Witch Water

CHAPTER SEVEN

(I)

It was just after nine p.m. when Fanshawe and Abbie entered the Squire’s Pub. The comfort he felt by being with her—the idealism of a first date notwithstanding—continued to ease the turmoil he’d been dwelling on all day. Additionally, he was pleased by how easy it was to slip his arm around her waist; he could tell she was glad he did that. Closer now, her subtle perfume and shampoo scents were driving him nuts, to an arousing degree, yet not once had he even re-framed the vision he’d stolen last night, when he’d peeped on her and seen her utterly naked.

Several tables full of loud professors took up the pub’s rear section; Fanshawe noticed the two joggers, too, who didn’t seem to be having quite the raucous time as their inebriated elders, which was understandable.

Most of the bar, however, was empty. Perfect, Fanshawe thought. Mr. Baxter stood in attendance, and at first Fanshawe was worried what the proprietor might think of him walking in with his arm around his daughter. The instant he spotted them, though, he seemed to perk up, as if somehow energized by their entrance. Fanshawe let his hand slide across the small of Abbie’s back when they parted for him to pull a barstool out for her.

“Well, hey there, you two,” the older man greeted, a crackle in his voice. “How was dinner?”

“Excellent, Mr. Baxter,” Fanshawe said, then sat down next to Abbie. “A perfect meal for a perfect evening.” He wondered if he should take Abbie’s hand so quickly in front of her father, but before he could finish the consideration, she took his.

“Oh, yeah, Dad, it couldn’t have been better,” she augmented, “and Stew says the curries are as good as the Thai places he goes to in Manhattan.”

“Your daughter has great taste in cuisine, Mr. Baxter.”

Baxter, thumbing his suspenders, failed to restrain an amused frown. “That she does, but not such good taste in what she chooses to let come out of her mouth. I’d like to put my boot to her behind for telling you all that gory baloney about Wraxall and his daughter.”

“Listen to Dad,” Abbie mocked, looking at Fanshawe. “You should’ve seen how excited he was when we found all those black-magic relics in the basement. ‘The Salem of New Hampshire!’ he said. ‘We’ll make a fortune from all these sucker tourists!’”

“Mind your mouth, girl…”

“Well, it’s true, Dad. For someone who thinks witchcraft is just a bunch of ‘silly drivel,’ you sure jumped all over it.”

“You did a little jumpin’ yourself, missy,” Baxter replied, wagging a finger. “So don’t ya go puttin’ it all on me in front of Mr. Fanshawe.”

Abbie laughed and drifted off her stool. She went behind the bar, to make drinks.

Fanshawe smiled through the vocal volley. “Well, it certainly looks like it’s working; you’ve got a pretty solid business here. But tell me, Mr. Baxter. It can’t all be baloney and drivel, can it?”

Baxter scoffed mildly. “Oh, I’m sure a little bit of that religious mob-law stuff went on,” and then he threw a hard glance to Abbie, who was adding ice to a silver shaker, “but it wasn’t nothin’ like the witch-killing free-for-all that my mouthy daughter here claims. It was just mostly folks gettin’ a little carried away.”

Abbie rolled her gray eyes. “What about the tens of thousands of people who died at the hands of the Inquisition, Dad? Just folks getting a little carried away?”

Fanshawe interjected, addressing Baxter. “But, seriously, did the legal authorities of this town really sentence heretics to death by barreling?”

Baxter stiffened up. “Aw, Abbie, ya didn’t tell Mr. Fanshawe all that morbid nonsense now, did ya!”

Fanshawe laughed. “Don’t blame Abbie, sir. I was the one who insisted she tell me.”

Baxter made a gesture of frustrated resignation. “Oh, jeez. I suppose there’s a hint of truth to it, but there ain’t really no official record.”

Now Abbie began to work the shaker, speaking over the clatter of ice. “The unofficial record, Jacob Wraxall’s diary, testifies that almost a hundred were executed in that fashion, including his daughter, Evanore.”

“Abbie, why do you insist on fillin’ Mr. Fanshawe’s head up with all that grisly poppycock?”

This was the first time tonight Fanshawe felt sexually distracted by Abbie: the way her breasts tossed slightly as she shook the iced tumbler, and suddenly he seemed hotly intrigued by the graceful slope of her neck, the hollow of her throat, her gleaming bare shoulders and skin above her cleavage. Fanshawe could’ve winced when the friction of Abbie’s bra from the shaking seemed to provoke her nipples to hardness.

Jeez… Eventually, he dragged his way back to his focus. “But I am curious about what Wraxall’s diary revealed. You’ve actually read it?”

“Oh, sure,” Abbie admitted. “I’d be happy to show it to you sometime.”

Baxter flapped a hand of disregard. “You can look at it all you want, Mr. Fanshawe, but you’ll be hard-pressed to make out a word of it.”

“It’s true that most of it’s not legible,” Abbie added. “First of all it’s written in a very old style, and the majority of the lines are blurred—”

“Oh, water damage? Silverfish?” Fanshawe presumed.

“Nope. It was mostly because back then the inks of the day were high in iron oxide content—I actually researched this. Proteins in the vellum stock that they used for paper interacted with the iron molecules. It would look great for a hundred years or so, but longer than that the ink would blur and turn yellow. A lot of the books here are like that unfortunately.”

“But you said that most of the diary’s illegible,” Fanshawe pointed out. “Most means not all.”

Now Baxter butted back in. “There’s a tad you can still make out, but you’re guaranteed a whopper of a headache from eyestrain.”

Abbie began to pour the drinks, looking at the shot glasses as she spoke. “Overall, there was a lot of verification of some of the mysteries of the day. There was a spate of missing persons—mostly children and teenagers—but no one suspected that occult ritualism had anything to do with the disappearances. Instead they were blamed on small scattered tribes of Indians who wanted revenge against the Colonists for killing so many of them when the area was first settled.”

“But?” Fanshawe goaded.

“Wraxall’s diary gave the real reason. It was him and Callister Rood, plus the coven members. Every so often they’d snatch a kid to sacrifice as an offering to the Devil. There were also entries about certain seasonal rituals they’d perform in the woods at night, on All Hallows Eve, for instance, and Candlemas, and the last day of April, called Beltane Eve. And the rest of the legible stuff is mostly what I told you about the other night”—she hesitated—“you know, about the incest and the sacrifice of Evanore’s newborns—”

Mr. Baxter groaned, a hand to his head.

“And he did go into some detail about some of his rituals and coven meetings,” Abbie added.

Fanshawe now fell unreservedly prey to Abbie’s sexual aura when she slid him his drink. Damn… Her breasts seemed to lift and then taunt him when she raised her own glass. “To Jacob and Evanore Wraxall,” she proposed with a laugh.

Baxter’s face corrugated. “I ain’t drinkin’ to them!”

“Just kidding! Um, to the Witch-Blood Shooter. Cheers.”

The three of them clinked the tiny glasses.

Fanshawe felt the sweet concoction slam into his stomach. The liquor blended with the sight of Abbie coming back to sit with him made him feel light-headed.

She re-took his hand immediately, which appeared to buff off some of her father’s displeasure with all the “grisly poppycock” she’d revealed. I guess he doesn’t mind his daughter going out with a billionaire, Fanshawe thought cynically. “Oh, what was I going to ask next?” He slid his stool even closer to Abbie and was suddenly luxuriating in her scents and exotic warmth. He looked right at her, helpless. Oh, God, she’s so beautiful…

“Stew?” She was grinning. “What were you going to ask?”

He could’ve twisted his own ear. Idiot! You’re acting like an airhead! “Oh, yeah. You said Wraxall dug up his daughter’s bones—”

“Six-hundred-and-sixty-six days after she was executed,” she reminded with an elucidating finger raised.

“What ya got to understand about my daughter, Mr. Fanshawe,” Baxter stepped back in, “is she likes to over-dramatize things.”

“Whatever,” she sniped.

“I’m just curious,” Fanshawe continued, “as to what Wraxall did with the bones, like…exactly.”

Abbie’s cocky smile challenged her father outright. “Dad, why don’t you tell Stew what Wraxall did with Evanore’s bones.”

“I’ll do no such thing, girl!” Baxter railed. “It’s all a bunch of hokey codswallop anyways.”

Fanshawe went with Abbie’s flow. “Come on, sir. I’d be interested in hearing your interpretation.”

Baxter stewed in reluctance, then resigned to the task. “Aw, well, if ya really wanna know… What he done was he made witch-water out of ’em.”

Of course, the term witch-water rang a loud bell. The glass, he thought. The caption called it a “Witch-Water” looking-glass… But he pretended to be unfamiliar with the term. “Witch-water? What’s that?”

Baxter, not enthused to be coerced into the line of talk, poured himself a beer. “Wraxall, see, he boiled them bones of his daughter’s. In a big cauldron—’least that’s what it looks like in his dairy.”

“Boiled the bones for what purpose?” Fanshawe asked.

“Well, after boilin’ ’em, he used the water. Called it witch-water.”

“The water was supposed to have occult properties,” Abbie augmented. “It’s said to be an invention of the Dark Ages. Witches, warlocks, and heretics used the water for all kinds of things: anointings, incantations, channeling with the dead—”

“—which proves it was all made up,” Baxter insisted. “In that silly diary, Wraxall claimed that he performed these rituals in the attic. Said he had a pentagram on the dang floor, written in blood. He also said he had a bunch of big cauldrons up there, and a whole lotta witch-water stored up in bottles from bad folks he dug up over the years. But ya know what?” In his pause, he smiled in self-satisfaction. “It was all a bunch of bull hockey. When the authorities busted into the house in 1675, they searched the entire place, including the attic, and found nothin’ of the sort. No cauldrons, no witch-water, no nothin’.”

“It does seem that Wraxall exaggerated some things in the diary a little,” Abbie accepted.

Baxter crossed his arms, eyes narrowed. “He didn’t exaggerate, missy, he lied. He made it all up ’cos he was a nut. Hell, we been up in that attic a hundred times and looked high and low, and under the floor planks too. Pentagrams in blood? My tookus. There’s nothin’ up there like what Wraxall claimed, not now, not then.”

You’re right about that, came Fanshawe’s private thought, since I was up there myself. But, “How interesting,” he said. “Eye of newt and toe of frog, sure, but I’ve never heard of witch-water. And…” Several cogs turned. He knew he had to be very careful making references to the looking-glass. They must not even know it’s missing… Of course it wasn’t missing.

It was stashed upstairs in Fanshawe’s room.

“Does anyone know what the water from the boiled bones has to do with looking-glasses?”

“It wasn’t clear in the diary,” Abbie said, “since that section was so blurred out. But my guess is that Wraxall filled the inside of the looking-glass with the witch-water, and this would somehow produce an occult effect.”

Fanshawe struggled to sort her words as her sexual presence continued to blare. Suddenly a consideration broke through: Maybe that’s why the glass is so heavy. It’s FILLED with the water. “But I assume you don’t know what that effect was.”

“’Cos there ain’t no effect,” Baxter insisted, then parted to serve several patrons who’d come up to the bar.

Abbie shrugged. “We can only assume, but my assumption is that when filled with the water, the glass might reveal something supernatural if you looked through it.”

Fanshawe stilled, but Baxter barked from the bar’s other end, “Which proves even more that it’s just a bunch more silly drivel. I looked through them glasses myself, Mr. Fanshawe, and so did Abbie. And you know what we saw?” He shot a half-smirk, half-smile to his daughter. “Jack diddly, that’s what.”

“I can’t deny that either,” Abbie confessed.

But Fanshawe could, couldn’t he? Holy shit… It took him a moment to recover and seem unimpacted by this information.

IF I saw what I THOUGHT I saw…

He’d seen the past. He’d seen Evanore Wraxall herself, in the window of the room he now occupied—a woman dead for over three hundred years.

Sounds supernatural to me…

Abbie jumped up, and said excitedly, “Let me go get it—”

Fanshawe threw off his contemplative daze. “Get what?”

“Why, the Witch-Water Looking-Glass, what else? We keep it in one of the display cases…”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Fanshawe interjected. Change the subject! Quick! “It’s just kind of interesting, like a lot of this witchcraft stuff. But that’s the other thing I wanted to ask you—”

Abbie ceased her gesture to leave the bar and fetch the glass.

Fanshawe felt relieved. “The other night just as I was leaving the pub, you said I should remind you to tell me about—what was it? The gazing ball?”

Her already bright eyes brightened more. “Oh, yeah! It’s just off from the graveyard.”

“Yeah, I found it but what is it?”

“I only mentioned it ’cos it’s kind of mysterious, and—just our luck—that portion of Wraxall’s diary is illegible too. But it’s interesting because it was one of the things Wraxall bought on the trip he took to Europe in 1671.”

Fanshawe nodded at the recollection of the excursion. “Yeah, I remember you saying that he was abroad when Evanore had been convicted and executed.”

“Right. But the point is who he visited with during the trip—”

“Aw, Abbie, would ya please stop boring Mr. Fanshawe with all that witchcraft bunk!” Baxter pleaded while serving more customers.

“He visited a number of like-minded folks—”

“Occultists?” Fanshawe presumed. “Other guys who thought of themselves as warlocks?”

Abbie nodded. “And from these people, Wraxall not only learned to sharpen his own skills, but he bought things, things he couldn’t get in the new colonies.”

Fanshawe studied her. “Do I want to know what things he bought?”

“No, he does not!” Baxter insisted.

“It was mostly books about necromancy,” she continued without pause, “and other things that witches and warlocks used. Crystals said to possess certain powers, hex-charms, pendants and bracelets made from metals smelted to special specifications for the purposes of protection, and of course, ritual ingredients.”

“Ingredients?” Fanshawe smiled and repeated his previous reference. “So he really did need eyes of newts and toes of frogs—”

“Nope, none of that. Try vials of elixirs, suspensions, and distillations used for soothsaying, alchemy, divination, stuff like that. The dried blood of virgin gypsies was big back then, oh, and in the diary Wraxall said he bought a lot of aborted fetuses.”

Fanshawe gaped.

“Warlocks and witches would burn the fetuses in a crucible and inhale the vapors, supposedly to see the image of Lucifer himself.”

“Abbie!” Baxter barked, “if you don’t stop talkin’ all of that bucket-of-blood claptrap, I’m gonna—”

“But it wasn’t the things Wraxall bought on his trip that were so important,” she talked right over her father’s objections, “it was specifically the people he went to talk to.”

“So you’ve said,” Fanshawe pointed out. “He went to see other warlocks.”

“Yes, a number of them, but there was one—above all the others…”

Fanshawe waited, tapping his fingers on the bar and knowing she enjoyed stringing him along like this. “And?”

“This guy was the Mount Everest of warlocks,” she said in a hushed tone. “His name was Wilson—I forgot his first name, but it was something unusual. There’ve been whole books about him. He was regarded as the most powerful sorcerer in England; he even turned lead into gold, and became very rich.”

“The only thing he turned lead into,” Baxter piped up, “was baloney.”

“Wraxall bought the Gazing Ball from him, but when he got it back to Haver-Towne, he told the residents it was like a wishing well. That’s the baloney, if you ask me. Why would someone like Wraxall, at the least a devotee of the occult, go all the way to Europe to consult with other occultists, then, on his last stop, visit someone as notorious as this man Wilson, just to buy some weird variation of a wishing well?”

“That explanation does sound fishy,” Fanshawe agreed but still he was nagged by the sudden distraction of Abbie’s beauty. I went all through dinner without lusting after her, but now it’s bowling me over. The calamities of last night and this morning, then the wax museum and his fears of becoming hallucinatory, and now this revelation about the looking-glass supposedly being possessed of supernatural characteristics? Everything mashed into his head like a logjam, and leading the jam, all of a sudden, was his steaming attraction to Abbie.

I need to think straight…

“There was another rumor that supposedly goes back hundreds of years,” she added, “that the Gazing Ball, instead of being a map of earth, was a map of hell—”

“Know what I think, missy?” Baxter chided. “I think it’s a map of your backside, showin’ my foot kickin’ it!”

Abbie just chuckled and shook her head.

“I couldn’t see that it was a map of anything,” Fanshawe offered. “There were some markings on the pedestal but as for the metal globe itself—”

“Right. It’s so tarnished you can’t make out anything.”

Fanshawe’s observations began to settle down. “It’s just another thing about Wraxall that’s curious.”

“Yeah,” Abbie said. “Intercontinental travel was no easy feat back then. It was dangerous. One out of every twenty ships either sunk due to poor maintenance or went down in storms. It would have to be important for Wraxall to make a trip like that.”

Baxter was beginning to enjoy his chastisement of Abbie. “And you’re gonna go on a trip to the moon if ya don’t stop all this witchcraft ballyhoo. Damn, girl, why can’t ya tell Mr. Fanshawe about the nice things we got in this area? Mount Washington, the Fire Quacker Festival, the steam-train tour?”

“There’s lots of time for that, sir,” Fanshawe informed. “I think I’ll be staying awhile.”

Both Mr. Baxter and Abbie seemed pleased by the remark and the change in subjects. Fanshawe asked for a soda water next; he didn’t want to look like a lush. But as Abbie helped her father tend to a sudden rush of customers, Fanshawe wound up recollecting his hallucinations at the museum…

Ascend, if thou dost have the heart, and—ay—partake in the bounty that ye hast earned, the mannequin of Wraxall had said.

Then the mannequin of Evanore: Go thither, if thou dost have the heart, to the bridle—

Fanshawe stroked his chin. What did she mean by that? but then he sighed at the ridiculous thought. She didn’t mean ANYTHING, you dunce, because it was an hallucination! Dummies don’t really talk!

When Abbie returned, she put her arm around him and hugged. “What are you thinking now? You seem lost in thought.”

I’m lost in thought a lot, I guess, because I might be nuts… He wanted to ask her if she’d seen anything in the diary about bounties or bridles but refused when he realized he’d be taking the mirage seriously.

That didn’t happen.

“I’m thinking about how much I like this town,” he fibbed. He turned but had no choice but to be faced by her bosom, since she was standing. He could’ve melted.

“I’ve got to turn in now, Stew,” she said, leaning against him. “Early day tomorrow. The guy who runs this joint cracks a big whip.”

“I heard that missy!” Baxter barked

But Fanshawe rushed to rise.

“Don’t leave just because I am,” Abbie said. “Hang out, have another drink—”

“I gotta turn in too,” he fibbed again. “I’ll walk you.” He bade goodnight to Mr. Baxter, then walked hand in hand with Abbie.

In the elevator, she sighed and leaned her head against Fanshawe’s shoulder. “Thanks, Stew. I had such a nice time tonight.”

“Me too.” He felt suddenly vibrant, gripped her waist tighter. He was about to turn and kiss her but the door slid open on the second floor.

“Here’s my stop,” she said, but her voice seemed edgy, nervous.

Their eyes met, and the moment stretched. Without forethought he was kissing her, and felt dropped into some scintillant esoteria of lovely scents and warmth. The kiss drew on, seemed about to get fervent, but then Abbie reluctantly pulled back.

“I really like you, Stew,” she whispered. Her face was flushed.

“I like you a lot too.”

“I so much want to ask you into my room but…”

Fanshawe smiled. “I know. It’s too soon.”

She hugged him and gave him a final, quick kiss on the lips. “Thanks for not being like most guys.”

“Go out with me again. Soon.”

“I’d love too.”

Her grin could’ve lit up the elevator when she pulled away. Their hands separated as she back-stepped out into the hall.

“Goodnight, Abbie.”

“Goodnight…”

She didn’t budge, and her soft grin remained as the doors slid shut.

Fanshawe leaned against the elevator wall, dreamy. The compartment rose to the top-floor hall; he seemed somnambulant walking out…

In his room, he felt gently giddy at the division of impressions: This has been one hell of a couple of days. I relapsed to voyeurism, I steal a looking-glass without even being aware of it, several times I hear an invisible dog barking, then I stumble on the dead body of some guy named Karswell, and later I peep on Abbie with the glass but then see the town turn hundreds of years old before my eyes and I even see Evanore Wraxall herself naked in her window, then, if that doesn’t take the cake, today two wax dummies talk to me in the museum, and after aaaaaaaaaall that…

He gazed at the wall

…I have this wonderful dinner date with a girl I’m crazy about…

He shook his head, actually chuckling as he rubbed fatigue out of his eyes.

He poured himself a glass of water. It struck him that the subject of Karswell, the dead man, had never been raised along with all the other ghoulish talk at the bar, and just then—

His cellphone rang.

“It’s me,” Artie said over the line. “Sorry to call so late, but I finally got some poop on your man.”

“Karswell,” Fanshawe uttered.

“Yeah, Eldred Karswell. Sixty-seven years old, resident of Ellicottville, New York. No criminal convictions, no old dockets, no arrests, not even a traffic citation.”

“Clean as a whistle on all counts, is what you’re getting at,” Fanshawe presumed.

“Mmmm, well, there’s no dirt on him but—let’s just say some weird stuff.”

Fanshawe laughed in spite of himself. “I’m getting quite accustomed to weird stuff, Artie. What’ve you got?”

“First, the guy was a Protestant minister in the seventies, but he was dismissed from active pastoral license by the Diocese of New York.”

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me for molesting kids—”

“Nope. It was after a series of theological controversies between Karswell and something called the Board of Informatory Regents of Episcopacy.”

Fanshawe’s lips pursed. “What?”

“It’s some kind of doctrinal regulatory commission, the bosses of the church.” Artie paused as if entertained. “You ready for this?”

“No, I’m paying you to jerk me around.”

“The Diocese essentially defrocked the guy for advocating and practicing Christian mysticism.”

Fanshawe’s speculation chugged to a near halt. “Of all the oddball things.”

“Tell me about it, boss, but that’s not all. Karswell’s also a published author, and it’s not just books about mysticism that he writes about—”

Fanshawe’s eyes widened.

“—the dude’s written books about witchcraft, demonology, devil worship, the history of human sacrifice—”

Fanshawe gulped.

“—he’s had over a dozen books published, all stuff like that. Last year he published a book with Montague University Press called The Magic of St. Ignatius, and his most recent publication was a paper that came out a month ago in some off-the-wall religious journal called The Anglican Scholar. The title of the paper?” Artie chuckled over the line. ‘The Thinking Christian’s Guide to Thaumaturgology.’”

Fanshawe almost spit out the sip of water he’d just taken. “What the hell is that?”

Artie laughed. “That’s just it, I don’t know! The word wouldn’t even Goggle! Your man’s into some goofy shit, boss. He’s got a house worth one-five, and property tax out the yin-yang, never paid late. Top-flight credit rating, two other cars plus the Caddy—a new Merc and a loaded Yukon, plus he’s got his own office and staff.”

“So he’s got money. From the books?”

“Can’t say for sure but I doubt it. He’s never been on a bestseller list, and there’s very little about him on the web.”

“Then how’d you find out about his books?”

“The research goons found his titles on some online book auctioneers, and there’s a tiny bibliography at a European booklist site. My opinion? I think Karswell writes for some fringe underground specialty market. Can’t see there being a lot of money in that.”

“Family money, then, the lottery—who knows—” Fanshawe chewed a lip. “—and who cares? Is that all?”

“Come on, boss, I’m better than that, ain’t I?”

“You tell me.”

“He’s got an agent, some woman named Reobek, office in Scarsdale. I actually talked to her a little while ago. Wouldn’t give me Karswell’s direct contact info, but she gave me his office number. Said he’s out of town for several weeks. Christ, the woman’s got a Bronx accent so thick I wanted to jump out the window. But, anyway, she did say he’s in New Hampshire for the time being.” An intended pause. “How’s that for a coinkydink? Same place as you.”

“Guess you left the old thinking cap at home, huh?”

Artie didn’t get it, but since he often worked ten- or twelve-hour days, Fanshawe gave him a break. “But I saved the laugher for last. She said one more thing… She said Karswell was working on a book about a warlock…”

Fanshawe caught his stare sticking to the wall, and thought with instantly: Wraxall.

“That’s the scoop so far. I’ll try his office number in the morning; maybe they’ll give me his cell number in case you want to talk to him.”

“He wouldn’t be very talkative, Artie. He’s dead.”

“Say again?”

“Karswell is dead”—the image of the dead man’s face resurfaced like a bellow. “No doubt about it.”

“You sure about that, boss? His name wasn’t on the Social Security Death Index.”

“That’s because there hasn’t been time. He died yesterday. Just so happens that he was staying in my hotel.”

Suddenly, distress seemed to come through with Artie’s next pause. “So that’s why you wanted to know about him. How…did he die? Heart attack or something, right? Natural causes? Please, boss, please—don’t tell me it was murder—”

“It was murder, Artie—”

“Shit, Stew! Get out of there right now! You’re not Little People, you know. Out of six and a half billion folks walkin’ the earth, only five hundred are billionaires and you’re one of them! I’m sending up a car and some of our guys to bring you back—”

“Forget it,” Fanshawe sluffed. “The police think it was murder, but they’re kind of Keystony around here. I think it was a wild animal attack—”

“I don’t like this, Stew. You’re too fuckin’ important to be near fucked up shit like that.”

“I guess you picked up the fine language in Harvard Yard, huh?” Fanshawe laughed. “Don’t worry about it, all right? But do me a favor and get research to hassle the agent again, try to find out the name of the warlock Karswell was writing about.”

Now the line’s silence seemed to remotely convey Artie’s lengthening face. It was a long silence. “Oh. So you’re up on warlocks, are you?”

“Just do it, Artie, okay?”

Artie groaned. “Sure, find out the name of the warlock, you bet…”

Fanshawe put the cellphone away, thinking. Karswell. Writing a book on a warlock…

And now he’s dead.

At once he was glancing abruptly upward, as though some inner monitor of his subconscious had so directed him. Why?

Yes, he was glancing upward, at the trapdoor…

Again: why?

He’d already been up in the attic, and had found—just as Mr. Baxter had—nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, next, he was standing once more on the bed, reaching up, and unprizing the trapdoor. Moments later, he was standing stooped in the warm, wood- and dust-scented space. He swept his penlight to either side, and if anything—

This place is even duller than it was when I first came up…

Why he paid this second visit to the attic he couldn’t guess. He came back down, now sweating and irritable, and replaced the panel in the ceiling.

He undressed, presumed to prepare for bed but now…

Same as the impulse to return to the attic, he found himself standing before an opened dresser drawer. He was not conscious of the reason he’d chosen to do so, but then he looked down and saw…

…that damn looking-glass.

He couldn’t even remember opening the drawer that he’d stashed it in. Why haven’t I put it back where it belongs? What might Baxter and Abbie wonder if they discovered it missing, so soon after Fanshawe had asked about it?

Tomorrow! he charged himself, I’ll put it that thing back in the case and never touch it again! Enough screwing around!

Once in bed, Fanshawe found it easy to ignore his previous aggravation, by thinking about Abbie. He smiled in the darkness, sinking into the pillow. My first date in ages… He fell asleep knowing that he couldn’t wait to see Abbie again.

Wouldn’t it be nice if he saw her in his dreams?

(II)

He doesn’t see her, but he hears her, as he did so recently during his first nightmare in the Wraxall Inn. Her voice echoes like drips in a cavern as the black mental fog seeps away to show him a mob of irate townsfolk in colonial dress forming a riotous half-circle on Witches Hill. Two more townsmen drag a distraught young blond woman into the clearing’s center-point. She’s in shackles and dressed in rags, smudge-faced, and beaten.

They drag her to the barrel with the hole in it.

When the blond convict sees the barrel, she silently screams; her face reddens in horror as the townsmen lower her into the barrel.

“They’d put the witch in the barrel,” Abbie’s voice repeats, “pull her head out through the hole and keep it in place by sliding this thing called a U-collar around her neck…”

A townsman’s hand reaches into the hole in the barrel, then pulls the woman’s head through. Someone else immediately locks her head in place with the horse-shoe-shaped collar. The woman’s eyes bulge each time she tries—and fails—to dislodge her head. She looks as though her very spirit is being wrenched out of her.

“Like a pillory only…with a barrel?” Fanshawe hears himself repeat the question he’d asked only hours ago.

“Well, sort of. See, after they did that—”

Sheer horror causes the whites of the blond woman’s eyes to turn scarlet, for she sees something approaching…

“…they’d bring out the dog—”

A husky colonist steps out of the parting crowd, leading a slavering black Doberman on the end of a cord. The animal is gut-sucked, its ribs showing from the time it has been deliberately denied sustenance. Foam flies each time it barks in silence.

The townsman has trouble keeping the animal back, yet he seems amused, as does the crowd, each time he scuffles forward, letting the beast come only an inch from the screaming convict’s face, only to pull it back to prolong her torment. Back and forth, back and forth—he does this for several minutes, until the sullen minister nudges the sheriff. Then Sheriff Patten nods solemn-faced to the dog’s master.

The Doberman is released, and it lunges toward the barrel.

Abbie’s voice seems to spiral away: “The dog would attack and…eat the flesh off the witch’s head…”

The wide-open eye of Fanshawe’s dreaming mind watches the Doberman’s jaws close over the top of the woman’s head—until it yank-yank-yanks off most of her scalp, woofs it down, then goes back for the ears, then the cheeks and lips, then the—

—Fanshawe awoke as if shaken violently by the shoulders. The heart-hammering fright bolted him upright—he actually feared someone was in the room but then he blindly snapped on the bedside lamp, and as he did so his mind raced: what might he use as a makeshift weapon?

Of course, no one occupied the room besides Fanshawe, but he checked the door as a formality, which was still locked. Just what I need. Another whacked out dream. Was it some mode of tactile nightmare that made him feel the impressions of fingers on his shoulders? Did such a type of hallucination actually exist?

It must’ve been backwash from the morbid dream.

creeeeeeeeeeek—

He’d heard the noise the instant he’d returned to the bedroom. It’s just a house noise! he insisted. Old rafters settling! There’s no one in the friggin’ attic!

Still…he had no choice but to look up to the trapdoor.

DAMN it! Not convinced by his own common sense, once again, Fanshawe was standing on his bed, pushing out the panel, and extracting the rope ladder. Penlight in hand, and glazed in sweat from the nightmare, he climbed back into the attic.

The warm, steep-roofed chamber seemed smaller, more narrow than earlier, and hotter even though the temperature had dropped with the sun. Nothing differed about the sight that greeted him: dingy storage boxes, piles of threadbare drapes, and lots of cobwebs. Fanshawe aimed to step into his previous footprints in the dusty floor, but as he looked closer, he noticed prints that couldn’t have been his own from previous visits; they were smaller. He’d thought nothing of them the first time, presumed they were Baxter’s…

But he didn’t think that now.

Hmm…

They seemed to lead an entire circuit about the attic’s outermost walls—and seemed to stop at various places.

At the back of the chamber, his nose crinkled. A faint but unpleasant odor like old cigars revealed itself. Fanshawe recalled smelling it the first time he’d been up, and now he saw why: a fat cigar butt sat in the corner. Using thumb and forefinger, he picked it up and examined the band, but why he was inclined to do so he couldn’t imagine. MONTE CRISTO # 1, the band read. HABANA.

This is a good cigar, he thought. He knew this only because Artie was very much imbued with the current rage of elitist cigar-mania. Yuck, he thought and dropped it.

Of all his bewilderment lately, Fanshawe was conscious of this: what bewildered him most was himself. What am I DOING up here? He felt silly now, underwear-clad, dripping sweat. He leaned back against the bare-wood panel and sighed—

click

Fanshawe felt the wall behind him…give.

He turned, sweeping his light up and down, and found the wall-frame cleverly hinged. Not a wall, a door…

A hidden door, evidently.

Ancient rust grated when he pushed the wall frame back, paused, then stepped into another attic chamber even longer and more narrow than the original. Well, what could this be? Beyond, dust lay inches thick, with no evidence of prints. Where the accessible chamber smelled “woody,” this one smelled interminably stale, such that he gagged. Garlands of cobwebs stretched across his face as he proceeded; he had to push through the webs to make out any details at all…

But there were details.

Long tables, sets of shelves, then rows of wide cylindrical objects too festooned to be identifiable. He waded closer through fetid dark, then began to clear the mass of cobwebs off the arcane objects…

Big cans? he guessed, but they were open-topped and felt thick. Pots?

Or—

Cauldrons!

Even in the trickling heat, Fanshawe felt a refreshing excitement. Here was the cove that Jacob Wraxall had written of but had never been found—The place he performed his rituals in. No wonder the authorities never found it—it’s been hidden all this time…

Next, his hand plowed through more and more webs, revealing rotten shelved books. There were dozens. In the corner, he swept off a hoary cast-iron wood stove with an exceedingly long exhaust pipe. The pipe led all the way down the center ceiling beam, then branched into the back of the chimney. Fanshawe studied the pipe’s trek with his light, thinking. Why not just put an exhaust pipe up through the roof above the stove? It would’ve been easier and cheaper. But maybe…

Had Wraxall deliberately gone to the extra trouble, to conceal the fact that there was a stove in the attic? No one would ask questions about chimney smoke…

He pulled out several decrepit books, some of which nearly fell apart in his hands. Close examination with his light revealed titles either too eroded to be deciphered or simply non-existent. But another book, larger than most, lay in a wooden traycase; he carefully set it on the dust-cloaked table, lifted the hinged lid, and made out: DAEMONOLATREIA, presumably the title, and presumably in gold leaf. He gasped to find the Latin text inside unflawed and the condition of the paper nearly mint. There was another gasp when he looked at the copyright page: Lyons, 1595.

Other books lacking traycases were severely worm-holed, some with pages that had turned soft and tenuous as cheesecloth, but the last one he pulled out…

Holy shit.

Fanshawe squinted in the tiny light-beam. This was no printed book; the coarse off-color pages revealed ghostly blurs of what had to be hand-written lines.

Wraxall’s writing?

Another diary. Each passage was prefixed by a date between 1670 and 1675—The last five years of Wraxall’s life, he recalled—and was followed by tight identical script.

29 Aprill 1670 - ‘Twas enraptur’d in Contemplation, and reckon’d ye Impression as if ye Prince of Air himself sat betwixt myself and ye Clutterham Girl, read one line. It smote me like a blow ye intellection that Master into mine Ear whisper’d thus: ‘Yea, never must thou scruple to render Expression of their Ilk, though thou sit with them at Service-Time. Instead, forbear such Trifles, for Trifles they are, and let come into thy head Blasphemies, not Altruisms, extreame Evillness, not Generosity; muse of Murther and Unwilling Consorte, not Charitie, for this sarve as Poyson to ye God of Sheep. In Hell, thou shalt be touch’d by ye Truth of Grand and Infernall Reward. A God of Sheep I am not, but a God of Promises Kept. Embosom faith, and I wilt shew thee.’ Aye! to my Mind then verily it was come to Understand’g! Forsooth, their God is such an One like ours, onlie Lighte, not Dark, only soft of Heart, not sturdy of Will. For such kindly Sheep, Lucifer hath naught. ‘Tis in thy Holy Darkness that we must needs to esteem ye Darker Visions and - shout out Praise! - our true Intendment! As ye porridge-faced Parson qouth Scripture, I mused upon ye Image of severing ye Clutterham Girl’s head from her Bodie whilst ravaging her of ye Loins.

Fanshawe’s wince couldn’t have been more intense; he didn’t know what to make of such scribbling. His penlight scanned down to another line, which he eventually decrypted. 2 Maye 1670 - To-day with ye Post deliverie arrived what I have so long desir’d: ye missive from ye most laudable Wilsonne in Wilsthorpe, grant’d license most pleas’d that he shou’dst receive me. When my trust’d Rood was at an end of smothering ye Poor-House Boye in ye Attick, I order’d him to assemble all necessarie Appurtenances for ye Long Journie across ye Great Sea.

This reference was recognizable to Fanshawe. Wilson, Wilsonne, he thought. Has to be the warlock Wraxall went to Europe to meet with—the man he bought the Gazing Ball from…

He flipped forward several leafs, and let the penlight beam fall on another entry. 25 December 1671 - With Spayd and Mattock myself and Rood, at a graven Hour, un-interr’d ye Bones of one Rose Mothersole, Grandam of a Witch of some Repute in Regions nere Castringham. These Bones we stole away downe the Verge, in Fish-Baskets so not to allarm ye Working-Men on their waye to ye Woode next morn. ‘Twas a heady Brew we boil’d said Bones into - yea, a most stout and pungent Draught of Witch-Water yet. ‘Shall I be grant’d Privilege of espying through a Looking-Glass, my lord?’ ask’d ye loyal Sarvant Rood, and I answer’d, ‘Thou shalt, but not this Daye and not with this Water. For ye next Glass I hath deemed it best to use ye thus unprepar’d Water from ye Bones of mine own Beautiful and Horrid Daughter, whom we shall un-entomb at the especial tyme, and split me if I lie.’ Which after Rood made Inquiry, shew’g extream fervor. ‘What, then, Master, is ye Thing we shall venture by this Witch-Water hither?’ No long Time expir’d when the virile Rood’s Answer was at Hand, for I engaged the Mothersole Water in the Affordment of a Channell with ye Dead and so call’d up ye Soul of a sartain Wretch’d Wizard and Chymist of skille once hail’d of Old Dunnich, one Harken Whateley, whom Wilsonne much impress’d was utmost Important, and, indeed, ye Wizard answer’d with Ghoulish Lighte hard by and a Stench to cause a Corpse to Gust, and grant’d what It was I most ask’d in mine Mind - yes! - the second of ye Two Secrets, just as was Wilsonne’s Pledge! I told Rood that our Time would soon be next to us - whereat Lucifer be prais’d!

The second of the Two Secrets? Fanshawe questioned. What’s the first? A chill that was somehow hot made him recoil; his head ached from the constant squint. I’m the first person to see this in over three hundred years, and the first to even set foot in this place since then… Without forethought, he felt obliged to tell Abbie and Mr. Baxter about the discovery—he was certain they’d be avid about it—but when he mulled the prospect over, an obvious frustration made him sigh. How would I explain coming up here in the first place? I’m technically trespassing. Booking the room doesn’t give me the right to rummage around in their attic. Would they even believe him if he told the truth, that he’d heard a sound like a footstep creaking on old wood? I wouldn’t believe it, so why should they? And what would Abbie think of such an explanation? She likes me, and I like her… She’d probably think I’m full of shit, a crackpot…

Fanshawe knew he’d have to give it more thought. The discovery of the secret room and its contents were distracting him; he was too excited to think with circumspect. This additional diary alone was quite a prize. He flipped through more leaves but found most pages blurred to illegibility. He put it away for now.

What else is up here? His heart thumped at the consideration. And…

What was it Baxter also said?

A pentagram on the floor. A pentagram drawn in blood.

Fanshawe held the penlight between his teeth now, as he went to his knees and began to crawl about. His hands ploughed away the drifts of dust, to disclose bare, very dry wooden planks that so many centuries had turned ashen gray. He swore at the pricks of several splinters, and sweat from his brow dripped to the floor, leaving dark spots, but when one such spot appeared two-toned…

He leaned down closer.

Yeah, there’s something…

A strip of something darker seemed to emerge from his efforts, a curved strip. Fanshawe turned frantic, sweeping the dust away in the direction of the marking’s layout; the action raised a gritty fog that made him cough. Christ, what if a guest in another room hears me? but the fear of that vanished when he realized he was uncovering a circle on the floor.

Unbelievable. They were right.

A few minutes’ time was all it took for Fanshawe to sufficiently clear the intended space. Marking the wood was a circle, six feet wide, and within the circle was a crude but obvious five-pointed star. Now, if he leaned any closer, his nose would touch the floor. It wasn’t paint that crafted the diagram, but some manner of stain.

The passage of so many years had dimmed the stain, of course, but Fanshawe knew it was blood.

Just like Baxter said.

Several other unidentifiable characters, geometric shapes, and letters had been drawn within the pentagram’s inner spaces, similar to those he noticed on the pedestal of the Gazing Ball. They reeked of occultism. Furthermore, at each of the pentagram’s five points he found what might be accumulations of wax…

Fanshawe was up and about, searching all the more. Everything he’d found thus far verified what Baxter had said so cynically: that Wraxall’s diary claimed the existence of cauldrons, ritual paraphernalia, and a blood-forged pentagram in the attic, none of which had ever been found until now.

But there was something else, too.

Shelves toward the end revealed several cabinets. When Fanshawe opened the first one, the door actually fell out when the rusted hinges gave way, but he caught it, stifling a surprised shout. More books here, only better preserved than those he’d found previously. One archaic folder with a cover made of runneled sheet metal contained more parchment of Wraxall’s tight handwriting. Fanshawe could barely make out what headed the top sheet: Copy’d & Transcript’d by J.Wraxall, Esq., from ye Latin - Al Azif, pps. 713-751. Next he unwrapped a tome draped in an old white cloth with cross embroidered on it in red. Inside the folder were countless sheets of manuscript copy, all in different hands, and apparently torn samples of hand-scrivened Bibles eons old. There were also drawings and engravings whose subject matter was obvious: crouched and smiling demons, cloaked monstrosities, smoke-belching pits just revealing wan faces in torment. The images unsettled Fanshawe to the point of faint nausea; they even made him feel watched, but he alternately interrupted his inspection with quick turns of his light as if expecting to find a face in the chamber’s dust-veiled darkness, a grimacing face, a dead face.

A final bordered drawing amongst the stolen pages showed a scene that to even Fanshawe—now, and given his unease—came as no surprise: a hooded wizard in a surplice of shining jewels, standing in a pentagram with candles burning at each point. But the smoke of the candles contorted into thin, lurid figures like vexatious phantoms; some had warped faces that seemed to evaluate Fanshawe directly. Nude, sultry witches cavorted about the circle, some with fangs, some with horns, some with bloody grins; the artist’s skill hid no details of their physicalities. Below the scene read PENETR. AD INTER. MORT. - NEK. SEPT. WILS. Of this, Fanshawe could decipher nothing, but why did the “Wils.” make him think of “Wilson” or “Wilsonne,” the name of the warlock Wraxall conferred with in England? And the “Nek.” must be an abbreviation for “Necromancer.” Whatever the case, the artist’s rendition of the subject showed only thin, baneful eyes peering beyond the hood. The warlock’s left hand grasped a limp loop of something—entrails?—while the right hand held, of all things, a looking-glass. And in the background?

An erect, orbed object very similar to the Gazing Ball on the hillock.

This is unreal, Fanshawe thought. The hot chill returned, along with the conception that this room was steeped in evil, the byproducts of a man who truly believed himself to be in league with forces contrary to all things decent. Fanshawe entertained that a malignancy hung in the air as thick as the centuries-old dust that he’d raised. These were not logical things to think but he couldn’t escape the notion. He put the books away, his mind racing along with the apprehensions that kept rising with the dust. He had the impression that the cabineted books were those which Wraxall valued above the others. His most important reference material— Several more books and folders rested in the cabinet’s age-scented maw, most protected by fabric wraps half decomposed. He couldn’t wait to examine these as well, in good light, but there was something else that further fanned his excitement, however dark it may have been.

He nearly retreated when a second cabinet offered a sack full of mummified hands. Fuck! he thought, but then deeper in the cabinet he found a several other small sacks, but these were full of bones—bones that were beyond a doubt human. Wraxall boiled them, for his rituals, for his…witch-water… In a third cabinet he found delicate wooden racks of corked glass cylinders that reminded him of overlarge test tubes. Could these contain the witch-water Wraxall had supposedly said was here?

Oh, God—

A gulp and a shudder told him no, for when he held a tube up to the penlight’s beam he detected a diminutive form in the bottom of the tube, a form suspended in murky liquid the color of honey. Fanshawe paled and put the rack back. The form was a human fetus.

Wraxall purchased aborted fetuses, he remembered. He ground them up and burned them for—

But why finish the awful thought?

One last cabinet sat against the end wall. When he opened it, the hinge keened so loudly he feared it might be overheard, but… I’ve come too far to stop now. He opened the cabinet fully.

More verification of what Baxter scoffed at sat neatly stacked before Fanshawe’s eyes. A dozen exact duplicates of the looking-glass down in his room.

He picked one out, and a ridge formed on his brow when it realized its duplicity wasn’t quite exact.

A lot lighter than the other one, he told himself, hefting it. Then he noticed that it had no lenses in place.

The explanation was obvious: These looking-glasses aren’t filled.

Because that’s what Wraxall did. Abbie implied that “witch-water” had multiple uses for the practitioner of the witchcraft, but her words drifted back into his head: …my guess is that Wraxall filled the inside of the looking-glass with the witch-water, and this would somehow produce an occult effect.

No, these glasses weren’t filled but the one Fanshawe had stolen was. And when he looked through that same glass last night…

An hallucination? Or an occult effect?

He deflected a coughing fit from the dust when he rummaged further, but what he hoped to find wasn’t far to seek. Several shelves on the bottom of the cabinet were lined with glass-stopped flasks—much like hip-flasks—sealed in black wax. Here it is…

His light showed him that yellowed labels adorned each flask, and on each label someone—probably Wraxall—had written tight, cursive initials.

J. C., S.O., E. H., and several others. The initials were obviously people—whose bones Wraxall had culled from their graves. Fanshawe immediately picked up a flask, knowing what it contained: water.

But not just ANY kind of water…

He dusted the flask off and shined his light through it, finding its contents almost but not completely clear.

Wraxall boiled the bones of witches and THIS is some of that water.

There could be no question: the occultist had planned to fill these glasses with the water in these same flasks, and then look through them.

What would he see?

And what did I see when I looked out last night?

Hunching lower, he quickly examined all of the flasks, twenty in all. Three of them had been labeled E.W.

“Evanore…”

When Fanshawe reset the hidden door and went back to his suite, he already knew he wasn’t going to tell Abbie or Mr. Baxter about his discovery, at least not right away.

There was something else to do first.

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