The people all rushed out of the hall as soon as what the governor said sunk in. We followed them through the doors and out into the square. Jeanette was being roughly pushed by two men, one being the farmer that accused her yesterday, and the other being the local blacksmith. His name was Jonathan, and had always been kind to me. Right now, all I felt from everyone, including him, was hatred and fear.
The people were shouting horrible things to Jeanette, pointing at her and screaming. The Pastor's girls were following closely behind the Pastor and Governor, and were convulsing in a manner that was completely unknown to me. It looked as if their joints were fused, and they were walking in such a strange manner. Their eyes kept rolling back in their heads, and I could finally feel who had felt the dark humor in the church yesterday. It was the girls. I felt the sense of evil coming from them, and they thought what was happening was funny. I couldn't find them because the Pastor had them hidden. They were faking their ailment, and they were consumed with this newfound power they had over the people and their father. They had piggybacked off the paranoia of their father, a man with already so much power, and in turn had made all the people of Salem their pawns in a game only they knew we all were playing. I must tell Mother and Father as soon as we get into the safety of our own home.
Jeanette was walked up onto the plank, with a noose already tied and ready for her. Jonathan put the noose around her neck, causing even more shouts from the people calling for her death, and then the governor pulled the lever that caused her feet to fall. There was a moment of eerie silence as Jeanette kicked and struggled to get free to no avail, and then she died. The worst part of it all, I could feel her fear and her resilience, even in the face of death, and then when that moment her soul left her body, I felt nothing from her. It was a silence I had not known before this moment. I prayed silently that her soul would pass through the gates of heaven and pass judgement to be allowed into heaven and have a wonderful afterlife.
Her death was followed with cheers from the people. They had genuinely felt that they had done something right by killing this woman, just for practicing healing magic. She had done nothing wrong, and she was killed for being different. I looked at the faces around me, Father's and the members of the council were stoic, Mother's and a few other women were worried, my friends from primary school were cheering with the others, all except one, a boy named Josiah. Josiah and I were close when we were little, but as we grew we became friends with people of the same sex as we were supposed to. He met my eyes and matched my expression, his and mine were ones of fear. We both knew that this was just the beginning. Who would be next?