Witch Water

He got the gist now that each time he lowered the glass and then re-raised it, some shift in time took place —not time now but the time-period he was viewing. That would explain Evanore’s near-instantaneous relocation, and Wraxall’s different apparel so quickly after he’d been grinning out the window. Now Fanshawe saw Evanore naked in yet another room, on the far end, lowering herself into a wide-lipped bathtub, but in this glimpse, her breasts were even larger, and she was extremely pregnant. The next glimpse showed Wraxall himself strolling about the yard, pipe in mouth, as he contemplated the stars.

And the next glimpse?

He heard a creaking sound, yet all the windows of the house were dark. Fanshawe scanned the yard with the glass, then caught a slightly swinging form of some kind. It was in the back yard, where the parking lot existed now, and from a tree that was no longer there, a man hung from a rope around his neck. Fanshawe zoomed forward in the moonlit dimness. The hanged man was Callister Rood.

For shit sake, what IS this?

Fanshawe paced the hillock’s meager clearing. Beyond, and without the aid of the glass, Haver-Towne stood well lit in the sodium light of its street lamps. He picked one such lamp out and raised the glass to look at it specifically.

The street lamp disappeared.

He wasn’t even surprised now. One of Dr. Tilton’s “fugue-states?” He’d seen on TV once that a rare tick passed a virus that caused hallucinations, but at this he laughed even as he scanned the town’s three-hundred-year-old streets. Yeah, that sounds JUST like my karma, yes sir. A fuckin’ TICK- bite is making me see all this.

“Sir, pray allow me?” a soft voice drifted behind him. “Thou oughtn’t take away the glass if thou wish to fancy my aspect. You need only turn, and elevate thy gaze.”

Fanshawe froze in place at the sound of the exotic, accented voice. It was a voice he’d heard before—at the waxworks—but his disorientation blocked out the impossibility of everything now. Oh, what the hell? he thought, laughing. He followed the instructions.

Evanore Wraxall smiled down at him from the next hill; she wore a tight black cloak, and was no longer pregnant. The moonlight somehow made her green eyes look larger, like an erotic yet vampiric caricature—the image stole Fanshawe’s breath. Her crude gown stretched against the solidity of her curves; and the facial expression he’d previously noticed suggested a classical beauty jammed together with abominable knowledge and sick-in-the-head carnality.

The image mesmerized Fanshawe.

“Alight from thy deceptions on which thou hast been weaned, and arise to thy true self, sir,” the woman—or apparition—said. “Steel thee against the sheep and hypocrites and weaklings, and stake out the bounty and claim it as thine own—if thou dost have the heart…”

Fanshawe stared, shaking.

“—a heart so black as to be stygian, sir, a black blacker, too, than the very abyss…,” and then the woman began to peel the crude gown slowly down her body until she stood nude in the moonlight.

“A heart black enough to butcher babes, sir, babes in their cribs—yea, black enough to see the blood of the innocent without a falter, and to dis-entrench the corpses of your loved ones as they still lie ripe, and to do so smiling.” Her lips and nipples looked black in the moonlight, while her skin seemed luminous. “All this we do in ebullience, so to praise our Master and clutch our reward so devoutly earned.”

She pointed toward another hillock, a sudden breeze billowing her blood-red hair. Her voice flowed like some tenuous dark fluid. “Lower the glass, sir, and then look, to descry the quality on mine own heart…”

Mechanically, Fanshawe lowered the looking-glass, let a moment pass, then aimed it where she’d just pointed.

Flaming torches bobbed amid rancorous shouts as colonists stood crowded about the hill. Men in tri-cornered hats and canvas trousers wielded pitchforks and muskets. From the mob came salvoes of invectives: “Witch!” “Idolater!” “Fornicatress!” “The Divell’s concubine!”

Wedges of shifting light and shadow diced up Sheriff Patten’s badly complected face; his girth threatened to pop the copper buttons of his star-badged vest. Two other men held Evanore fast by her arms, forcing her to face her accusers. She’d been stripped, her initial punishment of branding having already been administered: blistered shapes of crosses showed on her breasts, abdomen, and pubis. Her eyes remained narrowed throughout, and her lips were set in a narrow smile that could only be described as mocking.

The dour-faced pastor approached with a small Bible, and when he began to read the Rites for the Condemned, she parted her thighs, pushed her groin forward, and urinated.

“Despicable harlot! Evil’s sarvant who lives and breathes to transgress the Creator! May thee be damned to torment eternal!”

Evanore answered in a throaty voice, “Drink thee of this, heartily,” as she urinated harder. “’Tis of youthful boys you dream, father. And do please enlighten your devout High Sheriff that his arousal wilt soon be betraying him—”

Patten nodded to a deputy, who promptly brought a knurled cudgel across Evanore’s jaw. After the sick smack! loops of blood and several teeth flew out of her mouth. The only reaction she provided, however, was a scarlet grin.

Patten opened a scroll of parchment. “Evanore Wraxall, child of God agone, who so of thine own free will hast embraced Satan and his minions, and his imps and his divells, this just Tribunal of Assizes, in the name of our Savior, and in service to His Majesty the King’s New Colony of Hampshire, I hereby administrate thy sentence.” Patten’s eyes seized the woman, flicking once to her bosom. “Dost thou have any words to descant in thy defense?”

“Thou shall take thyself of thy hand tonight, good Sheriff, and of my body thou wilt muse, just as have you many, many times before,” Evanore calmly said.

It was Patten’s good fortune that the shifting light hid his blush. “By decree I am so ordered to say thus: may the Lord thy God grant mercy on thy soul.”

Evanore shrieked laughter as blood drooled off her lips.

“Let’s be about this,” the Parson whispered with a grimace. “There be no Godly justice so long as this intercourse-soiled attendant of Lucifer doth live…”

Another directorial nod from Patten, and his deputies dragged Evanore to the side, where a wall of flinty- faced spectators parted—

Fanshawe’s heart seemed to hiccup.

—to reveal the barrel with the ten-inch-wide hole in it.

The mob’s commotion rose. Evanore didn’t resist as she was hoisted up and then shoved down into the barrel. A rough hand reached into the hole, snatched her hair, and yanked her head out. When the horseshoe- shaped collar was slipped over her neck, the crowd cheered.

Aw, no, aw, shit… Fanshawe knew what came next; impulse urged him to pull the glass away but when he tried, it was as though it had been glued to his eye. He detected, first, the hush of the crowd, then—

The growls of a vicious dog.

The parson exclaimed, “May thy death be as revulsive as thy abominable sins…”

A slavering snarl fluttered through the air; it sounded monstrous. Another flank of spectators parted. Fanshawe half-fainted when he saw the size of the Doberman that was then led through the divide. The stout-armed deputy holding it back on its chain could barely manage to keep on his feet. It’s the size of a small horse, Fanshawe thought in dread. The animal’s eyes looked insane, which was understandable since it had clearly been deprived of food for some time. When the beast spotted the barrel—and the head sticking out—it surged forward by instinct, paws kicking up great scoops of dirt. Just as bad as the anticipation were the looks on the faces of the townsfolk as they watched: