پژواک قتل

The Echo of Murder

Once upon a time, a nobleman ordered five of his soldiers to arrest a woman named Rocio, who he accused of being a witch. He told them to drown her in the pond of a mill deep in the old forest where she lived. It required two men to drag her into the cold water and one to hold her down until she ceased to breathe. That soldier’s name was Umberto Garces.

Garces had killed before, but his master had so far never ordered him to kill a woman. The task was terrible, and at the same time it aroused him, maybe because the witch was quite beautiful.

It usually didn’t bother Garces to kill. He was surprised he couldn’t find sleep that night.

He couldn’t sleep for ten days, for the moment he lay down he once again felt the cold water on his skin and saw the witch’s hair floating on the surface of the pond. When, on the eleventh night, those visions once again haunted him, Garces got up from his bed, saddled his horse, and rode through the moonlit forest back to the mill.

Garces had hoped it would give him peace to see the water of the pond unstirred and the witch’s body gone from sight, as though she’d never existed. When he stepped closer to the water, though, Garces wished he’d never returned. The water was as black as his sin, and the trees seemed to whisper his judgment into the night: murderer!

Surely, she had been a witch. Wasn’t this the proof? This could only be her doing! The whispering trees, the visions and sensations that haunted him . . . she had cursed him. They had been right to kill her. So right!

Garces felt the guilt lift from his heart, all that disgust with himself, the regret—gone. Maybe he should become one of those witch hunters who cleansed the country of them. The Church paid them very well and as he’d killed one already, he figured it would be easier the next time. Yes. He would be able to do it again. And again.

He laughed. And turned to walk back to his horse.

But he couldn’t move.

The mud held his boots as firmly as if fingers had grabbed them.

Curse her! He was sure it was her.

“I’d do it again!” he shouted over the silent water. “You hear me?” His boots sank deeper into the mud and his hands started to itch. He lifted them to his face. His skin was covered in warts and webs were growing between his fingers—the fingers he’d used to hold the witch down.

He screamed in terror so loudly the sound woke the miller and his wife. They didn’t dare venture outside, though, to find out what all the noise was about.

Garces screamed again. By now his voice had changed. Hoarse croaking escaped his throat and, his spine twisted and bent until he fell to his knees, digging his webbed fingers into the mud.

Then he leaped into the same muddy pond water he’d drowned the witch in.