Witchseekers

Part 2 – Kathy Linyd

 

            Kathy Linyd's hands are shaking violently as the iron fetters are locked about her wrists.  She knows enough of the Witchseekers' finesse to be afraid; but she has seen the result of confessing, the shrieks and throes of a witch dying in fire, and she does not want to share their awful fate.

            "Raise her," I command.

            It is simple preparation.  The heavy windlass turns and Kathy's arms are raised above her head by the retracting chain.  Her hands droop useless from the iron shackles.  I have not yet ordered her stripped; for now, she still stands vulnerable in the flimsy floral sundress she was wearing when arrested - grubby, now, from her cell.  She wears slip-on pumps on her feet.

            Another crank of the windlass, and her arms are pulled straight over her head, her wrist-shackles knocking together.  She is raised on tip-toes, struggling to keep her weight on her feet, fighting the growing pain in her wrists.

            I move close to her.  "How does it feel to be helpless, Kathy?" I ask softly.  "How does it feel to be chained in a dungeon?  I bet you fantasised about this as a little girl … I bet you dreamed of being the helpless damsel in distress.  How does it really feel?"

            "I am not afraid," Kathy quavers.

            I trail the tip of one finger down the underside of her arm, skin like soft satin, through the exposed hollow of her armpit.  The gathering sweat betrays her lie.  I stare into her eyes, but direct my voice to Austin, at the winch.  "Higher," I say.

            The winch turns, the chain pulls, and I see the subtle flicker of panic in Kathy's eyes as she feels the tug on her wrists; her weight is wrenched onto the iron fetters, the strain travels down through her arms, and for an instant only the pointed toes of her pumps touch the floor.  Then, the chain has wound her higher, and her feet are swinging free, not quite kissing their own shadow on the flagstones.  She gives a grunt and a moan as the pain flares in her wrists.  The muscles in her arms tighten as she flexes against the strain.

            Her shadow edges further across the floor as she is hoisted higher; now, she casts her head back in growing angst, looking up the taut landscape of her own bare arms to the shackles that bite her wrists, and to the five feet of iron chain that travels up to a ring in the vaulted ceiling.  The windlass continues to turn, more links clatter through the ring, and Kathy moans again as, by the wrists, she is lifted higher still.

            Finally, when her toes are a foot-and-a-half off the floor, I motion Austin to stop.  "Secure her like that."

            Kathy's head rocks forward, her face flushed with the pain of her suspension.  She shifts her feet, and one shoe drops, landing on the floor below her.  Bare toes twitch in the cool dungeon air.  The flip-skirt of her sundress shifts about her thighs as she briefly pedals her legs, trying to evade the discomfort.  "Please," she gasps, "let me down?"

            I smile.  "Good night, Kathy Linyd.  We will see you tomorrow."

            "What?"  It is a familiar reaction; as we walk from the chamber, her voice echoes in panic.  "No!  Please, don't leave me like this!  Don't leave me!"

            We leave her. 

 

            One thing I like about the reality of a torture chamber: the victim doesn't escape.

            If this was Hollywood, Kathy would have miraculously freed herself and taken to the hills during the night.  As it is, Matmos, briefly captured after Janet’s interrogation, has been freed, the witch Daffy taunts from some secret location: but when we return to the torture chamber in the morning, Kathy Linyd hangs exactly as we had left her.  And after eight hours suspended by her wrists, she is exhausted to the core.

            Heavily, limply, she hangs from the shackles, her head forward, copper-coloured hair forward over her pale face.  Her arms and legs shine with an oiling of sweat.  Even her dress seems to heavily drape her slender figure, drawn downwards by the inexorable torture of gravity.  Her hands are like claws above the fetters.  One foot bare, the other still shod, toes down-pointed.

            "Bring her down," I order.

            After a night of no sleep, no rest, battling the strain of hanging by her wrists until drained of every last ounce of strength, Kathy is in no position to fight as she is cranked to the floor.  She manages to stand, her feet apart, but her manacled wrists drop with the chain, and she almost topples over, until caught by a guard.  "Remove her fetters."

            It is all about timing.  We work quickly, so that she will not have the chance to think, nor react; the irons are taken from her wrists, revealing the purple-black of bruising.  I give the order to strip her; the delicate shoestring straps of her sundress are slipped from her shoulders, and the garment drops away, baring her full and firm breasts.  A moment later, Austin deftly tugs off her panties, revealing the auburn thatch of her pubic hair.  Still dazed and weak from her ordeal hanging by the wrists, Kathy makes no move to preserve her modesty.  Her eyes, heavy with weariness, remain fixed to the floor.

            Austin and his assistant guard take hold of Kathy's arms and hold her steady, as I draw close to her.  "Save yourself, Kathy," I urge her.  "Confess that you are a witch.  Tell us where we will find Daffy, and Matmos.  Tell us how we will trace them and capture them."

            Slowly, Kathy lifts her face to regard me.  She blinks slowly, moves her lips.  "I do not know these things," she says, "and I am not a witch."

            I stand aside to give her a view of the torture chamber, and indicate the many hideous instruments laid out.  "Look at the tools of my trade, Kathy.  I can crack your fingers and break your toes, I can shred and scourge and brand and roast your flesh, I can crush, tear, and distend the most sensitive parts of you.  Eventually, pain will drive from your lips the answers to everything I ask.  Save yourself this anguish and talk to me now."

            "I know nothing," Kathy repeats.

            "Very well."  To my guards: "Put her on the rack."

            Deserved or not, no instrument of torture has quite the reputation of the rack.  It is the most famous, the most feared, the most exciting.  Ours is a masterpiece - nine feet long, with a heavy roller at either end, made of heavy oak.  The ratcheting mechanisms are such that every turn incurs a stretch of barely one-fifth of an inch.

            As the guards wrest her across the torture chamber, the adrenaline of fear returns a semblance of life to Kathy's limbs.  She struggles, albeit weakly, but succeeds only in losing her other shoe, the last vestige of clothing.  Now, as naked as the newborn, she is vulnerable in the guards' hands as they bodily lift her onto the huge wooden bed.

            She is laid on her back, squealing and protesting desperately.  "No!  Please!  You can't do this to me!  I have done nothing!"

            My rack is fitted with chains, for the express purpose of stretching witches.   Iron prevents escape - both of the body, and the spirit.  A witch fastened in iron cannot transfer her spirit to a familiar or other unwitting host.  Admittedly the shackles will bite cruelly into her wrists and ankles, much more so than ropes, but it is pain she will soon not notice as the stretching begins.

            "Austin?  If you please."

            My two dungeon assistants take up their posts at the levers of the rack, and, at my signal, begin to turn.  Music.  The slow click-click of the oiled ratchets, the gentle creak of the rollers not yet stressed. The subtle knock of chains on wood. Slowly, Kathy's splayed limbs are drawn parallel, her arms above her head, her legs reaching long towards the foot of the rack.

            She is looking at Austin, at the roller beyond her fingertips, in terror.  "Please!"

            "Keep turning," I order.

            Kathy's body shifts minutely on the rack's surface, her heels drag a little on the wood, her buttocks slide a fraction of an inch, her shoulder-blades draw in the opposite direction.  Her fettered wrists rise half an inch off the rack, her heels likewise raised by the growing tension.

            I watch, seeing the stretch take in her limbs.  The signs are subtle; the defining of muscles, the tautening of tendons through her thighs and armpits, the rising of her ribcage and the hollowing of her belly.  Her breasts are lifted towards the ceiling as the tension grows. The manacles wedge firmly against her hands and feet, pulling in opposite directions, and the strain through her body grows.

            Another notch; another, another, another - click, click, click - and Kathy is stretched further.  She gasps, and I signal a halt.  Gently, I put my hand to her arm, her belly, her thigh. All is taut, muscles rigid and straining.

            "Enough," I say.

            Kathy manages to lift her head.  In the cool dungeon air, her naked body is spread and vulnerable. Her breasts and armpits, her belly, her sex, all presented and exposed.  There is nothing quite as terrifying as being so very helpless, spread for torture on the rack the way she is.  "You bitch," she hisses at me through clenched teeth.  "Release me, or I promise, you will pay for this."

            "Is that before or after you die screaming in flames?" I reply coolly.  Kathy's eyes darken with hatred.  I glance at Austin.  "Let us leave her.  We begin questioning in a few hours."

            Kathy gives a groan, her head thuds back on the wood.

 

            Torture on the rack takes patience.

            Stretching a victim too hard, too fast, will simply cause damage without making the most of the rack's subtle power.  A victim's immediate response to racking is to fight it, to resist the pull, and chances are she will damage and dislocate her own joints in the process.  So a settling-in period is essential.

            Kathy is suffering, and the racking hasn't even begun.

            Held taut between the rollers, she is locked in an involuntary battle against the tension in her limbs. Her muscles are tight. The sweat glosses her naked body, the veins stand on her neck as she fights to resist.  But as time passes, her exhaustion grows.  Already her arms are weak from a night spent hanging in chains, and the muscles quickly fail her. But still her abdomen, back, thighs and calves are tight, and it is a long, slow process as, fibre by fibre, the muscles begin to burn, cramp, and weaken.

            Two hours, and she is losing the battle.  The ache of fatigue is maddening, as if she has been lifting heavy weights.  But the rack maintains its tension, so as muscles relax, the strain is instead transferred to the very ligaments and tendons that hold her body together.

            This is where the pain begins.

            Ligaments were not made to take such punishment.  They are the linking fibres between joints, and it is not in their design to absorb stress.  Their protest is felt as a deep, savage heat deep in her limbs, spreading from her shoulders and elbows, down her spine, through her hips and knees.  Like slow fire it creeps along her bones, a growing pain that quickens her breathing, breaks a sweat across her breasts like droplets of condensation upon glass.

            Her third hour on the rack is the worst.  The pain has invaded to her core; it is her skeleton, her very bones, that seem to burn and ache, an unreal savagery of pain that she cannot block out, no matter how she tries.

            When Austin, Steve and I enter the torture chamber, Kathy's head shifts and she looks beyond the horizon of her own upstretched arm, fear plain to see on her face.  She knows now how utterly vulnerable she is.

            Austin takes his position at the head of the rack, Steve at the foot, and I stand alongside the machine, looking down at the wretched Kathy.  "Confess, witch," I say.

            "I have nothing to confess," she groans.

            I signal, and two winches turn.  The shift is minuscule, barely perceptible, but to Kathy it awakens a fiery agony.  As her exhausted body stretches, pain flares in her joints, along her limbs, and her mouth opens in a gasp of pain.  Her eyes grow wide.

            "Oh - God!  Oh God!  It hurts!" she cries.

            "Confess, confess now," I urge.  "Agree to hear our questions and it will stop."

            Through brimming tears, Kathy bites her lip and says nothing, so I signal again.  Again, the winches turn, her body stretches between the rollers, and this time Kathy gives a lung-deep yell of pain.

            "Aaaaaahhhhh!!"  She drives her head back into the wood of the rack, the tears now spilling from her eyes.  The hot agony rips along her limbs, but also grows now like a savage demon deep in the small of her back, spreading with crippling intensity up her spine.

            "This is only the beginning, Kathy Linyd," I tell her.  "The pain gets worse, and worse.  With this machine I can pull your joints apart, but it will not end there.  You will still stretch further.  Talk."

            "I ... I ..."  Kathy gasps, shakes her head through the pain.

            My signal cues the winches to click over again, and Kathy screams and shrieks in pain as she stretches.  Her ribcage lifts, the rack creaks.  Now, her screams are constant, the fire of racking filling her drawn body.  The sweat streaks her ribcage and collects in droplets over her quivering flesh as she howls in pain.  She is learning the true suffering of the racked.

            "Tell me now that you are not a witch!" I shout.

            "Ohhhh gooodddd!" Kathy wails, her face screwed up in agony.  "Mercy, please, have mercy, I cannot bear this pain!"  Her breathing is rapid and shallow, the tension barely allowing her diaphragm to shift.

            I bend over her, seize her face in my hand, guide it so that her pain-swimming eyes are staring directly at me.  Framed by her upstretched arms and her hollowed armpits, her face shows that she is close to breaking.  "It is over.  You cannot resist this.  How many more notches do you wish to feel?  Confess!"

            "No ..." Kathy manages to gasp.  Then, horror in her eyes as I signal Austin and Steve to rack her another notch.

            The winches creak, and a new magnitude of pain rips through Kathy's helpless body.  She screams anew, her spine popping and groaning with the tension that rips at her very bones.  Again she screams, draws breath, screams.  Her shrieks echo from the stone ceiling.  She is shaking her head over and over.

            I am about to signal the next notch, when Kathy Linyd shrieks, "I confess it!  Oh, I confess!  I am a witch!"

            "Say it again," I tell her.

            "I am a witch!  Oh God, the pain …!"

            "You have consorted with Satan?"

            "I fucked him, I did it many times!  I am evil!  I confess - please stop the pain!!"

            I glance at Steve and Austin.  "Ease off a few notches only."

            The winches groan.  The shift of her limbs is slight, but the unbearable agony ebbs to a deep, unending fire. Still unbearable, still terrible, but less all the same.  Kathy's head rolls and shifts in her pain, she gasps air like a fish out of water.  Her body is wet.

            "Tell us about Matmos. Where has he gone?"

            "I don't know, I don't know!" Kathy gasps.

            I straighten, and turn to Austin.  "Heat the irons," I order.

 

            Kathy strains to see beyond her own arm and the imposing bulk of the rack's roller, as Austin pumps the bellows.  Fanned by the jetting air, the coals in the brazier roar, driving the iron implements to red, to orange, to almost-white with heat.  The radiance of the fire is scorching on my face.

            I pull on a thick woollen mitten to protect my hand, and grasp one end of a long brand, its tip a flat rectangle flowing furious yellow, two inches long and one inch wide.  As I carry the brand to the rack, it crackles in the chill air, incinerating invisible dust particles brightly.

            Kathy's eyes are wild with horror as she sees it.  There may be more effective tortures, but nothing, it seems, invokes such fear as hot irons.  Certainly, it is the pain; but it is also the knowledge that, at a whim, the torturer can cause such disfigurement.

            I slowly move alongside the rack, the shimmering iron in my hand.  Kathy's eyes follow it, though she bites her lower lip, saying nothing.  She is learning, now, how utterly helpless she is; racked, she cannot even struggle.  The pain is still severe through her body, tearing her limbs, but her fear surfaces regardless.

            "Answer my question, Kathy Linyd," I say slowly.  I have reached the end of the rack, and take Kathy's bare toes in my hand.  Her foot is curled over by the sheer tension of the manacles, but I force her toes up, stretching out the pale sole of her foot.

            "No," Kathy finally whimpers.  Her toes twitch in my grip.

            I press the searing iron to the sole of Kathy's right foot.  There is a quick puff of smoke, a tiny burst of flame, then a long, squealing hiss.  It is almost a full second before the pain hits, and Kathy gives a long scream of agony.  She cannot writhe, cannot struggle, she can only twitch her toes and fling her head from side to side, shrieking in pain as her own skin burns. 

            I finally lift the iron, smoking, from her foot, leaving an evil red welt where it has kissed her skin.  Kathy's scream becomes a long wail, the searing pain barely fading even though the iron no longer burns her.  I aim the iron for another part of her sole, closer to her toes, and press it to the skin.  Again the hissing of searing flesh, again Kathy's shrill screams of agony as she is burned.  I leave it for ten long seconds, then lift it away, a charred residue of skin smoking on the iron.  Kathy moans, her taut ribcage shifting fast, her head turning.

            "No more," she begs, "no more!  Please, I already confessed, I am a witch!"

            "You know there is more to tell," I say.  "Talk."

            "I do not know what you want to hear," she weeps.

            I return to the brazier, slide the branding iron back into its bed of coals, and choose another instead.  This iron ends in a smaller cross-shaped brand, an inch to each axis, and I bring it, smoking, to Kathy's side.

            "No," she weeps, to see it.  "No, no, no …!"  Her voice rises in pitch and volume as I bring the iron close to the wet plateau of skin below her right armpit, alongside her breast.  Her ribcage heaves but she cannot struggle or move.  I let her feel the radiant heat of the iron, then press it home.

            Steam hisses and bursts around the flat of the branding iron, then smoke, and Kathy's roar of pain rends the air, her mouth wide open, her eyes screwed shut.

            I lift the iron, leaving a smoking wound.  Kathy is bawling in her pain, but I mean to show her no mercy whatsoever.  After only a few seconds, I put the iron against her skin again, this time a little closer to her breast, and she shrieks like a banshee in her agony.

            I lift the iron and hold it, smoking with the residue of her own burnt skin, in front of her rolling eyes.  "Tell us where Matmos has fled."

            It is almost half a minute before Kathy is coherent enough to shake her head.  "I don't kno-o-o-ow!" she howls.

            "You do know, and you will tell us," I inform her.  As I return to the brazier, I tell Steve, "tighten her two notches."

            Kathy is dazed by the brands, but she is ripped back to full awareness when Steve takes hold of the winch beyond her feet and heaves.  The chains grate and scrape, the axle groans, and Kathy's helpless body is once again stretched.  She screams in pain of course, frantic and high-pitched, and there are creaking sounds from her limbs as they lengthen.  The pain in her joints is comparable to the searing pain of the iron, and her shrieks are testament to her utter agony.

            I switch to a new brand.  It crackles with heat as I bring it over to her, a trail of smoke on the air.  Kathy lies shrieking and gasping from the pain of being stretched, her head turning, every sinew and muscle taut on her straining body.  She is in such pain that she doesn't react to the glowing metal as it descends towards her; but when I place it squarely in the valley of her armpit and press down, her scream evolves into a lung-deep bellow of agony.  Steam and smoke billows around the end of the brand as it impresses its mark deep into sensitive flesh.

            I peel the brand away after perhaps ten seconds, but Kathy keeps screaming.  Her voice has changed its timbre; hoarser, thinner.  She is rapidly growing exhausted from the torture.  I touch the brand down again, an inch higher, and again she flings her head about, wailing and screeching.  The acrid smell of burning skin floods my nostrils once again.

            When, at last, I withdraw the branding iron, Kathy's scream trails into a long wail, then a whimper.  Her eyelids flutter and her eyes roll back, her face grows pale.  Without returning the iron to the coals, I grasp her jaw in my hand, rocking her head side to side.

            "Don't think you can slip away that easily, Witch," I tell her.  "Look at me!  Answer my questions!  Where is Matmos?  Who else have you associated with?  Tell me now, or it will only get worse!"

            My words are enough to draw Kathy back from her faint, and her eyes fix to mine, swimming in pain and fear.  "Please, please, I don't know," she says weakly.

            I release her face and return to the brazier.  Austin still pumps the bellows, and I return the iron, drawing out the cross-shaped brand again.  Once more it glows almost white with heat.  "I hope you're enjoying this, then," I say.

            "Oh, no, no," Kathy sobs.  "Mercy, have mercy!"

            Progress.  I return to the rack, show her the smoking tip of the iron, then press it down between her shining breasts.  Life returns to Kathy's voice as she gives a horrible scream of agony.  Her flesh sizzles and spits beneath the iron's touch.  I let it burn, all the way to the bone, before tearing it up from her ravaged sternum.  Two inches lower, and the iron is pressed down again. Again, Kathy's screams and shrieks of pain as her flesh burns deep.

            When the smoking iron is lifted, I count the brands.  She is lasting well, most witches would have long ago been inventing lies just to save themselves the agony.  That's not to say that I'm running out of options; but she's tough.

            Returning to the brazier, I pull on the second woollen glove, and with both hands, grasp the handles of the pincers. The scissors-like implement is made of heavy iron, ending in claws that glow bright and yellow in the dim air. I move to Kathy's left side and brandish the pincers before her face, opening them wide like the mandibles of some gigantic insect.

            Kathy's eyes are huge in horror. "No - no - NO!!"

            I bring the pincers down and close them on Kathy's full and shining breast.  The squealing, the pop of steam, and then the screaming.  Oh, the screaming; she bellows and roars, her voice sounding barely human in its long, drawn-out caws of agony.  I turn and tug the pincers, twisting and pulling her breast while the burning goes on.  Unable to struggle, Kathy just lies on the rack and screams.

            Finally, I release her breast and withdraw the iron from her smoking, steaming flesh.  Kathy turns her head and vomits a small spurt of water over her own armpit, groaning and wailing from the magnitude of it all.  The pincers still glow orange, so I lower them again, this time closing the claws onto the cinnamon stub of her erect nipple. Screams split the air again, with the sizzling, squealing sound of burning skin.  I wrench the pincers around, twisting her nipple like the stalk of an apple, until there is nothing left but a charred nub that once was sensitive flesh.

            When I lift the iron away, the wounds on her breast are ghastly.  Kathy is shaking her head and sobbing, from pain, and from knowing that her once perfect breast has been ruined.  "Tell me what you know, and it stops.  Refuse, and I burn you again."

            Kathy's head lolls.  Mucus streams from her nose, tears from her eyes, mixing with the sweat on her drawn face.  Her lips move, but her words are garbled.  It seems she is weakening from the torture.

            But it could be a ploy.  Just to make sure, I return the pincers to the brazier and draw out a fresh branding iron.  I return to her left side, aim it squarely between breast and underarm, and press it to her skin.  She shrieks and wails and turns her head, but the scream is somehow distant, agony without awareness.  I let it burn her nevertheless, until I am satisfied that she is truly insensible, then pull it from her flesh.

            I sigh.

            "Steve, Austin, I think we should rest now."

            "She is weak," Austin notes.  "She needs to recover."

            I nod.  "Loosen her, five notches each wheel, and let her breathe a little.  Then give her water.  We resume in a few hours."

            I am glad I put Kathy on the rack.

            I had thought of using the horse, and the pear, as I had with Janet.  But the horse can be endured; and I have known women to bear through the torture of the pear, until the damage is such that death is inevitable, and thus it becomes their salvation. Irons, too, can be resisted.  It is rare, but I have witnessed it.  The pain, though intense, is relatively brief, and too many burns can create more problems.  I know already that she would be stronger than the water torture, and while the thumbscrews might have forced her confession, I doubt they would coax the truth about Matmos and Daffy from her lips.

            The rack, on the other hand, holds the key to breaking her.  It has already drawn a confession of witchcraft from her, and the racking we gave her was only mild.  The pain of the rack grows incrementally, and by its nature is more powerful than the thumbscrews, the horse, the brands or the pear.

            She lies, now, recovering from the brandings. Stretched still, taut enough so that her wearied muscles will not regain their strength, but loose enough so she can catch breath and recover her senses.

            She will break on the rack.  She must break.

           

            In the orange-lit gloom of the torture chamber, against the dark wood of the rack, Kathy Linyd's stretched body looks as if it is polished with oil.  She does not move - she can not move - but lies, pulled between the rollers, secured in a world of misery and pain.

            The brands on her body are red and raw, yet another source of pain for the witch.  To hear our return, a groan of terror escapes her lips.

            How many hours has she lain on the rack, now?  Six?  Seven, or more?  It is a long time to suffer its torment.  Now, as Austin and Steve take their places at either winch, I am certain that Kathy has no strength whatsoever in her arms and legs.  Every tiny turn of the rack is going to be felt in every joint, every ligament, in every vertebrae.  Casually, I place the hourglass, used to measure half-hour increments, on the wooden bed alongside her.

            "Wake her," I say.

            The two men pull on their levers, and the winches groan.  As the chains pull on Kathy's straining limbs, the fire of agony rips through her.  I see her eyes fly open, her mouth too, and a hoarse scream rises from her throat, echoing through the chamber.

            "You are with us, then," I note.

"Aaaaaahhh!!  Oh God, it hu-u-u-urts!" Kathy cries out. 

            "It is just a whisper of the pain you will feel soon," I promise her.

            "What do you want from me?  Please, please, I beg you," she shrieks, "please, I have confessed, I am a witch, there is no more I can say!"

            "Tell us where Matmos is hiding."

            "I don't know, I don't know!"

            "Rack her," I say.  "Five notches."

            The winches roll over again. Kathy screams in pain. A second notch. A third.  Kathy's voice takes on a new sound, a thin wail of agony as, creaking like leather, her body is stretched further and further.  Her whole body begins to lift from the rack's surface, taut as a bow-string between the rollers, and the agony is fire along her bones, spreading up her spine from the small of her back like metal barbs tearing at her very core.

            Another notch, then another. Stretched almost to breaking point, Kathy shrieks and bellows in agony.

            I wait.  Circling the rack, watching her scream and cry, noting each taut muscle, each straining rib, the shallow heaving of her breasts - one perfect, one scarred by torture.  The veins in her neck stand out in her efforts not to lose all sanity.

            Then, I signal.  Again, the winches turn.  Kathy is already screaming, but makes a sound almost like a woman in orgasm as her body stretches again. This time, I hear a distinctive sound from her left shoulder, like breaking a green twig from a tree, and I see her entire arm visibly shift and lengthen.  Kathy's howls and shrieks are proof of the agony as her shoulder shifts out of joint.

            It is a matter of seconds before I hear the same sound from her right shoulder, and it, too, dislocates. Kathy's head hangs back between her disjointed arms as she roars in agony, the pain beyond anything she has felt before.

            I lean close and grasp her hair, lift her head from the rack.  "Listen to me, Kathy!"  She manages somehow to bite down on her screams, clenching her teeth so hard they might break, the veins at her temples pulsing, the tears streaming from her eyes.  "Look at yourself!  You are breaking apart!  I'm tearing your limbs from your body! Doesn't it hurt?  Doesn't it feel like the very agonies of Hell?"

            Incapable of words, Kathy simply tries to nod.

            "I can rack you further, Kathy. Much further. You can be stretched until your elbows and knees pull apart, your hips pop from their sockets. Even then, you can be stretched further still, until your vertebrae begin to come apart.  And when you have been stretched to the very brink of death, I can reset your bones and start all over again.  And the second time will be twice as painful as the first.  Do you want that, Kathy?"

            She shakes her head.

            "Two more notches," I order.

            Kathy begins to form the word, "no," but it simply becomes an inarticulate roar of pain as the rollers click, click again and her disjointed arms are pulled further from her body.  Her elbows, hips and knees begin to groan and creak.

            "Where is Matmos?" I ask.

            Kathy mouths the words, I don't know, so I let her head drop back.  I turn the hourglass, and step back.

            The sand runs slowly through.  Kathy wails and shrieks and groans.  Her body is burning from within, as if the fire of her incineration has already been lit, and smoulders within her bones.  It is agony beyond understanding, beyond belief, focused with relentless intensity in every joint.  I know that she cannot think, cannot focus, cannot do anything but feel.

            It is twenty minutes later that her left elbow separates with a crack! and her arm fractionally lengthens as the joint dislocates.  Kathy's voice explodes in a new scream of agony, her head twisting about, even as her right elbow pulls apart also.  Her arms are now strung together by the ligaments alone, and the agony is immense.

            We must rack her carefully, now.  Stretched slowly, she will be broken according to the size and strength of her joints; her hips next, then knees, then wrists and ankles, and finally her vertebrae.  Too fast, and ligaments will separate from bone, and she will never recover. 

            But that is a long way off.

            Half an hour has passed, and I nod to Austin and Steve.  They return to the winches, take hold of the worn wooden handles.  I move close, to stand over Kathy.  Her face is pale, she groans with every shallow breath.  Her armpits are up around her temples, now, and her ribcage looks as if it is about to burst from her body.  Her belly is tight and drawn.

            "Where is Matmos?"

            There is no response, so I signal the next turn.  The rollers creak, and Kathy gives  a new scream of agony as her broken body is stretched.  Almost at once, a pop! comes from her left hip, and it snaps from its socket with a jarring vibration that sends a shudder through her entire body.

Different bodies break in different ways.  An older witch will suffer more damage than a younger one; but at five feet seven inches, and still young and healthy, Kathy will stretch and stretch, anywhere from six to nine inches.  I watch with satisfaction as Kathy's right hip dislocates neatly, and her screams are like those of a woman possessed.

I turn the hourglass.

            Kathy's screams have shortened.  It is inevitable; even breathing is an effort, and added to the terrible agony of racking comes the panic of near-suffocation.  Her body, spread and shining, is so easily hurt.  And as the hours pass and her ligaments inflame in reaction to the tearing damage caused by the rack, her pain will simply grow and grow.

            A half hour after the turn that disjointed both her hips, I command another turn of the roller. Even hearing my order, Kathy begins begging for mercy in a desperate whisper, but when the rollers shift, she finds voice again, a broken roar of pain as her creaking body extends again.  There is a series of pops again from her spine, and I know the pain must be like knives driven into her back, rivalling that of her pulled-apart joints.

            When at last she is unable to scream any more, Kathy simply moans.  I lean over her again.  "It gets worse," I promise.  "In a few hours, when all of your joints have been ripped apart, I will leave you like this.  I will sleep, and you will lie here and suffer an eternity of Hell in every moment.  The pain will grow and grow.

            "Then, by morning, when we return, I will begin stretching you further and further, pulling and pulling, until -"

            "Cottage," Kathy gasps in a tiny voice.  "They have a cottage!"

            I quickly signal Austin and Steve to take the levers again, and they do so.  "Matmos and his witches?  You speak of them?"

            "Yes!"

            "They have a cottage?"

            "Yes!"

            Finally.  "Where?"

            "In the woods … five miles in from where … the road north … crosses a stream," she gives, in desperate agonised bursts. 

            "They hide there?"

            "Yes!  Yes, yes, yes!" she weeps.

            "Who else is with him? Name them."

            "I don't know," Kathy wails.

            I give the signal, and the rollers shift.  Kathy's screaming is high and terrible, her groaning limbs forced fractionally longer.  It takes her long minutes to find words again, and when they come, they repeat over and over: "I don't know, I don't know, oh God, please, I don't know!"

            I frown.  I want to rack her further, torture her more to be certain she speaks the truth, but she is already showing signs of slipping into a state of near-dementia from the pain.  She has been under torture for an entire day, and even one as young and strong as Kathy can only endure so much.

            I straighten.  "If you are lying to me, Kathy Linyd, God help you, because I will have you racked for three days without pause, do you understand?"

            "I swear it," Kathy gasps.

            I slowly nod.  "Very well."  To Austin and Steve, I say, "I will fetch the physician so we can loosen her."

            Both give their approval.

With joints to be reset and ligaments needing time to retract, it will take an hour to release Kathy from the rack.  But once again, our efforts have ended successfully.

 

            I have been instructed to re-examine the witch Kathy Linyd.

            Her wails are terrible as she is dragged from her cell, and not just because she knows she is to be tortured.  Every joint in her body is badly inflamed, muscles strained, and it is agony to move.  Her spine is cruelly swollen, and the fire of damaged tendons and muscle fibres have left her temporarily crippled.

            When she glimpses the torment I have in store, she openly weeps.  Alongside a sturdy wooden whipping-frame, a table is laid out with the instruments to be used in her questioning: the hourglass, the pitcher of lard, and a pear, ornate and grotesque.  Even closed, it is larger than a man's clenched fist. 

            "Oh, I beg you, I beg you, do not!" Kathy shrieks as she is carried to the frame.  "What more do you want from me?"

            "We want the truth, Kathy," I say.

            "What?  But - oh, I swear it, I swear it, I have told you the truth!"

            Her protest is not enough to save her; the guards hoist her up, and her wrists, purple with bruising already from her horror upon the rack, are set widely apart in manacles high above her head.  Naked, she is left to dangle, and a great scream tears her lungs as the pain of her damaged shoulders is cruelly reawakened.

            But it gets worse.  Her ankles are drawn widely apart, so that her toes clear the floor by several inches, and she is shackled; hanging spreadeagled, her joints and muscles burning in terrible agony, her body exposed front and back.

            "Take me down!  I cannot stand it!  Take me down!" she pleads, agonised by her suspension.  But it is not my decision to make, and I stand before her, gazing up into her pain-filled eyes.

            "You lied to us, Kathy.  We went to the cottage, but there was nobody there.  The Man In Black, Matmos, or any of his witches, were nowhere to be found.  We want to know where they are!"

            "How should I know?" Kathy shrieks in terror verging on nausea.  "Oh, by God, I do not know!  Please!"

            "Then you had better search your memory, because the truth must be known."

            I walk calmly behind her, step to the table, and dip my fingers into the jar of cold lard.  Kathy's drawn body is already heaving in pained breaths as she dangles from the manacles.  From behind, I regard the taut globes of her buttocks, the peeping copper-haired secret of her sex, and I carefully slide my hand between her thighs.  She jolts to feel my hand touch her most intimate part, as I smear the lard over her lips.  "No!" she shrieks.

            I take up the pear.  It is heavy, solid; it looks immense in my small hands.  Such a cruel instrument of persuasion, and yet so beautiful in its crafting; the intricacy of design upon its folded petals.

            Kathy is sobbing.  "Please, it hurts," she begs.  "I have confessed that I am a witch.  I have told you all I know of the ones you seek.  I know nothing else!"

            I say nothing, but crouch down behind her, looking up between her legs.  Her sex is there presented, labia slightly parted by the wide spreading of her ankles; the dungeon torch-light catches the fine curls of her pubic hair.  It pains me to so ravage the delicate flower of her femininity; but I have been instructed, and I will do as I am bid.

            I place the cold metal tip of the pear against the entrance to Kathy Linyd's vagina, and push it upwards.  She screams and squeals as the metal intruder forces her wide, wider than she has ever been; it takes effort on my part, all the strength of my arms and back, and her ankles jam against their fetters with the force of it.  But aided by the lard, the pear slides inside her, deeper and deeper, plundering her.  She screams.  Further, deeper I force it; its girth displacing her cervix, making her cry out in pain and distress, until finally it comes to rest, deep inside her sex.

            I stand, gather up a towel and clean my hands, circle my spreadeagled victim.  Now, only a gleaming brass turnscrew protrudes down between her spread legs, ending in the key-like handle for turning.

            A single tear lands on Kathy's unbranded breast, slides over its gentle curve.

            "I beg you," she gasps, "take it out!  It hurts!  You are killing me!"

            I can feel the tears in my own eyes.  "The truth, Kathy.  Give me the truth and it will be over."

            "I swear to you," Kathy sobs, "I don't know!"

            I reach between her spread thighs and grasp the turnscrew in both hands.  Kathy's voice becomes a shriek.  "No - no, no!!"

            I turn the screw - once, twice, three times.  From deep within her, a muffled groan as the pear's terrible flower shifts and blossoms almost two inches wider, sending a terrible agony through her.  She screams in pain, flinging her head back between her upstretched arms, her hair swinging against her straining back.

            I stand, turn the hourglass.  To the guards: "leave me with her.  I will send for you, and for the scribe, when she has something worthwhile to say."

The guards return to their posts; and I leave Kathy to her torture.

Any woman can perhaps understand the nature of pain that must be felt from the pear, but not its magnitude.  Not even the pain of childbirth can compare.

Kathy hangs from her wrists, racked by her own damaged joints, her body shining sweat, the handle of the pear protruding from between her outstretched legs.  She shrieks and groans endlessly, unable to stay still, at the pain of the pear inside her.

            I give her half an hour to suffer, before making my return.  Her distress grows at seeing me.  "Help me, please," she begs.

            "Where is Matmos now?"

            Kathy does not want to answer.  She dreads the question, and when it comes, she does not have the courage to give a reply.  She knows what the result will be, and on cue I reach beneath her widened thighs and grasp the turnscrew.

            "Where, Kathy?  Where are they?  Think, Kathy!"

            I twist the screw.  Another slow creak from her vagina as the pear opens further; I see the shift in her lower abdomen, and Kathy's scream is shrill and long.  She shakes her tortured limbs, swinging as far as the tautened chains will allow, but she is helpless to the pear's terrible agony.

            I watch her screaming.  The agony goes on and on; she is a creature stripped of dignity, stripped of free will, whose existence is pain and nothing more.  I give her time to call 'enough' and tell what she knows; but she merely hangs there and screams.

            I turn the hourglass and leave.

            She is silent when I finally return.  For more than an hour, she has hung in the shackles, agonised, with the pear buried up inside her.  From the bulge in her abdomen, she looks pregnant.  The tears have worn streaks down her face, down her grubbied breasts; the sweat shines on her taut body.  Her head hangs forward; she is exhausted.

            But hearing my footsteps, she raises her chin, and looks at me with eyes that are dark with suffering.  "No more ..." she begs.

            "You still resist me," I say sadly.  "Why do you do it?"

            "I gave you all I knew," Kathy insists, and her voice shakes in dread.

            I am running out of time to wrest the truth from her; she is growing weak already.  I put my hands to the turnscrew, and with Kathy shrieking in terror, I twist it firmly.  A muted crack! sounds from deep inside her, the pear spreads its petals into her womb.  Her screams are terrible.  I twist again, and it opens yet further.

            "No!  No-o-o-o-o!!!!" she bellows, over and over again.  Her screams echo off stone walls, and must be chilling the bones of other prisoners in forgotten cells.  For good measure, I turn the handle of the pear again; the bulge in her belly grows by a fraction, the pain roars ever greater.

            I step back again and watch her hang, watch her scream and suffer.  It is as if the demons have already come for her soul; her tortured eyes roll as her head rocks back and forth, side to side, in endless, restless agony.

            I turn the hourglass, and leave her to her pain.

            In my room off the passageway, mere paces from the torture chamber's locked door, I make a brief report to the waiting Witchseekers, urging them to be patient; then return to my never-ending studies of human anatomy, and the finer points of hurting it.

            The half-hour passes quickly, for me.  It must feel like an eternity for Kathy.  When I return, she hangs as she did when I left.  Groaning.  Agonised.

            "Does she speak the truth, yet?"

            The voice, behind me, belongs to Tina.  I am not surprised that she has come; Kathy's false lead regarding Matmos caused great embarrassment.  Part of me suspects that this further torture is as much punishment as inquisition, and that Kathy really has told all that she knows.

            "Not yet," I say.

            Tina's eyes have a strange look as she notes Kathy's racked and sweat-streaked body, spread suspended in shackles, with the bulge of the pear in her abdomen.  "Turn the screw," she says.  "I want to see it happen."

            I go to Kathy and kneel between her opened legs, take the turnscrew in my hands.  At my touch of the device, Kathy squeals in renewed agony; and when the screw turns and the pear's segments edge wider, she seems to tear her throat with shrieking.  Tina's face shows her fascination with Kathy's agony.

            Minutes pass, and Kathy's screams slowly ease as exhaustion again overwhelms her, and the pain becomes a roar that leaves her dazed and endlessly stirring.  I stand before her, then, and demand again, "tell us everything you know, Kathy.  Where is Matmos?”

            Kathy makes no reply.  Her eyes no longer fix on anything, but slide about in her disorientation and pain.

            "Make her talk," Tina says.  "Find the truth.  Failure would reflect poorly upon you, as you well know."

            There is little doubt as to the power behind Tina's threat, and I nod hastily.

            When she has gone, I return my attention to Kathy.  Silence is dangerous, and her groans are becoming more and more faint.  I know I haven't yet torn her womb, nor caused any lasting injury, but she risks fading into shock.

            "Kathy!" I call.

            My voice brings her back; her eyes find me.  She mouths one word; please.

            I move closer, and place my foot on the taut chain that runs from her left ankle to the base of the frame.  I push downward.  The force acts as a rack, adding tension that spreads up her leg, aggravating the inflamed muscles of her back, the damaged joints and ligaments in her shoulders and arms, and she gives a wail of pain.

            "Please, please, please," she begs.

            "Do you realise what happens if you do not tell me what I need to hear?" I ask.  "You will be taken down from here, but returned instead to the rack.  Imagine how that will feel, as all your joints are stretched again.  Imagine the sound as they pull apart all over again.  Imagine the pain, Kathy."

            "Audrey," she says.

            "What?"

            "Audrey ... Rose ..."

            "Who is Audrey Rose?  A witch?"

            Kathy nods.

            "And does she know where we will find The Man In Black?"

            Again, Kathy nods.

            It is not much, but I am sure, now, that it is the last drop of information she possesses. I put my hand to the pear's screw and gently begin to end Kathy’s suffering.