The Irish Witch Society

In the 17th century a group of Irish witches were found in a desolate country cottage on the misty moor of Ireland - there were five of them.In the night only the candlelight in the upper window of the cottage showed any sign of people inside, and as the potato farmer of the Regan family led his posse to the cottage, with pitchfork and torches at hand, the five witches carried on their Satan worshipping, aware of the controversy that was about to be bestowed upon them.When the Regan family arrived they immediately ascended the stairs - they could hear...nothing...apart from their chants of hate and defiant footsteps up the stairs.

James Regan stood in the doorway of the room, completely speechless of what he was seeing: his son was laid before a woman in a dark cloak at the back of the room and various others around in a semi-circle, giving wide berth to the boy and the pentagram in the middle of the room.The candlelight flickered and James Regan stood their unable to move, hypnotised by the enormity of what was happening before him; the women's eyes were closed, and they were on their knees - all of them, and Daniel lay before the women at the back eyes open, but not with them at all - not dead, no but in the place between consciousness and unconsciousness, or so James thought, until the boy started to jerk: legs and arms shaking, making thuds, hitting the wooden floorboards, eyes rolling back; and this was when James regained anything he had lost in those few moments; but it was too late: as he stepped forward to stop whatever was happening to his son (careful to avoid the pentagram), the woman raised her hands above her head in a tight, devilish grip that beheld a dagger between them and brought it down rapidly into Daniels chest.The climax of the moment took place; and just like every climatic moment, it happened quickly: Daniel went rigid, arms and legs raising slightly and then falling in a permanent restful position. The women raised both hands above their heads in a wide arc as if to welcome a guest that was coming from the ceiling. James Regan knew nothing of what they were doing and neither did his fellow search/mob party. The room flooded; the woman on the left closest to the door was whacked around the head with a torch. Blood flew from her mouth onto the wall and she swiveled to her right, holding herself up with her hands, only to be stood on with a firm boot; the next moment a pitchfork was lodged into her back below the shoulder blades. The women on the right closest to the door was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of the window on her left.James Regan had seized his dead son and held him, sobbing helplessly. The woman on the interior left of the gathering was ready to stab James in the back on order to defend herself; but only achieved further enragement: she was shot in the head with an English Civil War pistol, mid stride by Wayne and blood,brains and bone hit the wall and she went limp. The women on the interior right was too shocked to do anything: her eyes were wide and all that issued from her slack mouth while all this happened was: 'I praise thee god, forgive my sins and cast me to where i belong - why did i get involved in the-' she was interrupted by the cold slap of a grieving mothers hand, and then the hands enclosed her throat until nothing came out from her evil mouth. The woman who had stabbed Daniel was prepared to be shot, for she could see Wayne was getting ready but James got into his line of sight, grabbed the woman around the throat and pinned her against the wall, with his free hand he slogged her one on the jaw, shattering it. She did not fail to pull a sadistic evil grin that enraged them further.The evil women were burned, the last one alive and in the dead of the night her shrill screams of laughter while crumpling into nothingness sent a shiver down their spines. The Regan's had lost everything: Daniel was the only son they had bared and he was sole heir to everything they owned and he was gone; never to smile, laugh, speak, or dream again.'At least we got our justice,' Wayne said, and James replied bitterly: 'No...no, we didn't...they got what they wanted.'James had told them all to go home: Wayne, Sarah, Jim, Eon,and Charley. James went into the cottage one last time, and into the room where everything happened, and an old book was in the far corner. He strides toward it, to see what these women were all bout: to see what their objective was. Halfway across the room he heard heavy footsteps - HEAVY footsteps - in the room? the hallway? downstairs? James didn't know and he realised just then that he had walked over the pentagram and he had smudged it over with his heavy boot. James never was a believer in anything spiritual or anything beyond the ordinary, but just in case he stepped out of the pentagram - lucky he had only smudged it, but this was only denial, even James could do the math, but he had to keep composed for himself...for his family. He advanced to the book and opened up on a random page: diagrams of the pentagram were frequented in the book and droplets of blood decorated the pages, as well as riddles and sensual poems of lustful desires of 'Satan', upside down crosses? James had no idea what the symbols were but he knew who Satan was, and was frankly not surprised to see his name present.Got to keep calm, composed, be sensible he put the book down gently and turned to the smudged pentagram, looking for the slightest gap between chalk, found nothing and decided that his nerves were getting the best of him.

Just when he was ready to leave and daylight started to decorate the room luxuriously, the downstairs front door gave an earth shattering crack, that scared James silly. 'Hello!...Who's there!' Or whose left,James thought dreadfully. He went down the stairs hoping that maybe it was Wayne or Sarah but no answer confirmed his previous suspicions. The room went suddenly cold, and he was sweating... it was like being submerged in cold water. Hastily he left the lonely cottage and halfway up the hill to his farm James thought he heard laughter coming from the cottage...horrible shockingly deep laughter that plagued his nightmares forever after that, but sometimes he questioned whether he was awake or not, until one night he woke up and looked out of his window into the dark of the night; the cottage would have been a speck in the distance if he could see it...instead he heard a slam that would have been huge if he were in the living room of that horrible cottage. James shivered, for he knew, but pretended not to.A candlelight was distant but it was in that room, and James knew it, there was also something in that room, he knew that too...another thing James knew: that cottage wasn't empty: the devil lived in that cottage.