Ezekiel’s stares were the first warning sign. Lust for violence is something that humans can’t keep suppressed, sooner or later it always bubbles to the surface for all to see. I could see the flames already, a golden hue in what are otherwise dreadfully unappealing eyes. He would lock on to me as I passed him in the square, across the aisle during a sermon, and even in my dreams there he was, judging, ploting, premeditating.

The next sign were the whispers. I’m not a stranger to sideways glances or idle gossip, but this was something entirely different. Women would group together like crows when I walked past them, huddled and whispering fiercely, as if it were a matter of life or death. And later I would find out that it was a matter of life or death after all.

Over the course of a year, things in their little town had begun to take a dark turn. What once were vibrant and lively streets turned dark and cold. Children no longer freely played, their parents kept them under strict watch. No one loitered in public, for fear of unwanted company or attention. And it seemed as though there was a new death every week.

Mortality rates were normally high, but this was something else. Healthy men would die overnight, without a word of warning, entire flocks would grow ill and spread their diseases across a farm, homes would burn with husbands and wives still inside, arson being the only plausible culprit. Yet, as much as the constable tried, there was never a shred of evidence that foul play was involved in these disasters. There were no signs of struggle where the murders occured, no one but the shepard had gone near the flock, and no signs of fleeing from the fires.

Naturally, this led the town’s noble priest Ezekiel to declare what his years of liturgical education had taught him to be the culprit of any unexplained phenomena, there were witches in Salem.

If Ezekiel had spent more time studying botany, pathology, or chemistry, maybe he would have realized that this was the work not of witches, but the new colonies’ first serial killer.