Witch Water

CHAPTER FIVE

(I)

Fanshawe heard the entire speculation twice, first as Baxter recited it to the police, then again when he walked back to town with the man.

“Eldred Karswell,” Fanshawe repeated. That’s some name. “So he’s the man who booked my room before I arrived?”

“Yeah. That was definitely the same suit he was wearing last time I saw him. Don’t see many brown suits nowadays, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Don’t know anything about the guy ’cept that he had money and seemed like a nice fella. A bit stiff, but…nice.”

“How old do you think he was?”

“Sixty, sixty-five, he looked. Always dressed good too, kind of like you.”

Fanshawe didn’t like the portent of being compared to a dead man. “Retired?”

Baxter looked up. “Didn’t say, but he struck me as a history buff. Asked to look at some old books at the inn.”

Well, Fanshawe thought. The history buff is now history himself.

But Baxter seemed agitated, as though he’d done something wrong. “Damn, I guess I should’ve notified the cops when Karswell never came back to the hotel that night, but, hell…”

“You couldn’t have known. He was a guest, that’s all. How could you know that he didn’t go to visit a nearby town, or maybe had some friends stop by and go somewhere else. He’d already booked the room.”

“Right, for seven days, and six of ’em were already up when he disappeared.” Baxter’s face crinkled. “Just don’t like the sound of that. Disappeared.”

Now, he’s RE-appeared… “If you’d reported him as missing, the police wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway. Enough time hadn’t passed.”

“Right. And what else could I do? He doesn’t show up on the last day he’s booked, and then you arrive for an indefinite time, so…I moved Karswell’s stuff out and gave you the room ’cos it’s the one you wanted in the first place.”

It was between Baxter’s words that Fanshawe got the gist. Now matter how much money this Karswell man is worth, I’m worth more. He bumped Karswell for a more lucrative customer, just like airlines bump discount passengers for people who’ll pay more. Happens every day.

“Like you said,” Baxter continued, wringing his hands. “I thought he went someplace else for his last night, with a friend or something. He left his car, left his belongings and his suitcase, even left his keys.”

“Oh, the Cadillac I noticed parked behind the inn— That’s his, I suppose.”

“Right. I moved it myself, then put his suitcase in the trunk. The cops probably think I’m some kind of a dunderhead. Man leaves his car, his keys, and I don’t do a thing…”

Fanshawe recalled seeing Mr. Baxter stowing the suitcase just yesterday. “You’re fretting for nothing, Mr. Baxter.”

Baxter continued, still distraught, “I figured if he came back at the last minute, I’d give him his stay for free.”

“Anyone else would’ve done the same thing. You don’t have an obligation to inform the police that a private guest might be missing, and it’s certainly not your job to guess that someone may have been murdered,” Fanshawe offered.

“Yeah, yeah… But I knew it was him the minute I saw the suit that corpse was wearing.” Baxter let out a long breath. “Jumpin’ Jesus…”

Fanshawe could sympathize with the proprietor’s duress. A hotel guest getting murdered—getting his FACE cut off—won’t do wonders for the inn’s reputation… They entered the inn and its rush of cool air. “I gotta get my tookus back to work, Mr. Fanshawe, gotta food delivery out back,” Baxter said. He tssked. “I’m just dang sorry somethin’ like this happened to ruin your stay.”

“It’s not ruined at all, Mr. Baxter—bad things happen everywhere.” At last, the remnant adrenalin since the scream began to drain from Fanshawe’s blood. He tried to end their discourse on a witty note, “If you think this is bad, try Central Park,” but it didn’t work. In the back of his mind, the grisly image flashed: Eldred Karswell’s faceless skull…

(II)

“I don’t know what it was,” Abbie was saying during the early-evening lull, “but he just seemed—” She looked right at her father. “Weird?”

“Karswell?” Baxter questioned. “Maybe a bit of a stick in the mud, but I wouldn’t call him weird. Was nice to me, I’ll tell ya that.”

Abbie placed more margarita glasses into the overhead rack. “You just liked him ’cos he spent a lot of money. Come on, Dad. He was weird. His eyes looked…calculating. Like he knew something he was keeping secret. He was creepy, Dad. Even his name is creepy. Seriously—Eldred Karswell?”

Mr. Baxter didn’t look at his daughter as he rang out the bar receipts from the last shift. “A man just died horrible, and you’re calling him creepy. Talk about speakin’ ill of the dead…”

“Sure, Dad—what happened to him was horrible”—she leaned closer to him, and lowered her voice even though no one else was in the bar—”but don’t tell me you’re not thinking the same thing I am. Don’t even think about telling me you’re not.”

Mr. Baxter’s lower lip rippled, as if repressing a torrential rage. He clenched a fist till his knuckles whitened. “I know what you’re tiptoin’ around, girl, so you just hear me, and hear me good.” For a failed effect, he even thumped his fist on the bar-top. “Not one word of that to no one!”

“Come on. How Karswell died is an incredible coincidence. Even you have to admit it.”

“I don’t have to admit no such thing, missy!” Now Baxter roughly grabbed a towel and bottle of cleaner, and began to wipe down the bar. “And with all the commotion today, I ain’t even had the chance to get on your case for that blabber-mouth stunt you pulled last night.”

Abbie straightened her stance, her frown turning into a half-smile. “Blabber-mouth stunt? You’ll have to explain that one to me, Dad.”

Baxter pitched his finger back and forth. “Don’t act like ya don’t know what I’m talkin’ about—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“—because I heard every word of it last night,” and then his face seemed to smolder at her.

Now Abbie appeared bewildered. “Last night? Every word of what?”

“Ain’t ya got no sense at all? Don’t be telling folks all those gory stories about Wraxall and his daughter, especially a guest as important as Mr. Fanshawe.”

Abbie’s smile returned, and she slowly nodded. “Oh, so that’s what’s stuck down your craw. He’s a customer, Dad, he’s a guest, and he asked some questions. What am I supposed to do, say, ‘Sorry, sir, but my Daddy told me not to talk about it’?”

“Don’t get smart!”

“He asked me, so I told him. And you’re the one who pushes all this witchcraft jive to the tourists.”

Baxter’s eyes sprang open. “Mr. Fanshawe’s no ordinary tourist! He’s worth a fortune, and he’s the type of guest we want to accommodate so he can spend some of that fortune here! Just last month, Fortune 500 put him on the friggin’ Billionaire List, and here he is stayin’ at our humble little hotel. Damn, girl! I can’t believe you told him the room he’s taken used to be Jacob Wraxall’s!”

“He seems to have an interest in the hotel’s history, that’s all.”

“That’s all? I also heard it when you blabbed about Wraxall’s incestuous affair and the babies he sacrificed! For goodness sake, girl! Somebody must’ve switched your brain for a loaf of pumpernickel!”

Abbie chuckled, commencing to stuff olives with bleu cheese. “Relax, Dad. He’s very interested in the local lore. In fact, he also said he was going to have a look at the graveyard soon. I told him all about it last night.”

Baxter’s face began to pinken. “That’s probably what he was doin’, when he and them women found Karswell’s body. If you hadn’t told him ‘bout that damn graveyard, he wouldn’t even have been out there today! Holy hell, girl, he’ll be hightailing it out of here for sure, and probably’ll go straight to the Travelodge!”

She squealed a modest laugh. “Billionaires don’t stay in Travelodges, Dad.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t stay here, either, but we’re fortunate enough to have him anyway. It’s pure gravy. But after all that gross-out ballyhoo you jib-jabbed to him last night, you’ll wind up giving the man nightmares. We’re hoteliers, Abbie. It’s our job to cultivate our guests, not scare ’em off.”

Abbie put the stuffed olives away, then began to cut celery on a board: snap, snap, snap. “You’re impossible. And what’s the big deal? I told you, Stew’s fascinated by the Wraxall legend.”

Baxter nearly gagged. “Stew? Where’re your manners? It’s Mr. Fanshawe, girl. We treat our guests with every courtesy, ’cos that’s what they expect!”

“He told me to call him by his first name, Dad.”

Mr. Baxter paused, mulling a consideration. “Really?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Baxter leaned closer. “Hmmm…well, now. If he told ya that, then why don’t you turn that little light bulb on in your noggin and get ta usin’ your brain for more than skull-filler, huh?”

“What?”

“Don’t ya think it might be a good idea to maybe, well, make some eyes at the man a little?”

Now Abbie bubbled over with shrill laughter. “You’re priceless! Make eyes at him?”

“You’re actin’ like a dizzy blonde, and you’re not even blond. For Pete’s sake, girl—all that money?” The elder suddenly turned flustered. “But, no, I don’t suppose my brainchild daughter would ever consider that.”

Abbie shook her head. “Dad. Stop. He already asked me out.”

Baxter nearly gagged again. “You joshin’ me?”

“No, I’m not joshing you.”

Then a look of total dread came over the man’s face. “You said yes, didn’t ya, Abbie? Please. Tell me ya said yes!”

Abbie fidgeted. “Well, I wanted to, Dad, but I really don’t know him that well, so I said I’d take a rain check—”

Baxter stared, veins suddenly pulsing in his neck. In a stalled instant, his shoulders slumped. “Aw, Abbie, how could I raise such dumb bunny for a daughter?”

Abbie broke into more laughter. “You’re so easy to dupe, you know that? Of course I said yes. He’s taking me to the Thai place tomorrow at seven.”

Baxter stomped his feet and hooted out loud. When he did so, several guests out in the atrium shot glances into the bar. “Well, hot damn, girl! That’s the best news I heard since that Neal Osborn fella walked on the moon!”

“Armstrong, Dad. Not Osborn.”

Baxter was frantic. “What are you going to wear? That’s very important on a first date, you know. Hmm, let’s think. You gotta wear something nice, of course. How about that snappy green evening dress with the shiny razzle-dazzle things on it?”

Abbie sighed. “It’s just a date, Dad, not New Year’s Eve. Besides, I think that’s a little too low-cut, don’t you? A little showy?”

“Depends on what you’re showin’”—Baxter leaned an elbow on the bar. “It can’t hurt any to let the man know you’ve got some attributes, if you catch my drift—you’re not gettin’ any younger, you know.”

Abbie fastened a button on her blouse. “Oh, I catch your drift, all right,” Abbie said snidely, “and thanks for the Not Getting Any Younger line.”

Baxter ignored her. “Oh, and wear those high heels, too, the ones you got in Manchester. He’ll like them.”

Abbie shook her head and smiled at her father’s folly.

Baxter looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. “Hey, why are you even working now?”

“I’m filling in for Hester; she wanted to go to a concert.”

Her father scowled. “You should be in bed, you need to get plenty of rest for your big date tomorrow—”

“Oh, I get it, a woman like me, who’s not getting any younger, needs her beauty sleep?”

“That ain’t what I meant, missy—”

“It’s only ten o’clock, and I told Hester I’d work till close. Those professors always come in for a late round.”

“Poppycock. I’ll take care of those beard-o-lookin’ late-timers, so you get your bee-hind straight to bed this instant.”

“That’s ridiculous—”

Baxter grabbed her shoulders and urged her out from behind the bar. “Not another word, girl! Up to bed! Oh, and maybe get your nails done in the morning at that fancy salon”—he shoved some cash at her. “Can’t hurt.”

“You’re a nut, Dad…”

“That’s all well and good but I’m still your father and I’m still the boss.”

Abbie dismissed her father with a laugh, then left the bar, but only a few moments later several bearded patrons came in, bringing plenty of loud chatter with them. Baxter manned his post, but he did so in a dreamy, distracted state. No, sir, he thought with a smile. It’s not every day my daughter gets asked on a date by a billionaire…

(III)

The abrupt vision of seeing a savaged murder victim left Fanshawe in a strange daze. He’d thought he was over it but the image, however momentary, lingered like a flashbulb spot. After he and Mr. Baxter had parted, he’d begun to wonder the most grotesque things. Jesus, the guy had no face left. So…

Where was the face now?

If stripped off with a knife…where were the pieces? Had the police taken them? But, no, Fanshawe had been there before the police, and he’d seen no evidence of pieces or collection.

God Almighty. What happened to Karswell’s face?

The daze followed him into early evening, and he found himself almost unconsciously re-inspecting the hotel’s display coves. His eyes landed on one book, The Unsearchable Way, or England’s Danger and Dealings with Anti-Christ, by R. Crome, Rector; then another, Newe Angle-Land & Its Witcheries & Tragick Worshipp of Divells in No Human Shape, by Rev. A. Hoadley. Wonderful, Fanshawe sputtered to himself. Various paintings came next. He stood before the large, old portrait of Jacob Wraxall, his daughter, and their surly manservant. Why do I feel so dizzy? Gem-green eyes looked back at him, Evanore’s rather lustily, but her father’s eyes looked absolutely foreboding. Something seemed to emanate off the unpleasant likenesses; Fanshawe closed his own eyes for a full minute—not knowing why he’d chosen to do so—but a superimposition seemed to remain, with Wraxall smiling at him, smiling as one smiles in approval. Fanshawe thought absurdly, Looks like ole Jake likes me… It was fanfare, though—Fanshawe knew this. When he re-opened his eyes, Wraxall’s portentous scowl was unchanged.

What did I expect?

More dazed steps took him through more display coves. Why am I so ragged out? He felt unsteady on his feet. Now he realized he was looking at the ornate case which housed the peculiar looking-glass. Someone had moved it the last time he’d seen it—of this he was certain. But now…

Fanshawe squinted down. WITCH-WATER LOOKING-GLASS, MADE BY JACOB WRAXALL, CIRCA 1672, the familiar label read. Now, however, he saw that the device hadn’t merely been moved again, it was gone entirely.

The observation troubled him as he decided to go back outside. Why should that thing bug me so much? But he knew. It reminded him of his own Bad Old Days, which were not too far behind him. Of the object’s disappearance, any number of explanations were feasible. Mr. Baxter had probably loaned it to a guest interested in looking at the area’s panorama, or perhaps someone interested in such relics—an antique dealer or antiquary—had purchased it from Baxter.

Still, the notion itched at Fanshawe. His immediate impulse was to suspect the glass had been stolen, though…

Why would he think that?

Once he’d exited the inn, he’d walked around toward the building’s rear—once more, via an urge more unconscious than anything…

He was standing directly before Karswell’s old yet pristine black Cadillac. What am I doing NOW? He had no idea, and no idea further when he took out his cell phone and called his office manager.

“Hi, Artie, it’s me.”

“Oh, nice of you to give us a call,” came some obvious sarcasm. “Are you all right?”

“Of course—”

“So where are you? Hagerstown?”

“Haver-towne,” Fanshawe corrected.

“Oh, I’ve heard of it! Are you all right?”

“No assassins have knocked me off yet.”

“Funny. You know, you could at least touch base with us once a day. You’re turning our hair gray.”

“You’re already gray, Artie—prematurely. No offense.”

“Oh, none taken!”

“Look, I’ve got a wild bug up my—”

“Really? You?”

Fanshawe chuckled. “I want you to have the research people check something out for me. I want to know about a guy named Eldred Karswell—”

“Who’s he?”

“Just…a guy. He drives an old black Cadillac,” and then Fanshawe read off the vehicle’s license plate number.

Artie sighed through a pause. “Got it. Not gonna tell me the deal with the guy—this…Karswell?”

Fanshawe smiled. “No. Just run a make on him because…well, because I’m the boss.” Fanshawe didn’t want to reveal that Karswell had actually been murdered, or at least killed, if the police were wrong. Artie would go ballistic… They would find out soon enough.

“I’m hearing you loud and clear…boss.”

“Good. Just ring me on my cell when you’ve got it, okay?”

“Sure. Say, aren’t you going to ask how things are going with all your astronomically successful businesses?”

“I don’t have to ask, because I have the utmost confidence in you.” Fanshawe liked Artie but he just didn’t feel like talking right now. “Thanks, Artie. Take the office out on the company card tonight. Anyplace you want.”

“Uh…”

“A simple thank you will suffice.”

“Uh, thanks, boss!”

“Later, Artie.”

“Yeah, sure, I—”

Fanshawe hung up, feeling satisfied in some inexpressible way. He couldn’t imagine what goaded his curiosity about Karswell, but then there were a number of things he felt intensely curious about in Haver-Towne, things that wouldn’t ordinarily pique him. It’s because my life has changed now…for the better. I’m essentially retired; my managers run my businesses, so I need new interests, and with that he began to walk. He’d done lots of walking since he’d arrived, and he found that he liked it. It cleared his head…

He began to walk back toward the trails.

It occurred to him that police might still be around. I hope they don’t think I had something to do with it… Still, he felt like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. But he couldn’t quell the urge to see the trails again, and the scenery off the most elevated of the hillocks. He didn’t think for a minute there was a subconscious motive, the joggers, for instance. After what they saw today, they’ll NEVER come back out here. Before he knew it, he was ascending the hillocks.

No surprise there, he thought when he saw that the trail where Karswell’s body had been found was cordoned off completely with yellow tape. Only when he discerned that the police had left did he realize how unwise coming here might be. Whoever killed Karswell might still be out here…

But how likely was that?

At any rate, Fanshawe wasn’t convinced it had been murder, missing wallet or not. The Wild Animal Theory seemed much more plausible; then someone coming along afterward (someone disreputable, of course) could easily have taken Karswell’s wallet after the fact.

I don’t know…

The sun was descending, drawing smoldering orange light across the horizon. The vision was spectacular, and he realized then it had been ages since he’d seen such a sunset—just one more of nature’s wonders he’d been deprived of in New York. They’re all back in the Rat Race, but here I am, watching the sun set on Witches Hill… It almost seemed funny.

Sometime later, once darkness had drained into the hills, Fanshawe had turned.

Toward town.

That daze he’d felt earlier only magnified. It was as though the glittering lights of the Haver-Towne had puppeted him, had made him turn, like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. Fanshawe’s guts sunk; he knew what was behind the impulse.

The windows.

Was it this perverse desire that had been brewing in him all day, without his conscious recognition? In the past, too, he could remember times when his obsession had taken him out with seemingly no volition of his own. His eyes locked on the Travelodge, and its neat, enticing rows of picture-glass windows. Useless, he reminded himself. The joke’s on me. Even if he had come up here with the subconscious intent of peeping, he already knew he was too far away to see anything.

Then a noxious question slipped into his mind. Yeah, but what would I do—right now, right this second—if I had a pair of binoculars on me?

His guts sunk further when still another impulse fed his hand into his jacket pocket. In a hushed shock, his fingers touched something, then gripped it.

He grit his teeth, his eyelids reduced to slits, when he withdrew his hand and found it gripping the looking-glass from the inn. He held it as though he were holding a rancid body part. It felt heavier than it should, like a bar of solid metal.

Oh my God, my God, what have I done?

There was only one way to explain the device’s presence in his pocket…

I put it there, without ever realizing it…

After all, he had been looking at it over the past few days. How would I do that and not remember it? Am I that oblivious? Indeed, it seemed that his id had overruled his conscious will and prompted him to steal the instrument. He didn’t have to wonder what for…

His hand shook as he held the looking-glass. I’m not crazy, he convinced himself. I KNOW I’m not crazy. I’m just a little wrung out, that’s all. I’m in a strange place where I don’t know anybody, and now I’m suffering from some delayed-stress thing… His chest felt tight when he raised his hand and stared at the looking-glass.

I WANT to scope some windows, but I’m NOT going to, he determined. What I’m going to do instead is go back to the inn and put this damn glass back in the damn display case.

He turned on his feet, then began to walk back down the grass-lined path which would lead him back to the inn. In twenty minutes I’ll be in my room, he thought, and this ridiculous looking-glass will be back where it belongs.

That’s when his will began to fade. He sensed himself continuing to walk, but was cognizant of nothing else. He heard his feet crunching gravel on the trails, and he sensed some aspect of excitement but he couldn’t grasp that aspect’s nature, save that it seemed very far away.

As the night-sounds of crickets gained dominion over his surroundings, a drone entered his head…

Next thing he knew, his heart was racing, and his right eye felt dry from being open so long. The most delicious images swirled in the back of his mind. No, Fanshawe had not returned to the hotel—

Instead, he’d gained a better vantage point for the intent he’d failed to admit to himself.

He was standing at the highest point of Witches Hill, spying on the town with the looking-glass. The drone in his head amplified. He could not turn away from what he was doing…

In the glass’s viewing circle, he scanned the Travelodge pool, which now wobbled extra-dimensionally blue with its underwater lights. Mostly children waded about but several attractive mothers accompanied them. Fanshawe found that a ring on the glass would zoom the image surprisingly close. Oh, God… One woman’s breasts filled the circle now, water droplets glittering in her cleavage. Through the wet bikini top’s baby-blue fabric, he could see the darkened plugs of her nipples. Fanshawe swerved the glass, to another unknowing mother climbing out of the water. The contrast of this one’s black bikini against the luxuriant white curves of flesh left him breathless. She turned, standing still to talk cheerily to someone in a lounge chair; Fanshawe exploited this as any competent voyeur would, and scanned her entire body from her neck to her toes.

He raised the looking-glass then, to the upper-level windows…

Time turned to a smear along with Fanshawe’s free will. He only vaguely noticed his watch beeping, signaling eleven p.m. From this point on, he floated on a squalid euphoria, as myriad images found their way into his famished psyche; it seemed as though the looking-glass itself were injecting the hot crush of glimpses deep into the substance of his brain, like marinade into the middle of a rump roast: shapely women in underwear or less striding across rooms; a melon-breasted college student stepping out of the shower; a man and woman having rowdy intercourse on their bedroom dresser-top, and a half-dozen more, all commingling into a single, inflamed kaleidoscope that existed solely to stoke Fanshawe’s idiosyncratic lust.

He couldn’t imagine how long he’d stood there sampling so many visual delicacies; time didn’t exist, only the most vivid, lascivious succession of images. When he’d exhausted the Travelodge windows of everything his eye could pilfer, the drone in his head swelled, and he moved the hoary spyglass to the Wraxall Inn.

Silence shrouded him. Had the incessant night-sounds ceased, or had his craving shut them out? Indeed, like last night’s dream, all he could hear were his own heated breaths and the quickened thuds of his heart.

And through the elaborate windows of the inn, Fanshawe’s smorgasbord marched on, a visual feast the likes of which he’d not experienced in over a year. People are naked a lot, his thoughts broke through his fever, when they don’t think anyone can see… He started at the top floor, then slowly moved the glass one window at a time from left to right. The window of the corner suite stood dark—of course, it was his own—but next to it a slightly overweight woman with robust curves and shining blond hair stood nude before her open closet, hunting for the desired nightgown. Eventually she turned, showing all that plush, soft flesh and the exorbitant substance of her bosom, just as Fanshawe zoomed in to scrutinize in every detail. Oh, Christ… On the next floor a window displayed a bed that was empty until a clearly excited male suitor approached with his nude girlfriend or wife—her feet wagging aloft as she silently giggled—dropped her into the middle of the bed, then slid briskly on top of her. The man’s mouth moved from one nipple to the other; evidently, he was biting, for the woman’s back arched, and she clenched, but the look on her tense face was one of pleasure, not discomfort. The man disappeared for a moment, only to return with handcuffs and a blindfold, but after applying these things to his lover, he turned off the lamp, leaving only ghostly television light. More pay-dirt, thought Fanshawe, for deeper along the floor, a shimmering sight slammed into his eye: a svelte woman, nude, on her belly with her legs wishboned. Her skin shined from an obvious application of oil, while another naked woman, just as shapely, straddled her and slowly massaged her back. Fanshawe’s hands shook when he crudely zoomed the glass close between both women’s legs. The motherlode, he thought.

When the sultry masseuse leaned for the bottle of oil, he caught the sides of her breasts, like a model in one of the classier men’s magazines, but he also saw enough of her face…

Harvard, he realized. And they’re about to…

—after a few moments, the masseuse hopped up, laughing, then quickly closed the curtains as if her partner had casually mentioned that it might be a good idea. How’s that for some bum luck? Fanshawe thought, frustrated and now painfully aroused; he grew light-headed when he considered what he’d be missing. But at least the pair of lovers seemed to have recovered from their gory shock on the trails.

Now his crude excitement left him disordered. I’m such a scumbag! he yelled at himself, but only continued to manipulate the glass. Through a careless curtain gap, he zoomed in a young brunette wearing only panties; she stood before a narrow, full-length mirror, and seemed to be grinning at what she saw: wide hips and a flat stomach; long, sleek legs; small breasts that swooped upward, topped by dense nipples. The woman’s grin deepened; next, she drew her hands up her abdomen, cupped her breasts, then began to vise each nipple between forefinger an thumb…

Fanshawe made an aggravated fist with his free hand, his self-disgust simmering. Scumbag… Pervert…

He moved the viewing circle past several dark windows on the second floor, then stopped when the last of them went alight. He held the glass fast, waiting, heart thudding. No movement revealed itself, yet Fanshawe seemed to sense that patience, as far as this window was concerned, would be well rewarded. The room appeared smaller than the others; he thought he detected heather-green carpet, then walls papered in flowery, neutral tones. In a split-second, then, a shape strode past. Fanshawe only made out jeans and a light top, but he knew it was a woman.

Patience, patience, he insisted.

The shape returned, and a hot breath suddenly seemed trapped in Fanshawe’s chest. Now the woman was bereft of jeans and top, and was skimming off her panties and bra. Of all the women he’d spied on tonight, this woman possessed the most exorbitant curves. But her back was to him. Was she getting something from a closet?

He couldn’t tell, and the lower angle blocked all detail of her from the shoulders up; he could only tell her hair was not blond but lighter than brunet.

It was then that she turned, offering a delectable side-glance. At once Fanshawe’s wooziness doubled. The woman’s breasts were heavy but high, her waist fatless. A tuft of butterscotch public hair showed. Next, she turned only a trifle, such that Fanshawe could see the large, dark circles of her nipples and the jutting papillae. He zoomed only to be astonished to near disbelief. These optics are incredible.

It was uncanny how closely the looking-glass could bear in on an image. Just then, the unknowing woman’s nipple nearly filled the viewing field. Every detail was there before his eye, the stark demarcation of the nipple’s rim against the white flesh of the breast, even the finest hair follicles, and even the papilla’s lactation ducts. It was akin to microscopy… But—

Was she about to lean over?

Fanshawe backtracked the zoom to bring the entire window back into frame.

Yeah… Contact lenses…

The woman was leaning slightly, finger on one hand widening her eyelids while those of her other hand slipped out the lenses. It was during this pose that Fanshawe received his most vivid shock of the night. The woman was absolutely voluptuous, and now he could see her face.

It was Abbie.

The sudden noise spun him abruptly around like someone caught by surprise on a barstool. He’d heard a dog growl.

He stood frozen, staring into the clearing. What he noticed first was the old rain barrel, but it almost looked as though it were shimmering. Some aspect of the moonlight seemed to over-substantiate details much in the same way as the looking-glass. Everything he saw—the high grasses and wild flowers, the small stones on the ground, and even the dirt’s grit—looked excessively crisp. As for the barrel, even from yards away he easily detected the pits and water-damage grooves of its body beneath its protective coat.

But as he might expect, there was no dog.

Not this shit again.

It hadn’t sounded as precise as when he’d heard it earlier that day—just before the scream. It only took a few moments for him to feel sure there was no dog, but remembering how Eldred Karswell’s body had been found didn’t afford much relief. What IS this? he wondered, close to being angered. I’m hearing growling dogs, for God’s sake. But there’d be other evidence of a dog in the vicinity, wouldn’t there? Panting, moving through the brush, etc.? There’d been none of that. I CAN’T be hearing things, can I? He could only hope that the sound had carried from far away, via some fluke he didn’t understand. When he was fully convinced that no dog was present, his lust took him back to previous activities.

Abbie…

He lined the glass right back up on her window, but—

Damn it!

It stood dark now.

Here, his id railed. Naked, she’d proved even more alluring that he’d imagined; her body had stunned him; the prospect of looking at her again filled him with an edgy thrill. But even before he’d seen that her window was now dark, the more decent side of his character groaned at him, How low can I get? I’m peeping on a woman I’ve got a date with! Some force tried to urge him to put the looking-glass away, but he never quite got to that point. I’m a scumbag peeping-tom loser… He noticed several other windows still lit, but as he would put the glass back to his eye—

The minuscule alarm on his Brietling watch began to beep, signaling midnight.

More self-scorn rained down on him. My God, it’s midnight already. I wasted the whole night up here. Looking in windows, eyeballing nude women behind their backs. What a piece of shit I am. When he considered Dr. Tilton’s reaction, he couldn’t have felt more crushed. He could almost see her ice-cold face hanging right there before him like a semi-palpable shadow, not frowning but simply blank, which was much worse.

He presumed to leave at once, his watch still beeping its electronic tolls. But then he was wincing, struggling against the beggardly temptation. Leave! Leave this hill right now and never come back! Only low-lifes do this, only perverts and dirt-bags! but even as this bleak truth socked home, his hand raised the looking-glass to his eye—

All right, damn it… This is it, just one more minute and then I go back to the hotel, and I will never do this again…

There were two odd things that he immediately recognized, but the order of the recognition reversed. In only that short period of time, all the remaining lit windows of the Wraxall Inn had gone out, almost as if they’d been extinguished simultaneously. A sweep of the glass showed him that the rest of the town, too, seemed much darker than before…

The toll of midnight drew on, but not via the electric beep of his watch…

It now sounded as a deep, sonorous bell.

I haven’t heard bells ringing here, have I? He felt certain, in fact, that the town’s church had no bell.

When he momentarily lowered the glass to think…the beep of his watch continued.

And the bell-peals disappeared.

What on earth?

He put the glass back to his eye, then felt a chill, for the peals somehow revitalized themselves. Each toll, though heavy, deep, sounded oddly brittle as well, the way bells sometimes sounded on still, hot nights.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

Then silence. His attention, splayed as it may have been, switched back to the visual: the town.

His mouth fell open.

What he saw now was impossible, yet he saw it just the same…

The town was different.

Haver-Towne not only appeared darker in the sheen of moonlight, it appeared smaller. A power failure? he considered. A brownout? But no, half the buildings on Back Street weren’t there, and those that were did not coincide with his memory. And were there no street lights burning at all now? He zoomed and squinted, then with an incredulous realization saw that there were no street lamps. And the light in the few windows that remained lit shone duller, less intense, and somehow flickering, like…

Like candles, he realized.

Looking again to the inn, he scrutinized the walls, the gables, and the roof. This is crazy… The once-clean white walls looked streaked now, shoddy, as if whitewashed or painted with inferior product. Flaws, splits, and cracks were apparent in the wall-slats, and on the roof…

The shingles were definitely not the same as they had been.

Fanshawe squeezed his viewing eye shut, rubbed it, then shook his head as if to dislodge some cerebral misfire. I’m tired, I’m burned out, he forced the idea. And I’m pissed off at myself for relapsing. Certainly the stress of such things combined could urge eyes to play tricks on their owner, that and the crisp blocked out shadows that the bright moonlight generated about the town.

He took a heavy breath. I’ll look again and everything will be normal—

He looked again.

Fanshawe’s heart seemed to squeal, like some small, agitated animal in a trap. The town did not look normal.

Impossible…

Haver-Towne looked corroded now. As Fanshawe stared, he let his eyes adjust, then could’ve sworn that Main Street was no longer paved, and in it a lone figure walked slowly, hesitantly, holding what had to have been a candle-lantern. Fanshawe trembled in place, then homed the looking-glass again on the Wraxall Inn.

Abbie’s window hung dark now, but then some peripheral light elsewhere urged his instincts to raise the glass, to the top floor. Another window was indeed alight when it hadn’t been a moment ago. The bow window on the end…

That’s not…MY room, is it? No, no, that’s impossible. He was sure he hadn’t left the lights on. Why would he? Next, Fanshawe froze.

A part in the curtains formed a wide cleft of light in the window; Fanshawe was sure that these curtains were darker and more ragged than the curtains he knew the room to have. And it was candlelight—he was sure—that wanly filled the cleft.

Suddenly the back of a naked woman appeared in the window—his window. He focused closer and thought that her hair was a shimmering deep red. When she turned, he felt a jolt. The woman’s large, bare breasts jutted—more voyeur’s pay-dirt—but he scarcely paid the image mind, for there was something else much more paramount that he’d noticed first.

The woman was pregnant, very pregnant, undoubtedly close to term.

Her great, white belly stretched out pinprick tight, the navel inverted like a button of flesh. Was she talking to someone in the room? Her movements indicated an anxious expectation, though Fanshawe couldn’t imagine why he believed this. Moreover, he couldn’t believe any of what he was seeing.

How could he?

I must be dreaming, he tried to convince himself. Though nothing of the past few minutes seemed at all like a dream. The looking-glass’s eyepiece felt connected to him now. As he continued to stare into the window that could only be his, the pregnant woman began to crudely caress herself, and then—

The window turned pitch dark, like a candle being blown out.

Fanshawe lowered the glass; he was too afraid to look anymore. What he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, made his mind feel like it was shredding. He shoved the looking-glass back into his pocket and stalked away down the path.

I think there’s something seriously wrong with me…

(IV)

His eyes felt peeled open when he returned to town. Both Back and Main Streets stretched out charming and quaint as always. Only a few passersby were about, evidently on their way to or from the tavern, or one of the late-night cafes. What bothered Fanshawe most was the vibrancy of the street lamps—

Street lamps that weren’t there a little while ago. But his unease toned down in a moment. He was a logical man, so there had to be a logical explanation.

Unsure steps took him back into the hotel. He crossed the near empty atrium, thought of putting the looking-glass back into the display case—though he still didn’t remember ever taking it out—but changed his mind when a pair of professors loped drunkenly out of the pub. I’ll put it back tomorrow, he resolved, and I better make damn sure no one sees me. A quick glance into the pub showed him Mr. Baxter, not Abbie, idly tending the bar, but then he remembered seeing her: undressing, getting ready for bed. Yep, I’m a scumbag, all right—peeping on a girl I’ve got a DATE with tomorrow… He thought of stopping in to say hello but realized that conversation was the last thing he desired just now.

What the hell was I seeing back there?

He hastened for the elevator, hoping Baxter hadn’t noticed him. What a day. A dead body and now…this… He couldn’t have gotten to his room faster; the hall’s muffled silence seemed to chase him inside like a pursuer.

The pursuer, he knew, was guilt.

Not too long ago, he’d been spying on some women on this very floor.

He locked the door behind him, then sat on the high bed with a nervy sigh. Only now did a flattened sensation at his groin tell him that he’d masturbated on the hill. Disgust drew lines in his face. Probably while looking at Abbie. What a sick slob. Ordinarily his mind would be swimming in all those delectable images, but now his anguish sabotaged them. Other images struck him now, images not of Abbie or the other women he’d seen, but images of the town.

Fanshawe took out the looking-glass, noting again how heavy it felt for such a small object. Acid trickled in his stomach.

Images of the town. The town…changed…

Yes, just after he’d spied Abbie naked in her room, her abundant breasts so apparent as she removed her contacts, his eyes showed him that the town had indeed changed. And it had seemed to change at the precise stroke of midnight—

From a bell that doesn’t exist.

He dropped the glass on the bed like something that nauseated him.

Ridiculous. He shook his head, then put his brow into his hand. I’m not cracking up, am I? Now his watch—not a distant bell—beeped once.

Just go to bed…

He began to undress but found his eyes oddly lured upward, toward the ceiling. The trapdoor, he thought, staring at it. In a moment he was standing on the bed— feeling ludicrous in his boxer shorts and Gaultier shirt—reaching up. He pushed on the board, slid it off, then stood on tiptoes and patted his hand around just inside the egress. There, he thought, feeling something. He pulled it out: a rope ladder.

Why am I doing this? the question drifted but it never solidified. He hopped off the bed, slipped a penlight in his shirt pocket, then grabbed the unstable rungs, ignoring the rope’s sheer age. Carefully but with determination he couldn’t fathom, he climbed up. Eventually he was standing stooped in a long narrow wood-scented chamber. There were no dormer windows or vents—nothing to offer light or air; in seconds he was shedding sweat. He aimed the penlight around, finding nothing of interest, just several boxes—reading in Magic Marker XMAS DECORATIONS—and piles of what appeared to be old drapes. Dust lay an inch thick on the floor but his light showed him the footprints of someone else. They appeared very new.

Had someone been up here recently? Probably Mr. Baxter, putting the decorations away after Christmas.

But Fanshawe couldn’t figure why he’d come up here. What did he expect to find? I’m just getting nuttier and nuttier, I guess. Still, he walked down the narrow space, fanning his light. Tree sap—more than likely cooked out of the rafters and wood slats from hundreds of years of hot summers—hardened like tinted glue everywhere he looked. When he made it to the chamber’s end, he stopped, sniffed. He wasn’t sure but he thought he smelled—

Old cigar smoke?

But the fetid odor was gone just as he thought he’d detected it.

Enough Nosy Parkering for me. He climbed back down and replaced the trapdoor, shaking his head at himself. Snooping in other people’s business wasn’t like him, but then he laughed and frowned at the same time when he realized the outrage of that impression.

I’m a voyeur, a peeper. I’m the worst kind of snoop.

He went to bed, baffled by his actions. But at least the trip into the attic, if only temporarily, had freed his mind of the impossibilities he’d glimpsed—or thought he’d glimpsed—on the hill.

Some time later, he was sinking into sleep—sinking, as if in a trench of slime. He twitched under the sheets; the darkness clotted around him.

He dreamed…

««—»»

A bright window comes into focus through a familiar binocular frame. A beautiful woman is undressing, in seeming slowness, but once she’s nude, she turns toward the window, showing all—

Behind him a voice trumpets: “Freeze! Police!”

Fanshawe is slammed against the alley wall, his cheek rubbing bricks. Snap! Snap! and next his wrists have been handcuffed behind his back. “How do you like that shit? A peeper…” Red and blue lights pulse blob-like within the alley.

Next, Fanshawe sweats on the pay phone in the booking section of the chaotic police station. “Artie, it’s me. I’m in big trouble. Call the lawyers and get me bailed out…,” and then he tells his confidante what he’s been arrested for, his voice tinted by shame. Artie’s initial reaction is only a guttural silence, as though he were choking on the information—

Next, Fanshawe stands haggard in the foyer of his luxury brownstone, his shirttail out, his hair mussed. A Tiffany clock on the mantle chimes three a.m. as Fanshawe’s silk night-gowned wife stares with a look that’s half-outrage and half stupefaction.

“You-you…were arrested for what?”

“I—”

Next, she’s haphazardly dressed in the spacious bedroom, her head a blond blur as she maniacally crams clothes and toiletries into a suitcase. When she slams the case closed, tears fly off her face.

“Laurel, please,” he croaks. “Let me ex—” but the words die as if his lungs have collapsed.

“You think you know someone,” comes her shrill sob, “you think they love you so you give your life to him, and then you find out he’s a pervert!”

“Honey, I’m sorry, I—”

“You’re sick!” she shrieks.

He pleads now not to her but into his hands. “I’ll get help, I go to a counselor—I don’t know how to explain this to you because I don’t even understand it myself—”

Laurel’s face has contorted into a pink mask stamped by every conceivable negative emotion. “Explain what? That you’re a pervert? That you’re a common criminal who gets his jollies looking at women in windows?” but then the rictus deepens with a worse thought. “They were women, weren’t they?” She is teetering in place. “Or were they really children?”

Fanshawe feels flattened, like the ceiling has just collapsed on him. “No, no, I swear, it wasn’t anything like that.”

Laurel spins round, grabs her purse and keys, then the suitcase. She doesn’t believe him. “Don’t ever speak to me again. Do you have any idea how much this hurts?”

Fanshawe sobs himself now. “Please don’t leave. I love you. I swear, I’ll never do it again. I-I…I just have this problem…”

“You’re sick! And that’s what you make me: sick! I want a divorce!”

The whole room concusses when she flies out and slams the door. Their wedding picture on the wall falls down and shatters.

Now Fanshawe sits on the couch in Dr. Tilton’s sterile office, and looking at him from behind the big desk is Dr. Tilton’s sterile face. “—a sickness, Mr. Fanshawe, a chronic paraphilic fixation that has reached a transitive state. This isn’t simple voyeurism, it’s an extremity of late-stage obsessive disorders such as Scoptolagnia and Parascopily…”

He feels as lost as one sitting in an electric chair. When he rubs his face, he feels sand-papery stubble. “What’s wrong with me?” he drones.

“You’re ill,” she snaps back. “You need treatment. Otherwise you’ll never be able to function normally in public… All your money and lawyers may keep you out of jail, but you’ll always be a pervert in society’s eyes—always, unless you stop right this instant…”

“I will!” he pants, “I will!”

The doctor’s elegantly manicured finger raises up to touch her chin. “But I’d like to ask you something rather pertinent, as—and don’t be offended by this—most patients suffering from such anti-social habituations as this generally lie to their psychiatrists initially, but…are you being honest with me when you say that it was a woman you were spying on?”

Fanshawe glares.

“Not a child? Not an adolescent?”

“No, no, no!” he yells and wishes just then that he could crush his own head in his hands—

««—»»

—and that was when the clot-like darkness seemed to force its way down his throat, almost like someone’s hand, and when Fanshawe began to gag, he sprang awake.

Jesus…

Sweat sopped him like glue, drenching even the sheets beneath him. His open eyes jiggled in shock. Another nightmare, he thought; he grimaced when he dragged his forearm across his brow to wipe off the chill sweat. The final dream-fragment stuck in his head like a shard: Dr. Tilton’s stony face as she so wanted to imply that it might be children he’d been scoping all these years. The notion made him sick—sicker than he generally was of himself. It made him hate her.

The moonlight streaming in seemed lightened now, pale. Dawn was not far off. He sat for several minutes to catch the breath that the dream had robbed him of. It was with a determined force that he struggled not to think back to what he thought he’d seen on the hill, but the harder he pressed that force, the more the images leaked in. Not the sultry joggers nude in their room, and not even Abbie and her stunning physique—it was the other images, those that arrived later: the corroded town, the wild forest surrounding it—a forest that was not there now—the lampless streets, unpaved, not black-topped or brick-lined; the handful of windows dimly lit by candles, not electric bulbs. It’s almost like I was seeing the town as it looked hundreds of years ago… Then the final marauding image: the nude woman, red-haired, standing heavy-breasted and pregnant as if to burst…

“For God’s sake,” he muttered. He must have dreamed all that, and just gotten confused. Yeah… The pregnant woman must surely be a product of his dreaming mind—some oblique reference, no doubt, to Evanore Wraxall, a witch kept pregnant by her own father.

He jerked around in bed, close to yelling, when he suddenly heard—

That damn dog again!

Enraged, he leapt up. Yes, he was sure he heard a dog barking, not too distant but not too close, either. It didn’t come from within the hotel.

Outside.

He rushed to the sitting room which faced the street. What the HELL is this? Now Fanshawe was not as bewildered as he was mad. He’d heard a dog several times during his stay but had seen not a single one. He threw back the drapes, glared down into the street…

The street stood still in the vestiges of nighttime. No people, no movement or traffic of any kind.

No dog…

He could tell dawn was fast approaching. It seemed impossible that the night had already passed—the dream had seemed to last for hours. But perhaps, still groggy, he’d been disoriented, and had misplaced the location of the dog’s barks. Behind the hotel, he thought and hurried back to his bedroom. He grabbed the looking-glass and immediately pointed it into the rear parking lot—

Fanshawe’s throat seemed to shrivel in on itself.

There was no dog.

There was no parking lot, either.

But, beyond, he could see the hillocks which formed the natural pedestal for Witches Hill. The hillocks looked different: wilder, overgrown, more heavily treed, and he could detect only one trail, not the webwork he was used to. Then…

Movement.

He stared into the looking-glass, more acid dumping into his stomach. He could see several people stalking up Witches Hill in the distance, and one of those people was walking a large black dog that barked viciously.

No…

He lowered the glass; he was shaking. He could hear the animal’s continued barks but now his head was filled with that same disorienting drone that had overcome him earlier. Thoughtless, he stumbled back into the sitting room, and re-aimed the glass through the window and out into the street.

He heard a moan, and he saw…

The looking-glass was zoomed in, as though it had adjusted itself. He knew this—like everything else—was impossible, but now he was looking at an abrupt close-up image, that of a woman in the shabbiest clothes locked by wrists and neck into the authentic pillory out front. Filthy hair hung down in strings; she’d been egged, for Fanshawe could easily detect the presence of eggshells stuck to her hair, while more shells and apparently rotten fruit lay on the street. Several men in the strangest attire lingered behind the woman. “Be quick about it!” shot one man’s hot whisper, for another seemed to be crudely fornicating with the woman from behind; his face, like his cohorts, was kept blacked out from the shadows of oddly shaped hats. Now Fanshawe could hear the woman’s sobs as she hitched in the cruel wooden brace. Still another man said “‘Tis no transgression to defile a strumpet whose very life defiles our Savior,” and another, “May we stay in the favor of the Lord thy God when we acteth out against His adversaries.” “Offenses against the offender bespeaks a blessing.” They both came around the front and began to expectorate on the woman’s head; then they began to urinate on her. Fanshawe made this out very clearly, even with the men standing with their backs to him. It was the looking-glass, demonstrating the most precise clarity; Fanshawe could see the streams of urine. Then, only to intensify the foulness of what took place, the pair of men stepped closer to the woman. Fanshawe didn’t have to speculate that they were masturbating on her.

Eventually the group sulked away, leaving the abused woman drenched and hitching in her misery.

Immediately, Fanshawe thought, Rape. Strange talk or not, some transients must have abducted the woman, put her in the antique pillory, and raped her. Fanshawe pulled on his robe, grabbed his key, and dashed out of the room.

Barefoot, hair sticking up, he took the elevator downstairs, burst through the atrium, and ran out the inn’s front door.

I should’ve known…

Before he’d even gotten halfway to the pillory, he saw plainly that it was unoccupied. No spit, fruit, eggshells, or other debris was in evidence. The pillory and the street beneath it was clean.

— | — | —