Witch Water

CHAPTER FOUR

(I)

The silence stretches like the neck of a decomposing corpse on a gibbet; the darkness brims. And through it, images rise and fall akin to chunks of unclassifiable meat bubbling in a horrific stew. Fanshawe’s dreams whirl slow, putrid: he sees women in windows through the infinity-shaped viewing field, beautiful women, nude, sultry, and, best of all, unknowing. Their sexual features are pinpoint-sharp, focused to a preternatural clarity. One is exercising; one seems to be talking to herself as if in argument, anger coning her nipples. Another lay flushed on a couch, her tight stomach sucks in and out as she masturbates with a peculiarly curved rubber phallus. But then the women clump together, squashed to nauseous misshape, and drain away into a swirl of liquescing breasts, navels, and pubic triangles, to be replaced by more images: faces. The disgusted face of the police officer, the agape stares of residents in lit windows as red and blue lights throb, the vision of pock-cheeked drug addicts, winos, thieves, and, likely, rapists, child-molesters, and murderers. One of them buckles over to vomit, hitching in silence. Some of the vomit splatters noiselessly on Fanshawe’s thousand-dollar shoes, for he sits there with these men in the deplorable holding cell, being appraised by the scum of the earth. A man standing hip-cocked in the cell’s corner looks at him with a smirking grin and mouths You’re MY bitch tonight… Then more faces, a parade of faces: Artie’s face when he bails Fanshawe out, the judge’s face at the arraignment, the faces of the lawyers at the pre-trial conferences…all expressions of blank disgust. But the last face to haunt his dreams is the worst: his wife’s, Laurel’s, a face whose expression radiates heartbreak, outrage, revulsion, and hatred concurrently. She stares as the nightmare stares back. I hate you, her lips speak without sound. You make me siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, yet after a moment, the face warps as if before heat-waves on asphalt, then mutates and grows, not like a balloon expanding but instead a tumor or cyst in aberrant hyper-development, and just when the throbbing mass seems about to erupt, it collapses into a black void…

Fanshawe cannot close his eyes against the dream’s blackness, which goes on for what seems hours. He hears nothing save for his anguished breaths and thudding heart. Then—

A voice, echoic, as if speaking in a rock-hewn grotto miles deep.

Abbie’s voice.

“Jacob Wraxall, one of the founding members of the town. He lived here with his daughter, Evanore—”

Fanshawe sees what he believes is the great portrait again, until its subjects move. Wraxall and his tantalizing yet somehow obscenely visaged daughter are taking slow steps up a dark, narrow stairwell, the elder in coattails and ruffled bib, his pendant of stars and sickle moons glittering, the sibling with her blood-red hair and plunging bustline, the smooth stark-white flesh nearly luminous in the plunge. They each hold a candle whose flickering light turns their eyes into green-crystal pools. Jacob’s expression is solemn as an undertaker’s, while Evanore’s is one of deep, intractable rapture. They enter a room…

A black fog sweeps over Fanshawe’s vision, thickens, then dissipates, and now— Wraxall stands in a hooded cloak of sackcloth, in a plank-boarded, windowless room. He reads silently from an old book with a cord holding in the folded sheets in place rather than a typical binding. Candlelight wavers, throwing light that seems leprous; smoke rises from the eyeholes of a skull serving as a censer, a baby’s skull.

Evanore now stands bereft of clothing; her lambent skin shines either in sweat or oil. Fanshawe can feel himself trembling as he looks at her in the dream: the slim, curvaceous body, long white legs, breasts so deliciously swollen she could be lactating yet her abdomen shines lean and flat. It’s a jarring contrast: all that glistening skin, white as fresh snow, shimmering below the dark-crimson hair. Indeed, her hair is combed back wet now, rendering the appearance of actually being dipped in blood; the tuft at her pubis shines similarly. She is reciting words of some unhallowed prayer that Fanshawe remains deaf to. His gaze stays riveted to her stimulating physique until something unsought drags his eyes down to show him that the nude woman is standing within a queerly angled pentagram inscribed on the bare wood floor. The inscription has been fashioned with some black substance akin to char. Immediately he notices the sticks of burnt bones lying aside.

The candle-lit spectacle recedes, to reveal a dozen other cloaked figures looking on from the background…

Abbie’s reverberating voice continues, “They practiced their witchcraft in secret. Years went by, but the town never knew…”

The black mental fog creeps back, then disperses.

The room is gone. The night seems to seethe as Fanshawe is looking at a clearing deep in a woodland where trees hulk like dryadic miscreations. Their knotted arms outstretch, soon to be mimicked by Evanore, now dressed in her own hooded gown, and the remaining twelve in her coven. In gangrenous moonlight, they stand in a circle in the clearing, some bearing torches. But as Evanore raises a newborn babe in her hands—

Chaos unfolds.

More torches plunge into the circle, these held by townsmen with stern, determined faces. Other townsfolk wield pitchforks, and others, muskets. Male coven members are butt-stroked in the face; the women are dragged to the ground and stripped, then slapped dizzy by hard opened palms. The black mass had been encircled without anyone ever knowing, and as remaining members try to flee, they are beaten to the ground by still more men in tri-cornered hats, then hog-tied. Several armed deputies part, allowing the stout and basilisk-eyed Sheriff Patten to enter the scene; he is followed by the black-cassocked town pastor whose large silver cross flashes in torchlight. The infant which had nearly been murdered is delivered to the pastor’s hands. Patten looks this way and that, then his gaze seems to find what it seeks: Evanore Wraxall. She’s already been stripped naked, and stands defiant as one deputy keeps her in place by elbows pinned behind her back. The sheriff pauses to stare at the white, raving body, but then the pastor’s reproving glance reminds him that lust is a grievous sin.

Patten crosses himself. Duly shackled now, the other heretics are being roughly led out of the wood, but three of the sheriff’s raiding party hold several torches together, boosting the potency of their flame, and into this flame, four branding irons are held. Minutes pass.

The pastor nods consent; Patten stands, arms crossed, the fire-light in his eyes. Four of the deputies pull the irons out when they’re smoking hot, then they turn them toward Evanore…

The witch’s nude body seems to relax, even in what she must know awaits her; the guard behind her holds her fast.

The branding irons are each formed in the shape of the cross.

One iron is pressed into the front of the right breast, then another is pressed into the left. Flesh silently sizzles. A third iron burns into her white abdomen, cooking the flesh. But the fourth is handed to Sheriff Patten himself. He whispers a prayer, then approaches, then sinks the iron into the abundant plot of pubic hair, searing first the hair, then the private flesh beneath. Only after an extended allotment of time is the iron withdrawn, leaving a smoking indentation in the shape of the Savior’s symbol.

But Patten’s lower lip twitches as if he’s secretly infuriated, while the pastor’s face seems made of stone; for not once through the agonizing ministration did Evanore scream or even flinch. Instead, she simply smiles back at her persecutors as the brand-marks continue to effuse smoke.

More black fog, then the field of Fanshawe’s nightmare shifts, to that of a quiet hillock webbed by footpaths and askew brush. A gray sky yawns over all, low clouds shedding drizzle, as the queue of shackled heretics, now dressed in rags, is led up at musket-point. The sheriff and his deputies take their places about the hill’s crown; so do the town’s citizens. The pastor reads from a Bible, then closes it.

Sheriff Patten steps toward the stoop-shouldered captives. He reads from a scroll…

Abbie’s voice echoes back through the dream’s black blood: “Evanore and the coven were all condemned to death…”

Now, a horse-driven carriage pulls into the town square. Jacob Wraxall gets out with his personal attendant, Callister Rood. Rood bears a large suitcase, then takes a crate down from the coach. A town man immediately rushes over to tell them something silently. Jacob’s reaction is one of alarm. And next?

Jacob is standing in the cemetery, looking solemnly down at some graves.

“Jacob and Callister Rood were abroad in England at the time,” Abbie’s voice wavers; however, a long silence follows, broken only by the sounds of Fanshawe’s quickening breaths. “But when they returned, Jacob’s daughter had already been executed…”

(II)

Was it the sound of a growling dog that Fanshawe woke to? He churned irritably out of his sleep, then sat up.

He grimaced.

At once, the long smear of nightmare poured back like reeking slop through his mind. His subconscious had concocted imagery to accompany Abbie’s grim recital of Wraxall and his daughter. Christ… The dream’s aftermath left him feeling faintly sick; the moderate hangover didn’t help. But then he winced, recalling what had roused him out of his sleep.

A growling dog? He rubbed his face. His eyes ached; they felt dry. I thought I’d heard a dog growling yesterday too, on the hill… But outside, then, he heard a rudely loud motorcycle in the distance. There’s your growling dog…

His brows shot up when he noticed that morning as well as most of the afternoon was already gone. Jesus! How could I have slept so long? For years—for decades, actually—he’d risen at four-thirty in the morning. Now I don’t have to anymore. The Wall Street pressure-cooker was finally behind him; perhaps his body was taking back the rest it had been robbed of after so many years of ceaseless thinking, speculation, buy-outs, and re-organizations.

But this?

He’d slept sixteen hours. Maybe I’m getting a cold… Could the faint headache be a cold coming on rather than too much alcohol last night? But either way… So what? he thought. If I want to sleep sixteen hours, I can. I can do anything I want; I’m on vacation…sort of.

But he felt worn out even with the extra sleep. The dream… Why would a dream—unpleasant but not excruciating—cause such exhaustion? The Witch-Blood Shooters, he suspected. Smart move, Fanshawe. At least the window promised spectacular weather. Now, if I can only enjoy it without feeling like shit… A cool shower helped a little, plus more casual dress, including a lighter sports jacket. Downstairs, he noticed no sign of Abbie or Mr. Baxter. An older woman he hadn’t seen before was preparing to open the bar, while a pair of college-aged waitresses set tables in the dining room, in preparation for the upcoming dinner hour. The Professors, he thought next, noticing several of them browsing the display coves. The long hair and beards were the giveaway. Bloodshot eyes were a giveaway, too, that at least their hangovers must be worse than Fanshawe’s. He heard the elevator open and close, then came a soft, regulated pattering as Harvard and Yale walked briskly down the carpeted hall and across the atrium. They wore blank, midriff running tops today, with no designation, but he thought he saw Harvard glance once at him, then say to her companion, “Where have I seen that guy before?” They jogged out into blazing sunlight and were gone. Fanshawe’s hangover pulsed at his temple. For an instant he thought of inconspicuously following them, to see if they repeated yesterday’s topless coddling at the hidden nook, but then rebuked himself for even considering it. He grabbed some complimentary candies off the check-in desk, then milled around the displays. It was not his own volition that guided him toward the display with the looking-glass, but when he found it—

Hmm…

The Witch-Water Looking-Glass lay in a different position from when he’d first seen it. He couldn’t imagine why he would take note of such a thing, yet he was certain. The instrument was inverted; the eyepiece end faced toward the front desk earlier, whereas now it faced toward the Squire’s Pub.

Mr. Baxter must’ve taken it out of the case to show someone, he reasoned, a perfectly sound explanation.

So why would he even stop to consider it?

A cove away, one of the professors could be heard talking heatedly on his cell phone—an argument no doubt with his wife. “Oh, so that’s why you want a divorce. Great. Work my ass off thirty-five years, now you decide you don’t want to be married anymore, decide you’d rather just take half of everything I worked for, for us!” Fanshawe slipped away, feeling for the man. Welcome to the Divorce Club, buddy… But the situation caused him to think of one of Dr. Tilton’s insinuations several months ago. “You’re lucky your wife didn’t take you for half of your net worth, Mr. Fanshawe—that’s what usually happens.” “She got twenty million and a house in the Hamptons,” he detailed, but then she asked a question he would never have expected: “Are you…still fond of her?” “I love her!” he blurted. “I miss my wife, but I don’t expect you to believe that, considering what I did.” Her cool eyes thinned on him from behind the shining desk. “Did you try to get back with her?”

“Yes. I begged her. I told her I was in therapy, told her that it was working. I-I told her I hadn’t…gone on…a peep, in over six months.”

“And what did she say in response?”

Fanshawe had felt dizzy with nausea. “She didn’t say anything, but…well, her response made it clear that she’d never give me another chance.”

Dr. Tilton touched her chin with the tip of her finger. “I don’t understand, Mr. Fanshawe. If she didn’t say anything, on what do you base her negative response?”

Fanshawe had gazed back at the sterile-voiced psychiatrist, his mouth open. “I…just hung up. Her response was the sound of vomiting. Just hearing my voice made her physically ill.”

It had been the only time he’d witnessed the following expression from Tilton: pity.

Fanshawe groaned at the recollection, then quickened his pace out of the hotel.

More than a sparse number of tourists strolled the town’s streets. A slim woman in a furniture shop leaned over to inspect the panel-work of an armoire. Fanshawe’s eyes locked on her body, imagining it nude, but when some inkling of being looked at caused her to glance up at him, the fantasy collided with his shame. Shit! What am I doing? He quickly pretended to be looking at an umbrella stand right next to her. I’m eyeballing women in broad daylight! He walked off, hands behind his back, as if he hadn’t noticed her returning stare. But no sooner had he crossed the block he caught himself staring up at rowhouse windows.

His self-disgust raged. What the hell’s wrong with me? I just got a date with a really nice girl but I’m out here…doing this.

“Top’a the day to ya, sir,” the easily recognized voice cut into him. Mrs. Anstruther smiled at him from her kiosk. “Out for a stroll, are you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Anstruther. It’s quite a day for it.” But was there something sly about her smile? It lifted wrinkles on her face to something mask-like, which made him feel as though a cunning assessment were being taken of him. He knew it was pure paranoia on his part, to think for even a moment that she’d guessed his intent when looking up at the windows.

“Quite a day, yes, sir, a lovely day, indeed. The acme of summer’s what we’d call a day like this back home.”

Fanshawe smiled at her pronunciation of the word “summer.” It had sounded more like soomer.

“Garnerin’ up your nerve, perhaps? To have a peek inside the waxworks, sir?”

“Not today, Mrs. Anstruther.”

“Nor the palmist’s, hmm?”

“Not likely. I think I’ll take another walk around the trails. They were really interesting. And Abbie mentioned an ancient graveyard.”

“Oh, there’s an ancient graveyard, there is—a marble orchard’s what we’d call ’em back home, but that phrase don’t seem to ’ave catched on in the States. Not that you’ll find much marble in the graveyard of what you’re speakin’. ’N’fact, the west end don’t got nothin’ in the way’a markers, sir, ’cept for some splotchy stuff what they wrote the name’s of the dead in with their fingers.”

This woman can RAMBLE, Fanshawe thought. “Yeah, Abbie mentioned something about that. Tabby, I think she called it. Low-grade concrete.”

“Right she and you is, sir. And as for the little boneyard as what you was mentionin’, least the unconsecrated one, it’s sure as His Majesty King Charles were buried in Windsor that Jacob Wraxall and his ’orrible daughter was buried there. But it’s the daughter’s grave, sir, Evanore Wraxall’s, that you’ll likely as not find the more queer.”

“Queer?”

“Yes, sir. It ain’t like what you’d expect.”

Fanshawe showed her a snide glance. “Queer in what way, Mrs. Anstruther?”

She tittered with a wave of a bony hand. “Oh, best I not spoil if for ya. Best you’d find out yourself, yes, sir.”

Up to her old tricks again. “I see,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I appreciate your consideration.”

“Oh, but, sir, please pardon my makin’ mention of it, though I did happen to spy a pair of birds, not more than a minute or two ago—no, it couldn’t’a been more than that—two rather smart looking birds which seemed to be ’eadin’ same way as you.”

Fanshawe’s brow creased. Birds? but then he figured her vernacular. She means two women.

“Quite smart, yes, sir, quite smart, indeed, all dressed in some downright scant exercisin’ apparel.” She winked at him. “Handsome man like yourself? You might want to have a look round for ’em.”

Fanshawe stood still. Oh, she means Harvard and Yale, but before he could reply, she prattled further, “And please don’t be put off by my sayin’ so, but seein’ as it’s obvious you’re not sporting no weddin’ ring, you just might be doin’ them a kind service to chat ’em up a bit.”

Fanshawe sighed. Now she’s a matchmaker. Great. “Actually, ma’am, a walk is all I’m looking for today.”

“Oh, sir, yes, sir, and what a splendid day it is to be about a walk. The weather couldn’t be more propitious, er, what I mean is favorable. In fact, a day like today’s what we called the acme of summer where I come from”—she faltered. “Or…might I have already mentioned that, sir?”

“No, ma’am,” he lied. “It’s an apt description.” Fanshawe couldn’t resist; he put a ten-dollar bill in her tip jar.

“Gracious me, sir, and blow me down! ’Tis a higher place in Heaven which awaits men of a generous heart, yes, sir. Says so in the Bible, it does. And a heart generous as yours, sir? ’Tis likely the size of a bloomin’ haggis.”

Fanshawe could’ve reeled at her antics now.

“Thank you, sir!”

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Anstruther, and have a great day.”

He stepped away, amused by her continued outpouring of gratitude in the outrageous accent. But in just moments he found himself strolling by the Travelodge, and he felt his shoulders slump. Don’t look, don’t look, he begged himself. Frolic was heard, shrill summer laughter, and splashing. He was passing the pool, with all those enticing windows running behind and over it. He could hear his teeth grinding as he hurried away, so wanting to look, but demanding of himself that he do no such thing. When he was safely past, he was shaking in place.

God, I am SO screwed up…

But his resistance didn’t make him feel better once he’d outdistanced the temptation. He found the signs, then the trails themselves almost unconsciously, and was wending upward in a daze. What was it? Passing what was surely a bounty of bikini-clad women by the pool? Knowing that somewhere among these dirt- and gravel-scratch paths the two beautiful joggers lurked?

He walked more quickly, trying to empty his mind.

His feet took him higher and higher up the grassy hillocks until he found himself close to the highest peak, peering between the hulks of two unruly bushes. The bushes’ smelled foul. Yes, he was peering…

Oh, for God’s sake…

He was peering back toward town. In the blaze of sun, the buildings—and their scores of windows—blazed back at him. A change of angle next, then the pool threw white, wobbling light into his eyes. When he squinted, he detected the tiny shapes of swimmers and sunbathers, and when he raised the squint…

He cursed himself.

Even at this distance, he could make out the rows and rows of first- and second-floor windows at the Travelodge. On the balconies of several units, the tiniest human shapes became evident. Fanshawe’s conscience felt split down the middle, one half relieved that he was too far away to see anyone in detail, the other half enraged that he no longer carried any of his erstwhile optical devices. He stepped away from the useless vantage point.

Stray walking occupied the next quarter of an hour. First came the peak of Witches Hill…and along with it a shimmy in his gut. Next, he found himself again examining the odd rain barrel at the clearing’s fringe, and its ten-inch-wide hole which made no sense. With less conscious thought, though, he drifted over to the meager stand of trees that he knew overlooked the lower clearing—the clearing where he’d spied on the topless joggers. There’d been no sign of the women among the trails, and no sign of them now continuing their secret embrace: the lower clearing stood bare.

Minutes later, he discovered the next sign, one he’d missed on his first expedition. HAVER-TOWNE CEMETERY, the sign informed. EST. 1644. Its layout was long and narrow, and girded by a crude and well-rusted iron gate. The farthest perimeter was studded with teetering tombstones whose inscriptions were barely legible from the sheer passage of time; some of the stones’ actual edges had abraded as well. With some effort, Fanshawe made out dates from the seventeen- and sixteen-hundreds. But the stones seemed rather paltry in number, then he remembered Mrs. Anstruther’s comment about a sparsity of them. In all, the word decrepit seemed an ideal description of the place.

But most of the perimeter within the gate lacked any extruding markers at all, which leant the cemetery a bizarre disproportion. Where’s this tabby stuff Abbie and the old woman were talking about? he wondered. The position of the sun led him into the western portion of the graveyard. Sure enough, as he looked down into sprawls of weeds, he made out the crude patches of cement on the ground with names and dates finger-grooved in them. Another sign told him: THIS IS THE WEST END OF THE CEMETERY, THE UNCONSECRATED END. COUNTLESS WITCHES, HERETICS, & CRIMINALS HAVE BEEN BURIED HERE…

Fanshawe shuffled around the patches. Bodies down there, skeletons, he thought. Images formed in his head, images of the long-buried. He took extra care not to step on any of the patches. Many of these were even less legible than the bonafide stones, but in a moment he had stopped, gone down on one knee, and peered.

One patch read: JACOB WRAXALL, 1601-1675 CONVICKT’D OF SORCERIE, DEVILTRIE, & INFERNALL PROPHESIE. And the next patch: EVANORE WRAXALL, 1645-1671 CONVICKT’D OF WITCH-CRAFT & DIABOLIK CONSORTE. Four-year difference, Fanshawe calculated. But he was already jarred by his most immediate observation. What have we here?

At the foot of the patch that marked Evanore Wraxall’s final resting place, there was an oblong hole, as if the coffin had collapsed…

…or been exhumed and removed.

Fanshawe tweaked his chin. So this was the answer to Mrs. Anstruther’s cryptic comment, referring to the grave plot as “queer.” For sure, in the area of space below which must be occupied by the corpse, there was a distinct indentation, almost as though that particular spot of ground had eroded, nearly like an old sinkhole.

There was nothing else to presume other than the body must have been removed a very long time ago.

So much for a decent burial.

Several crows screeched at him from a high tree, but the birds looked sickly, bare patches showing. Large pink circles surrounded their tiny black eyes where feathers had fallen out; Fanshawe thought of negative omens. But his previous absent-mindedness returned; he was walking without thinking. Could this be the better part of his conscience blocking more thoughts of voyeurism? Next thing he knew, he’d entered another clearing not far off from the graveyard. He stood still, his eyes addressing a stone pedestal of some sort, about four feet high, and tapering as it rose. At first he guessed it might be a more elaborate grave-marker but then found no plaque or chisel-work to identify the interred.

Sitting atop the pedestal was a tarnished metal sphere.

It was slightly smaller than a soccer ball. Fanshawe’s impression was that the sphere was brass, for age had tarnished it to a deep patina over which a tracery of whitish incrustation had developed. This reminded him of the calcium deposits that frequently accumulate around faucet spouts. Cleaned of its patina the object would be impressive to look at; now, however, it was an eyesore. I wonder what… Oh, this must be the ball that Abbie mentioned last night when I was leaving the bar.

What had she called it? A viewing ball? A gazing ball?

He stepped closer, leaned down, and was able to see markings on the pedestal: swaths of geometric shapes, such as stars, circles, crescents, as well as fairly tiny lines of writing in some language other than English. He took a wild guess and thought Hebrew. But some of the geometric shapes reminded him straightaway of Jacob Wraxall’s brooding portrait and the features of his pendant. To the touch, the pedestal itself must be marble.

But then he rose to inspect the sphere.

Beneath the pallid green tarnish and webworks of crust he thought he noticed outlines of shapes, however faintly. At first he thought the sphere must be a geographic globe depicting the continents, but then he realized that the shapes didn’t correspond at all to anything global.

Fanshawe touched the encrusted orb and found it cold—strangely so, for brass or any similar metal would’ve surely conducted heat from the sun beating down on it all day…

Weird. He stepped back for another more distanced look, tried to figure what purpose lay behind the object, then could only draw blanks. But Abbie had promised to tell him about it, hadn’t she? Tomorrow, he thought with a pleasant twinge, when I take her to dinner. Just then, he allowed himself the luxury of letting Abbie’s image enter his head: her trim shapeliness, the incandescent dove-gray eyes, the exotic alliance of her hair color: auburn with blond. He stood dreamily, musing over the normalness of it all; just a simple dinner date, true, but simplicity and normality were elements that had always eluded him, either that or had been rendered moot by the involutions of his secrets. Just then, the brilliant blue sky seemed to welcome him to a new state of mind…

Then the moment shattered.

Fanshawe twirled in place at an adrenalin dump. It had been the unmistakable sound of a growling dog that had invaded his muse. Not this again! He stood still, eyes darting left and right, poised to flee. It had been much louder this time, as if the animal lurked distressingly close. He’d thought he heard the same sound on this hill already, then he’d even dreamed the sound, hadn’t he? He knew that he could not be mistaken this time.

Careful. Don’t look at its eyes…

His vision pored over the high weeds and tangles of bushes, but in just a few moments, again, he could discern that there was no dog. Next, he walked around the brush for a closer inspection, then found what he’d found previously: nothing. No dog.

What the hell?

Was he hearing things? There had to be some reasonable explanation. Perhaps some other hotel guest was walking their dog, and it happened to snarl along another trail. The idea seemed like an absurd excuse, given the snarl’s tonality but—

All right. Enough. There’s no dog this time, either.

Fanshawe took a final glance at the senseless pedestal and globe, chuckled at this next mishap of hearing a dog that wasn’t there, then turned to continue through the trails, when—

The skin of his face seemed to tighten like shrink wrap, while every tendon and muscle in his body turned taut as stretched wires. This fright doubled that of the imaginary dog-snarl, and he broke into a sprint at this next sound that had caught him so unawares.

There could be no mistake, nor any idle explanation.

What he’d heard was this: a long, high, blood-curdling scream, indisputably that of a woman…

(III)

Fanshawe thought of a plum with its skin chewed off.

A half hour after he’d heard the scream, the manic scene that he’d rushed into became a circumstance that could only be described as funereal. The ambience here seemed to leech power from multiple sets of throbbing red and blue lights. A crowd had formed quickly; the scream had been so shrill it was heard even by those even at the fringe of town. Blanch-faced EMTs were preparing the gurney, while an equally blanched coroner stood aside, signing papers on a clipboard. Several county police officers kept the crowd back; others were cordoning the perimeter, and in the center of all the activity stood a tall, fiftyish county captain who was trying but not quite succeeding in looking stoic. Silence, and a semi-tangible grimness, had settled over everything. Clearly, events such as this never occurred in an area such as Haver-Towne.

Fanshawe’s knees still wobbled from the sight.

“Well, jumpin’ Jesus, I just can’t believe this,” Mr. Baxter muttered next to Fanshawe. “Of all the crazy things to happen.”

“I still can’t quite believe it myself,” Fanshawe said. The aftermath left his throat dry as old leaves. “It seemed more like a dream.”

“So it was you who stumbled onto him?”

Fanshawe shook his head and pointed to the pair of joggers who now looked winded not from exertion but shock. One stood by wide-eyed while the other nervously recited details to a scribbling police officer. “Those two, they were jogging the trails.”

“Aw, yeah. They been here for the convention last couple of years—associate professors I think they are. And what a thing for a couple of gals to run into…”

And run into it they had, literally. Fanshawe had followed the scream to a lower hillock. Evidently the woman in the lead, the bustier of the two, had tripped over some object just protruding from the high grasses that walled the trail. It was her friend who’d seen it and screamed. Fanshawe had arrived just as the first woman’s eyes were rolling back in her head—then she’d fainted.

The obstruction had been a man’s head and shoulders, the rest of the body still concealed in the brush.

Fanshawe had called 911, then helped revive the unconscious jogger. But the image of that victim lying in the brush seemed to sink into his brain like a stone in watery silt, that man…

No details could be made of the man’s face, for he no longer had a face. What sat instead upon those shoulders was little more than a skull stripped raggedly of most of its flesh. The majority of neck muscles were gone as well, as if torn away. Only mere scraps of blood-mucked skin remained. Ears, nose, lips?

Gone.

The eyeballs were intact, but lidless, transforming what had once been the man’s visage into a grinning, staring mask.

Upon seeing this, Fanshawe’s mind swam in a hot panic, fragments of thoughts bursting through. Murder? He doubted it. An animal attack seemed most likely. But if it were the former, couldn’t the perpetrator still be near? The jogger’s ceaseless, whistle-like screams only shattered more of Fanshawe’s concentration. What kind of an accident could account for this? And if the victim had indeed been savaged by a wild animal, why was his coffee-brown suit untorn, and his hands untouched? These and other questions only had time to half-solidify in Fanshawe’s mind. When the second woman had finally stopped screaming, the three of them could only stare open-mouthed at one another. Several police cars and an ambulance showed up sometime later, using the GPS on Fanshawe’s cellphone.

Fanshawe shuffled his feet as he stood with Mr. Baxter. Baxter seemed disconcerted by something more than the presence of the corpse. What’s he got cooking in his head? Fanshawe wondered but didn’t feel he knew the man well enough to ask. Eventually, the police had finished questioning the joggers; they walked shakily back toward town. My turn, Fanshawe realized. The questioning officer approached, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses in which Fanshawe saw his own face. The county captain came over, too.

Fanshawe felt interrogated. He explained his presence on the trails along with his chronological observations once he’d heard the scream, and answered rather typical if not irrelevant questions. Then came questions like: “Can you remember seeing anyone here or in town who struck you as suspicious?” and “Do you recall seeing a man dressed similarly to the decedent at any time today?” and “Did you notice any things—articles of clothing, for instance, disturbances in the brush, money, credit cards—while you were out here today?” to which Fanshawe answered in the negative. But then the captain, who seemed self-reflective, interrupted, “Oh, so that’s why your name’s ringing a bell. You’re one of those finance geniuses I’ve seen on TV.”

Fanshawe knew the comment was incidental yet still his paranoia construed something smart-alecky about it. “I’m semi-retired now,” was all he said, but was surprised a particular question hadn’t been asked. “I did happen to hear something out of place—I mean, I think I heard something.”

“What’s that, sir?” asked the cop with the clipboard.

“A dog growling, a large one by the sound of it. I suppose it could have been a wolf.”

The captain shrugged. Was he repressing a smile? “There’s been no wolves here in ages,” and with that the man didn’t seem interested in the least.

“I just thought I’d mention it; this does look like it could be a wild animal attack.”

“A wild animal wouldn’t likely snatch a man’s wallet,” the captain enlightened, then the cop added, “No change in the victim’s pockets, either, no pens, no handkerchief, no keys…”

Fanshawe contemplated the surprising information.

As if to change the subject, “In town long, Mr. Fanshawe?” the captain asked. It seemed intimidating the way he crossed his arms.

“I’ve been here two days but may be staying several weeks or even months. Not sure yet. I’m kind of …on vacation.”

The captain’s brow jigged. “Kind of?” but then the officer caught himself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fanshawe. Vacation or not, it’s none of my business—”

Good, because you don’t WANT to know why I’m really here, Fanshawe thought.

“—but it’s our conclusion that this man here”—he took a grim glance to the now covered corpse—”is a homicide victim.”

“It would seem so. No wallet, no keys,” Fanshawe said, confused.

“Just want you to know it’s a pleasure to have someone of your influence staying here in Haver-Towne,” came the captain’s next odd remark. Now he seemed not to be aware that a dead man was in proximity. “Sorry a nasty thing like this had to happen. What I hope you can understand, sir, is there hasn’t been a murder here in, well, since way back when. Right, Mr. B?”

“Not since Colonial times,” Baxter accentuated, but then that discreetly troubled look grew more pronounced.

“Something wrong, Mr. B? Looks like you got something on your mind.”

“Aw, yeah…” Baxter glanced again to the covered corpse—the facial region of which was revealing blood spots through the white fabric. “Aw, damn, captain. I guess I could be wrong here, but I don’t think so. See, I think I know who this man is…”

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