Witch Water

CHAPTER NINE

(I)

Fanshawe groaned, feeling as though his face sat directly beneath a very bright heat lamp, and he groaned again when he heard a barking dog.

“Stay away, Winkly!” came a woman’s voice annoying as nails on slate. “It’s a dirty bum! He’s probably got lice and diseases that would be bad for a good little doggie like you!”

A slingshot-like reflex shot Fanshawe bolt upright on the path and pried his eyes open. Moving shapes formed in the block of blazing sun. Oh, no…

“Winkly! Stay!”

Fanshawe could’ve been rising from a coffin; the back of his head beat like an overburdened heart. When vision formed, a yapping poodle hopped around at the end of a taut leash. Frowning above it stood the woman in tights he’d seen before, but today the tights were rainbow-striped. Pocks of cellulite showed through the adhesive fabric, and so did rolls of fat around her belly as though tubes had been wrapped about her waist. I have a feeling this ISN’T a nightmare, Fanshawe thought. Over-mascara’d eyes looked down as if he were the lowest form of life on earth.

The poodle—Winkly—yapped and yapped and yapped, stretching its lead.

“Do you need help?” she asked with distaste. “Are you drunk?”

Fanshawe could imagine how he appeared. The annoying voice pounded in his head. “I…fell down last night, and hit my head,” he murmured.

“Fell down drunk, you mean. I guess I should call an ambulance—I don’t want to be liable…” She flipped out her cellphone but paused, her irksome expression turning more bitter. “Oh, I remember you, making faces at my poor little Winkly, scaring him out of his wits!”

Fanshawe was more irate than embarrassed. He got up, praying he wouldn’t stumble. Take a look in the mirror, then call the ambulance for yourself, he wanted to say. Suddenly he smelled something unpleasant, then noticed that Winkly, who’d stopped yelping, was now laying lines of stool very close to Fanshawe’s feet. Was the little dog actually grinning at him?

Fanshawe snapped. “Lady, if that dog shits on my Norvegese shoes, I’m going to turn the little motherfucker into the world’s first barking kickball.”

The woman burst into tears, scooped up the dog, and shuffled off. “Don’t you hurt my dog! Don’t you hurt my dog, you-you hobo!”

“Hobo, huh?” He took out his black American Express Centurion card and waved it at her. “How’s this for hobo? And by the way, you look like two hundreds pounds of cottage cheese in a hundred-pound sack. Get some of that liposuction, why don’t ya?”

The woman clopped away on wedgelike high-heels, crying outright.

Fanshawe recomposed himself when she was gone. Did I really say that? It wasn’t like him to be hateful, even when someone was hateful to him first. To do that was illogical. She’ll get over it. He felt half-cooked in his crumpled clothes, tried to brush himself off, but then noticed a flash like a sliver of light.

The looking-glass lay in a clump of grass just off the trail. He picked it up, pocketed it, then took the trail down back toward town.

It occurred to him how calm he was as he walked.

Calm?

How could he be calm, after all he’d seen last night?

Back in town, he righted his hair via his reflection in a shop window, then slipped into the café and washed up in the bathroom. The ache in his head receded. His watch told him it was ten in the morning.

He took his coffee to an outside table, and sat down, to think. It only took a few moments for him to realize why he hadn’t freaked out the instant he remembered his visions through the looking-glass: I was afraid I was hallucinating, I was afraid that I’d gone insane, but now? He let every impossible experience thus far flow across his mind’s eye.

I’m NOT insane.

No, he wasn’t hallucinating, he wasn’t suffering from some organic brain defect or some stress-related aberration or a “fugue-state.” It was none of that. Aside from being a voyeur, I’m perfectly normal.

Which could only mean…

The looking-glass was for real, and so was the witchcraft of its origins.

He took the glass out of his pocket and looked at it under the table. He stared as much at the implication as the object itself. It works. The damn thing WORKS…

The only explanation that made any sense was this: the looking-glass was an optical device that displayed the past.

And it means that Jacob Wraxall really was a warlock. And his daughter was a genuine witch.

Fanshawe had no more believed in the supernatural than he believed the world was flat. I’ve GOT to believe it now, he thought, with more of his previous calm. Suddenly he felt just like he had when he’d made his first million in the market.

“Why, if it ain’t the good Mr. Sir!” an all too familiar voice greeted him, “and a pleasant mornin’ it is I hope you’re a-havin’.”

Fanshawe looked up from his coffee. “Hello, Mrs. Anstruther. And, yes, I’m having a very pleasant morning.”

“A pleasanter one couldn’t be asked for, I dare say,” she said, looking up into the sun. She wore a frumpy white dress with black animal prints on it—Fanshawe’s cheek ticked when he spotted a Doberman. But suddenly she took a look at him that seemed concerned. “But, sir, I do hope you’re feeling chipper.”

“Chipper? Uh, sure…”

“I only mean—if I may say it—is you don’t appear the fresher for your night’s rest.”

Fanshawe laughed. That’s because I slept on Witches Hill. “Tossed and turned all night, couldn’t get a wink—too much coffee, I guess. But since you’re here, can I get you a cup?” he offered.

“How kindly you are, sir, but as I’m just off from me break, I’m afraid I ’aven’t the time. Much obliged, sir, much obliged, what of your generous offer. Oh, but since you just ’appen to be stayin’ in the same lodgings”—her voice lowered—“might you have ’eard anymore ’bout that poor man got done away with on the trails, done away so ’orrible like?”

“No, I haven’t, ma’am,” Fanshawe replied, and then the weight of the coincidence hit him. How come that didn’t occur to me before? Eldred Karswell had been found dead with all the flesh stripped off his head. Almost as if he got barreled…

He shrugged away the coincidence for what it was: impossibility. People don’t get ‘barreled’ in this day and age. And Mrs. Anstruther’s question reminded him, I wonder if Artie and the research guys got anymore info on Karswell. I better call him later. “But sometimes I wonder, Mrs. Anstruther. Maybe the horror from one era is no better or worse than the horror of another—it just seems to be.”

The elderly woman reflected. “Why, I never me-self thought on it that way before, sir, but I think it could be you’re right. Might be that our natures are inclined to think things is worse for us than they was for those before us.”

Fanshawe had to mention. “The wax museum might be a good case in point.”

She seemed thrilled. “Oh, so ya finally took yourself a peek in there, did ya?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did, and you were right about it—it gave me a case of the creepers. But, you know, it also showed me—the torture chamber in particular—that humankind has quite a capacity for cruelty.”

“That it does, sir, that it does.” She raised a bony finger. “And maybe if we’se wise, we can learn by what went on back then to make things a sight better now.”

“We can only hope.”

Her voice piped up, and a gleam entered her eye. “And isn’t it amusin’, sir, to consider how folk’d behave if they was able to learn from the past but also from the future?”

Fanshawe didn’t follow her. “You’d need a time machine for that, Mrs. Anstruther, or a psychic—” but then he got it. Jesus, she’s persistent. “Still trying to get me into the palm reader’s, huh?”

She feigned innocence. “Oh, no, sir. I was just bein’…what’s the word? Suppositional! That’s the word, sir, to a T: suppositional, yes, sir.”

“Yes, I suppose it is, ma’am.”

The woman shrieked laughter. “Oh, my word, sir, you’re quite the quipster, yes you is!”

“You must get a kick-back for every person you send over.”

“On my honors, sir, nothing could be more untrue. But seein’ ’ow you’s already bucked yourself up for the waxwork, why not give the palmist’s a go?”

Fanshawe looked at the woman. She’s nuttier than a can of Planter’s, but… He stood up. “You know what, Mrs. Anstruther? I think I’m going to take you up on your dare.”

“Smashing, sir! ’Tis the kind of man God most admires who don’t dither ’bout havin’ a look-in on his destiny—”

I doubt that God admires me very much right now, Fanshawe thought, almost laughing.

“—for God, too, looks quite high on a bloke with a true heart.”

Fanshawe wasn’t comfortable with all the references to ‘hearts’ lately. If thou dost have the heart, Evanore had said, emphasizing the last word. It seemed that her image from last night was daring Fanshawe to confront something, just as the old lady was.

But…confront WHAT? he wondered.

Knowledge, the idea struck him, but that could mean anything.

Or maybe it means nothing. Maybe it’s just a bunch of bullshit she’s talking, so she can get her commission from the palm-reader. “Well, I’m on my way, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Aye,” she said with a strange emphasis.

Fanshawe crossed the cobbles to the redbrick row house whose neon OPEN sign blinked on and off in the window. The bricks could’ve used a sandblasting, and the trim didn’t look like it had been painted in decades. Browned flowers stood crisp in the planters just outside the first-floor windows. Kind of a dump… But he paused before he knocked on the scuffed Federal Period door. First, the address, No. 13, struck a bad chord. Fanshawe rarely believed in omens, good or bad, but after last night?

Maybe I better start.

The next bad chord came from the doorknocker. Mounted on the door’s center stile was an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. It seemed morose, even foreboding.

Fanshawe actually considered turning back. He glanced over his shoulder—You gotta be shitting me!—and saw Mrs. Anstruther watching him, waving.

But what was he afraid of?

Nothing, he thought and rapped on the creepy knocker.

He expected someone marmish—like Mrs. Anstruther—or a foreigner, but instead the door was opened by a tall, gaunt woman—late-thirties, probably—with jet-black hair cut so severely across her bangs and neck it looked like a helmet. She seemed dull-eyed and blanched. A baggy kaleidoscopic T-shirt that read CHISWICK RECORDS hung limp on her shoulders, covering small unbra’d breasts; she also wore a black-denim skirt hemmed by safety pins, and clunky black boots. Fanshawe found the woman gawky, awkward, nerdish, yet interesting in some way. Thick black glasses made her a hybrid of a librarian and an over-the-hill punk rocker.

“Are you here for a reading?” she asked in a reedy voice.

“Yes.” He had the idea she was rattled by him being there. “But if it’s inconvenient, I can make an appointment and come back later.”

She yipped a laugh. “In a recession? Are you kidding? I’m just shocked to have a customer this early. Come on in.”

Fanshawe entered an old-style parlor crammed with old portraits, old furniture, and smoke-stained wallpaper. He liked the cliché. A bumper sticker over a transom read CHIROMANCY IS SEXY. Fanshawe guessed this was another name for fortune telling. “So I guess you’re Letitia Rhodes?”

“Yes, and—” She turned quickly to glance at him. Her eyes looked absurdly large behind the thick glasses. “And you are…well, your first name either starts with an S or an F, but I’m leaning toward the F.”

He remembered the word PSYCHIC in the window. A con, he suspected. She could easily have found out my name. “Better to lean the other way.”

Her shoulders drooped. “Aw, well. Can’t get ’em all.” Her long white hand bid a scroll-couch of some loud red velvety fabric. “Have a seat…S.”

“It’s Stew, Ms. Rhodes.”

“Just call me Lett.”

Lett… He sat down, waiting for her to close her eyes, touch her forehead, and suddenly divine his last name, but she didn’t.

“Sorry it’s so warm”—and she rushed to a wall unit and turned it on. “The damn power company—they raise the rates for no reason.”

“They’ve been known to do that.”

She sat down across from him and pulled out an antique wooden box the size of a toaster oven. She smiled at him, but Fanshawe got the vibe that she was unsettled. By me? One way or another, though, the smile was manufactured. “What kind of reading are you interested in?”

“Well, the palm-reading sounds all right—”

“I can do charts, too,” she added quickly. “Costs more but—” but the rest fell away.

“Let’s try with the simplest first,” Fanshawe said.

Another stiff smile. “That would be palmistry, which is probably the oldest form of fortune telling, and the most widespread. It’s twenty…dollars per palm”—she fidgeted through a pause—“but there’s a summer discount! Fifteen?”

Fanshawe needed to break some ice. She’s not very good at making herself credible. “I’ll pay the twenty…if it’s good.”

“Well, I can’t promise you a favorable reading, but I can promise an accurate one.” She didn’t even look at him when she continued, “More accurate than any reading you’ve ever had.”

“I appreciate confidence,” he said, “and I’m sure you’re right. I’ve never had a reading before.”

She peered at him, obviously doubting him. “No? Never? Never in your life?”

Then it dawned on him. “Oh, yeah. Coney Island, when I was a kid.” Am I supposed to think that she sensed that? He crossed his legs, hoping he didn’t look too disheveled after spending the night on the hill, but at the same moment, she quickly got up, came over to him, and brushed off his shoulder.

“You’ve got some grass there,” then she offered another crumpled smile and sat back down. “Did you sleep in the woods?” she added with a giggle. Fanshawe frowned. Actually—yes. From the box, she withdrew a fancy square of ornately fringed linen that had a sandalwood scent, and spread it on the low table between them. Fanshawe squinted; sewn into the fabric were letters and designs like he’d seen on the Gazing Ball’s stand, and in the portrait of Wraxall and Evanore.

“So other than Coney Island, you’ve never had your fortune told in any way?” she asked, still puttering a the table.

“Nope”—he tried to make a joke that turned out not to be very funny. “Just at my stock broker’s.”

Letitia grumbled, and muttered, “Fuck…”

Fanshawe peered at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “The reason I’m sucking wind is because of this damn recession. Every time I think about all those stock brokers and CEO’s and bank presidents and mortgage lenders who caused this because of their own greed—I wish I could put an exsanguination hex on them.”

Fanshawe laughed a bit too loudly. “A what hex?”

“Oh, I’m just bitching. It’s a medieval curse that makes corrupt people bleed from all their orifices. The bastards. They’re all like that jackass Madoff—could care less about who they destroy as long as they fill their coffers.”

Fanshawe, still chuckling to himself, at least felt sure he was not one of the “Madoff’s” she referred to. I never ponzi’d or short-sold. I never cheated investors, did I? No, no way. I earned my money the old fashioned way: I gambled on long shots and got REALLY lucky.

Lett sprinkled something like dull glitter over the linen. “Seramef dust,” she said. “It jacks up the psychic ambience, kind of like using higher octane in your car.” When she looked up, she started, then gawkily went “Oooo! You have a very pronounced aura. But don’t ask me what color it is. I never tell.”

Fanshawe sighed. “Come on.”

“Nope. Sorry.” She shrugged. “It’s low class.”

Aura, huh? “All right, Lett, then tell me this”—Fanshawe had to know. “Does Mrs. Anstruther get a cut of your fee if she sends someone over?”

Lett’s face tensed in a displeasure. “That old biddy! I told her she was hard-selling people too much!” Then her lips pursed. “Yeah, I pay her five bucks for each customer.”

“I knew it!”

Lett made a single, silent clap. “She’s a kick in the tail, I’ll tell ya, but I guess I shouldn’t complain; she does bring in some business.” Still, the woman seemed flustered. She exhaled hard. “All right! We’re ready! You said both hands, right?”

“I didn’t say, but let’s do both.”

Very quickly, she grabbed his left hand. “It’s best to start to your dominant hand.”

Fanshawe was left-handed…, But she could’ve determined that by watching me, he knew.

“Left-dominant people are more subjective, and they respond more deeply to intellectual stimulus and ethereal provocation.”

Fanshawe winced at the latter term.

“They’re also more sensitive to spirituality and para-naturalism.”

Fanshawe could only stare in response.

“And…they’re more attuned to non-physical realms.”

“Jeez, I thought you’d look at my lifeline and tell me how long I’m going to live,” he said, expecting the usual clichés.

“That’s a misconception.” Now she seemed to be inspecting the undersides of his knuckles. “The lifeline has nothing to do with how long a person lives. Palmistry isn’t about one’s death, it’s about one’s life.”

Fanshawe opened his mouth to speak, but then she seemed to notice something important on his hand. “Now this I don’t see very often, you’re part Aqua Hand and part Fire Hand; it means you’re energetic but shift from one interest to another. Oh, and now I see why you’re not concerned about the summer discount.” She smiled down but not at him. “You’re very wealthy.”

Someone at the hotel could’ve told her that, he knew. And also, “You can see that by the watch.”

She glanced at the five-figure timepiece. “Oh, yeah. Didn’t notice, but left-dominants are always skeptical.” A pause as she squinted closer into his palm. “Not only are you successful in your business, you—well…wow. You’re probably a genius in your field.”

Fanshawe shrugged. “Let’s get to the good stuff.”

She giggled. “Okay. Let’s see… Mmm, yes, great heart line, and an interesting fluctuation of your Girdle of Venus. It means you’re passionate and unselfish—”

Fanshawe took exception. “You could say that about anyone and they’d find a way to agree with you—”

“It also shows me in detail that you love your wife but you’re either divorced or separated. It’s a severe injury to you…that she…” Her lips closed quickly.

“That she what?”

“You already know, so why would you want me to repeat it?”

“I’m paying you,” he pointed out. “So tell me.”

Her eyes glanced down. “Your wife hates you. She’s disgusted by you for some reason.”

The words dulled his vision; he could’ve been staring a mile off. But how could he not be impressed? There was no way she could she have known that. After a few moments, he said, “You’re right.”

“But here’s the good news!” she chirped too quickly. Her voice lowered. “There is someone else on your romantic horizon. She has more in common with you than you think, and she’s nuts about you.”

Abbie, the name unfolded in his mind. “I hope you’re right,” he muttered. I need someone to be nuts about me…

“And”—her black eyebrows shot up—“she’s here? Here in town or nearby?”

For all Fanshawe knew, Letitia might be friends with Abbie, who could easily have mentioned their date. He made a rolling gesture with his right index finger. “Just…keep telling my fortune, okay?”

Finally, a genuine smile appeared on her face. But just for a moment; she isolated one finger. “Truncated finger pad tridents, and…” She blinked. “You have a weakness—”

“So does everybody.”

“—a weakness that’s considered anti-social? Hmm. You want to be a good person but your weakness keeps you thinking you’re not.”

Fanshawe’s face seemed to turn to granite.

“It’s a weakness that nearly ruined you—not occupationally but, well…”

“Personally,” he said.

Lett clearly sensed the dark note. “But, there’s more good news!”

Fanshawe’s shoulders slumped. “Please…”

“You will soon reduce this weakness to nothing.”

He considered this. Probably EVERYONE could say they’ve nearly been ruined by a weakness or fault. This is all gray area. “You’re not being specific,” he said as if in defense. “If you can’t be specific, it’s all suggestion versus interpretation.”

She fidgeted in her seat. “I’m not sure specifically, but… Want my hunch?”

“Sure.”

“Something visual, something about seeing,” and that was all she said.

Fanshawe’s lower lip trembled.

“Something—”

“That’s, that’s fine,” he cut her off. He faked a laugh, trying to joke.

She perked up again; in fact she seemed relieved to. “But you will succeed in defeating this weakness, and the conduit to this success will, in part, be your new romantic partner.”

“In part? What other ‘parts’ might help me?”

Instantly, she answered, “A revelatory interest—”

“Revelatory?”

“Yes. Lately you’ve become interested to the point of obsession with something totally foreign to you, something you wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in at all.”

The words popped into his head without any conscious prompt: Wraxall and Evanore. The occult. Witch-water… “Why do I get this idea that you’re genuinely psychic?”

“Because I am sometimes. And sometimes I’m all wrong. Just…not today.” Her attentions returned to his palm. When his eyes flicked to hers she was looking right at him over her glasses, smiling.

“And you have a fascinating partial joining of your heartline and headline. The angles suggest a future change of the direction of your life, and it’s a drastic change.” Her expression squeezed up as if she were suddenly perplexed. “It has to do with what I said a minute ago, a sensitivity to para-naturalism and non-physical realms, meta-physics, even. Are you…” but again she didn’t finish, holding something back.

Fanshawe sighed, exasperated, and snapped, “Am I what?”

“Are you, well… Are you a student of the occult?”

He wasn’t sure how to take this, and he wasn’t sure what he even expected, but in a sense he was such a student. His sudden interest in Wraxall, and more especially the things he’d found in the hidden chamber of the attic, suggested that. He didn’t believe in such things, did he?

But did he believe in what he’d seen last night through the looking-glass?

He was about to admit that he had a slight curiosity about the topic when something on the wall was suddenly harassing his attention. Some pictures hung there, mostly photographs but one was a portrait that seemed as old as those at the hotel. Fanshawe’s eyes seemed to bloom at the image within the old carved frame. It was a clean-shaven, stark-eyed man in a Colonial hat. The man looked sullen and unexpectant, and had an overly large jaw.

Fanshawe pulled his hand out of Letitia’s, jumped up, and strode to the painting. “Hey, this is Callister Rood, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and why on earth would you…” Was she somehow fatigued by his sudden separation from her hand during the reading? “Oh, you must be staying at the Wraxall Inn.”

“That’s right. I saw the painting of Rood over there. Abbie and Mr. Wraxall claim he was a warlock who worked for Jacob Wraxall.”

Her eyes grew enthused. “So you are a student of the occult. But since when?”

“Since, well, a few days ago, I guess, but I wouldn’t call myself a student. It’s just kind of interesting to me.”

“Hmm. Well. Callister Rood was a fledgling, not a genuine warlock. And it was more than merely the occult they were interested in. It was deviltry.”

Deviltry. “I remember that word on Wraxall’s grave. It was one of the crimes he was charged with, right?”

“And found very guilty of, yes. The premeditated solicitation of the devil, to incur favor by making oblation, homage, and sacrifice to Lucifer, which, when practiced with faith, results in future actions in which the devil personally assists. This was what Wraxall, and in a sense, Rood as well, were up to. But Wraxall was the true sorcerer. Rood was his underling, and the muscle for Wraxall’s dirty-work.” Letitia popped her brows. “There was a lot of dirty work, trust me.”

Confused, Fanshawe looked back at Rood’s likeness in murky oil paint. “But why is his picture hanging on your wall?”

Now that the palm-reading session was in stasis, Letitia slouched back on the couch. Fanshawe remained standing when she began, “I don’t know how much of the story you got from the Baxters, but back then no one in town would’ve suspected Wraxall of having anything to do with the devil worship—”

Fanshawe remembered the explanation. “Because everybody loved him, right? He paid for the town’s improvements and loaned money to the locals.”

“Exactly. In fact, Wraxall’s character was so unimpeachable that the townspeople didn’t suspect him of heresy even after Evanore was executed.”

“Execution by barreling,” Fanshawe added.

“Yeah. Pretty groaty folks back then. But Wraxall himself built most of the town. He even built the church. He never missed a Sunday service except for a few times he was traveling abroad. Anyway, Evanore was caught red-handed with her coven, performing a conjuration, a ritual that required the use of the blood from newborn babies. So that was the end of her.”

“Right,” Fanshawe recalled. “But Wraxall himself wasn’t suspected of any heresies until years later—”

“Four years later, to be exact. In 1675. Some witnesses saw Wraxall performing a Black Mass in the woods, and after his death, they found his diary, which spilled the awful beans about what he and Evanore had really been up to since Evanore had entered puberty. Do you…” Letitia fidgeted. “Did anyone tell who how they got the newborn babies for their blood rituals?”

All Fanshawe could say was, “Yes.”

“Oh, good. I really don’t get a kick out of repeating that. But anyway, Wraxall’s diary—which was eventually acquired by the Baxters when their family bought the inn— implicated Rood as well. So Rood’s name was big time mud just like Wraxall’s. See, Rood’s relatives were so ashamed by the terrible things Rood did, they had to completely dissociate themselves. So they changed their name.”

Fanshawe looked intently at her.

“From Rood to Rhodes.”

“Ah. Your last name.”

She nodded. “Callister Rood’s parents built this house. I’m one of his direct descendants.” She held up her hands. “That’s why his picture’s on my wall. Not that I think highly of him. But I keep it there as kind of a curiosity piece for tourists who have questions.”

Tourists like me, Fanshawe thought. Unbidden, though, he needed to know, “Was Rood executed too?” All too well, he remembered his visions from last night. “Or did he commit suicide?”

Letitia’s gaze darted to Fanshawe. “He hanged himself. I didn’t think I told anyone that, including the Baxters, because I figured the inn’s history was grim enough. Old Baxter wouldn’t want guests finding out an apprentice warlock strung himself up on the property.”

“But the Baxters didn’t tell me.”

“Then who did? There’s no record of it. All the documents kept by the High Sheriff and the scrivener of the court were lost in fire in 1701.”

Fanshawe stalled, then lied, “Just a hunch.” What could he say? Oh, I saw Rood hanging by the neck last night with the Witch-Water Looking-Glass. See, I’d taken it up to Witches Hill to peep in windows because I’m a pervert…

“Just a hunch, huh?” Her smile crossed with a disbelieving smirk.

“Makes sense for Rood to hang himself in order to avoid the ‘death-by-barreling that Wraxal and his daughter suffered.”

“Evanore, yes, but actually, Wraxall himself didn’t die by barreling—”

Fanshawe rubbed his chin. “I could’ve sworn Abbie or Mr. Baxter said he was executed similarly…”

Suddenly Letitia slumped more on the couch. “If you really want to know about this gross stuff, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to repeat it to Abbie or her father. I’m on good terms with them, I guess, but I don’t really know them that well. They might get mad at me for not telling them everything I know. They might think I was smearing their hotel.”

Fanshawe cut to the chase, still standing in front of the picture. “I promise not to repeat anything you say, to anyone.”

She looked as though she barely believed him. “Wraxall died in the house. He’d been arrested once by the sheriff, put in jail, but somehow Wraxall escaped, probably with Callister Rood’s help. The same night of his escape, he died in the room with the attic trapdoor.”

Fanshawe gulped loudly.

“When the sheriff and his men went to re-capture Wraxall, they found him dead. His heart had been cut out.”

“Ooo,” Fanshawe uttered.

“After the witness reports, it was always believed that the townsfolk were so enraged over Wraxall’s blasphemous deceptions that they didn’t even want to wait for a trial—”

“So they took matters into their own hands?”

Letitia nodded. “And sliced him open and cut out his heart.”

“But you said it’s always been thought that that happened.”

“Um-hmm. I’ve already told you Wraxall left a diary—”

Fanshawe almost but not quite interrupted her to reveal that the warlock actually had two diaries, one of which he’d just found last night, but the desire to say so retreated back into him like a spring-loaded tape-measure.

“—but Callister Rood, my charming ancestor, left one too. Nobody’s seen it—”

“Nobody but you,” Fanshawe presumed.

The awkward woman touched her lip, appraising Fanshawe. “Would you like to see it?”

“I’d appreciate it very much.”

Letitia got up, disappeared into another room, then returned as fast. She passed Fanshawe a small book of mottled dark-blue leather whose binding was merely a string of tanned hide tied through the folded creases of parchment, just like Wraxall’s diary. He opened to a random page. Also like Wraxall’s diary, most of the stanzas of scribbling were blurred by the passage of time; however, unlike it, the diction was a lot less sophisticated than Wraxall’s, indicating a lower level of education.

Last nighte-time so did I kiddnap yung Ann Clark from her beddroom, a girl known to be thick of wit and slow of mind. Uncomely, she be as wel, but that matters naught, so spake the Squire. Afore this act, I lit ye Hand of Glory on ye threshold, which werk’d so potently that nevur once did Mr. or Mrs. Clark stir from their slumbering, potent enough in the fact that I—impatiently as is oft my wont—engag’d in karnel knowlidge with Mrs. Clark, and on my honur never did she wake dispite the vigur with witch I put my seed in her. Wearupon I next comence to abscond with yung Ann through whose mouth I ty’d a smitch of flannel to hold her tongue, and lash’d her wrists. Into ye Squire’s house I took her, where ye Squire stood in wait, seaming qwyte pleas’d. I rend’d ye girl in ye attick chamber and hall out her innards whilst Squire Wraxall reed especial words of intursseshuns for coming Rite of Beltane, which he dost call preeker-sory prayers.

Fanshawe realized, Rood’s describing the abduction of a child or young woman, for some Satanic rite that must serve as a precursor to a more important ritual. The bald acknowledgment right there on the page made Fanshawe feel frozen in place. He flipped forward, finding that many passages were even more illegible than Wraxall’s diary. Midway, though, he deciphered this: To-daye I ask ye Squire why no longer he partake of ye pleashures of Evanore’s loynes as dost he hath many tymes afore so to make ye babys for ye grist of our Master, so he spake bak to me: “Good sarvant Rood, ye evill prokreeayshun which so thralls our Benefactor is—yea—a yung man’s art, and a vital man’s privalige who mayest be one with Lucifer. Lo, in my long yeers, I mine own self am not anye longer so vital,” and aft’r shewing a calm countenance, he so explayn’d verily that in his age he hast lost his manly vitality, and that ye seed of his loyns ist like now that uv a palsy’d man, no longer able to act as once it wuz.

Fanshawe glanced to Letitia. “So Wraxall was impotent?”

“Toward the end of his life, yes. From what I gather, the last three or four babies Evanore gave birth to weren’t Wraxall’s; he was simply too old—started shooting blanks, couldn’t swing the bat anymore, you know?”

“What a way with words you have,” Fanshawe had to laugh but then reminded himself that incest and having babies for occult purposes weren’t laughing matters. He also reminded himself of another of last night’s images: Rood was having sex with Evanore… He read on: “How then, Squire,” I replie to this, “wilt we bring to us ye infants so desir’d to oblayte our Dark Mastur?” and he sayest unto me, “Loyal and virile Rood, from thence forth it shall be your seed which will make my wretched and luvely dawther great with chyld!”

Fanshawe shot another inquiring glance to the palm-reader. “And after Wraxall realized he’d become impotent—”

She finished the obvious. “It was my illustrious ancestor who stepped up to pinch-hit for Wraxall.”

“That’s a pretty earthy way of putting it.”

She chuckled. “That was some pretty earthy stuff they were doing.”

Fanshawe’s brows jiggled. He kept reading the passage. Lerning this, I felt no little joye in mine hart, and stirr’d about my groin, for such consorte wyth Evanore I hath long dreem’d, but then I feel lowlie in profiting by my Squire’s loss, so I speek unto him wurds of lamentation that his oncetime pleshures will be no more, and I say that his grater age having leeving him no longer able to sire infints doth make me sad to my marrowe. But then my mentor’s eyes come alighte, and I see no aspect of sadniss of his ownself, and he say, “Mere age, goodly sarvant, is no diffurent than tyme and space in that it maye be ply’d like clay or sculpt’d like woode! In wurds akin, age, then, ‘tis as chayngeable as thy cloak! As thy trousers, I say! But heed me in thiss, fine Rood, sutch chaynges be constrewed onlie when thy sarvants of our Dark Lord shew fayth mighty enough and—yea!—a hart black enough, for such arre ye admixtures of ye very thing! Forsooth, Rood, I shalt be vital again, for our Benefactor whisspers to me in ye manner of dreems of portent, and he sheweth that if so ever one’s fayth remane as stronge, then he shalt be bestow’d the knowledge which maye make away wyth the very prospect of deth itself!”

Fanshawe was amused by the last segment. “So the old warlock thought he would live forever, huh?”

“All warlocks thought that,” she said. “Same way as all condemned witches cast curses.”

Hard as the handwriting was to read, Fanshawe flipped through more of the scribbling.

Grayte Satan! Ye first chyld borne of my seed thrugh Evanore came this morn! My Squire very qwikly went up with it to ye attick to drayne its blud…

Another: Mine eyes did not lyke the waye Prudence Cattel didst look at me to-daye at Market Square. Thencesoever, with the Squire’s permisshin, I did saye ye Hex-wurds on payge five hundred five of ye Remigius writings and didst putt upon thiss woman ye burdin of nawseeating dreems and grate paynes at her womanly regions. In the even-time late I did heer her screeming from her beddroom window, and this didst make me very glad…

Another: Hath just reterned from ye Oldys cabin ware I bound and silenc’d and came away with their onlie son, a boye of ten and two yeers. Of his parents, I lash them to-gether and bury them—stille living—deep in ye woode, and of the boye, I so forc’d him to watche my burying of them, for it onlie magnify’d the horrour of ye deed which is mutch lik’d by Lucifer. So pore were ye Oldys, none will suspeckt mischief but instead beleeve them to have depart’d for elseware in hope of better harvest-time.

“Some wicked stuff here!” Fanshawe exclaimed.

“Yeah. Wicked. In this day and age, Callister Rood would rank high on the list of psycho-sexual serial-killers.”

In spite of his repulsion, Fanshawe kept hunting for legible entries.

Mine hart is made to sing by ye Squire’s aspect to-daye. Ye most reecint letter from Squire Septimuss Willsun in Angle-land leeve my mentor overcome with joobilayshun, being that we wilst soon be in possession of a Brydle—

Bridle? Fanshawe thought abruptly, but before he could ask Letitia what the bridle was, she came over and pointed to a particular entry. “There. What do you make of that?”

Fanshawe squinted. I must be firm by ye inwardness of what ye Squire say for me to do in ye ende.

“Hmm,” he uttered.

“Yeah, kind of makes you think. Like maybe it wasn’t the townspeople who killed Wraxall at all, but Rood himself.”

“Under Wraxall’s orders.” Next, his eyes caught a familiar reference. After we erlier boilt ye bones of ye womin from fifty yeers agone known as ye Fenstanton Witch, ye Squire fashion’d a look’g-glass and after midnighte’s peal, we peer through it and see ye land in ye witch’s time. Ye Squire’s suksess leeve me neerly in a swound yet ye Squire himself chukle and speek that this is a trifle when in compar’d to what he has in his mynd for future glass he endevers to make.

“What I was leaning to earlier,” Letitia said, “turn to the last page with writing on it. It sort of clarifies things.”

Fanshawe did what she said, and here were the final lines written by Callister Rood: I needs must admitt that my spiritt grows disorder’d bye feare in contemplayshuns yet to come, and ye Squire espies this as plain. He sayeth then, in a mannur most comfitt’d, “be disheartened not, frend Rood, for all which we worke for is now in playce, save for my final behest unto thee. Ye tyme be neerly beside us, and thee hath learnt well! Yet the corpulent High Sheriff and his bird-witted assizers be already suspecting of us. Best, then, that you giveth them not the satisfaction to do away with thee in their manner but instead cause thyself to cease to be, whilest thou knoweth what must be done upon me…

Fanshawe thought he understood. “I’d say this definitely clarifies that Rood killed Wraxall. Wraxall was instructing Rood to commit suicide once the sheriff and his deputies came for them.”

Letitia nodded. “But isn’t the end of the sentence curious?”

“Yes. That something relevant might be required of Rood,” Fanshawe figured.

Letitia nodded. “At least that’s how it strikes me. Rood killed Wraxall before he killed himself, and cut out his heart.”

Fanshawe hesitated. “What happened…to the heart?”

“Well, no one knows that, of course, but hearts were used in sorcery all the time, especially the hearts of necromancers.”

Fanshawe hadn’t thought of that. More occult ritualism, I guess. Didn’t the Aztecs cut out people’s hearts as an offering to their Gods? To solicit favor and immortality? He knew he remembered something like that from history classes decades ago.

But it was the passage just before the last one he’d read that most piqued Fanshawe’s interest. He was talking specifically about—

“What do you know about witch-water looking-glasses?” he asked.

Her expression was one of surprise. “Wow, you’ve really got the bug, haven’t you?”

Suddenly he felt self-conscious. The Baxters’ looking-glass was still in his jacket pocket. Jesus, if she’s really psychic, does she know I’ve got it? “Don’t know why,” he said, “but I’m finding all this witchcraft stuff pretty fascinating. I saw the looking-glass over at the inn, and they told me a little bit about it. Did Wraxall really believe that the water from boiled bones could be magical?”

“He not only believed it, he and Rood claimed many times that it was magical. Witch-water was fairly common in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds in Europe. Sorcerers would boil the bones of dead witches, warlocks, criminals, whatever, and the water would be used in ritualism, sort of like the antithesis of holy water. Supposedly Wraxall learned how to make the looking-glasses from other warlocks and ancient reference books called grimoires. In a looking-glass, witch-water was said to provide a view through the dead person’s eyes and in the era of that person’s life. The glass at the inn supposedly contains witch-water from the bones of Evanore Wraxall. We all tried it but—no surprise—it didn’t work.”

Fanshawe’s silence at the comment caused an awkward pause.

“This is really odd, though—coincidental, I mean.”

“What?” he asked.

“Last week some guy came in here and was asking about witch-water, too.”

“Eldred Karswell,” Fanshawe uttered. “That was his name, right?”

“He never said his name. Older guy, though, and nice enough, I guess. He paid well but he smoked the worst cigars.”

Fanshawe nodded. “Definitely Karswell.”

“So I take it you know him?”

“No, but—” Fanshawe deliberated over her exact words. Know him or KNEW him? “Didn’t you know that he was dead?”

Letitia’s face seemed to broaden in shock. “What?”

“His body was found two days ago, on one of the trails at Witches Hill.”

“The guy they found there was him? Holy shit. As of today, the paper didn’t give his name. I assumed it was just a transient or someone like that.”

“No, it was Karswell, the same man who spoke to you,” Fanshawe felt certain, “and he was no transient—he was rich.” Some psychic, he thought. Karswell was sitting right in front of her, but she didn’t predict his death. “Did you tell his fortune?”

“No, he just wanted to ask me stuff about Wraxall, said he was willing to pay for the information, which now that I think of it was kind of bizarre. He seemed to know a lot about the occult.”

“Well, he wrote about the occult; he was a writer, had a bunch of books published. He was also a Christian mystic.”

This took her aback.

“I have this feeling he was writing about Wraxall himself,” Fanshawe added.

“But if you didn’t really know him, how do you know he was an occult writer?”

Fanshawe gave the question honest thought. “You might say…I had some researchers pry into the dead man’s privacy.”

The look on her face told him: Why? Why would Fanshawe want to know anything about Karswell? “This is getting more interesting by the minute. I got bad vibes from the guy the minute he walked in here, and now I’m getting more.” She stared right at him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m just curious about some things.”

“Well, I’m curious too, about this Karswell man,” she said in a drier and almost demanding tone. “Do you know how he died? The papers just said he was found dead, said it was a robbery-related homicide. His wallet was missing.”

“His face was missing too,” Fanshawe said. He watched closely at her reaction.

Her mouth fell open, then closed.

“I’m not trying to make you sick but…Karswell’s face, scalp, and most of the flesh on his head had been torn—or chewed—off, as if by a wild animal.”

“Almost like…”

“Yeah, almost like he’d been ‘barrelled,’” Fanshawe said.

Another silence followed. Their eyes met, then flicked away, but Letitia made no comment. Fanshawe used the now-unpleasant silence to feign interest in some of the other pictures on the wall. One was a picture of Letitia holding an infant. She didn’t look any younger in the picture than she did now. “What a cute baby,” he offered.

When she didn’t reply, he turned.

Her appearance had changed completely. No longer the off-beat, quirky “palmist,” now she looked wilted, crushed.

Oh, no, Fanshawe thought, his guts sinking.

“His name was George Jeffreys Rhodes,” Letitia said in a dark wisp. “He died in May, he was only eight months old.”

“My God, I’m sorry,” Fanshawe struggled. He wanted to kick himself. Yet he had to wonder about the dead infant’s father, since he saw no trace of him in the pictures.

He didn’t have to ask, though. “The biological father left when I told him I was pregnant,” she said.

Fanshawe’s tongue seemed to adhere to the roof of his mouth. This time the silence turned excruciating, and for all he was worth he struggled for something to say, but before he could—clack!—the lights and air-conditioner shut off. Letitia shrieked at the initial startlement.

“Just a blown fuse, I think.”

“I should be so lucky,” she said with a long smirk. “The bastards could at least have waited till the end of the month.”

“Forgot to pay your power bill?”

Letitia, smirking, picked up several letters on the end table, then flapped them back down. “Yeah, I ‘forgot’ to pay a bunch of them—a delinquent customer is what they call me after all these years of giving them money. I’ve got bills stacked up till Judgment Day. It’s this damn recession. When there’s a recession, the last thing on anyone’s mind is getting their fortune told.”

“Sorry to hear you’re so having such a tough time,” Fanshawe said.

“The power bill’s the least of my worries,” she remarked with some cynicism. “I’ll be kicked out of the house before long ’cos I can’t afford the damn property tax. The bastards assess this house for three times what it’s worth, and nobody’s buying houses now anyway, not in this economy, so I couldn’t sell it if I wanted to. But they don’t want to hear that, oh, no. I gotta pay taxes on what they say it’s worth, whether I like it or not. Bunch of pirates, bunch of damn blood-suckers.”

Now Fanshawe felt twice the bad luck magnet. First, he reminded her of her dead child, and now this. Shit… But he still had questions, about Wraxall, about Rood. Can’t ask her about all that now.

She got up in the dimness, tried to laugh. “Well, this sure turned into a bad scene.” She opened the front door. “I can’t expect you stay to have the rest of your fortune told when I’ve got no a/c or lights.”

“It was very interesting,” he said. He took out his wallet.

“No charge,” she said. “I didn’t even finish.”

“I got my money’s worth. I was mainly here for the information about Wraxall anyway.”

“Just like Karswell…”

He smiled. “Yeah, just like Karswell,” then he gave her a $100 bill. “Keep the change.”

She sighed in relief. “Thanks, that’s—wow—that’s very generous.”

They both went outside into the sun.

“I’ll come back again,” Fanshawe said, “when things are better for you.”

She laughed. “Yeah, when I’ve got lights. But these days all you have to do is listen to the news people talk about the recession to think it’ll never get better.”

“Well, I happen to know some things about capitalism and the free-market system. It’s cyclic, it has to be. We have to go through the lows to get to the highs.” He shook her hand, preparing to leave.

“I don’t know why but…you’re pretty inspiring,” she said with a smile, and after she shook his hand, she turned it in her own palm. She raised it to look at. “Just as I thought: a quad-bifurcation. Curious.”

“That’s not a disease, is it?”

“No. It means that you will give to and take from the same—”

Fanshawe was instantly confused. “Give to and take—”

“—in a way that’s, well, connected to something of a recent revelatory note.”

He didn’t have a clue what she meant; nevertheless, he thought: The looking-glass?

Her fingertip traced lower on his palm. Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, dear…”

“What?” he said with some force.

“Here goes. The best news all day. Your riches will increase a thousandfold.”

I’m a billionaire already, honey, he thought. That’s enough for me. The remark seemed ridiculous yet, somehow, she didn’t. He took his hand away, more interested in his questions than his fortune. What immediately came to mind was the pedestaled ball on the hill, and how little he knew about it.

“If I can keep you another minute, do you have any idea what that bronze or copper ball is near the cemetery on Witches Hill? Abbie Baxter called it was a Gazing Ball to make wishes with but, at least to me, it looks very occult.”

“That’s because it is very occult,” Letitia told him. “It’s a totem that originated with the Druids and then got picked up by Satanic necromancers in the Middle Ages. No one really knows what their purpose is, because sorcerers were good at keeping secrets. A lot of the historians think it’s the Druid version of a Magic Circle.”

“And do I understand correctly that Wraxall went all the way to England—”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “to buy it from an infamous sorcerer named Septimus Wilsonne. You can think of him as the Mack-Daddy of warlocks back in those times.”

Fanshawe pushed his hair back, frustrated. “Between Wraxall and Callister Rood, you’d think that one of them would’ve written about it in their diaries.”

“Well, it’s mentioned a few times, but no one explained exactly what it was.” For some reason, Letitia shivered as if at a chill in spite of the ample heat outside. “What you have to understand about witches and warlocks is that they went to great pains—and sometime would even die—to keep their secrets. And speaking of secrets, that was one of the most curious parts about Callister’s diary. Several times he mentioned ‘The Two Secrets,’ which I think had something to do with a ritual that Wraxall was planning in the future.”

“The Two Secrets,” Fanshawe droned. He’d read precisely of that in Wraxall’s second diary last night. …and grant’d what It was I most ask’d in mine Mind - yes! - the second of ye Two Secrets, Wraxall had written, information supposedly given to him by the spirit of a dead warlock. He cringed to tell Letitia this, but if he did, then he’d be admitting the liberties he’d taken at the inn. “But since warlocks were so good at keeping secrets, as you’ve just said, no one knows what these Two Secrets were,” he said more than asked.

“You got that right. My guess is it has something to do with the last ritual we know Wraxall was preparing for.”

“What’s that?”—he paused—“er, let me guess! The bones of his daughter?”

Again, Letitia seemed impressed with his insight. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say. So the Baxters told you the whole story?”

“Everything they know themselves, I guess. I know that Wraxall and Rood dug up Evanore’s bones 666 days after she was buried.”

“Right, and you and I both know what he was going to do with them—”

“Witch-water,” Fanshawe intoned.

“Sure, but that’s the $64,000 question. Witch-water had many uses, not just looking-glasses. Rood’s diary does say that the key to the Two Secrets was written down on parchment by Wraxall himself before he died.”

“Where’s the parchment—no! Don’t tell me. No one knows.”

“Not a soul. Wraxall hid it, either that or it simply got lost or confiscated by the court.”

Fanshawe’s brain started ticking.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I have a feeling that the Two Secrets have to do with Evanore’s witch-water and the Gazing Ball too.”

“Your psychic inclination, huh?” Fanshawe asked, not knowing if he was serious.

“Yeah.”

He knew it was time to leave but, still, his questions nagged at him. Leave her alone, he thought. Shit, I just reminded her of her dead baby. The last thing she wants to do is answer more of my kooky questions. However, he remembered Evanore’s hallucinatory remark in the wax museum, and he’d just seen the word a little while ago in Rood’s diary. Bad taste or not, he had to ask: “What does the word bridle have to do in an occult context?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I said that the Gazing Ball originated with the Druids—well, that’s what they called it. A bridle.”

Fanshawe wondered. “A bridle… I’d always thought that a bridle was something on a horse.”

“That’s right. It’s a strap that helps the rider guide the horse into a particular direction. But in an occult context? Think of it as an object that helps guide a warlock or witch into a particular direction, a direction that ultimately serves the Devil’s interest.”

Fanshawe looked back at her but didn’t seem to see her.

“I better go now,” she said, happily looking at the $100 bill he’d given her. “Maybe they’ll let me pay part of my power bill.”

“Wait,” he said. Without thinking, he was taking out his checkbook. Nor did he seem to be consciously impelled to say, “I’ll pay your entire electric bill and any late fees—”

“What?” she said. She winced.

“In exchange for information. What’s wrong with that?” He leaned against the door and wrote her name on the check, then signed his name. “I want to know one more thing.”

“And you’re gonna pay my whole power bill?” she almost gasped.

“Yes. I’m well off, but you already know that. And I’m also a very curious person when something suddenly interests me.”

“The occult? Wraxall? Sorcery?”

He nodded. “How much is your power bill, the total?”

“It’s eight hundred bucks! You can’t possibly—”

Fanshawe made out the check for a thousand, and gave it to her.

Her eyes went wide, but behind them there was the look of a heavy burden lifted. “This is crazy…”

“No it isn’t. I’m paying for your knowledge, just like Karswell. Consultation fee?” He thought of his own business and smiled. “People pay for information all the time. It really does make the world go round.”

“As much as I need it—”she looked longingly at the check—“I can’t take it.”

“Wouldn’t you be foolish not to?”

Moments ticked by; Letitia’s hesitation was nearly palpable. “What’s your question?”

He answered at once, as if it had been on his mind all along. “Earlier. You almost sounded amused when you told me not to ask you the color of my aura. Well, I want to know.”

She exhaled as if exerted. “Of all the questions, you would ask that.”

“Come on. I don’t even really know what an aura is, or even what’s it’s supposed to be if I believed in such things…”

Letitia seemed to squirm where she stood, still looking at the check. “An aura is a detectible emanation of a person’s life-force, or soul,” she said, exasperated. “Not everybody has one, but those that do—”

“Are what?” he jumped in, thinking the obvious. “Psychically inclined?”

“No. Just sensitive. The color of a person’s aura suggests their nature. Orange means passionate, red means quick to anger, blue means meditative, white means benevolent, like that. But some experts insist that it’s more than that. They say that the color of one’s aura reflects the true character of their heart….”

Fanshawe’s throat felt dry when he asked, “What color’s mine?”

“You don’t really have one,” she said. “But it’s something I tell anyone who comes to have their palm read. It sounds genuine. It puts customers in good mood, and when they’re in a good mood, they tip better.”

Fanshawe slowly shook his head. “Lett, I think you’re making that up just to close out the topic.”

Her posture drooped. “All right, I am! Jesus!”

“What’s the big deal?” he asked, astounded by her reluctance. “What, it’s some ethical thing, a palm reader’s creed? Come on.”

“Well, it sort of is. Doctors have their Hippocratic Oath, palm readers don’t tell people about their auras. It kind of…crosses a boundary, I guess you could say. It’s the mark of a jaded fortune teller.” She eyed the check again, moaned, then offered it back to him.

“You’re kidding me!”

“No. I wouldn’t feel right about it. Take the check back.”

Fanshawe chuckled, amazed. You sure don’t see this everyday. He was impressed, yes, but also…

Very disappointed.

“You really walk it like you talk it, Lett. Thanks for your time. And keep the check.” He turned and began to head down the sidewalk.

“Hey!” she called out.

He turned to see her fuming.

She pointed a finger right at him. “You asked, so don’t blame me! It’s black!” and then she ran across the street, check in hand, to the bank.

(II)

Black, he thought.

Black aura. Black heart.

Go thither, if thou dost have the heart, to the bridle—

A heart so black as to be stygian, sir, a black blacker, too, than the very abyss…

Fanshawe’s reaction to Letitia’s parting words was nothing like what he’d expect. He felt neutral about it, not confused, not scared or foreboded. A psychic just told me I have a black heart—that’s not much of an endorsement, is it? The color black brought negative connotations: corruption, dishonesty, greed…

Evil.

He scoffed as he moved leisurely down the sun-lit sidewalk, then he laughed aloud to himself. I’m not any of those things, and I’m certainly not EVIL. However, as he thought more on it, the more irresistibly he found himself reflecting back on the entire meeting. She’d mentioned something revelatory, hadn’t she?

There’d certainly been revelations in her parlor.

The Gazing Ball was also called a bridle, something akin to a magic circle. It evolved from the times of the Druids, a very occult bunch. Last night he’d found a second and more secure diary of Wraxall’s, while today he’d seen a corroborating diary: Callister Rood’s. Rood himself had committed suicide, by hanging, while Fanshawe had seen the man’s image hanging by the neck last night. And Wraxall probably hadn’t been executed after all. He’d been butchered by Rood, his own apprentice.

Now, all that he’d learned began to swirl about consciousness, and when his elbow brushed his jacket pocket, he felt the tubular bulk of the looking-glass. The glass worked last night—I KNOW it did…

And if that were the case, everything else was real too, not superstitious invention.

It was real.

The acknowledgment of that brought the drone back to his head. I’m NOT crazy, so that can only mean…

But how could this be?

“Well, ’ow’d your session go at the palmist’s, sir?” greeted the enthused, elderly voice.

Fanshawe had been too wound up over his thoughts to even see that he’d just passed Mrs. Anstruther’s information kiosk. It took a moment for him to snap out of the daze.

“Ah, Mrs. Anstruther—yes, it was very entertaining. I appreciate your suggestion.”

The high sunlight filled the creases in her face so sharply with shadow-lines she looked like a grinning sketch. “Cheery news on your horizon, I hope, sir.”

Well, I’m told my riches will increase a thousandfold and I’ve got a black heart… “I think you could say that, yes.”

“And what might your estimation be of Ms. Letitia Rhodes? Hope ya don’t got the notion I steered you improper.”

The tiny drone remained in his head even as he engaged in the talk, as though his current concerns were being intruded upon. “Not at all. She seems very genuine, maybe even a bit too genuine, if you know what I mean.”

The old woman laughed. “Aye, but I do, sir. Just like I said to ya!”

Fanshawe’s mood darkened; he lowered his voice. “Yes, but I felt awful at one point. I saw the picture of her baby on the wall and made the mistake of asking about it.”

Mrs. Anstruther’s eyes turned instantly regretful. “Oh, dear me, yes! What a ’orrible, ’orrible thing to happen, I must say. The poor little tot, he caught hisself a fever so’s Miss Letitia, she rush him to the hospital but”—she crossed herself—“he die in her arms ’fore she got him there, not two months ago it was. Certain I am, though, sir, certain as I’m certain the day’s long, the Lord’ll bless ’is little soul. The tot was buried in the town churchyard, sir, and the entire town show up to show their respects,” and then she crossed herself again. “We all pitch in some to pay for the tot’s embalming and coffin and all, on account Miss Letitia ’erself were sufferin’ from empty pockets at the time.”

Died from a fever… The added information only made Fanshawe feel worse. My God, what a terrible thing to happen… “I can’t imagine what a blow it must’ve been to Letitia.”

“I don’t imagine none of us can. A dreadful thing like that? And not no one there to help her through it.”

“Yeah, she told me the child’s father abandoned her,” Fanshawe recalled. He didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t wait to leave and be back with his own thoughts.

“Ah, but did she tell ya any more about that scoundrel of a chiseler who walk off on her?”

“No, nothing else—”

“Well there’s more to that story, there is, a good bit more.”

She’s probably working me again, but— His irritation at being here collapsed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, I ain’t one to leave a gentleman twistin’ in the wind, so’s to speak”—but just then her own attention was highjacked. A smiling middle-aged couple approached the kiosk; the look on their faces said they had several questions for the elderly woman. “Pardon me a jot while I tend to these folks’ needs, and I’ll tell you all about it, sir.”

“Okay. I’ll go grab a coffee and come back when you’re done. Can I get you a cup?”

“What I fancy most is a cop’a tea, sir, if you please—the Earl Grey type, what they’s got—and I’m much obliged to ya, sir, much obliged.”

Fanshawe parted for the coffee shop. When he’d arrived he realized he’d walked right by the Travelodge and felt no temptation whatsoever to steal a glance at the windows or the pool. This perked up his mood. While he waited for his order at the cafe, he thought to check his cellphone and saw that he’d turned it off. Oh, a message, he realized, then listened to the voice mail.

“Hello, Mr. Fanshawe,” the passionless voice sounded. “This is Dr. Tilton. I thought I’d give you a call to see how everything is progressing since we last talked, and am hoping that you’ve set into motion what I suggested. I’d very much like to hear from you, so please call back at your convenience.” Fanshawe’s thumb hovered over the dial-back button, but then he hesitated. This was a call he didn’t really want to make; he was too intrigued by other considerations. And what would I tell her anyway?

Hi, doctor. I’m pretty much convinced that I’m NOT actually hallucinating. What do I mean by that? Well, see, that looking-glass I stole WORKS…

He still had to think about that determination, he knew, but didn’t want to bother with talking to her now. And when he thought to call in to his main office, his phone rang.

“Artie, I was just thinking about you,” he said.

“Good things, I hope. I wanted to get back to you so you wouldn’t think we’re sluffing.”

“I would never think that.”

“We got ahold of Eldred Karswell’s secretary, danced around some issues, and got her to tell us about your guy. The, uh, warlock he was writing about was named—”

“Jacob Wraxall,” Fanshawe said. “I already got that, Artie.”

“You make me feel useless,” his manager griped. “And that’s all she would say except for bibliographic crap. Nothing else about the warlock.”

Fanshawe appreciated Artie’s humorous emphasis. “I got the scoop already, but thanks just the same.”

“Well here’s some scoop you probably haven’t gotten yet. About five minutes ago the Prosser Fuel Corp stock split, and it skyrocketed just like you said. Congrats. You just made a couple million.”

Fanshawe’s eyes roved about the shops and passersby on the street, not particularly interested in what Artie had just said. “That’s cool, Artie, but—”

“Cool?” Artie sounded shocked or angry. “I just told you you bagged a couple mil on the side, and all you say is cool?”

Something in the back of his mind itched at him, and it was just that second that he knew what it was. That picture of Letitia Rhodes’ baby made him feel terrible. “The split’s great, Artie, but I’m kind of distracted at the moment. Write down this name and address.”

“Ready.”

“Letitia Rhodes, 13 Back Street, Haver-Towne…”

“Got it. Why?”

“I want you to contact the county tax office here and pay off any outstanding property-tax debt. And while you’re at it, pay off the next, say, five years, in advance. Use one of the ancillary accounts.”

“Ooooo…….kay,” came the response. “Let me guess. A hospice? Someone who runs an animal shelter?”

“No—”

“Oh, wait! Some chick you’re hot for?”

Fanshawe’s eyes glimpsed Abbie across the street; she was watering plants at the entrance. She smiled and he waved. Oh, man. I better get my ass in gear and ask her out again… “Actually I have met someone, Artie—”

“Eureka! Finally getting over the divorce shit!”

“No, no, it’s someone else, not Letitia Rhodes. I just…feel bad for her, so pay off her prop tax like I told you.”

Artie seemed resigned over the line. “Always the good Samaritan, okay. I’ll get on it.” A confused pause. “But…who is she, this Rhodes woman, I mean?”

Fanshawe was about to tell him to mind his own business, but then he smiled. He’ll love this. “She’s a palm reader, Artie. A fortune teller.”

The next silence seemed to unroll. “Great, first a warlock, now a fortune teller. Just another day at Fanshawe Enterprises.”

“You know what she told me?”

“Uhhhh—”

“My wealth will increase a thousandfold,” and then Fanshawe laughed.

“That’s a good one, boss. So you’re going to be the world’s first trillionaire?”

“Thanks, Artie”—he kept laughing—“I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up.

That’ll give him something to talk about at the office. But, next, he considered his impulsive order: paying off the taxes of a woman he didn’t really know. Fanshawe had thrown lots of money at charity situations but…not like this. He simply felt awful for the woman—Baby died, the father booked, can’t make a living anymore because of the economy, and she was about to lose her house for defaulting on taxes. But now that he’d done this, he felt much better. I helped someone in need—and his next thought amused him. Who says I’ve got a black heart?

He looked back to where Abbie had been but she was no longer there. He couldn’t wait to see her—

Mrs. Anstruther wriggled her fingers at him. The tourist couple was gone. He brought her tea to the kiosk.

“Thank you, sir, oh, that’s perfect, it is,” she said, sipping from the to-go cup.

“Now—what were you saying?”

The woman’s stiff hair moved when her brows rose. “Oh, yes, sir, ’bout Miss Rhodes and that man she were with what made her in a mother’s way.”

“Yes, you were saying that he left Letitia when he found out she was pregnant.”

She nodded in a way that seemed cunning. “And that ain’t all he done neither, sir. See, when he left her he also stole a fair rooker of ackers from her.”

“He stole…what?”

“Quite a considerable sum of money, sir, what that she save up from her palmist’s business—oh, yes, sir. Several thousand dollars it was.”

“Jesus…”

“A bloke like that, sir? What it is we call a bloke like that in England is a man who hain’t worth a brown trout,” and then she smiled as if amused.

Ain’t worth a shit, Fanshawe translated. “I hope at least that the police got him for the theft.”

She ruefully shook her head. “’Fraid not, sir, oh, no. See, what this bloke done after he took the money is he broke out a winder from the outside, so’s ta make it look like a burglary, sir. The constables couldn’t charge him with no theft on account there was insufficient evidence.”

“Damn,” Fanshawe muttered. “Well I hope the bastard at least paid some child support before the baby died.”

“No, sir, I’m sorry to say he did not. ’Tis the way things work out sometimes, sir. The folks who wouldn’t ’urt a fly are the ones who get roughed up.”

“Unfortunately—”

“But it hain’t the end’a my story, sir,” she went on, at once enthused. “As I were just relatin’ to ya, the day after that scoundrel found out what that Miss Rhodes was havin’ a baby, he left her. But ’ere’s what else, sir.”

Fanshawe tapped his foot. By now he was quite used to people deliberately keeping him in suspense. “Any day now, Mrs. Anstruther.”

She grinned. “The day after that poor li’l baby die…he die.”

“What, the child’s biological father?”

“The same, sir.”

Fanshawe felt a satisfaction at this news. “Pardon me if I sound callous, ma’am, and pardon my language, but when shitty people die, I don’t call it unfortunate, I call it justice.”

The old woman laughed. “Oh, sir, I’m so ’appy to hear you say it ’cos your feelin’s are the very mirror to what all of us thought. But tell me what your mind tells ya of this: that man? It weren’t a accident what killed him, it were a massive ’art attack which since he were only in ’is thirties, we all found quite odd, we did, quite odd.” Then she paused to look at him, with that same cunning cast to her face.

“Odd, sure, but it happens,” Fanshawe said.

“Sir, if I may, it might well be that you hain’t receivin’ the full measure of my meanin’, sir.”

Fanshawe tried to study her words with as much introspection as possible. What does she m… “You’re not saying that Letitia had anything to do with the guy’s death, are you? That’s impossible. What? She slipped him some drug to cause heart failure?”

“What it might be that you should do is like what my father used say to us when we was girls, sir, and what he said was that the surmise, sir, might call for a bit more forceful ponderment, sir,” and then she winked at him.

Fanshawe felt his face go blank when something seemed to snick in his mind. “Oh, come on, Mrs. Anstruther. She put a curse on the guy? She stuck a pin in a voodoo doll?” He laughed. “She’s a palm reader, not a witch.”

Mrs. Anstruther’s expression turned dead-serious. “Oh, hain’t she now? Are you sure of what it is you’re speakin’, sir?”

Fanshawe just kept looking at her.

She turned quickly, offering a lively pretense as a man, woman, and two young teenagers approached the kiosk. “Lovely talkin’ to ya, sir, as always, and I hope to talk to ya again soon. Got ta tend to these tourists now—”

“Have a good day, ma’am”—again he couldn’t resist. He put a $10 bill in her tip jar.

The woman brought her hand to her heart, acting overwhelmed. “Gracious me, sir! The proper words simply don’t exist to express my feelin’ of gratitude, sir, and bless you, sir!”

Smiling, Fanshawe pointed to the jar full of bills. “Looks to me like you’re doing all right today.”

She hunched over to whisper, “Yes, sir, but most’a that ain’t but a bunch of piddling singles, sir. Ten-spots, now, they’s what we call in England rare as rocking-horse shit!”

Fanshawe could’ve gusted laughter as he left her to her business. But as he crossed the cobbled street, the levity faded. What the old woman had distinctly implied stuck to him like burrs.

Letitia Rhodes? A witch?

The idea seemed absurd, but then why should he discount it so quickly when he’d already convinced himself that Wraxall’s sorcery, and Evanore’s witchcraft, was real?

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