I blink and the eyes are there, glowing embers. The snarling shakes me from inside. Hackles rise. I feel it, the dog. It is me, I am it.

Silence spreads from the centre. John’s stillness infects them. One by one they fall quiet, step back. Eyes downcast at the tangled, bloodied mass that was once my brother. Soundlessly sucking on their bleeding knuckles, wiping their stained weapons.

‘My son,’ Mam cries. ‘Oh, my boy. My son, my son.’

The only sound.

She is released and crawls over to John, cradles his head, kisses his hair.

‘Wake up,’ she whispers. ‘Open your eyes, lad.’ Strokes his face again, again. ‘Not so bad. Just a little hurt. Waken.’ Her hair parts at the neck and her mark shows clear for all to see.

‘Dear God,’ Bett says, weeping. ‘What have we done?’

Hands fall to sides, limp. Not one can meet another’s gaze. I watch with ember eyes, claws break through my fingertips. Snarling shakes the bones of me.

Only Gabriel looks about, eyes bright, face flushed. He stabs the pitchfork into the ground and is upon me in two steps, grabbing my arm and hauling me from Bett’s grip as she yells at him to stop.

‘And what of this one, that tricked and mocked us? Bewitched us into trusting her, putting her to work and homing her, and all the while she was the Devil’s own?’

His words are met with silence, turned backs and averted eyes.

‘You see what she is now,’ he says. ‘No dairymaid, but the Haworth witch-whore.’

‘Leave be, Gabriel,’ Mr Taylor says. A web of blood drapes across his knuckles.

‘Enough done today.’

I struggle but cannot free myself from the grasp of Gabriel’s meaty fingers. Cast my eyes down and see claws, run my tongue over fangs. ‘You see what I am?’ I scream. ‘Then look upon me some more, for this is nowt to what will be. I shall haunt your waking and sleeping hours all, until you see nowt but his face, hear nowt but his cries, and you shall know your own hand in the evil done here. I wed myself to any being that will make it so. And I shall spill the blood of each and every one of you while this day is done.’

I sink my teeth into Gabriel’s hand and he lets go with a cry, releasing me to fall upon the others. Tear at skin until my nails are thick with it and warm blood tracks my fingers. Dig into eyes, rip hair out by the handful.

‘A curse upon you all,’ I scream. ‘Your every child shall wither and die before you.’

They fall back as I bear down upon them, whimpering and raising their hands as though the heat of hell itself burns through me.

‘Pestilence shall pass from house to house until you all have suffered as he.’