It was odd, everyone agreed, that a woman with a baby would choose to live so far from town in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But what unsettled the villagers most wasn’t Cora’s isolation. Misfortune seemed to follow wherever she went. Cows mysteriously became sick and dried up after she passed by. In hungry times, her table never lacked fresh fish, though others’ nets came up empty. Once, a boy fell deathly ill after mocking her child. Fear grew, and soon, whispers spread: Cora was no ordinary outsider. Some said she practiced dark magic. Unfortunately for Cora, just as the rumors about her being a witch reached their peak, a ship captained by a Salem, Mass, ran aground near Frisco. While waiting to find out what to do with what was left of the vessel and its cargo, Captain Eli Blood and his crew took refuge in the town. Blood, who considered himself a witch hunter after studying the methods the Puritans used during the Salem Witch Trials, caught wind of Cora’s bewitching reputation.
Then it happened: a body washed ashore, a jagged 666 carved into the man’s forehead. No one saw Cora near the scene. Still, the villagers swore they found small footprints, too dainty for a man, leading away from the corpse and vanishing into the woods. Blood demanded that she be caught and put through ‘tests’ that would determine if she was really a witch. Once she was captured, the captain tied up Cora and threw her into the water. If she floated, she was surely a witch.
She floated. After several other experiments, Capt. Blood was absolutely convinced Cora was indeed a witch and called for her immediate execution. He tied her and the infant to a tree as the townsfolk argued that there should be a proper trial to decide the fate of the two.
As dark, threatening clouds rapidly moved in overhead, replacing clear blue skies, Blood hurriedly moved to light the kindling at the trunk of the tree when a blinding bolt of lightning struck the very spot where Cora had been bound.
When the smoke cleared, Cora and her baby were gone, vanished. All that remained was a single word, scorched deep into the tree: CORA.
Written By John G. Clark Jr.
