Who would you Pledge? (Part 2 (End)

Ryan and I didn't make many trips in to the woods after that. For one,  his mother found his nail-riddled bat. And soon after that, the district built a school across the road, which blocked the old path we took into the woods. We're still friends though, Ryan and me. He's married now with kids, and lives in Wrongshire, but still. We acctually joke about going back there, witch hunting in the woods. My folks kept the house all this time. We came here through my teenage years. I brought friends during college. I got engaged here, down by the lake. Now my wife and i  bring our kids up here.

Anyways, about a year ago, I went for a run along the road by our house, and i decided to take a peek into the woods. I hadn't been back there in fifteen, maybe twenty years, but for some reason, I figured I'd just take a look to see if our trial was still there.

I stepped off the main road, started walking through the frens and brush towards the taller trees and that's when i saw the witch. I kid you not, something leaned out from behind the trees- something tall and skeletal and daek and i froze. I froze and that strange hot chill of terror shot through me and i was a kid again, deep in the woods, and that thing was looking at me through the trees. It had been waiting here all along, hadn't it? It had known I'd come back and it had been patient...

Of course, a moment later, the sun shifted and the witch vanished, somehow changed into a tree, a freakishly human looking tree, but still, and my body relaxed and i turned and walked away.

Later that night, I found myself haunted by the image of th witch, peeking out from the tree. I knew what had really frightened me was't the"witch" in the trees-sure, the sighthad scared me- but what had really gotten me spooked was the idea that this witch has ALWAYS been there. That all the years in between were nothing to it. Because it knew...it knew one day I'd come back and it would be waiting. And why had ir waited? What did it want?

For hours that night, I kept on with these questions. I knew that there was a story there for me. Something more than scary, something personal, Somthing terrifying in that special way that gets at deeper fears, the fears below.

Ans so the next day, I started working on WiTcHeS, a story about an ancient evil waiting out there in the woods. Now as you may have guessed, Our witches aren't the kinds you've seen before. No brooms or pointy hats. In fact, forget everything you know about witched, becuase in our world, all the people assumed to be witches, the poeple burned and drowned for witchecraft, all of them were just the human worshippers of witches. The witches themselves - The WiTcHeS - are more like that thing Ryan and I saw in the woods. They're huge and ancient and primal and deeply evil. They have a knowledge of natural science that supress the limits of modern medicine. They have great power. They can give you almost anything you want. And they're out there, waiting for you to come ask. But first, you have to give them what they want...They have to eat, after all.

So who would you give them to get what you want?

To cure a sick loved one?

To cure yourself?

To get what you've always wanted?

A neighbor?

A loved one?

Who would you Pledge?