The town did not have a name; it had nothing to its name either. It had no outstanding attributes but for its simmering heat, one that made the air shimmer. Sweat clung to the skin like water in the rain, although it was not common to see rain in the town. The stores were empty but for a small grocer selling the same thing every day, the only things that would grow in the sandy soil. Carrots, beets, radishes, okra.

The only thing that attracted visitors to the town was the ghost that haunted it, the story of Mary Gray. The story of a child, born only fifteen years before her death. Her parents had immigrated from Spain, and she would tell us wonderful stories about the dancing dragons and fairies, only to laugh and tell us she had never been, born and raised in this small town.

Sometimes somebody would ask her about her name, voices going quiet as if she might strike them for offending her. Barbaric, that’s what they called the immigrants in the South. But she was only a girl, one that had been born and raised here; sixteen years ago she was brought into the world. She would answer by telling them she had been born here, why would she not have such a name? But nobody believed her but the very nurse who had witnessed her birth. “You’re not from here,” they would say. “You’re not like us.”

Mary Gray lived in a small blue house with both of her parents and her younger brother, everybody knew it. Everybody knew because her mother was the only one who could raise flowers in the sweltering heat, and every morning she would open her doors to sell them. But when they left the house they only lasted a few days. Jealous wives would begin to call her a witch, and a witch’s daughter was a witch all the same.

Everybody loved Mary Gray and her family, they said. What reason was there not to love them? The answer was none, really. But the schoolgirls envied the flowers their mothers couldn’t tend to, the food their mothers couldn’t cook, the happiness that they could never find in their households. Their bitterness turned to hate, and that hate paved the way to anger. Anger that, in their minds, was rightfully justified by the mother’s witchcraft and spells.

Yes, they said. That was it. The mother was a witch, and her daughter would follow in her footsteps.

A witch, witch, witch, they sang, in the school halls when Mary Gray had left. The teachers heard it, but they said nothing, because in their hearts they believed it too. In the summer, surrounded by endless waves of heat, her mother’s flowers sat on the windowsill for months on end. In the early morning, you could see the girl tending to the flowers with her mother, pruning the stems and leaves.

A few months had passed and it was late August, a few weeks before the new school year started, when the rumors really began to blossom. Over in Salem, they were putting witches in jail, burning them, drowning them. The news spread like wildfire, and in the buzz that surrounded the town for the next few days, you could hear whispers of Mary Gray’s name shot from ear to ear like contraband.

The grocer heard the young girls talk as they accompanied their mothers, their mouths running like dripping water. A faint mutter, silence. Soft laughter. They entertained the idea. The idea that what if–just what if–Mary Gray was a witch? She didn’t act like the other girls, she didn’t look like them. But the grocer was a friend of the Spanish mother, and he reprimanded them for their ill talk.

Shame brewed in the girls’ hearts but the shame was overcome with anger. Boiling, rancid anger that poisoned their young minds. They went home to their mothers, begging and wailing and telling stories of the spells they had seen Mary Gray cast, the incantations they had heard her speak. 

Did you hear, did you hear?

What?

The next day the grocer had told Mary Gray’s family of the accusations. They sat in their house in silence, and the flowers seemed to wilt with their fear. They heard of the witches being burned at the stake, or tied to a chair and thrown into a river. They said they would leave, that same very night.

That girl, the immigrant girl.

Who, Mary Gray?

That night the family stuffed their belongings in bags, running around the house. Even from outside, you could hear the sharp cries of the son, only nine years old.

I heard she’s a witch.

Nobody really knew what happened that night. Some people said it was one of the girls, some people said that Mary Gray had tipped over a lantern in her rush to leave. Some people said that it was too dry, that the fire had come from nowhere or there had been a single lightning strike. But that same night, the blue house erupted into flames, flicking over the flowers and roaring to life, until the whole home was ashes and dust.

No one heard a single shout after the fire started, a single cry. It was all silent but for the crackling of the flames and the softest sound of the flowers burnt to a crisp. Some thought the family had fled from the back and run away, some believed them dead.

But no matter what happened to them, the town was shocked into silence; the weight of both the summer heat and the presence of arson and death dragged down its inhabitants.

The grocer never closed his shop. Carrots, beets, radishes, okra. 

Even in the winter, there were still traces of heat, and that was all the town had to its name. That, and the story of Mary Gray.