I Curse This Land

In a sleepy coastal village a curse lies waiting. Legend has it one night centuries ago when a smuggler was delivering his illicit wares, the excise men pounced. One of the villagers had betrayed him. The smuggler was caught and quickly hanged as an example but, his widow was more than she seemed, the practitioner of an ancient religion of magic and sorcery. The villagers formed a mob to hunt her down as a witch, they brutalised her, tarred and feathered her, but before they could kill her she put one last curse upon the land; that nothing should flourish, no life or love, before taking her own life and spilling her blood upon the land.