She stood unwavering as the flames licked at her bare toes. The straw hissed and crackled as the fire swallowed the pyre whole, wrapping around her like a thick blanket. She stared at the crowd, chanting and hollering.

“WITCH!”

They screamed it as if it were a bad thing. Something negative. Something to be ashamed of. She knew her power. She knew what she was capable of. If they were smarter, they would have known, too. But alas, she let the flames consume her, unbothered by the heat.

Their hollering got louder as the flames grew bigger. They were certain she was dying a slow, painful death under the heat. Little did they know, she’d summoned the others. They rose in the smoke and danced around her, protecting her with the very thing meant to destroy her.

They’d all been through this before. Just like her, they hadn’t burned. Silly fuckers didn’t understand that witches don’t burn.

“I think our house is haunted,” she whispered to Ted as the woman drifted out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

Ted stared, frozen in place.

“I guess it’s a good thing Scott is with his grandparents this weekend,” Stacy whispered, her eyes still glued to where the woman had just wafted by.

“What … what do we do?” Stacy asked.

Hurriedly, they rushed up the stairs to their bedroom and slammed the door shut. “I think maybe we should go find a priest or something. Maybe they can help us get these ghosts out of here.”

“Ghosts? You think there’s more than one? More than just that woman downstairs messing with our kitchen?” Ted looked horrified.

As she rounded the corner, the face remained, following her. Strings of spit clung to the razor-sharp teeth grinning at her. Clouds of its breath fogged the window. She stared in pure terror as it raised its gnarled, filthy fingers and tapped it’s long, dirt covered fingernails against the glass.