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
