Witch Water

CHAPTER ELEVEN

(I)

It was one-thirty in the morning when Fanshawe stood again in front of the crazily carved pedestal and the mysterious orb that crowned it. Before re-ascending Witches Hill, he’d stopped at his car and grabbed a larger flashlight. All the while, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing or what he expected.

The night was still stiflingly warm, yet when he placed his hand on the Gazing Ball—the bridle—it felt almost ice cold. He knew it was a trick of the moonlight but when he stared at the pedestal, the swaths of tiny occult symbols seemed to exude the faintest pale-green luminescence. But when the time came to do whatever it was he was going to do…he paused.

I could just go back to the inn, get Abbie, and get out of here. Start a new life…

He raised the looking-glass and aimed it precisely at his own window at the Wraxall Inn.

The creepily angled roof, gray wood slats, and black windows sat there like some hulking thing in wait.

Fanshawe, next, was examining the surface of the Gazing Ball: tarnished, encrusted, weather-pitted. But the strong white beam of light brought out a blemish that was obviously new.

A thin maroon stain, vaguely in the shape of a hand. Blood, he realized. And it hasn’t been there long, it still has red in it.

Then he thought: Karswell. He was here. A brief scan of the surrounding brush verified this almost beyond doubt, when Fanshawe discovered a fat cigar butt with a Monte-Cristo band, and—

Unbelievable.

—a small, clear jar. The jar’s lid lay right next to it.

Karswell must’ve made his own witch-water, Fanshawe deduced. New England’s full of unconsecrated graves of condemned witches… It was perfectly feasible that a writer of occult history and a Christian mystic would know how to make it. He challenged himself: All right. There’s only one more thing left to do…

He flicked open the tiny penknife on his key chain. He looked at the modest blade, then looked at the palm of his left hand. He winced at the initial puncture of the knife-tip into the middle of his palm. Blood welled up first as a pea-sized bead, but very quickly it formed a grim puddle in his hand. When he turned the flashlight off, the blood looked black in the moonlight.

Well?

Fanshawe spoke aloud the queer words he’d recently read on the centuries-old parchment: “Besmear ye mystickal and horrid sphere with thine own blood…”

He placed his bleeding hand on the orb, leaving a scarlet print.

“And then take into thy mouth one driblet of ye wretched and most nefarious aqua wicce…”

His slick hand wrapped around the flask’s glass stopper, twisted, then he felt the ancient black wax give way. He lifted the stopper out—

Fanshawe swayed in place, grimacing: he stood on solid ground like a man on a tight-rope. It was an appalling odor that issued from the flask’s aperture, like rotten-meat stench blended with the smell of basement mold. My GOD! I’ve got to DRINK this? Queasiness engulfed his stomach. But— Only a ‘driblet,’ he reminded himself, which he assumed could only be a minuscule unit of measure.

The odor’s foulness wafted before him; his eyes watered. Am I really going to…, but when a side breeze crept up and blew the reek off, Fanshawe didn’t even think about it.

He snatched in a breath, took one sip of the cryptic water, paused—

Down the hatch.

—and swallowed.

He stood still in the next pause. His brows popped up at the accommodating surprise: the water was absolutely tasteless and totally inoffensive.

For about two seconds.

An impalpable impact sent Fanshawe to his knees. A taste more revolting than anything he could conceive filled his mouth, a taste that could only be described as evil. At once, he gagged, then he began to dry heave, blundering about the clearing on hands and knees. My God my God my God! His mind spun. His equilibrium reversed, all the while his stomach spasming progressively harder, such that subsequent abdominal cramps flared pain as if he’d been sledgehammered in the gut. I’ve poisoned myself! he somehow was able to think through the shards of pain and waves of terror. When he rolled over on his back and opened his eyes—

He could see nothing. Fanshawe was blind.

A darkness slammed down on his psyche like an ax-fall, dragging him down and down and down until, only seconds later, he died.

««—»»

Or at least he thought he died, given the pain, loss of sight, and sheer blackness that had overwhelmed him. When he roused, he remained on his back, his eyes staring up. Low, coal-smoke-colored clouds slid swollen overhead. Only the faintest veiled luminosity tinged the edges of the clouds, as though the moon had been ingested by their tumorous shapes. Hooooooooly SHIT! he yelled at himself. I must’ve been out of my mind to drink ANYTHING that’s been sitting in an attic for three hundred years! Though he sensed some time had passed, his stomach muscles still ached sharply, and the dizziness lingered when he pulled himself to his feet. He calmed down and caught his breath…

He was looking around the clearing.

His jaw dropped.

It was the same clearing, but…not the same, either. The surrounding brush was much higher than it had been, while the clearing’s perimeter was closer, far less delineated, and was completely devoid of decorative gravel. A glance down to the town showed Fanshawe the same modest village he’d seen after midnight through the looking-glass…

Then he turned and faced the Gazing Ball.

At first the carved markings on the pedestal seemed infested by fitful movement, but Fanshawe’s shock since drinking the vile water left him disoriented. How could I NOT be disoriented? he reasoned with himself. However, the next shock gave him more to be disoriented about.

The Gazing Ball—or Bridle—stood before him in the moon-tinged darkness, straight as a chess piece. And as for the metal globe itself?

It bore no incrustations, no tarnish, no weather damage. Instead, it shined as if just polished.

The damn thing looks brand new, Fanshawe thought, but then an even darker thought insinuated itself. That’s because it IS brand new…

Fanshawe’s mind stayed relatively blank as he crept about the hillocks. No, the trails weren’t the same; where before they’d been gravel-paved and well-trimmed, now they were just meager weed-lined lanes beaten into existence by constant foot traffic. The scent of wood-smoke hung heavily throughout. Then an owl hooted from a high tree, its white blank face appearing distortedly human at first glance—Fanshawe thought of an invalid’s face. But his wanderings were quite aimless; in a sense he already knew his way around. Of course, the very peak of Witches Hill lacked the accompanying wooden sign explaining the spot’s historical significance, but it did not lack the barrel.

Fanshawe’s face blanched as whitely as the owl’s when he directed his flashlight to the foot of the barrel and saw a puddle of coagulating blood which crawled with flies. There was vomit there as well, and chunks of what appeared to be scalp tissue with long threads of hair still attached.

My God…

Fanshawe backed up, nauseous.

It was an undersense more than conscious impetus that guided his next steps. Consciously, he could not reckon the reality of where he was, what he’d done, and what he would next do. Instead, he let his feet take him where they may—

Down the straggly hill, toward the town.

Ramshackle horse-quarters stood where the Travelodge should be. Fanshawe heard the scuffs of his shoes answered by heavy snorting sounds. He’d just crossed Back Street—its teetering abodes and primitive service-buildings showing white-washed boards and crudely glazed window panes. All that lit the town was cloud-filtered moonlight. He thought of switching on his flashlight but felt alarm when he realized that might instantly make him a target for attention. The town was asleep, and he needed it to stay that way.

But he knew where he was going now…

Wraxall’s house should be just across the next street. When he slipped through an alley, he froze—at the sound of a bell—

A church bell.

It struck once, twice, then a third time. The nature of each peal sounded fat and buoyant in the air of the warm night, but also oddly brittle.

Fanshawe knew he’d heard this bell before.

Three o’clock in the morning, he deduced. Instead of emerging from the other side of the alley onto Main Street, he hung back, letting himself sink into shadow. The bell-ringer would come out of the church any moment, to walk into the tavern where he’d wait till it was time to sound the bell again, probably by the assistance of an hour-glass. Before Fanshawe’s eyes, the night-veiled dwellings of Main Street stretched, then, as suspected, a door was heard opening and closing. Footsteps crossed hard-packed dirt. Fanshawe glimpsed the bell-man approaching the tavern and disappearing into it.

Now.

He stepped out of the shadow-black alley, prepared to whisk himself across the street, but nearly shouted via the surprise that came next:

“Who be thither? Come for another go upon a helpless woman, have thee, thou stinkards? Well, I say pox on you, and may there be a plague upon all thy children! May they be borned with cloven faces and empty heads!”

Fanshawe’s heart slammed.

Just beside him stood a pillory, and in its long wooden brace hung a woman dressed in scraps of soiled fabric. Worse soiling left the color of her yard-long hair impossible to determine.

Another one, Fanshawe thought.

Sunken eyes in a gaunt face craned upward. “Glory!” she rasped in a whisper. Decayed teeth grinned at him in relief. “Pray, sir, ’tis not one’a them that you be, I can see as much! Hear my plea, I beg! Release me! ’Tis a fortnight they’ve kept me here. They spit on me in the name of God—hear me! Into mine womanhood they spurt their seed any time they’ve the mind to, and ‘tis only foul water and livestock gruel they let be my sustenance!”

“For God’s sake,” Fanshawe groaned, disgusted. He could see rings of scab and infection about the prisoner’s wrists and neck. “Kept quiet, I don’t want that guy to hear”—he fiddled with the latch on the brace.

She shivered, concealing a squeal of delight as he finally worked the latch and raised the wooden brace.

Joints cracked and she moaned when he helped her up. Between the tatters of her clothing, Fanshawe saw a body like a victim of a death camp. Immediately she hugged him, which caused Fanshawe to recoil from the power of her body odor.

“For thine kindness, I wilt do anything you may ask!” Rotten breath gusted into his ear, and then she caressed his crotch.

Fanshawe was revolted. “No, no—just run, get out of here!” he whispered. “These people are crazy.”

“Oh my great dark lord! May the Morning Star bless thee and keep thee safe!” and then the raddled woman crossed herself, but it was the sign of an upside-down cross that her hand gestured over her chest.

Fanshawe stared.

“Myself and all mine own shalt pray that Lucifer guide thee always. We shalt do anything you deem us worthy of, great necromancer!”

Fanshawe stammered, “Buh-but I’m not a necrom—”

The woman hobbled off, disappearing down another alley.

A witch…

“Halt, you!” another voice rose. It boomed down the street like a basso shout: a man’s voice.

Fanshawe ground his teeth in fear. A large man lumbered in his direction, and when a reef of clouds moved off to let the moon shine, Fanshawe grimly recognized the obese stature of the man: the vest about to break its buttons, the star-shaped metal badge, and the swollen, corroded nose and blemished face.

Patten, the high sheriff.

Fanshawe wanted to run, but his knees locked when he saw the fat, shambling man raise a flintlock pistol. “Be still and speak thy business on this Godly street at so an hour!”

Fanshawe opened his mouth—

More footsteps, then another voice boomed: “On my word, Sheriff, just now from my window I espied that fellow unfetter the harlot from her just and legal capture!” A slimmer man raced from another door, bearing a lit lantern.

“Oh, did he now?”

Fanshawe remained unmoving as the men converged, but when they got closer, their steps slowed as if intimidated. The sheriff’s out-broken face creased in fear.

“Behold his manner of dress…”

“Yea! Just the same as—”

“That one come only a week afore! Another warlock, turned up by deviltry to curse our Christian flock—”

The other man’s voice quavered. “What-what be that he’s got in his hand?”

“’Tis a weapon?”

Fanshawe raised the flashlight and turned it on. “No, listen—it’s just a…”

The slim man dropped his lantern in the road and fled, shrieking in nearly a feminine voice. The sheriff froze, terror open on his face. “A sorcerer’s scepter—surely! A wand that yields a spot of light like that of ye sun!”

Absurdly, Fanshawe said, “It’s just a damn flashlight, man. Look, I don’t want any trouble—”

Sheriff Patten’s lower lip trembled; his gun hand shook. But when Fanshawe shined the flashlight in the man’s face, he saw the expression slowly go from a gibbering panic to a slowly rising disregard for danger. He began to step forward.

Shit! What am I gonna do now?

“A Christian soldier such as I need have no fear. God shalt protect me always, as one of those with faith.” His gun hand was shaking less. “Now, keep thyself still and let go that scepter, lest thee find thy bosom with a hole large enough to admit my fist!”

With a reflex he didn’t think himself capable of, Fanshawe jerked to the left, to sprint across the street. There was a snap! a flash, then—

BOOM!

The entire street concussed from the pistol shot. Fanshawe’s teeth clacked, and he felt something substantial plow past his head, displacing air; his feet carried him through another alley as though he were on a tow-line. Behind him he heard bells clanging, shouts, and the sheriff’s voice booming nearly as loud as the shot: “All Christian men, awake—we’ve a wizard in our midst! Deputies, come out! Call ye parson! Someone fetch Humphreys and have him bring his beast!”

Beast, Fanshawe thought in horror, stumbling over rubbish in the alley. Then the thunderous barks of an immense dog overpowered all other sound; it was so loud Fanshawe wanted to scream.

He’d already seen the animal responsible for those sounds.

He tripped just as he would exit the alley—more rubbish. These people just piled their garbage in the alley? The Wraxall house stood in sight, bathed in moving moonlight, but—

I’m never going to make it, he realized, because he could already hear the nearly mule-sized dog race into the alley’s mouth.

“Fly, Pluto!” a voice shot. “Tear the wizard asunder!”

As Fanshawe scrabbled forward, he heard the huge paws tear toward him from behind. He clawed ahead; he knew that at any second the massive jaws would snap a foot off, then the other, and this would only be the beginning of a slow, unimaginable death—

The image of Abbie flashed in his mind; Fanshawe managed a smile…

He thought he could actually feel gusts of hot breath blowing into the back of his neck, when—

There was a pop! then a long sizzle which accompanied a broad, ball-shaped flash of light that was scarlet with moving veins of green. The light filled the alley; Fanshawe smelled acrid smoke. At the same time, resonant words drifted: “Nattel’gleg shebb m’gy-hotl…”

Fanshawe stared terrified over his shoulder. The blossom of light dissipated a moment later, but now, instead of hunting him, the mammoth Doberman was snarling as if wildly aggravated, and turning circles in the alley. It seemed to be chasing its own tail.

“Pluto! Sic!” one voice called from the alley’s other side.

“Of all the…”

“Look! The wizard’s bewitched the dog!”

Fanshawe still had spots in his eyes from the mysterious flash when he was hoisted to his feet and shoved. A sturdy man in dark clothing pointed toward the open front door of the Wraxall house.

“Who—”

“Stifle thy words!” a whisper snapped back. “And mind thy tongue lest it be the death of us…”

Fanshawe stared into the stranger’s face…

Callister Rood.

“Make haste and close Master’s door!”

“But—”

Another hard shove. “Be off!”

Fanshawe sprinted to the door to the house, closed it as quietly as he could, then turned to peer out of a small glass pane in the side-light.

By now the Doberman had churned its way out of the alley, still snarling, still chasing its tail. Sheriff Patten and the others lumbered after it through the trash-clogged by-way.

Rood rushed to meet them. “Good Sheriff! I glimpsed a hellish light, then spied a man in evil raiments flee thither! Pray, let me aid thee in thy chase!”

“Callister Rood, surely thy vigilance be blessed by God Himself!” Patten barked, then, behind him, “This way, men! Ye divell’s made off this way!” and then the sheriff, Rood, and the rest tramped off down the street till they were out of sight.

Fanshawe’s face pressed against the glass; he exhaled long and hard, and felt relieved when the last of the posse’s footsteps faded to silence.

He turned, to face almost total darkness. The entrance, which was probably just a narrow foyer back then, he guessed. The only light could be seen very dimly at the top of the first stairwell.

“I’m here to see Jacob Wraxall,” he announced loudly to the darkness.

There was no vocal response but—

What-what’s that?

Fanshawe heard the faintest sound, like a muffled, hot thumping…

A heartbeat!

Someone was in the room.

He raised his flashlight, was about to turn it on—

From behind, some form of garrote looped around his neck and tightened. A chuckling like bubbling tar gurgled. Fanshawe’s tongue shot out of his mouth from the tightness of the noose; he had no choice but to drop the flashlight so that he could raise his hands to hook his fingers under the rope.

“Might this break thy starch?” a man’s voice slithered up. Then Fanshawe’s eyes bugged when he was kicked from behind between the legs. Pain bloomed. He doubled over.

He began to choke at once. His heels pummeled the floor; he was being dragged by the noose across the floor, through horrid darkness, then—

thunk, thunk, thunk

—dragged up the stairs.

Fanshawe’s face ballooned as his attacker tugged him along as though he were a sack of feed. He continued to kick, twist, and contort in resistance, all for nothing.

“So,” the mocking voice resumed, “ye venturer desires to be a warlock, aye? He dares quest to be one with ye Squire?”

“No!” Fanshawe croaked out. “I just came to—”

A hard yank of the rope cut off the rest of his garbled words. Up another flight of steps, Fanshawe was hauled, then the last flight, and then down the hall. Splinters from the wood floor lanced through the rump of his slacks and into his flesh; he could only gargle his torment against the noose.

He was dragged to the left, into a room. For a moment, the noose’s pressure lessened; a needed rush of blood shot into his head. Got to get up! he realized, and he’d almost accomplished that when—

whap!

He toppled again when his attacker rammed a fist into his stomach.

If Fanshawe hadn’t summoned the strength to get his fingers back under the noose, he probably would have strangled, because just after the blow, his attacker began to climb the now-familiar rope ladder with one hand, while keeping the noose-rope attached to Fanshawe’s neck in the other.

“Up, up goes ye venturer!”

Fanshawe’s eyes could’ve popped out now: his back and then his feet left the floor as he was suspended aloft by his neck. In hard jerks, he was hoisted up into a room he’d seen three hundred years in the future…

Fanshawe’s vision dimmed, and the pressure made his face fit to erupt. Just as he thought he would die, he was slammed down onto a floor of wood planks.

The noose was taken off.

Fanshawe heaved in air while coughing at the same time. His mind spun like a child’s top; no coherent thoughts formed, which seemed understandable. But as his vision brightened, he was able to see exactly where he was: the secret section of the attic.

He sensed his attacker’s bulk just behind his head. Fanshawe was enraged now; he wanted to fight, as implausible as that instance was. Play dead, he thought.

And so he did.

He lay as if unconscious, while the man who’d dragged him up here puttered with some task. Fanshawe kept his eyes open only to the most narrow slits. He glanced in snatches, each glimpse revealing more of the hidden room: the book shelves, only new and clean, bereft of cobwebs and dust; rows and rows of lit candles; the woodstove, with fire-light showing in the grill-slits of its hatch; and the long tables which housed all manner of the laboratory apparatus of another day. An awful odor permeated the warm room, and that’s when Fanshawe guessed what its source might be:

A large cauldron sat atop the woodstove, eddying ribbons of steam.

He let his eyes veer to the right, and in the wall of candlelight, he got a full look at the man who’d hauled him up here.

Callister Rood.

He can’t be here! Fanshawe thought in consternation. I just saw him on the street!

“I know thy prank, sir,” the thick-jawed man said down to him. “Yet there be reason why feigning death wilt fool me not,” and then Rood leaned over and grinned broadly down at him.

Fanshawe leapt up, grabbed a knife from a rack on the table, then lunged at Rood.

Rood’s mouth ejected words thick as half-formed objects: “Nard’gurnlut do’blyn srug…”

Fanshawe fell limp. He could see and think, he could feel, but he couldn’t move. Had the alien words really caused his paralysis or had his neck been broken during the hoist into the attic. Suddenly rough hands were on him— “Venturer, first, thy garb must be got rid of,” Rood said, amused. Fanshawe felt his shoes pulled off, then his slacks, then his underpants, and his sports jacket and shirt. Then—

SPLAT!

—a bowl of something warm suddenly slapped Fanshawe’s face. The copper-salt taste that leaked into his mouth told him it was blood.

“Now,” Rood’s voice fluttered from above, “thine fit and proper anointment.”

Blood drooled down Fanshawe’s face and stung his eyes.

“And afore ye most unholy of imprecations—as mine Squire sayeth—thy gullet must be filled,” and then another bowl was wielded, and put to Fanshawe’s lips. “Drink all this up, good sarvant.”

Revolted, Fanshawe kept his lips sealed; he shook his head no. He knew it wasn’t merely blood Rood wanted him to swallow, but baby’s blood.

“Nay? Why dare displease the Squire?”

The edge of the bowl pushed at the seam of his lips.

“Heed, and take this down into thy belly, stranger. Thy worth must first be proved.”

Fanshawe kept shaking his head, eyes squeezed shut as tightly as his lips.

“Be an encumbrance not, or suffer…” and then Rood picked up a hand-forged linoleum knife whose inner curve had been honed to the sharpness of broken glass.

The knife was hooked under Fanshawe’s scrotum.

“Many’s the time, sir—and believeth it—ye pleasure’s been mine to skive a man’s groin bare.” A chuckle fluttered. “’T’will make a woman of thee if thou refuse to drink.”

Fanshawe tensed as the blade’s edge threatened to break the skin.

The bowl nudged his lips. “Drink with faith.”

Shuddering, Fanshawe gulped the bowl’s contents down.

“Fine, fine Rood,” another voice seemed to sing. A graceful shape passed before the wall of candlelight. “A glorious christening it is thee’ve achieved.”

A lithe figure towered over Fanshawe. Evanore, he knew by the voice. She giggled, gliding a bare foot up the inside of his thigh. When she leaned over, he could see she was not only naked but feverishly intent on him. “A handsome one, isn’t he?”

Rood, still behind Fanshawe, only grunted.

“Calm thyself, Rood. Our ilk has naught for jealousy, hmm? Our Benefactor hath spoken it,” but her words were a mockery of their meaning. Fanshawe saw the woman’s large bare breasts moving closer—she was kneeling between his splayed legs. “Yea, I’ll pleasure in filching the cream from this one. Do taketh away thy knife, friend Rood. You’ll wither him to nothing, and what use have I of that?”

More giggles sailed off as Rood put the knife away; even in his paralysis, Fanshawe relaxed…but only for a moment.

Terror had shrunk Fanshawe’s genitals, but now Evanore purred as she applied some oily fluid to them. “Surely this even-time’s events hath affrighted our venturer out of his vitality.” Her hands worked the slick oil all around Fanshawe’s groin. “But this shall resurge him a’plenty—the juice of many blister beetles, b’mixed with but a half-dram of nightshade oil…”

Beaten, hanged, forced to drink infant’s blood, and a knife held to his genitals—it was understandable that Fanshawe had completely lost his sexual responses. In only moments, however, Evanore’s arcane concoction succeeded in arousing him.

“There now!”

Fanshawe was sick to death. Nothing in his mind was sexually aware, yet his erection throbbed, if anything, larger than ever. Evanore’s grin turned greedy when she squatted down and impaled herself on it. All the while, Rood’s hand clamped to Fanshawe’s throat, fingers pliered around the adam’s apple.

Licking her lips, Evanore began to ride Fanshawe up and down.

Slick sounds rose; Fanshawe’s eyes crossed at the abominable act. She’s raping me… Her breasts bounced with each hard impact of her groin to his. She began to moan and even drool.

“Now, Rood! Lend some spark to his spirit!” she panted.

Fanshawe’s tongue shot out of his mouth the noose was put back around his neck; Rood gave it a twist. The sight seemed to rile Evanore—her groans began to blend with muted shrieks, and in the carnal delirium, her finger reached out. First she made the sign of an upside-down cross in the blood on Fanshawe’s forehead, then a pentagram on his scarlet chest. She rode him harder and harder.

Rood gave the noose’s knot another twist.

Almost no air got into Fanshawe’s lungs. He felt worse now than when he was being hanged. His face expanded; his neck beat. When he started to gag again, Evanore touched a fingertip to the top of a tiny bottle. “My moment’s nearly beside me!” came more words through more panting.

The slick sounds drew on with the lewd motion. Fanshawe’s vision was dimming but he was able to see the glimmer of a drop of fluid on Evanore’s fingertip. “Yes, yes!” and then she drew her finger along the inside of his lower lip. Instantly, he felt a tingle.

He thought of shooting his thumbs backward, to target Rood’s eyes, but he couldn’t raise his hands off the floor. A harder thought, then: grabbing Evanore’s white, sweat-sheened throat and wringing it till a vertebra snapped, but, still…

He couldn’t move at all.

Then he began to convulse.

“The potion’s so vital!” Evanore seethed.

Fanshawe’s convulsions came like electrocution. His body began to flop beneath Evanore’s weight, causing his pelvis to lurch repeatedly up. Evidently, this was the effect she wanted. She wanted to be penetrated violently, by the throes that just preceded death…

“Just the tiniest bit of spike-fish poison can kill a man,” she drooled in glee, “but half that? It makes a man flop and flip quite a fish out of water!”

Fanshawe’s body bucked hard now, and as if on cue, Rood tightened the noose further. Evanore’s bosom heaved in and out as her climax drew near. “Yea, to the very brink he must be brought!”

Fanshawe felt her sex spasm in fits around his erection. He continued to twist on the floor, veins beating in his head. A scream of the most demented ecstasy burst from Evanore’s throat; Fanshawe’s heart beat so hard if felt as thought it were trying to churn its way out of his chest. Then his entire body heaved on the floor as his own climax broke, bringing a sensation of pleasure more potent than anything he’d ever felt.

A sound more like a death-rattle than a scream ground out of his own throat when his vision turned black and he felt heat so intense he could’ve just been dropped into a slag furnace—

—and then Fanshawe was sitting wide-eyed and fully dressed at a round wooden table inlaid with pearls. Several candles flickered; the same centuries-old paintings that hung in his suite at the inn now surrounded him, but they looked brand-new.

A glass of wine sat before him, and sitting beyond it, across the table, was Jacob Wraxall, his green eyes glittering.

“Pray, pardon the viciousness of my attendant’s hectoring,” the old man said. “His orders to do so were mine alone.”

Fanshawe could only stare.

“And an equal pardon I’ll hope you to grace upon my rather randy daughter, and ye fervid eccentricities that be her wont when coupling with a man.”

“Eccentricities is putting it mildly,” Fanshawe finally managed to speak.

“But before interview could be granted, it was required in the utmost that thy faith be proved.” Wraxall smiled ever-so-slightly. “And so it has been.”

Fanshawe’s mind felt riotous with questions; and Wraxall seemed to read this in his face.

“I can only conjecture, friend,” the man began, “what might addle thee firstmost. All these matters will be answered to thee. As anent to ye chase by Sheriff Patten and his nincompoop assignees, and ye great eruption of light, additives of sartain mineral salts provided ye strange and startling hue its illuminance—lo, just a flashpot—while ye vicious cur’s progress was forestalled forthwith by an ably bespoken Confoundment Hex. Its disorienting effect remains vital for only the passage of seconds, but seconds, as your presence indubitably ostends, were sufficient to spare thy neck. In all, ‘twas a simple thing—little more than a parlor trick, same as the Stasis Spell bespoken to you next—”

Without even thinking of it, Fanshawe remembered the words that Rood had said, words that seemed to have semi-solid substance: Nard’gurnlut do’blyn srug…

“’Twas necessary, to keep thee compliant for thine anointment, and, yea, the sequent entertainment of my most lovely and awful daughter.”

But now Fanshawe’s confusion was beginning to gain a form of coherence. “How could Rood haven’t gotten in the house so fast?”

“Thy meaning, sir?”

“The sheriff’s men and that damn dog were chasing me through the alley!” Fanshawe yelled. “But after the flash, I got into the house. It was Rood who threw them off my direction—he ran down the street with the sheriff, but the second I got into the house, Rood was waiting for me! It’s impossible! He didn’t have time to get back inside!”

“Time, good student, is a notion of which you’ll become more apprized sooner than later, I say.” Wraxall stroked his trimmed Van Dyke, as if amused. “But I should think such possibilities would already have come to thee.”

Fanshawe pounded his fist on the table. “What are you talking about!”

“’Twas the Bridle which thee rode to come hither.”

The Bridle, Fanshawe thought.

“’Tis a genius mechanism given men as me by the great dark Benefactor, whom I live to sarve. A man such as thyself, possessed of understanding, should surely see this.”

“It-it’s some occult thing… that manipulates time,” Fanshawe said to himself.

“Far more than mere manipulation it is of which we be speaking. It is an instance of one’s spirit being united with the ways of our Benefactor. Such knowledge be bestowed upon only a precious few.” Wraxall pointed. “You.”

Fanshawe continued to stare.

“Yea, you. But I shall give thee witness, to further embolden thee,” and with that, Wraxall seemed to grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut, and—

Now Fanshawe was standing in the silent hall, Wraxall smiling at his side. “Time? Space? Such things these, thought to be constants, but to those so gifted, they be but playthings to ye minister of Lucifer”—and then Wraxall made the facial gesture again, to leave himself and Fanshawe standing in a small bedroom occupied by a high, veiled poster bed. “Behold,” Wraxall said.

It was Evanore who lay there, with Rood standing by, leaning over intently. Evanore grunted, her face a grimace. She was nude and—

Holy shit, Fanshawe thought.

—very pregnant. But after several forceful shrieks, her belly collapsed. Rood reached between her legs and raised up a wet, new-born infant.

Fanshawe trembled. “That’s not…”

“Ye child of thy seed shared with my daughter—”

“But that was just a few minutes ago!”

“So to thee it may seem, for ye Bridle skews time, venturer, yet he who masters it owns it.”

Fanshawe looked again. The squalling newborn lay now at Evanore’s bosom. As the tiny thing suckled, Evanore grinned…right at Fanshawe.

Again, the warlock transplanted them, this time, to the foyer. A dog was heard barking outside, along with the shouts of men. Rood grinned at Fanshawe as he set down a bloody knife. Behind him on a shelf lay an indiscernible shape—a tiny shape—yet before him on a table sat two bowls of blood.

“Back, I take thee, forward—any and all!” Wraxall said. “Like a jester who juggles pins amid ye air, so do I juggle time!”

The nausea rose in Fanshawe’s gut, even after the scene disappeared, leaving him to sit in a dark parlor room. He didn’t have to be told that the blood he’d drunk was that of his own child.

“Forsooth, sir—these be ye secrets I design to teach.”

Fanshawe’s mind spun. “I don’t want your secrets! I don’t want to know any of this, and I don’t want to be here!” Spittle flew from his lips. “I’m not evil! I don’t want to be a fuckin’ warlock!”

“Nay?” Only one candle lit the room. Wraxall looked like little more than a shadow. “’Twas of thine own will that thee are here. You sought such secrets. You engaged ye looking-glass. And, you, sir, were all too eager to ride ye Bridle.”

Fanshawe went limp in his chair.

“To thee I shalt bequeath ye Two Secrets of which you hath willingly read already. The test thee hath passed. Thy mettle hath been proved. Only one other such venturer has come here, claiming to seek ye same.”

Something small and dark flapped on the table before Fanshawe. He picked it up.

It was a wallet.

Fanshawe opened it to find a New York driver’s license and a picture of—

“Eldred Karswell. So he did come here.”

“This he did, seeking secrets such as you. Aye, but at a glance I knew that his poise was but a feign. He claimed to serve ye Benefactor, yet one of such he was not.”

Karswell was a Christian mystic, Fanshawe remembered, and a former minister.

“Yet his aspect here at once introduced quite an incongruous element, and with but a glance I espied his falsehood, for his truth I glimpsed in the tone of his aura…”

Fanshawe’s gaze was dragged up by the statement. “What color? What color was Karswell’s aura?”

“White as new-felled snow—”

“And mine?” Fanshawe shook where he sat. “What color is mine?”

“Black,” the word grated from Wraxall’s throat. “Same as ye hue of thy heart, like deepests earth’s blackest ichors.” Wraxall’s shape paused; he seemed to be appraising Fanshawe’s reaction. “But this thee know already. In matters appertaining to ye imposture called Karswell, from the house he was cast, then encaptured by ye sheriff and deputies. ’Twas a joyous sight to behold—his end.”

Fanshawe remembered the image of Karswell’s face, or lack thereof. They barreled him…

Now Wraxall’s words in the dark seemed to vibrate like some suboctave groan. “You too wilst have such power as I, to play with time as thou see fit, and to thine own great gain, whereat Lucifer be praised.”

The word—Lucifer—seemed to hang in the darkness like the face of a barely seen watcher.

“To one such as thyself, such things seem impossible, since we know time to be of ye Nature God hath put upon us. How wondrous, then, must it be to have in thy hands such black endowment to corrupt God’s will, and forge the impossible into that which be more than possible? Let us look then back into the countenance of God and hurl our laughter as we subvert his givings for our whimsey!”

Fanshawe let the echos of the words melt away.

“But as bearing with all great gifts, a price must be exacted—”

“What? My soul?”

Wraxall laughed out of the darkness. “You squandered that some while back, my friend.”

“What, then? What’s the price?” Fanshawe demanded, no longer even caring.

“Something thee wilt freely give, so am I certain. Alas, our disquisition be nearly as its end. Naught remains save for this,” and then Wraxall leaned out of the darkness, green eyes ablaze. But the image of the necromancer’s face seemed to switch back and forth between glimpses of vibrant youth and great age. His hair shifted from dark to gray, back and forth; his posture stooped, then straightened, and the hand on Fanshawe’s shoulder wavered between that of a teenager and that of a hundred-year-old man. That same hand felt hot through Fanshawe’s jacket, and then he noticed tendrils of white smoke wafting off Wraxall’s head. “‘Tis history you and I shall make—a most evil history,” and then Wraxall began to whisper into Fanshawe’s ear…

««—»»

The moment felt like weeks. Fanshawe stood dazed in the barely lit foyer. Wraxall was gone, but a second later, a figure stepped out of the blocks of darkness: Rood.

Rood opened the front door, showing the twilit street.

“I don’t know what to do next!” Fanshawe exclaimed in a whisper.

Rood’s smile was like a mask of wax. “Just but one test remains—”

“Bullshit!” Fanshawe’s voice boomed. “I already passed the fuckin’ test!”

“A challenge most final of thy fiber, sir. Into the even-time you must now go—”

“But the sheriff! His men!”

“—and ride thy must upon the night-wind with all things born of darkness. Should thy heart be not as stoutly black as it must, then thou shalt die most horrible, as did the interloper called Karswell.”

“This is a pile of shit! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put—”

“But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves,” another voice floated from the darkness. In increments, Evanore emerged. It was only the icy moonlight from the door that revealed her: nude, curvaceous, her bosom thrusting, and her grin wet. “Would thou take thy leave without so much as a bid of farewell?” she asked coyly. Her white hands reached out to him. Like the last glimpses of Wraxall, Evanore’s aspect changed, shifting, from adolescence to adulthood, and back again. With each impossible metamorphosis, her blood-red hair lengthened down to her buttocks, then shrunk back up again. It was as though Fanshawe’s presence here had triggered some kind of flux that was leaking in from various time periods, which made sense once he thought about it. The same tendrils of smoke wafted off of the woman’s perfect skin. With one step, she was lissome and slim, but with each step after that her belly grew and grew till it looked close to rupture, only to shrink back down to flatness. Fanshawe stood still as a post in the ground as he watched, and he didn’t even flinch when one manner or another of Evanore wrapped her arms around him. Her mouth found his at once, her tongue invading; as she pressed closer, Fanshawe sickeningly felt her belly expand and contract, expand and contract, to mimic each infernal pregnancy. Then—

“Oww!” Fanshawe roared.

Evanore was giggling, her mouth red. She’d bitten down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. Fanshawe’s reaction was faster than instantaneous, his rage leapt up and he clamped his hands about her throat and squeezed for all he was worth. Harder, harder. No conscious thoughts entered his head, just the reflex…

Harder, harder.

Evanore’s face turned pink, then blue, yet all through Fanshawe’s act, she smiled. Now the nameless flux showed the smoking brand-marks of crosses burned into her breasts, belly, and pubis; he could hear them sizzling. Then her face and the flesh on her head disappeared in strips as if torn by an invisible beast, then…

Fanshawe’s hands were clamped to the throat of a corpse stripped of almost all its flesh.

“To thee I bid my love forever,” the corpse said but it was with a voice like someone talking and vomiting at the same time, after which came an even more loathsome laugh.

Rood’s strong hands shoved Fanshawe out the door. The door clicked shut, then its bolt snapped closed. Fanshawe stood alone in the street; he glanced terrified back and forth. Moonlight streamed down on him. Where did they go? but the question was answered a moment later:

“There he is!”

“Wizard! Get thee hence!”

A rabble of men shambled southward down the street. They carried torches and pitchforks. Fanshawe’s heart felt like it turned inside-out—he raced across the dirt road, into the alley he’d crossed earlier, but—

BAM!

Muzzleflash bloomed at the other end of the alley. More enraged townsmen leapt toward him over the rubbish.

Out of here, Fanshawe thought. He backtracked, jerked north, began to sprint, but stopped in his tracks.

More townsmen poured down the street. He was being converged upon by all accessible directions…

I’m caught, I’m dead, he thought. Patten and his deputies were the first to seize him. The grossly overweight sheriff’s pocked face and red, bulbous nose looked huge in the moonlight. When Fanshawe raised his flashlight, Patten slapped it away. “Thy tools of Lucifer are of no use to thee,” the lawman said, “for our tools—faith—be empowered by Almighty God who hast power to rub thee to dust!”

Another man in a tri-cornered hat chicken-winged Fanshawe from behind. Now over a dozen men encircled the scene, shouting, waving torches. “To the barrel I say!” one shouted. “Wither has Humphreys taken his cur?” someone else asked. And another: “Whilst we pass this night in our beds, ’tis best that this warlock pass it in the belly of the dog!”

Fanshawe couldn’t think beyond the contemplation of that massive dog. Several men spit on him, and one prodded hard him with a stick. Fanshawe yelled when the man propping him up yanked his elbows higher to twist his shoulder joints.

“Pray, Sheriff, Humphreys and his cur be in ye fields!”

“We’ve not time to wait!” Patten blared. “We must kill this sarvant of Satan before he speaks hexes upon us!”

Fanshawe strained in his captor’s clench; a frantic glance to the Wraxall house showed him Rood and Evanore peeking out a front window. They were grinning.

“Keep him in thy clutches, Cooper,” the sheriff said. “Hold him fast and still…” Patten was unscrewing the cap on an unlit lantern. “Let him decide if hellfires be so hot as this!” and then the lantern was upended over Fanshawe’s head.

His face wanted to suck in on itself. A thick, fishy smelling oil saturated his hair, then drooled down his face and chest. Next, his pants were unfastened, his underwear pulled out, and more oil was poured. “No doubt ye fiend hath defiled many a Christian woman with this,” Patten said, “and put many a devilish babe in her belly. Well, warlock, here be recompense!”

The crowd surrounding Fanshawe quickly stepped back, then he was released. He only had time to attempt one lunging step before—

“Burn the monster!” Patten ordered.

—a lit torch was plunged right between his legs.

Flames erupted from his groin; Fanshawe was suddenly dressed in a suit of fire. His hair smoked off his head in a single burst; his face crackled and shrunk. The more he wheeled about in the street, the hotter the flames grew.

“Aye,” someone said approvingly, “tonight Humphrey’s beast shalt have cooked meat for its supper…”

Fanshawe’s eyes popped. He could smell his own flesh burning, and as for his genitals, they shrunk and bubbled like marshmallows dropped in a campfire. Amid pain a thousand times worse than anything he could imagine, his fiery face turned to something like slab-bacon and his mouth opened and he screamed louder than a trumpet—

««—»»

—and collapsed, rolling in turmoil. Each time he let out a breath, smoke expelled. But as he flailed in the dirt—

What the—

He realized that the pain that had cocooned him was gone, and where his eyes had popped, he could now see the perfect, star-flecked twilight above. Fanshawe turned over and sat up…

He was intact.

No oil soaked his hair and clothing, and the porky smell of flesh roasting had vanished. His hands went to his crotch to find it dry and his slacks still fastened.

Then he looked up and saw the Gazing Ball. The metallic orb atop the pedestal was stained and tarnished, not clean and brand-new as he’d seen it last. Fanshawe heaved a sigh and dropped his face into his hands.

“I’m back…”

Rood’s and Evanore’s words refreshed his memory: Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put—

But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves…

“Well, I sure as shit screamed loud enough for that when I was on fire,” he muttered. In spite of all he’d experienced, he jumped up, frenzied with excitement. A glance to his watch showed him it was ten minutes past midnight. It was a lot later than that when I was in the town…, but then he recalled what Wraxall had told him about time:

He who masters it OWNS it.

Fanshawe rushed out of the cove and dashed up to the highest point of Witches Hill.

Below, the town glittered in its lights. He stared down, knowing that this was the town of today, with its asphalt streets, its sidewalks, its streetlamps, its tourist hotel complete with swimming pool.

But that’s not where I just came from…

He squinted and could easily make out late-nighters sitting at the café, and several more crossing Main Street into the tavern. He even saw the annoying woman in tights, and her even more annoying dog, out for a nighttime stroll. At the town hall, the lights were blinking off, and several people were dispersing from the front doors. One of them seemed to be heading toward the inn. Probably Abbie, he guessed, now that her meeting’s over, but he couldn’t be sure.

Fanshawe reached into his pocket and withdrew the looking-glass. He raised it to his eye and looked at the exact same place in the street where he’d thought he’d seen Abbie…

Now, of course, she wasn’t there. The town of three hundred years ago was there instead, and what Fanshawe saw specifically, on the unpaved street, was the same torch- and pitchfork-wielding crowd that had just doused him with oil and set him aflame. At this moment, though, many of the townspeople were running away as if terrified, while the others stood with fear-stamped faces and mouths agape. Fanshawe thought he could even hear them—

He kept the glass to his eye and cupped his ear.

“By his magic, he’s escaped into thin air!” someone shouted.

Another voice: “And out of it he may reappear when we least expect!”

In the viewing field, Patten waved a torch back and forth. “Hear me, good Christians—the devil be near at hand tonight! Take to thy beds! Bolt thy doors and keep thy Bibles close!” and the parson added with a stammer, “If our pruh-prayers be sufficient intentful, then God shall keep ye adversary at bay!”

The remainder of the crowd scattered in all directions, boots tramping. Seconds later, the street stood empty and in utter silence.

Fanshawe could hear his own eyes blink.

What now? he asked himself, but he already knew the answer…

He swerved the looking-glass to the Wraxall house.

One window after another stood dark; some were even shuttered closed. But…what did he expect to see? More of the atrocious sights he’d witnessed personally? Evanore, nude and beckoning? Instead, he found the drab, weathered windows blank, and shutters pale. None were lit—

Wait…

Fanshawe had lost track of which floor he was surveying; nevertheless, one window seemed to emerge from its own uniform darkness until the most wan candlelight flickered within its frame. Soon, in a slowness that could be called ethereal, a shape moved from within—the shape of a man.

It took Fanshawe’s eyes a minute to acclimate.

Why am I not surprised?

The man in the window was Jacob Wraxall. The cuffed and collared sorcerer leaned out the window, peering for something. His narrowed eyes scanned back and forth, up and down, until—

He appeared to have found whatever it was he sought. Very slowly, he smiled, raised a similar looking-glass to his eye…

Chills that were strangely scalding flushed their way up Fanshawe’s back. For some inscrutable reason, he felt that Wraxall’s gesture of raising his own glass served as a cue for Fanshawe…

Fanshawe zoomed tighter, until the window came in close, then Wraxall’s face came in close…

Then…closer, until only a third of the necromancer’s face filled Fanshawe’s circular viewing field, then—

Even closer.

More. Closer.

Fanshawe zoomed directly into the lens of Wraxall’s looking-glass, then he kept turning the supernatural ring tighter and tighter, delving deeper and deeper, such that he thought—impossibly—that he was actually zooming in through the iris of Wraxall’s eye itself…

More!

…then deeper and deeper and deeper, into the warlock’s very optic nerve and straight into his brain…

Holy shit…

…then out of his brain and down, down as if down into the earth. Fanshawe’s vision descended akin to a drill, boring through, first, soil, then the rocky crust of the world. He stood electrified as he was forced to bear this resistless black witness, yet soon the notion of what propelled him…changed. Where first it had been actions of his own will that had begun this phantasmagoric trek, he now realized it was another will which had superseded: his vision through the glass was no longer doing the delving but instead it had been commandeered and pulled, as though a berserk pair of hands at the bottom of this seemingly bottomless journey were pulling on a rope, and the rope was Fanshawe’s eyesight.

Sensing a terror, he willed himself to retreat but all that responded to his efforts was an increase in the evil velocity that had taken over. Helpless, came the whimpering thought, but with it came a sound like a distant yet incalculably vast chuckle. From here, Fanshawe descended fast and sure as a stone dropped into a mineshaft miles deep, dropped, yes, into darkness.

The darkness was just as incalculable as the speed by which he plummeted; it was a blackness that existed as far more than an absolute absence of light but as an entity of its own, that magnified as the screaming, plunging lightlessness rose. Fanshawe was deafened by this speed; he felt his psyche begin to boil from the unearthly, brain-jarring friction. Was he going mad? He may have even shrieked laughter as his senses were pulled further; he managed to think of a roller-coaster car fired through a cannon barrel, but just when the “car”—Fanshawe—would make impact and explode—

His soaring vision stopped.

The termination of the manic velocity left him staring at still more of the absolute blackness of this realm, but after the passage of some time, that blackness seemed to take on a glistening, like something wet, and then?

It began to move.

It throbbed. It expanded and contracted, and each cycle of this movement brought a sound, an even thump…thump…thump…, and only then did Fanshawe’s vision begin to back-track, ever so slowly, until he could make out details of the blackness, but before those details converged he already knew what they would reveal:

A heart.

A coal-black, chasm-black heart, beating within the confines of a chest cavity winged by ribs yanked open via devilish retractors over which flaps of flesh hung.

Like a camera, then, his vision pulled back more, to reveal his own head atop the naked corpse lying on a slab of infernal stone. Yes, Fanshawe saw himself lying there in the subterranean cranny, his chest cranked apart, and when a shadow crossed the charnel slab—somehow a shadow where no light existed to cast it—Fanshawe sensed an emanation of not only approval but of love.

An incogitable finger lowered, to touch the black beating mass in Fanshawe’s chest. The face of the cadaveresque thing which symbolized Fanshawe…smiled.

“Back now,” said a voice that existed not as sound but as darkness. “Ye final verge of thy rigor thee hast crossed.”

“It’s him!” a voice blared.

“Well, I’ll be!” exclaimed another. “You were right!”

The voices caused Fanshawe to churn amid the overwhelming blackness he lay buried in. Like a victim trapped in a tar pit, he floundered, terrified. Eventually he surfaced—not his body, his mind.

“Yeah, I was right but I goddamn wish I wasn’t!” a third voice cracked. Even in his consternation, Fanshawe knew it was Mr. Baxter’s voice. “And it looks like we caught him red-handed!”

Fanshawe felt a physical heave, then found himself disarrayed face-first on the ground; the looking-glass tumbled out of his hand. He blinked his way out of the stupor, realizing that someone had shoved him hard from behind, severing the occult tether that had moments ago plunged him into a raging black netherworld. When he leaned up, exhausted and still terrified, he saw Baxter standing over him. Beside him were two other elderly men, one slim, stoop-shouldered, with an overly large jaw who wore an out-of-date suit; the other beer-bellied, in a shoddy Yankees T-shirt. In the moonlight, the three men looked down at him like inquisitors.

Fanshawe was about to speak but—

FWAP!

—Baxter reeled back and kicked him in the stomach.

“There’s a good one in the breadbasket!” exclaimed the suited man with a high, piping voice.

Fanshawe clenched, losing his breath. His eyes bugged. What the hell is going on? He feebly rolled back, then shambled to his feet.

Baxter and his cohorts surrounded him.

“What the fuck!” Fanshawe yelled at Baxter. “I want an explanation!”

Baxter picked up the looking-glass. “Well, Mr. Fanshawe, you’re the dag-blasted last person I’d ever expect to catch stealing—”

Pain throbbed at Fanshawe’s stomach, while anger forced his thoughts through the sheer bewilderment. “What are you talking about! What, you just kicked me in the stomach because of that damn glass?”

Baxter remained with his arms crossed, while the other two elderly men stood like gray-haired henchmen. “Wasn’t till just today I noticed the glass missing, then I could’a kicked myself for not checking the tapes from the security camera every day.”

Fanshawe instantly made the deduction. He saw me take the glass, but… He was still enraged. “All right, I admit, I took the damn glass! It wasn’t my intention to steal it, I was just borrowing it!”

The Yankees Shirt let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Yeah, borrowin’ it for a little window-peepin’. You beat off when you do that, bub?”

Fanshawe felt his face redden. “It’s not what you think, for God’s sake! I just needed it to…,” but then his vocal wrath dissolved. What could he say? “Shit, if the looking-glass is worth that much to you, I’ll buy the damn thing! Name your price!”

“What Mr. Fanshawe here’s gotta understand,” Baxter said, “is not all of us put so much stock in money. Money’s not worth much compared to things like character and honesty. Those are the things that make a man, Fanshawe. Not how fat his goddamn wallet is.”

“I don’t believe this!” Fanshawe replied, his mind twirling. “You don’t kick a guy in the stomach because he borrowed a piss-ant looking-glass!”

The Suited Man and the Yankees Shirt grinned. Then Baxter said, “And it ain’t really even the glass that’s got our dander up. It’s what you been doin’ with it.”

Fanshawe glared back at him.

“We don’t got room for perverts in our nice little town, Fanshawe,” Baxter continued. “It’s so fuckin’ disheartening, you know? Seems like the whole world these days is full of perverts, weirdos, sickos, and creeps. But the worst of the bunch are guys like you, hiding behind success and respectability. No one knows.” Baxter’s eyes leveled. “But I knew, and I wish to hell I’d figured it out sooner. First, Sadie Simpkins tells me she’s seen you loiterin’ around up here at night—”

“Who?” Fanshawe bellowed.

“Aw, you seen Sadie. Wonderful gal. With the poodle?”

Fanshawe ground his teeth. That BITCH!

“But when she told me that, I thought nothin’ of it. ‘So what,’ I think. ‘Mr. Fanshawe just has a fancy for late-night strolls.’ A couple of the gals at the convention told me the same thing, as a matter of fact, and now that I think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was their window you’ve been peeping in, good-looking as they are.”

Harvard and Yale, Fanshawe realized grimly.

“No,” Baxter went on, “like I said, I didn’t think nothin’ of it—of course not! Mr. Fanshawe’s a billionaire! Billionaire’s don’t get up to no good! Billionaires ain’t deviants. Ah, but then I notice the glass missing, checked the security tape, and, presto! There it is—the truth starin’ me right in the chops! I would never have thought it in a coon’s age.” Baxter grimaced. “Mr. Billionaire is a fuckin’ peeping tom!”

“A perv,” added the Suit.

“A sick piece’a shit,” added Yankees Shirt.

“Bet he was lookin’ for little girls.”

“Or little boys!”

“No!” Fanshawe’s blood was boiling. But what could he do?

Then all three men took a foreboding step closer.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Fanshawe challenged. “You’re threatening me? Don’t you know I could sue you for assault and battery, and imprisonment? Shit, my lawyers could sue you right out of business.”

The men chuckled, and each took another step closer.

This is ridiculous! “Listen, Mr. Baxter. I know I’m not exactly a kid anymore, but—no offense—you guys are old men. I could take all three of you.”

“Think so?” Baxter asked coyly. “Was a famous saying my daddy used to tell me: ‘Be a man large or small in size, Colonel Colt will equalize…’”

Then the Suit and Yankees Shirt pulled pistols.

Fanshawe froze. “All right!” he yelled. “What more do you want?! I took the glass and, yeah! I looked in some windows! You’re pulling guns on me for that? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna kill me for that?”

“Howard,” Baxter said. “Prop the sombitch up.”

The Suit handed Baxter his pistol, then took Fanshawe from behind, chicken-winging him quite like the colonist had when Fanshawe had been doused with oil.

Baxter grinned in the moonlight. “Howard’s stronger than he looks, huh? Go ahead, try and throw him off. After all, he ain’t nothin’ but a old man.”

When Fanshawe tried to jerk his arms, he found his captor’s grip tenacious as metal straps. Then he tried to haul himself away but remained planted in place. “This doesn’t make sense!” he yelled, mortified now.

“Well, tell me if this makes sense,” Baxter said, and then walked up very quickly and kicked Fanshawe between the legs.

The burst of pain folded Fanshawe up, and again he was face-first in the dirt.

Laughter rose.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” exclaimed Yankees Shirt.

The Suit: “No jerkin’ off for him tonight!”

“Tickles me pink,” Baxter joined in, “to give a low-down lyin’ thievin’ scumbag a good old fashioned kick in the nuts!”

Fanshawe’s cheeks ballooned from the pain. Clutching his crotch, he rolled over, cross-eyed. “You’ve got to be out of your minds!”

“Naw,” Baxter said very calmly. “We’re just three old duffers sick to death of watchin’ this fine world go straight down the toilet.” Baxter shrugged. “Every so often, well…we do somethin’ about it…”

“Here here,” said Yankees, keeping his gun on Fanshawe.

“Old days were the best days,” said Howard.

“I hear that,” Baxter rambled. “The ooooooold days.”

“Listen to me!” Fanshawe spat, still crumpled in pain. Did these men really mean to kill him? Whether they did or not, Fanshawe had no choice but to tell what he knew. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I can prove it!”

“Prove what, Fanshawe?”

“Prove that you’re a pervert and kiddy diddler?” Yankees added with a chuckle. “Bet he hangs out at toy stores in his spare time!”

Fanshawe snarled, addressing Baxter. “The glass! I swear to God. It works!”

Baxter’s lips pursed. “Say again?”

“The looking-glass! It’s not folklore—it’s true! Jacob Wraxall didn’t just think he was a warlock, he was a warlock! He can manipulate time, he can see the future! And the witch-water looking-glass works!”

Baxter laughed. “Oh, I get it, you’re tryin’ to distract me with all that witchcraft poppycock and silly warlock drivel. Well I won’t fall for no pish-posh. Ya can’t bamboozle me.”

“I’m serious! It really works!”

“It does, huh?”

“If you look in it after midnight, you see the time period in which it was made!” Fanshawe nearly screamed. “Go ahead!”

Baxter stalled, eyeing the glass.

“What he hell is he yammerin’ about?” asked Yankees.

“Probably on the drugs,” said Howard.

“Go on!” Fanshawe insisted. “Look in the damn thing!”

Baxter sighed with a smile, and turned. He raised the looking-glass to his eye, pointing it toward the town.

He froze. “God damn…,” then he lowered the glass.

“There!” Fanshawe said. “I told you, it works! You saw the town as it was three hundred years ago, right?”

Baxter turned back to Fanshawe, looking more disgusted than ever. “The only thing I saw, Fanshawe, was my daughter buck-naked in her room, gettin’ ready for bed.”

Fanshawe wilted in the dirt. I should’ve known. It only works for people with the blackest hearts—like me…

Baxter dropped the looking-glass, then turned back, rubbing his hands. “Time to get this party rollin’. Fellas?”

Chuckling, Howard and Yankees approached Fanshawe, who was about to jump up, but—

smack!

Baxter cracked him on the top of the head with the pistol. For the third time that night, his face met the dirt.

My God, they can’t be serious… The blow had been not quite hard enough to knock him out, but sufficient to impair his motor skills: trying to move with all his might only resulted in the most feeble motions of his arms and legs, no more formidable than a man in a nursing home.

Dizziness marauded him; he felt himself being picked up and carried away from the Bridle. It was Howard and the Yankees Shirt who did the carrying. Baxter followed, gun in hand.

Fanshawe mumbled incoherent words. The stars he was seeing from the blow merged confusingly with the stars of twilight. Eventually he was carried into one of the other clearings…

“Up ya go, Mr. Pervert,” Yankees grunted.

Baxter’s two lackeys, in spite of their age, easily elevated Fanshawe’s limp form, then lowered him down into something rimmed, like a hole…

Fanshawe’s cognition lolled, head aching. A manhole? A grave? but…no—

At first he thought they meant to bury him alive but as more of his senses throbbed back he knew full well where they were putting him.

Holy mother of…

They were putting him in the barrel.

Fanshawe yelped when a rough hand shoved his head down. Moonlight showed in the hole cut into the barrel’s front, and from there another hand appeared, reached in, and snatched Fanshawe’s hair. He yelped again, louder, when the hand yanked his head out of the hole, and then a u-shaped wooden collar with leather treatments was dropped over his neck and fastened.

Reeling, Fanshawe tried to look upward but could only see the feet of his attackers.

“Been a while since we seen a good barrelin’,” remarked Yankees.

Spittle flew when Fanshawe yelled, “You can’t do this!”

“Sure we can, and why not?” said Baxter from above. “What this world needs is a look back to the old days, Fanshawe. It was majority rules back then, the way the Founding Fathers intended. And criminals were punished in the ways the majority agreed. It was for the greater good, see? To protect the good people from the bad.”

Horror dumped adrenalin into Fanshawe’s brain, rousing him from the grogginess inflicted by the blow. His fists beat on the inside of the barrel. “Let me out!”

“Oh, we’ll let you out, all right,” Howard chuckled, “once we’re done.”

“Name your price! Just let me out!”

“There you go with your ever-lovin’ money again,” Baxter chided. “You just don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand you can’t kill a guy for looking in windows! Call the police, have me arrested! I deserve my day in court.”

The other three cackled like witches.

“But this is your court, Fanshawe,” Baxter went on. He whistled high and loud.

“And here comes the judge!” Howard celebrated.

The mad growling could already be heard. Footsteps crunched, and in a moment another man entered the clearing. He was in his seventies, balding and bespectacled, with a large, gleaming forehead.

“Howdy, fellas,” he greeted.

“Hey, Monty,” Baxter said. “Thanks for loanin’ Buster out.”

“Oh, it’s always a pleasure! Old men like us need a thrill every now and then.”

“I’ll drink to that!” exclaimed Yankees.

The man—Monty—came closer into moonlight, and he brought a scampering shape with him. Fanshawe could only stare in unreserved despair when he got a look at the snuffling, snarling canine at Monty’s side. It was not quite the giant Doberman he’d witnessed in the town of old, but instead an overly large pit bull with strings of foam hanging from its maw and bumps of muscles tensing. The animal’s eyes looked insane from the beginning, but when the dog saw Fanshawe’s head sticking out of the barrel—

“Ho, boy! Not yet, Buster!”

—it lunged, tugging its leash, and nearly pulled Monty down. Terrifying barks ripped out of its throat. Those insane eyes seemed as intent on Fanshawe’s face as if he were a pile of raw steak.

“Mr. Fanshawe here says he wants his day in court,” Baxter began, “but he knows full well that courts don’t serve justice no more, and what they were designed to do is serve justice. For the people. The law-abiding people of this great land. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted.”

“You can’t kill a guy for looking in windows!” Fanshawe wailed.

“Aw, but nowadays? Things are just all twisted up and messed about so bad there ain’t no real justice left anymore. Now, take a rich fella like you. Oh, sure we could call the cops, give statements that we seen you peeping in windows, not to mention the security tape of you stealing the glass, but then you’d just hire yourself a Dream Team and get off scot free. Damn, Fanshawe, the Founding Fathers would shit in their graves if they knew what American Justice has turned into. Politicians and rich men? They can do whatever they want.”

The slavering dog barked several times, as if in agreement.

“But back in the old days, when things were based on common sense and majority rules instead of loopholes and kickbacks and plea bargains, the idea of justice still meant something. Witches and warlocks threatened the stability of the community, so they were executed—it was the law of the land. Same for murderers and rapists and child molesters, you name it.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Fanshawe blared. “I’ve never raped anyone! All I did was look in some windows!”

Baxter’s shadow from the moonlight nodded. “Well that’s just it, Fanshawe. Back then they killed perverts just like they killed all the rest of the scum. Crimes against nature and God; that’s how we took care of our own. Why should perverts be an exception? First a man’d be lookin’ in women’s windows and next thing ya know, he’d be rapin’ ’em, and then killin’ ’em so they couldn’t talk. Best way to stop it was to nip it in the bud.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake!” Fanshawe bucked in the barrel. “This is crazy! Let me go!”

Baxter’s voice turned placid. “Every now and then…it’s good to get back to the old days.” He paused as if absorbing the moment. “Monty? I think it’s time you let Buster have at it. Poor little pooch must be famished after not eatin’ for a week…”

Monty stood about ten yards away. He leaned backward, struggling against the pit bull’s strength, then—

Baxter counted off, “One, two, three…go!

—unhooked the leash from the animal’s collar. The pit bull surged forward, kicking up dirt with the synchronicity of a machine.

Fanshawe screamed.

“Buster! Sic!”

“Get it, boy!”

“Eat that the head, Buster! Eat that head!”

“You go, doggie! Let’s see you peel that head like a damn banana!”

The dog tore forward, releasing cannonades of foam-throwing barks. It didn’t run, it galloped, kicking up more dirt and gravel with its muscle-bulging hind legs. Fanshawe’s instinct was to shrink, to close his eyes and hope his knowledge of the imminent horror would make him lose consciousness but he experienced instead the opposite. It was as if some psychical imp of the perverse had confiscated his reflexes, then forced his eyes to remain open and kept his adrenalin pumping. Though less than thirty feet away, the mad animal tore toward its target in the most cruel slow motion. Each foot the pit bull traversed seemed to take ten seconds; even Baxter and his henchmen hooted, cheering the animal on in long low words that poured like molasses. Fanshawe convulsed inside the barrel, screaming, screaming.

Ten feet closer the animal had galloped, then twenty feet, then twenty-five. Fanshawe could only stare in skyrocketing horror as the dog’s head tossed with each stroke of its legs. It was the beast’s gleaming fangs that riveted Fanshawe’s gaze, the fangs and the high-p.s.i. jaws snapping open and closed.

Twenty-six feet, twenty-seven…

Fanshawe was screaming now with such ferocity he expected chunks of his lungs to fly out of his throat. Madness held dominion of his consciousness, while his inner visions were full of the image of the monstrous animal voraciously eating the flesh off his head like a fat man eating the caramel off a candy apple…

Twenty-eight feet, twenty-nine…

Fanshawe’s eyes, at this indivisible moment before an imponderable death, seemed to double in size so to force him to bear witness with even greater clarity. Did the insane animal’s jaws actually unhinge or was this hallucination? Baxter and his cronies were in conniptions of bloodthirsty glee, when—

twang!

The pit bull stopped abruptly in its tracks, jaws snapping just an inch away from Fanshawe’s face…

Baxter and his men were laughing so hard they were bent over.

“The fun’s over, Monty,” Baxter wheezed. None-too-pleased, the dog was reeled backwards away from the barrel, and Fanshawe was able to see the details of the ruse. It was a second, much longer leash that had also been attached to the animal’s collar, which suggestion and sheer horror had prevented Fanshawe from seeing.

Hee-hawing laughter continued as the u-collar was taken off and then a nearly comatose Fanshawe was hauled out of the barrel and dropped on the ground. Strings of foamy slime spattered his face; he’d wet his pants. The Yankees guy was laughing so hard he was literally slapping his knees, while Howard and Monty were yucking and wiping tears out of their eyes.

“How’s that for a good scare, Fanshawe?” Baxter asked.

Fanshawe managed to stand up, wobbling. “You’re a bunch of old fuck motherfuckers!”

“Aw, now, don’t be that way. Can’t the billionaire take a joke?”

Fanshawe snarled like the dog. “That’s what this was? A joke?”

“Well, no. You’re still a scumbag,” and with surprising reflexes, Baxter kicked Fanshawe in the crotch one more time.

Fanshawe collapsed, cringing. He was getting tired of this.

Hands fumbled in his pockets; his watch was taken off.

“Bet this is a Rolex!” Yankees enthused.

“It’s a Brietling, you redneck vagabond!” Fanshawe groaned.

“Fits dead-solid perfect!”

“Got a horse-choke wad of cash in his wallet, too!” Howard exclaimed.

“Take the cash, leave the cards,” Baxter instructed.

Fanshawe craned his neck to see Howard slip stacks of bills out of the Nautica wallet. Then he threw the wallet in Fanshawe’s face.

“And to top it all off, here’s his checkbook!” Yankees informed.

Fanshawe had to laugh. “Character and honesty, huh? Who’s the thief now? Who’s the criminal now?”

“We ain’t stealin’, Fanshawe. This is what I think you fancy citifed types call punitive damages,” and then Baxter ripped off another laugh. “Now why don’t you just drag your ass up and go back to New York Fuckin’ City? By the time you get back I figure you’ll be on all the news channels.”

Fanshawe struggled back to his feet. “What’s that?”

“Yeah, I can see it now on CNN: Pervert Billionaire Caught on Tape Stealing from Historical Inn.”

“You’re shitting me, right?” Fanshawe said.

Monty piped up, “And they’ll pay a pretty penny for that tape on one of them cable shows.”

Howard: “And then they can interview all of us about how we caught him red-handed peeping in windows with the self-same glass he stole!”

More, more laughter cackled up.

But Fanshawe knew they were right. They could do that and more. He’d be lambasted in the papers. Too many outside sources had him cold now. Getting caught the first time was one thing, but security tapes and multiple witnesses?

“A’course,” Baxter began, “if ya want to save yourself from all that public embarrassment, all you gotta do is put your John Hancock on that there checkbook of yours, hmm?”

The checkbook was thrust in Fanshawe’s hands.

“We’d be pleased as punch to keep that tape safe and our mouths shut for, say fifty grand—”

“Fifty?” exclaimed Yankees. “That’s a bit light, ain’t it? Hell, he is a billionaire.”

Baxter smiled. “Like I said, a hundred grand.”

Fanshawe kept his rage quelled, wrote the check, and gave it to Baxter.

“A wise decision, Fanshawe. And all that’s left for you to do now is pack your bags, sit your ass down in that fancy kraut car of yours, and—how do I say this nice? Get the fuck out of town.”

“Fine,” Fanshawe said.

“Now me and the boys are gonna go have us a few beers at the ale house,” Baxter said, pocketing the check. “When I get back to the hotel tonight, don’t be there.”

Howard, Yankees, and Monty all high-fived. The pit bull wagged its tail. Monty threw it a Snausage.

“Well,” Fanshawe said. “You assholes got my money, you got my watch, and you got the tape. But you know what I got?”

“What’s that, Mr. Peeping Tom?”

Fanshawe pointed right in Baxter’s face. “I got the Two Secrets of Jacob Wraxall,” and then he picked up the looking-glass, put it in his pocket, and walked briskly out of the clearing and off Witches Hill.

(II)

Fanshawe didn’t care if anyone saw him flecked with dog spit, scuffed, disheveled, and with a wet spot in his pants; however, when he returned to the inn, no one was about to see him. He didn’t bother showering, nor even changing his clothes. Just get out of here, he resolved. He felt automatonic when he opened his suitcase, but instead of filling it back up with his belongings, he emptied it.

Twenty minutes in the attic was all it took to get what he needed: the most vital of Wraxall’s books, some of the bones, some of the empty looking-glasses, and, of course, as many jars of witch-water as he could fit in his suitcase, in particular, those marked E.W.

He loaded up the car but did not leave.

The words “Who’s there?” answered almost immediately when Fanshawe knocked on Abbie’s door. “It’s me,” he replied impatiently. “I’m about to leave.”

The door snapped open and a nightgowned Abbie stepped back in bewilderment. Even after all he’d gone through tonight, the image of her—a breath-taking, beauteous one—wiped all other concerns from his mind. Coltish legs shined below the short-hemmed nightgown; her hair shined as well, as if preternaturally illumined. Beneath the sheer fabric, her breasts absolutely seduced his vision.

She was shocked by his appearance. “What happened to you?”

“Doesn’t matter. Pack your stuff, pack light. Meet me at my car in ten minutes.”

“But I— That’s—”

His voice droned, disguising all the wonder that seemed to percolate in his spirit. “If you’re coming…ten minutes. If not, goodbye,” and then he left.

She was there in five, and then Fanshawe pulled away from the gabled, moonlit edifice that was once the shrine of the abominable genius, Jacob Wraxall.

Abbie’s face in the dashlight was full of untold questions but she somehow knew not to ask. Instead, she said, “I tried real hard, Stew—I mean I really did.” Guilt seemed to rust her voice. “But I couldn’t hack it.”

“What? Cocaine?”

“After the meeting got out…I folded. I can’t help it,” and then she shrugged. “I am what I am. If you want to throw me out of the car, that’s cool.”

Fanshawe just drove. His headlights projected blazing white circles before them, revealing the town’s quaintness, but in shifting glimpses that were wholly involuntary, he seemed to see the town when it was not so quaint: three hundred years ago, teetering, skulking under an impalpable caul of fear, oppression, and sorcery, haggard victims reeking in pillories, and the periodic melees atop Witches Hill. When he glanced at Abbie, she looked dismal as she inhaled a line of white powder off her key.

He didn’t object; he said nothing. She’s a wreck. If I can’t get her fixed up with all my money, then no one can. He drove leisurely through town, only now realizing how exhausted he was; but even in this fatigue he felt wired by the anticipation of what was to come.

Self-disgust contorted Abbie’s face when she did another line. “Yeah,” she sputtered. “We are what we are, all right. I guess people can spend their whole lives without ever realizing that.”

Fanshawe didn’t comment, just drove.

“We gotta jump from one foot to the other, trying to be what society tells us to be, and not be our true selves.”

Fanshawe tested a frown. “If you’re trying to find some philosophical way to justify being on drugs…that’s probably not going to cut it.”

She laughed without mirth. “You’ve got me there. At least the crazy shit you’re into won’t kill you.”

Fanshawe smiled. It almost did tonight.

She did another line. “What I meant is…even when we fit ourselves into the mold society tells us we should be in…good or bad, we never really change. We still stay the same way deep down…in our hearts.”

Fanshawe stared abruptly. When he turned, the only thing he saw beyond the windshield was an unwavering blackness.

Like my heart.

Abbie seemed to notice something past the buzz of her cocaine. “Why’d you turn here? To get to the turnpike, you have right.”

“We’re not going to the turnpike—”

“I thought we were going to New York.”

“We are,” Fanshawe told her in dull monotone, “But we have to go somewhere else first.” More unbroken blackness flowed past the windows. “It won’t take long, but I’ll need your help, and what you need to know is…”

The headlights reached out into still more blackness.

“Is what?” Abbie asked, partly suspicious, partly amused.

“It’s fucked up,” Fanshawe said baldy. “If you’re not up to it, then I’ll take you back to the inn. But the way I see it is”—he shrugged, and glanced at her cocaine—”what have you got to lose?”

Abbie laughed. “How can I argue with that?”

««—»»

“You’re kidding me?” she said, frowning. “You’re stealing this?”

“Yeah,” Fanshawe said, and without hesitating, he began to unscrew the tarnished globe off the Gazing Ball’s bizarrely inscribed pedestal. “I’ll explain later.”

“But—”

Fanshawe paused, irritated. “You in or out? Make up your mind.”

“Stew! I don’t know what’s going on!”

“Keep your voice down. I think your father’s at the tavern with his friends, but I can’t be positive.”

“What’s my father got to do with—”

Fanshawe glared at her in the moonlight.

“Like you said, what have a got to lose?” She chuckled to herself. “Okay.”

Fanshawe finally detached the ball from the pedestal. He handed it to Abbie. “Take that back to the car…carefully.”

By now Abbie didn’t even challenge her confusion, but when she took the globe… “Hey, this feels like it’s got something in it.”

“It does. Take it to the car.” Fanshawe leaned against the pedestal, then began to rock it back and forth until it dislodged from the ground. With a grunt, he hoisted it up.

Abbie stared at Fanshawe. “Come on, Stew. What’s in the globe?”

Fanshawe huffed, dragging the pedestal. “The ashes of Jacob Wraxall’s heart,” he replied and then trudged down the hill back toward the car.

Abbie, with her mouth hanging open, stood there for a while holding the ball.

Eventually, she followed Fanshawe.

««—»»

You will give to and take from the same, Fanshawe recited Letitia Rhodes’ strange prophesy as his shovel bit down into earth. He wondered if it was really true that they buried people six feet deep.

If so, he was in for some work.

When Abbie had seen what he was doing, she scurried away, either back to the car, or as far away from him as she could get.

Oh, well.

This was the second stop before his return to New York: the cemetery behind the community church. He dug at a gravestone which read GEORGE JEFFREYS RHODES.

“I will give to and take from the same,” he whispered aloud, digging. “Yeah, I guess I will…”

As it turned out, the coffin lid was uncovered beneath less than two feet of earth. It didn’t take very long for Fanshawe to unseat the tiny casket and take it back to the car.

All in a day’s work, he thought, thunking closed the Audi’s trunk. He wiped his hands off on torn, urine-damp Dolce & Gabbana slacks, then got back behind the wheel. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find Abbie in the passenger seat, looking shell-shocked. Can’t say that I blame her… He pulled away and drove off in darkness.

Not a word was spoken until they were on the freeway.

“I’ll explain everything in time,” he said.

She looked at him, mouth still hanging open.

“But let me ask you something. How do you feel about kids?”

“What?” she croaked.

At once, Fanshawe’s enthusiasm bubbled forth. There was so much of it. “And why should we beat around the bush? We’re not getting any younger, you know. Hell. Let’s get married,” and then he eyed her with intensity.

She looked like a mannequin in the dashlight. “Stew, I just watched you dig up Letitia’s Rhodes’ dead baby.”

“So?”

Abbie rubbed her face.

“I told you, I’ll explain all that,” he said. “But not now. You’re not ready for it yet—you’ve just got to trust me on this.”

She tried to say something but couldn’t.

“You want to know what this is all about? I’ll tell you. It’s about transposition. It’s about metamorphosis. We have the opportunity to shed our old skins and become the new us. It’s not much different from what you were saying before. Why should we force ourselves into society’s mold instead of being what we want to be in our hearts?”

Abbie paused in the ceaseless drone of tires over asphalt. “What are you in your heart, Stew? A warlock? Is that what this is? You want to be a warlock and you want me to be—what?—your sorceress?”

Fanshawe reflected. He’d never felt so wonderful in his life. “Like I said, I’ll explain everything when you’re ready.”

“This is crazy!” she exploded. “That’s got to be it—you’re insane, certifiably insane! You’ve got the trunk filled with a bunch of occult-looking shit I’ve never seen before, you tell me Jacob Wraxall’s ashes are in the Gazing Ball, then you dig up a dead baby and practically in the same breath you want to get married to a cokehead and have kids! Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”

Fanshawe remained calm behind the wheel. Several miles beyond the guardrail, the lights of a town dazzled. “Take this and look at that town,” he said. He handed her the looking-glass. “That’s how crazy I am.”

Outraged, Abbie recognized the glass. She put it to her eye and pointed it at the nighted town beyond.

And fainted.

I knew it. She’s got a black heart too. Just like me…

It was a comfortable thought.

Fanshawe smiled. He switched on the satellite radio and filled the car with a quiet violin concerto—Vivaldi, he suspected. Or maybe Corelli. Then he put on the cruise control, leaned back in the plush seat, and drove.