Witch Water

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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CHAPTER EIGHT