Witch Water

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

Since he’d been a young child, Fanshawe had always admired Manhattan’s triangular Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue, so after his first salvo of speculative stock market buys, he’d easily purchased the spectacular twenty-two-story monument as his own. This, he decided, would be his new home, on the entire top floor. In the cusp of unparalleled luxury was where he wanted his child to live and to learn.

Several chambers of that massive penthouse suite had been reserved for Fanshawe’s “research.”

Further market speculations had officially made him the wealthiest man in the world, in fact, exactly six months after his return to New York, which Fanshawe found not only satisfying but quite appropriate: six being the imperfect number and the emblem of his new Benefactor.

Abbie—if only temporarily—had overcome her cocaine addiction, not via rehab but more provocatively by forced abstinence. Fanshawe had locked her in a posh, luxury-stuffed room and kept her there until the birth of their son three months ago. The love he’d felt for her early on—like most things pertaining to human relationships—had moldered as quickly as a dog turd in the sun.

When he wasn’t touching base with his multiple companies, he pursued his new and wondrous calling with unrestrained zeal: following in the alchemical and occult-scientific footsteps of Jacob Wraxall. And as for his impoverished, pitiful obsessions of old? Those paltry urges no longer existed. He had far more crucial things to do now, things which excited him exponentially more than peering at woman in windows.

He’d mounted the Bridle in the building’s center court, whose security and privacy he’d seen to at tremendous (but now inconsequential) expense. Jaunts back into the past, however, were no longer needed, and the miraculous Bridle’s inscribed orb no longer contained the ashes of Wraxall’s heart. Those ashes were now kept in a memorial urn mounted in the bedroom.

Instead, the orb contained the ashes of the heart of one George Jeffreys Rhodes. With this instance, luck had accompanied Fanshawe, along with Mrs. Anstruther’s information that Letitia Rhodes’ unfortunate baby had been embalmed with town donations—hence, the infant’s heart had not decomposed. Thanks to the intricacies of the first of the Two Secrets, Fanshawe was able to transplant himself selectively into the future rather than the past. The limits of this occult traversement was seventy-one years—the life span that would otherwise have been enjoyed by Letitia Rhodes’ son. It took some rather strenuous mental conditioning, meditation, and certain “oblations” (Fanshawe thrilled in reducing New York’s homeless population), but after only a few weeks of this, Fanshawe found that he had received the blessing he’d asked for, just as Wraxall had said he would.

When his heart felt the blackest, he pushed himself forward.

Six months ahead was enough, and then only five minutes in the public library was all it took. He’d gone online, looked up the year’s best low-to-high earners on the Dow and NASDAQ, and returned to his own time with enough data to make billions on the marketplace. He knew that as he honed his talents (and further conditioned the blackness of his heart) his reconnaissance surveys would take him more and more distantly into the time ahead of him. Indeed, he would amass more riches than any man in history.

Lucifer, be praised, he thought.

««—»»

“It never gets old,” Abbie said in a hush. Midnight had tolled minutes ago, when Abbie had taken her usual place at their huge bedroom window twenty-two stories up. She was scanning the guts of Manhattan (back when it was not called Manhattan but instead the Isle of Manna-Hatta by the Wappinger Indians) with one of the looking-glasses. She was utterly engrossed.

“What’s that?” Fanshawe said, not quite hearing her. He closed the door behind him.

“The view. It’s just so spell-binding, I never get tired of it. It never gets old.”

IT doesn’t but YOU do. He walked up behind her and gazed out into the nighted city with his naked eyes, watching the dazzle of millions of lights and millions of people; yet knowing that what she saw was equally beautiful in an opposite way. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Which glass are you using?”

“Evanore’s—it’s my favorite. To think that New York City looked like that in the 1670s.”

“I know. It’s incredible.” And YOU, my dear, are an incredible waste of space. Fanshawe learned quickly that “love” was just another mode of passing fancy. After the baby had been born, she’d served her purpose. She’d become wine gone stale.

The bowl of cocaine next to her was nearly gone, while it had been half-full this afternoon. Fanshawe didn’t care about it now; he’d only cared that she be off the dope during her term, to protect the baby.

But now?

She can snort a pound of that shit every damn day for all I care. In fact, I HOPE she does. He knew he’d be intrigued to watch her incrementally wither to nothing. She was halfway there already.

“The Mothersole glass is pretty awesome too—it goes back fifty years earlier than Evanore’s. Remind me and I’ll bring it out tomorrow,” but this was just so much idle talk. He looked at her from behind. What’s she down to now? A hundred pounds? Ninety-five? The unrestrained plunge back into her addiction had turned her arms to pasta-colored broomsticks; her breasts had lost half their girth. Her face was a skin-covered mask.

She paused, raised a solid-platinum spoon to her nose, and snorted. Then she took to looking through the glass again.

Fanshawe smiled.

They’d never actually been married; in fact, no one even knew she was here. And as for Mr. Baxter and any trouble he might make?

Fanshawe had envisioned the potency of his calling without delay, and then he’d made certain arrangements with certain persons amenable to the discharge of certain enterprises in exchange, of course, for a previously agreed-upon fee. Within a week of Fanshawe’s taking Abbie to New York, Baxter, Monty, Howard, and that asshole in the Yankees shirt had tragically perished in a fiery car accident.

Money talked, and Fanshawe had developed a big mouth.

Dr. Marsha Tilton, too, had met with a regrettable mishap, in her own parking garage, no less. Similar persons had introduced themselves to the astute psychiatrist, and after hauling her into a van and ra—

Well, what more need be said? Fanshawe simply didn’t like the idea that she knew so much about his embarrassing past.

On the other hand, Letitia Rhodes must’ve realized that Fanshawe had been the mysterious hand-of-charity that had paid off her property taxes; therefore, she would make the same deduction once the annual million dollars were wired into her account. He felt a distinct kinship there, and, It’s the least I can do, considering what I took from her…

He stood a while longer watching Abbie stare enraptured through the glass. Between that and the cocaine, she couldn’t have been more content.

“I’ve got some work to do now,” Fanshawe said.

“Goodnight, honey,” she murmured. She just kept staring out the glass.

Fanshawe left the room.

Perfect…

««—»»

From the east balcony, he gazed out into the glorious night. What he saw in the stars were promises that couldn’t be measured…

Later, he raised one of the looking-glasses to his eye and watched Madison Square Park disappear and be replaced by dark, tree-crowned hills and dirt-scratch trading trails which would later emerge as Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Street, Broadway. Torches flickered on those trails just now, as Dutch settlers armed with blunderbuss rifles guarded a caravan of merchant wagons. Fanshawe heard distant drums beating—tom-toms—from the remaining pockets of obstinate Indians. Periodic shrieks shot out (war cries?), and low, rhythmic chants. But farther north, where Gramercy Park would one day spread, the log-hewn walls of Peter Stuyvesant’s essential first settlement came into focus, campfires burning bright.

It’s all history, he thought. And I get to see it.

Lately, he’d been thinking. Since he’d brought Abbie to New York, Fanshawe hadn’t once traveled out of the country or even out of the city: his apprenticeship was too important. But now that he was grasping the Art of Deviltry with confidence, the idea of travel excited him. Rome, London, Athens, Hong Kong? Naturally, he’d bring some of the looking-glasses with him, to see those great cities as they’d been three centuries ago. And with his money and connections?

Procuring the bones of corpses hundreds of more years old, or even a thousand, seemed quite feasible. There was no limit to the sights he could behold.

And who knew? He might even bring the Bridle with him…

««—»»

In the wee hours, Fanshawe went to the baby’s two-thousand-square-foot suite and told the guard and night nannies to take a short break. Much gold, chalcedony, and jasper decorated the suite, along with fineries that would stagger the most indulgent sultan. Above, great skylights of nearly indestructible Lexan commanded the beauty and sheer vastness of the universe. This is what Fanshawe wanted his son to see whenever he might awaken at night.

His footsteps made no sound as he walked the black-carpeted straightaway toward his son’s bassinet. He’d had the bassinet custom-crafted by some of the best sculptors in the country. It was a fabulous, shining basin carved of unflawed onyx: the color of the abyss, of Lucifer’s smile, and of the hearts of the faithful. Ribbons of labyrinthine carvings weaved about its outer surface, recalling not only the inscriptions of the Bridle, but the most paramount ancient blessings of evil, unholy formulae, and every variation of the Benefactor’s name in every language known.

Fanshawe’s lower lip quivered when he peered down at his sleeping scion.

“The world is full of secrets, son,” he uttered, “and for some people, those secrets are power. What you’ll learn soon enough is that faith and a willingness to understand is the key to unlocking those secrets.”

Overhead the stars seemed to shift in the skylights. Fanshawe listened with great intent to the silence.

Through his mind, Letitia Rhodes’ words seemed to slither: I have a feeling that the Two Secrets have to do with Evanore’s witch-water and the Gazing Ball too…

Ms. Rhodes’ “feeling” was on the mark.

As Fanshawe gazed in wonderment at his slumbering son, his heart had never felt blacker, nor more splendorous. Wraxall had indeed shared the Two Secrets with him during their unfathomable meeting. “Ye first secret be as thus: if one black of heart shalt gulp blood of his own child, and if he shalt disentomb ye corpse of a witch’s babe died untimely, and shouldst he then burn that heart to ash and let those ashes be put in ye Bridle, then, ye necromancer shalt be enabled to project himself into time yet to come, and if he remains sharp in his wits, then riches wilt pour down. Yea, but all is naught unless thee empower ye Second Secret, which I sayeth: thou wilt sire a second babe in the guise of love that be instead truly hatred and lust, and thou wilt serveth ye Lord of Deceits with thy whole heart, then I shalt be among thee again, for mine spirit shalt be dressed anew in flesh of thy babe…”

Hence, the payment that Fanshawe owed, which was…

No big deal, he mused.

Of course, Fanshawe had named the child Jacob Wraxall Fanshawe. Abbie had raised quite an objection, but when Fanshawe dropped a sack of coke in her lap, those objections had ceased without another word.

He smiled at the tiny form swaddled in raven-black linen. It slept in a state of peace that could only be called consummate.

“Goodnight, son,” Fanshawe whispered, turned, and left.

— | — | —

AUTHOR BIO: Edward Lee is the author of almost fifty novels and numerous short stories and novellas (or is it novellae? Hmm.) Several of his properties have been optioned for film, while HEADER was released on DVD in 2009; also, he has been published in Germany, England, Romania, Greece, and Austria. Recent releases include Bullet Through Your Face and Brain Cheese Buffet (story collections), Header 2, and the hardcore Lovecraftian books The Innswich Horror, Trolley No. 1852, Pages Torn From A Travel Journal, Going Monstering, and Haunter of the Threshold. One of Lee’s creative ambitions is to one-day write an effective M.R. James pastiche.