Witch Water

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,