Witch Water

They looked giddy with excitement.

I can’t watch this, Fanshawe knew but, still, he could not take the looking-glass away. Enthused squeals rose up when the deputy lost hold on the leash, and—

Holy Mother of—

The dog was so large its jaws were able to take nearly all of Evanore’s head into its mouth in a single lunge. Ropes of foam poured from its black lips; the sounds were nauseating. Fanshawe managed a blink, after which his vision registered just in time to see the ravenous animal peel most of Evanore’s face and scalp off like pulling off a stocking mask. The animal deftly swallowed the macabre meal in reversed heaves, hair and all. The crowd “Oooooooo’d,” paused, then cheered.

Evanore’s head now existed as a skinned skull. It hung limp as the dog devoured what it had torn away but then—impossibly…

The head moved in increments—

Holy SHIT!

—and looked up.

The lipless grin and lidless eyes very slowly scanned the crowd.

Evanore’s fleshless mouth moved to laugh as blood squirted out of the space where her face had been. She laughed for a long time.

On the next strike, the dog’s jaws collapsed the convict’s skull altogether, then the creature began to snuffle for collops of brains, but many of the townsfolk had already rushed off the hill, too unnerved by Evanore’s laugh. One woman shouted “’Tis a curse the witch hath put upon us, a curse! ” and then a man fretted, “Where is ye difference betwixt this and Divell’s work?”

Patten, the Parson, and the deputies remained, looking on with grim expressions as the great Doberman returned to pick scraps off what little remained of Evanore’s skull.

Fanshawe wanted to be sick; his vision faded in and out like a dimmer switch. “Eat with heartiness, Pluto,” the sheriff said of the dog. “Even as thou slake thy appetite on unholy flesh, God be finely appeased…”

By then, the deputies had hauled Evanore’s near-headless corpse from the barrel and let the dog eat to its heart’s content. The men wish-boned the corpse’s legs, then pointed to the furred groin, which was promptly ripped out and swallowed by the dog. The breasts were tugged off, then the arms and legs were attacked.

“When the beast hath reached its glut,” the parson directed Sheriff Patten, “I want the carcass of this diabolical bitch buried in double-quick time, Sheriff.”

“Granted, my lord, it shall be.”

Fanshawe seemed to feel something in the air, something like a bad portent, and at that identical moment, in the circle of the looking-glass, the Doberman abruptly stopped its rending of Evanore’s now-stick-like remains…and shot its gaze right at Fanshawe.

“Of a sudden, our animal hast grown listless with its meal,” Patten observed, “nearly as if…”

“Aye, nearly as if its senses, which be many times more acute than ours, hath detected a peculiarness of a kind,” said one of the deputies.

A concern stiffened the pastor’s posture; he looked sharply in the direction of the dog’s stare. “’Tis perhaps a black spirit, as such spirits be in specter-haunts such as this”—his suspicion lowered to an etching whisper. “Of mine own self, and though my eyes perceive nothing at odds, I swear verily that I too hath been made sensible of a most unnatural stir…”

The dog’s keeper—the largest of the men—took on a look of panic. “A black spirit, you say my lord? In our midst as we speak?”

“Aye, an entity most evil, son, and lacking all corporality…”

Now the dog’s ears stood up, and so did the short fur on its long, sloped back. Its eyes remained fixed…on Fanshawe.

Oh, my God, it can’t really—

The dog vaulted down the hill, releasing barks like gunfire. Each bound of the Doberman took up fifteen feet, as the men trotted clumsily down after it.

Fanshawe screamed, the glass still to his eye. Just as the dog’s snapping jaws would hit his throat…

“Behold, how it bounds!” Patten yelled, fat riding as he jogged forward, “as of at the thin air alone!”

“’Tis a spirit, yea!” snapped a deputy, “too foul to be observed by Godly men such as we!”

Fanshawe was knocked down like a hinged duck, the looking-glass flying off. When the back of his head slammed the hard-packed dirt beneath him, everything turned black.

— | — | —

CHAPTER NINE

(I)

Fanshawe groaned, feeling as though his face sat directly beneath a very bright heat lamp, and he groaned again when he heard a barking dog.

“Stay away, Winkly!” came a woman’s voice annoying as nails on slate. “It’s a dirty bum! He’s probably got lice and diseases that would be bad for a good little doggie like you!”

A slingshot-like reflex shot Fanshawe bolt upright on the path and pried his eyes open. Moving shapes formed in the block of blazing sun. Oh, no…

“Winkly! Stay!”

Fanshawe could’ve been rising from a coffin; the back of his head beat like an overburdened heart. When vision formed, a yapping poodle hopped around at the end of a taut leash. Frowning above it stood the woman in tights he’d seen before, but today the tights were rainbow-striped. Pocks of cellulite showed through the adhesive fabric, and so did rolls of fat around her belly as though tubes had been wrapped about her waist. I have a feeling this ISN’T a nightmare, Fanshawe thought. Over-mascara’d eyes looked down as if he were the lowest form of life on earth.

The poodle—Winkly—yapped and yapped and yapped, stretching its lead.

“Do you need help?” she asked with distaste. “Are you drunk? ”

Fanshawe could imagine how he appeared. The annoying voice pounded in his head. “I…fell down last night, and hit my head,” he murmured.

“Fell down drunk, you mean. I guess I should call an ambulance—I don’t want to be liable…” She flipped out her cellphone but paused, her irksome expression turning more bitter. “Oh, I remember you, making faces at my poor little Winkly, scaring him out of his wits!”

Fanshawe was more irate than embarrassed. He got up, praying he wouldn’t stumble. Take a look in the mirror, then call the ambulance for yourself, he wanted to say. Suddenly he smelled something unpleasant, then noticed that Winkly, who’d stopped yelping, was now laying lines of stool very close to Fanshawe’s feet. Was the little dog actually grinning at him?

Fanshawe snapped. “Lady, if that dog shits on my Norvegese shoes, I’m going to turn the little motherfucker into the world’s first barking kickball.”

The woman burst into tears, scooped up the dog, and shuffled off. “Don’t you hurt my dog! Don’t you hurt my dog, you-you hobo!”

“Hobo, huh?” He took out his black American Express Centurion card and waved it at her. “How’s this for hobo? And by the way, you look like two hundreds pounds of cottage cheese in a