Chapter 4

The next morning, Ethan dragged Sarah, barely conscious, into the main hall of the ranch house.

The ranch hands were assembled, their faces grim or curious.

On a central table sat Sarah' s most cherished possession: an antique silver music box, a family heirloom she had intended for her twins.

Ethan picked it up.

With a roar of rage, he smashed it violently on the polished wooden floor. Silver fragments scattered.

"This woman," Ethan announced, his voice booming, "used this... this trinket... for dark folk magic! Hoodoo! Learned from her outsider family!"

He pointed a shaking finger at Sarah. "She used it to curse Brenda' s pregnancy! To harm my unborn child!"

Pastor Davies stepped forward, his expression solemn.

"It is true," Davies intoned. "I have examined the remnants. This music box was imbued with a potent curse, fed by Sarah' s bitterness and jealousy. It could have brought ruin to the Walker ranch, and death to the innocent child Brenda carries."

Brenda, clutching her stomach, let out a theatrical sob. "My baby... oh, my poor baby!"

Ethan slapped Sarah hard across the face. Her head snapped back.

"Confess!" he demanded.

Sarah, her lips split and bleeding, could barely speak. "No... I didn't... I've been... sick... confined..."

Brenda suddenly cried out, a sharp, piercing sound. She stumbled, clutching her arm.

"She scratched me!" Brenda wailed, showing a thin, red scratch on her forearm – a mark she' d made herself earlier, or perhaps from Sarah's desperate lunge in the barn.

Ethan' s eyes blazed with renewed fury. "More proof of your malice!"

A stern, long-serving Walker family housekeeper, fiercely loyal to Ethan and what she believed Brenda represented, brought a piece of paper and a pen.

"Write your confession, girl," the housekeeper ordered, her voice like flint.

Sarah, slumped against a post, shook her head weakly.

Ethan' s voice dropped, becoming deadly soft. "If you do not confess, Annie, I will ensure you never learn the true, final resting place of your twins."

He paused, letting the cruel words sink in. "The burial you know of... it was not their final peace."

That broke her. The faintest, most desperate hope of one day finding them, of properly mourning them, was all she had left.

Tears streamed down her face.

She couldn' t hold the pen. Ethan grabbed her bleeding hand, the one with the fence-mending cuts, and forced her finger onto the paper, smearing a mark in her own blood.

"Enough," he said, satisfied.

He ordered her locked in the damp, cold root cellar beneath the old smokehouse.

"Let her contemplate her evil," he said to the housekeeper.

Three days later, Sarah died.

The snake venom, the untreated infection from the C-section, the constant abuse, and a profoundly broken heart finally claimed her. She lay on the cold earth floor, clutching a shard of the silver music box.

Ethan, a strange disquiet finally piercing his rage, went to check on her.

He found her lifeless body.

He stared, then fell to his knees.

"Annie!" he choked out, gathering her cold form in his arms. "Annie, wake up! Don' t do this to me! Annie!"