Within a month, the house itself would be gone along with any memories or records that ever demonstrated it’s existence. After the clean up crew had completed their job, there were no tax records, titles or land transfers on the property itself to indicate that the empty lot had been anything other than a weed-choked eyesore that was owned by a negligent city. The weeds that sprouted overnight were as much a joke as they were a cover-up. The eldritch work detail enjoyed playing pranks when the opportunity presented itself and the simple growth spell camouflaged their work perfectly to the casual observer. The ragweed that grew to man-height overnight made everyone in the neighborhood with allergies suffer. Once their work was done, the Coven would disappear into the background again with nary a ripple on the surface of reality to show it had ever been present.

Like their forebearers, the antecedent inheritors of the Coven’s traditions had learned to perform their work invisibly and vanish into nothingness. Survival of the Coven meant absolute secrecy above all. Those who violated the terms of their sacred oath, were subject to the justice of the Coven. The only evidence that Krystyn had ever existed would soon lay in the minds of the two eternal babes in the hands of Baptist missionaries three states south. As time went on, Brad’s mind would deteriorate until what was in his cute infant head resembled the outer shell that remained of his former existence. In a month at most, his mind would regress into early infancy, leaving not a shred of clue to what had happened that morning.

Krystyn’s mind would suffer a far more ghastly fate. An enchantment had been laid on her to prevent her mind from deteriorating like Brad’s psyche. As a precaution, a geas was laid upon her to keep her from attempting to communicate her true intelligence by any means to her caretakers. By her behavior, she would appear to be a normal infant. The geas would force her to crawl, play, giggle, babble and bawl like any infant, whether she willed it or no. Her body would become an infant automaton which would house Krystyn’s adult mind. Brad would at least be allowed the blessing of nepenthe so that his fate would not be an unhappy curse for more than a month. Given his behavior with his former girlfriends, Becky judged his fate to be just. Krystyn, on the other hand, had incurred the wrath of the Coven and had been stripped of her powers as well as her body. She would retain her memories and self-awareness, but without any mental defenses against the barrage of Christian preaching and exorcisms which would eventually grind her down to a naked ego who would become terrified of spells and witchcraft as the metaphysical ideology of her caretakers ate its way into her mind like a horrible worm-like parasite that devoured her psyche, leaving tunnels in her reason that were back-filled with the waste of illogical myth.

The knowledge that she had been a witch and that her own activities had caused the curse of God to fall upon her would shrivel her soul like a sun-dried raisin. The effect of the geas would also prevent her from mentally accepting Christ as her Lord, so that avenue of escape was closed to her as well. She would become a weepy, whiny, fearful personality whose infant body would fit like a tailored suit. She would regret that she had ever been born and live in terror of her personal Judgement Day when (as she would come to believe) she would crouch on all fours at the feet of God to receive His eternal damnation for the abominable sin of witchcraft. The very smell of her poopy diapers would become a curse of their own as they reminded her several times daily of the fetid reek of Hell which was to become the place of her eternal torment on the day that she died. There would be nothing in her life to bring her heart gladness or solace of soul. Everything that she would do as an infant would incur guilt as every loving thing that was done for her would remind her of the price that must be paid for sinning against God’s commandments as set forth in the Bible whose every word she would know and come to believe in.

While she would be Baptized early in her stay with the Baptists, the pious act on the part of the minister would make no difference to a person who constitutionally could not accept the ascendance and forgiveness of God. She had committed evil as an adult and could not accept Jesus into her heart. Her helpless body would not even permit her to make an evil-ameliorating act that a Catholic Bishop might praise. Krystyn would know no redemption for her sins on Earth. Knowing this, her mind would descend into a continuous consideration of the horrors the next life would bring. The loving arms of her caretakers as they carried her helpless body from one room to another would bring forth images of demons who would carry her equally helpless soul from one torture pit to the next.

If she was lightly paddled on her diapered bottom for being naughty, she would imagine the barbed, acid-dripping, poisoned demonic scourges that were soon to come to flay the ethereal “skin” from the corpus of her soul and she would scream in absolute terror as she befouled her diaper in fear each time she was spanked. Since the Baptists believed in corporal punishment for childhood naughtiness and the restructuring of her brain by the geas would force her into occasional infantine waywardness, it was a punishment that she would receive many times in the years to come.