging us for what we’ve done, and yet you have no idea what these men are capable of.” She recognized the woman as a frequent diner occupant. Usually with a book, she often sat in a booth by the counter. Her shoulder-length black hair brushed against the collar of her dress as her russet skin turned amber in the light. Tenderly, she tucked a piece of Vera’s hair behind her ear. “I’m Martha Butler. We were never introduced but you should know my dear son.” Vera recognized the doe-eyed shape of her eyes, the thin frame. “Isaac is my only child. My wonderful, beautiful gift. An angel born into the trenches of hell. He’s always been different. Different than his daddy ever was. More sensitive, more tender. He was mine, through and through and that’s why he brought you here. So desperate for change and help, he didn’t see that we’d already begun to take care of it ourselves.”
Her earnestness held Vera like a vise. This woman loved her child more than life itself. Would do anything for him, for a chance to stop him from being like the other men they lived with.
“There’s a reason there are so few children in this town.” She recalled Teddi’s question to Daisy and why it’d seemed odd. No parks to play in, no children’s toys taking up space in yards, and no laughter or crying in the diner. All they had was Daisy and she was seventeen. “It was the first choice we made for ourselves—sterilizing our bodies against them. Alice’s twin boys were an accident. A happy one for her now that she’s run to who knows where, but an accident along the way nonetheless. We prevented children that would have been born just to suffer.
“Dan Gunson is the reason we stopped having children. Your investigation couldn't reveal that tidbit of information. Not only did he beat his wife, and put her on The Pedestal every chance he could, but he subjected her to his special brand of humiliation and torture. He thought anyone was for the taking and the touching. Brushes against your ass in the store, stalking us home, convincing our husbands to ‘share’ as if we were lunch snacks,” Becca spit the last words as she stood. “I caught him cornering Daisy one day when she was just a child. It cost me hours on The Pedestal to intervene, to prevent him from taking what he wanted. That sick fuck was already on his way to violate the very few children we had, and we couldn’t have that. Our only regret is that he was so far down on the list.”
Vera could say nothing, do nothing but look at the seven of them. Shoulders back, hands clasped in front of the bellies that refused to birth a child by force. They were proud. She could see why they’d done it. Could see the pain in the lines around their eyes, the misshapen parts of their bodies that had been abused and left to suffer for no reason other than they could. As she recalled the barbarous tallied scars on Becca’s thigh, she tasted the revenge as if it was her own. It was a sugared ghost on her tongue and she wanted to spit it out, make it disappear. “This isn’t right,” she argued quietly. “It isn’t, no matter how you frame it.”
“Just because it isn’t right or just to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t to us. Some evil exists beyond the comprehension of your laws. You can’t tame a beast with the shackles made for a man.”
“And what about Alex?” Her voice broke as she looked at the rock where they mutilated and murdered their husbands. “What about my cousin? What did he do to you to warrant his death?” Every head turned until they landed on one face. Nora Howe.
“Alex was out of control and he needed to be stopped.”
“No. Nononono,” Vera chanted.
“He was harassing Lily for months after their breakup. He would call endlessly, all through the night and day. Texting, leaving voicemails, eventually beginning to threaten her if she wouldn’t take him back.”
“You’re lying!” She yelled as she jerked against the ropes.
