But why? Who would have an interest in seeing the town fail? As the story goes on, and more characters are introduced, McCammon gives us a pot-boiler steeped in the Carolina swamps. Someone who, clearly, wants the new settlement to fail. McCammon thus gives us a mystery Matthew, fully believing that the woman is innocent, comes to the conclusion that someone else, who he deems 'the fox', is actually behind the deeds ascribed to the witch. After some damning testimony, the magistrate is basically convinced she is guilty, but Matthew thinks otherwise.

The witch trial, however, cannot be postponed and hence is held in the jail so Matthew can keep the minutes. Shortly after their arrival, Matthew seeks shelter from a horrific downpour in a horse barn and basically stumbles into an altercation with the owner for this, he is given three days in jail and upon release, three lashes.

It soon becomes obvious that the settlement is falling apart rapidly, with people either dying or leaving the small town in droves. The supposed witch turns out to be a very attractive woman with few friends in the settlement she was married to a local preacher who, along with another preacher, were brutally killed in the early spring. I took a course in college as an undergrad on the Salem witch trials and McCammon is obviously very familiar with the ordeal. McCammon did some research here regarding witch trials in the colonies, and frequently mentions the Salem trials that happened just a decade or so before this story takes place. Once arriving, they find that basically everyone is convinced the woman in question is a witch and they are just dying to burn her alive. Together, they journey to a small settlement south of Charles Town, located amid the great salt marshes that make up the Carolina coastal zone. Our main protagonist, Matthew, is a clerk to a magistrate, the latter basically adopted Matthew from a orphanage. The plot involves the investigation of a woman accused of being a witch. The character development is also pretty amazing, as usual in McCammons' work.

The atmospheric qualities of this work are also pretty amazing you can feel and smell the dampness and such of the rough and tumble outskirts of 'civilization'. His gifts in this regard are on full display here, as McCammon takes us on a journey to the late 17th century colony of South Carolina. Even in his early horror outings, his prose stands apart. His prose is not fancy and does not involve five dollar words, yet it is mesmerizing nonetheless. McCammon is something of a wordsmith, but in a very unique way. Perhaps the best way to describe it is a historical fiction mystery thriller set in South Carolina in 1699. This is the second half of McCammon's Speaks the Nightbird and this review is for the entire novel.

Speaks the nightbird