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At a few minutes past 6:30, the big moment finally arrived. Out of Crystal Meth Church proceeded the court, through the cordoned-off alley across Temple Hill Cemetery to the scaffold. Up front was Colton Mathers, imposing and severe, flanked by the two Council members who had voted in favor of the sentence. They were closely followed by a group of security guards led by Rey Darrel. Jaydon Holst, Justin Walker, and Burak Şayer were brutally dragged forward in iron chains, as inhumanely as they themselves had driven the witch a few days earlier. Their upper bodies were stripped bare, and panic was written all over their faces. Behind a second group of security guards the executioner rounded off the parade wearing a ceremonial hood to cover his face, although everyone knew who he was.

There was no cheering. There was no uproar. There was only an uneasy, doubtful murmur that rose from the crowd. Now that the moment they all had been waiting for had finally come, now that they were able to see with their own eyes the monsters who had stoned Katherine, they all seemed to suddenly remember that, despite the terrible charges, these were also human beings, two of them still children—human beings they had lived with and with whom they would be forced to live in the years to come. Eagerness gave way to shame, excitement to uncertainty. Only when the procession reached the crowd standing at the bronze statue of the washerwoman, someone yelled “
Murderers
!”, and a number of no-brain cretins began to throw large pinecones at the prisoners did the crowd dare to look up … pale, but with glistening eyes.

Now they had a show to watch and they didn't have to reflect upon themselves.

Screaming, the boys tried to dodge the pinecones, which left nasty marks on their naked skin. One of the security guards took a hit on the cheekbone. Without a moment's hesitation, he and two others threw themselves onto the agitators to douse the fire before it spread.

Farther on, at least forty yards back on the east side of the intersection, Steve, Jocelyn, Tyler, and Matt stood facing the spectacle. Not much of the disturbance reached them at that distance, but they did sense the unrest, which was rippling through the crowd like rings in water. Steve and Jocelyn had had an all-out fight. Immediately after the vote on Tuesday night, Jocelyn had taken Tyler home because the boy couldn't take it any longer. She'd blamed Steve for not taking the initiative. Moreover, she was categorically opposed to having Matt attend the flogging. She had screamed at Steve—actually
screamed
—and Steve had screamed back that
she
had forbidden
him
to step up when the moment had been right for it. Now the sentence had been passed and all parents were obliged to bring children age ten and up to witness the frightening example being set. Skipping duty was a no-go.

Steve was hurt, but he understood that Jocelyn's anger and distress had to do with the situation. As she couldn't fight that, she turned on him.

Judging by the faces in the crowd, we're probably not the only household in Black Spring where the dishes were flying through the kitchen yesterday.

And so he threw his arms around his family and pulled them close, and he prayed—not to God, but to common sense—that they would get through this one way or another.

Jaydon, Burak, and Justin were led onto the scaffold. Wild with fear, their eyes raced over the crowds for a last way out, a last hope, a last trace of humanity. The guards tossed the chains—locked to their wrists with tie wraps—over the wooden A-frame, and pulled the other ends so far down that the boys were forced to raise their arms up in the air and stand on their toes. Then they linked the chains to the railing and left the scaffold, exposing the prisoners to the crowd. Their wiry bodies were pale and blue in the cold air, their jutting rib cages wet with rain. Three all-American boys in sneakers and jeans, hanging like animal cadavers in the slaughterhouse.

The Crystal Meth carillon began to play. The people in Highland Mills and Highland Falls would have thought there was an early morning funeral going on. The carillon played, and at the crossroads Jaydon screamed, “
People, you're not going to let this happen, are you?
” He had purple hypothermic blotches on his cheeks, and saliva flew from his lips. “
What kind of fucking freaks are you? Please, do something, while you still can!
”

But the crowd was unrelentingly silent as the executioner climbed up the scaffold.

With long slow steps he circled the condemned, the rod of the cat-o'-nine-tails in his right hand and the lead-tipped leather cords in his left. The hood with its holes and his muscular build made him look like a hideous vision from a horror flick. Justin tried to scramble away from the mask like a frightened animal, but he only swung on his chains, legs kicking in a jig, and his wailing could be heard in the distant streets. Burak spat at the mask, but the executioner didn't flinch and kept on going. With a yank of both hands he snapped the leather tails tight, making a threatening whipping sound that resounded through the crowd.

And Jaydon spoke to the mask, so softly that even the people in the first row couldn't hear, only the executioner himself. He said, “Theo, please. Don't do this.”

And in that one brief moment that he faced his executioner, that moment of utter darkness that would remain with him forever, he knew it wasn't Theo behind the mask, but a torturer from bygone years, Katherine's year; a torturer whose name and face he didn't know and never would, because when this was over, when the mask came off, it would be 2012 again.

The executioner walked around behind him.

The carillon played.

People licked their lips.

People shut their eyes.

People prayed.

The cat-o'-nine-tails was raised.

With brutal, terrible lashes that reverberated against the surrounding buildings, the naked backs of the three boys were flogged. The nine knotted tails sliced through their skin, and like claws the lead balls sank into their flesh. The second lash already drew blood. The boys screamed their lungs out in sounds that were unearthly and animalistic, like pigs being flayed alive with blunt knives. One by one the flogger went past them, one by one the cat-o'-nine-tails ripped them open, one by one that dreadful, excruciating pain, with no time to recover, to gasp for breath, to plead for release.

The sound of the flogging rang out over the crowd, who looked on in terror. Each of them felt the lashes as if they had landed on their own skin. They rang out through the whole region, through the valley and down the river to the south. They caused molecules in the air to whirl for miles around. Even if you had held your ear against the metal skeleton of the Bear Mountain Bridge that morning you would have sensed the tremor of the lashes, as delicate as the flapping of butterfly wings. Yet nobody did, as nobody knew what was going on in Black Spring. The people in the daily rush-hour traffic between the towns of Highland and Peekskill were listening to WJGK and WPKF. On the road, on their way, on their phones, eating commuter breakfast bagels from paper bags. America was waking up. Good morning, America.

When the executioner raised his arm for the eighth lash, a shudder of alarm suddenly ran through the crowd. People began screaming and pointing, and words were whispered from mouth to mouth: “The witch … Katherine … the witch … Katherine … the witch is here…” Everyone on the west side of the intersection looked up at the same time and saw Katherine van Wyler standing on the center balcony of The Point to Point Inn. Maybe it was a burst of collective delusion, or maybe it was a dark miracle, because as soon as they noticed her, every soul in the crowd saw the same nightmarish vision: The witch's evil eye was open. Like a shepherd over her flock, she looked out over the torture unfolding at the intersection … and
laughed
.

In a heartbeat, the vision vanished, but everyone was convinced that they had seen it. Had
lived
it. Katherine was indeed standing there, but of course her eyes and mouth were stitched-up, just as they always had been. Yet her appearance in their midst did not seem like an accident. From one moment to the next everyone knew with unshakeable certainty that the witch had set this all up, that with her degenerate whispering she had somehow brought out the very worst in all of them as part of some diabolical plan. How else could they, such righteous people, have unresistingly become entangled in such savage, depraved, and immoral practices?

This realization evoked such a primordial fear in the throng that they scattered in blind panic, stumbling about and trampling each other underfoot. It was total pandemonium. The people on the east and south sides of the intersection didn't realize what had happened, but soon the tumult spread there as well, and everyone began pushing back to get the hell away. Even Colton Mathers did nothing to stop the fleeing crowd.

Only the executioner appeared to be unaware of the sudden change in atmosphere. He had finished his work on Burak and Justin. They hung from their chains, writhing in pain, their backs a chaos of open flesh, the seats and legs of their jeans dark purple, and their heads drooping down like an imitation of the passion of Christ. With undiminished vigor, the executioner continued to flog the bloody, unconscious body of Jaydon Holst, which shook like a puppet with every lash.

When the executioner had finally counted twenty lashes, the church bells fell silent. The large number of people still present at the intersection slunk away in disgrace and shame, following the crowds who had stampeded off at the sudden appearance of the witch. Some looked up at Katherine and made a gesture to fend off her evil eye, but most just gazed in the direction they were heading: away from
there
. No one spoke. Many wept. Everyone wanted to erase the event from their memories and no one, no one, would mention it once they got home.

The security guards climbed onto the scaffold to release the mangled bodies. They were carried away on stretchers—facedown—and taken in a van to the office of Dr. Stanton, general practitioner, for proper treatment. It took a long time for the van to clear a path through the throngs of people. The scaffold was destroyed—the blood-spattered planks would meet the wood chipper that same day. Street sweepers came in to clean up the intersection. The Point to Point Inn hung a canopy over Katherine, and the roadblocks at Route 293 were taken away. By about nine o'clock, there was no sign whatsoever that earlier that morning almost three thousand people had gathered at the intersection and had unanimously been swept away in mortal fear.

A new day had dawned in Black Spring.

 

TWENTY-TWO

NOVEMBER PASSED LIKE
an unwanted guest, overstaying its welcome. When the first day of December finally came, Tyler felt exceptionally relieved. He had wrestled with his midterms, but luckily the drop in his grades wasn't as bad as he had feared. Only Spanish was a fuck-up. During the spring semester he'd have to pull out all the stops to get a satisfactory grade on his finals.

Like everyone else in Black Spring, Tyler was trying hard, bit by bit, to resume normal life after November 15, to forget the events of that day, as well as to shake off his guilt. Eventually he succeeded, more or less. The tension between his parents had been palpable throughout the house during that period. It was probably unreasonable to blame himself for saddling his father with his secret, but he did anyway, and no amount of rational thinking could change it.

Matt had nightmares for a while, and one afternoon Jocelyn confided in Tyler that Matt had wet his bed. Tyler felt sorry for his little brother. He helped him brush Paladin and Nuala that evening, and although they didn't talk about it, they both valued the rare moment together. Not long after that, Tyler asked if he could use Matt's laptop to google some homework. When he opened Safari he saw a gay porn site in Matt's history. Tyler bit his lip, pretended he hadn't seen it, and realized he loved Matt more than he would ever say out loud.

A week after the fifteenth, Robert Grim came over to return his laptop and iPhone. He took Tyler aside and told him with a meaningful look, “No matter what you did, if you do it again, I'll see it. Is that clear?”

Tyler turned full sunset and looked at the floor in silence. Did Grim know? Of course he did. Or at least he had strong suspicions. He must have seen the quarantine for the
OYE
website URL. Why hadn't he taken action, or at least said something to Tyler? It was beyond him—until that evening, as he lay in bed and realized that if
OYE
had leaked, the conservative Council probably would have shut down the entire Internet in Black Spring in response. Grim, that badass son of a bitch, had kept his mouth shut to prevent Black Spring from turning into a second North Korea. Tyler fell asleep with a smile on his face, and the next day his conscience felt just a little lighter.

There came a day, early in December, when only after coming home from school and seeing the empty spot that had once been occupied by Fletcher's basket was Tyler reminded of the dog's death, the nightmare in the woods that had followed it, and the horrific stoning. Tyler was surprised and felt a little guilty, as if he would be held accountable for trying to leave it all behind. But time passed, and some wounds healed faster than others … although there would always be a faint scar to remind him.

On Jocelyn's birthday, December 4, the weather was stormy and bleak. The house, which had been so highly charged for so long, felt as warm and cozy as ever. The VanderMeers came over with a birthday cake. Laurie came, too, and was allowed to stay overnight. Tyler had put effort into making a photo collage of the family—including Fletcher—and Matt had written a hilarious poem for Jocelyn that made her laugh until she cried. After Jocelyn opened her presents, Tyler was surprised to discover two early Christmas presents for the kids, which they unwrapped in front of the fireplace. Tyler's came in a flat box. When he tore off the paper and saw it was a new MacBook, he looked at his dad with his mouth open wide. Steve nodded with a warm smile.
This one's without keyloggers,
the smile said. Tyler was deeply moved by his dad's trust, and did his best to keep from tearing up. He swore with boyish loyalty never to betray that trust, and he gave his dad a big hug.