Memories From the Hollow
I
Damnation
He looks so very like her.
Standing before him now is like standing before a mirror, one which reflects back the hideousness of the past. The dark of his hair, the slightness of his form, and the worry on his brow; it's as if the man is the one seeing the dead, now.
The irony is not lost on Judge Hopkins.
No podium to elevate him above human morality, the Judge stands timid, ashamed, as he is addressed. The boy with the book stares in fierce bewilderment. "How could you?" he demands. "She was just a little kid… she was no different than me."
So very, very like her…
Her sentence passes, and she begins to shake. Lonely tears dance softly off her cheeks as she protests. But a child cannot stand alone against the Council; a child. A single child, no older than Hopkins' own granddaughter.
"I was only playing…" Her words catch against his chest – but her chains rattle, and Hopkins emerges from his stupor.
The filthy witch, the demon. She's bewitching him as plain as day! "Aye! With fire!" The Judge roars. "You were speaking with the dead!" Such insolence, such evil, to try and beguile him so! No good child of his state would carry wickedness in her veins! Hopkins is burning with the fire of the Lord, the fires which will judge the monster as it cowers on the floor. "I will not risk damnation on these good people!"
The Council closes in, and Hopkins prays their souls remain untarnished by the witch's tears. For the souls of the righteous, he commands: "You are to be taken to the place of execution… "
For the souls of his grandchildren, clean and pure and fearful of the demon among them. "Where you are to be hanged by the neck…"
For Hopkins' own soul as it stands clean and cool before God, unwavering in its resolve to do right by his fellow man. He prays quickly for God to give him strength against bewitchment, to protect him from the pleading child, for her screams to fall on deaf ears as he condemns her, O Lord pleasesave us all!
"Until you be dead!"
But as the sentence leaves him, Hopkins feels not the joy of doing right in the name of the Lord. He feels not the strength of righteousness, or the courage of a man without sin. Instead he feels heavy, and hateful, and black, as if something – something is not right.
It takes the Judge only a moment to realize precisely what sits wrongly with him, because it's then, as he has declared himself, that he sees not the witch… but the child. The child he has sentenced as fear consumes her entirely, and at once he sees his granddaughter's fear. Rage burns bright upon the skin of Agatha Prenderghast, bright and powerful, and soon it is blinding.
He has realized now. He has not saved the souls of his kin, or Council. He has failed to protect what is good and right. But most of all…
"I'll make you sorry! I'll make you all sorry!"
He has failed to protect these good people from themselves. And this is their damnation.
Quivering, quaking before the damnable present, Judge Hopkins sees his last moments reflected in the eyes of the Prenderghast boy. He sees the eyes of Agatha, especially; their anguish, their perceptiveness to the suffering of the damned. Hopkins feels unworthy of extending his spindly, rotting fingers in search of salvation - for really what right has he? He recoils in fear of the boy's ferocity, as if he, too, might send them to a hotter circle of hell.
This is their punishment, he knows. With each rattling step and drag of decaying flesh, he knows. In the accusing glare of the boy with the book, the boy with the gift – he knows. The only true crime against God is the betrayal of that little girl's soul.
He is guilty. He is damned. He is the soul, the memory, the life of injustice passed in a prison of his own making. Judge Hopkins sees now, through the eyes of a dead man, that only Agatha's gift will see these good people finally put to rest.
The boy is so very like her…