Servant of Evil

Prologue

Her sister's eyes were open again. Blinking and blown out, the whites as bright as a frightened hog that was about to have its throat cut open, gyrating violently in her skull. Who would have guessed that these symptoms would have meant witchcraft only a few years in the future. However, it was not the Devil's black hand causing such a fit, not right now. Not yet.

Now that she was thinking about it, though, her sister was a lot like the hogs in the yard. With Father ill and busy, she had been giving them their feed. They were ravenous, consuming anything and everything she dumped into their stall. That was the only thing different between her sister and the hogs- her sister wouldn't eat. Whenever she did, she brought it right back up a little while later in the form of sickening green-yellow-brown goop, curdled and chunked, a mess all over the old pine floors. The hogs would have slurped the puddle right back up, finding it delightfully appetizing. Her sister did not.

Hogs would eat everything if they could. Hogs could eat whole bodies.

But, like the hogs, her sister would squeal in frenzied fits of fever, limbs thrashing and cracking against the floorboards, body convulsing with awful spasms, foaming at the mouth. Like the hogs, she drooled, mouth ajar and oozing, saliva a faint color of yellow. Like the hogs, she reeked, body odor on top of bile on top of blood on top of pus on top of urine. Like the hogs, she wouldn't respond to things being said to her.

Her sister had been asleep for a long time. Sometimes her eyelids would flutter, sometimes she would twitch and make strangled noises more befitting for a wild animal in a snare, but she did not fully wake.

Not until that moment, of course, and her eyes were fully open and hog-like.

Her older sister's eyes were like their mother's, a shade of amber so dark they looked completely black in the dimness of their house. But in the sun they would light up in brilliant orangey-brown hues, bringing out the faintest yellow speckles around the pupils, glittering like gemstones. Seeing them now, glazed and glassy, black pupil merging with near-black iris, was like looking at some sick rendition of what they used to be, so false, so fake.

Her own eyes were like their father's- blue-green, like the river that ran through the village. In the dark, they grew as murky as unsettled water, and when she was upset, they became cloudy like a brewing storm. Her mother said they were prettiest when the first rays of sun would hit them, almost making them glow in the early hours of dawn.

She hadn't heard anything of her mother in quite some time. She would have to go see her soon. She desired to be complimented so highly some more.

Right now, however, she had precious moments of her older sister being conscious. There was so much to say.

"Finally," Mary Warren whispered, dropping the knucklebones she had been playing with aimlessly. They clicked loudly against the wooden floorboards, making her flinch slightly at her own mess, but she noticed that her sister strangely didn't react to the clamor, despite how noisy it was.

One thing she deeply regretted was finishing cleaning so quickly. Despite being the only working member of the house at the moment, she still managed to get all the chores done rather fast and had nothing else to do. That being said, she was delighted to have her sister awake again.

"I have been waiting for you," Mary went on. "It has been so quiet without you. Can you stand now? Are you better?"

Her sister continued to stare at her like she was pointing their father's gun in her face. She blinked her fake eyes rapidly, acting as though she was seeing some kind of false reality instead of the actual one. Then, she opened her cracked lips and made a strangled sound that Mary wasn't able to discern.