Witch Water

“What it might be that you should do is like what my father used say to us when we was girls, sir, and what he said was that the surmise, sir, might call for a bit more forceful ponderment, sir,” and then she winked at him.

Fanshawe felt his face go blank when something seemed to snick in his mind. “Oh, come on, Mrs. Anstruther. She put a curse on the guy? She stuck a pin in a voodoo doll?” He laughed. “She’s a palm reader, not a witch.”

Mrs. Anstruther’s expression turned dead-serious. “Oh, hain’t she now? Are you sure of what it is you’re speakin’, sir?”

Fanshawe just kept looking at her.

She turned quickly, offering a lively pretense as a man, woman, and two young teenagers approached the kiosk. “Lovely talkin’ to ya, sir, as always, and I hope to talk to ya again soon. Got ta tend to these tourists now —”

“Have a good day, ma’am”—again he couldn’t resist. He put a $10 bill in her tip jar.

The woman brought her hand to her heart, acting overwhelmed. “Gracious me, sir! The proper words simply don’t exist to express my feelin’ of gratitude, sir, and bless you, sir!”

Smiling, Fanshawe pointed to the jar full of bills. “Looks to me like you’re doing all right today.”

She hunched over to whisper, “Yes, sir, but most’a that ain’t but a bunch of piddling singles, sir. Ten-spots, now, they’s what we call in England rare as rocking-horse shit!”

Fanshawe could’ve gusted laughter as he left her to her business. But as he crossed the cobbled street, the levity faded. What the old woman had distinctly implied stuck to him like burrs.

Letitia Rhodes? A witch?

The idea seemed absurd, but then why should he discount it so quickly when he’d already convinced himself that Wraxall’s sorcery, and Evanore’s witchcraft, was real?

— | — | —

CHAPTER TEN

(I)

Fanshawe felt physically aimless when he re-entered the inn, went upstairs, and showered and changed.

Physically but not mentally.

His thoughts had become something like an apparatus of many moving parts, all turning in synchronicity so to process everything Fanshawe had experienced.

A relapse into his voyeuristic obsessions hand in hand with Abbie, his only romantic interest since his marriage; the Wraxall legend; death by ‘barreling’; what were possibly hallucinations of a barking dog and then what he’d witnessed in the wax museum; Karswell’s dead body and its coincidental condition, not to mention that he was investigating Jacob Wraxall just as Fanshawe was; the secret attic room and the discoveries of a more telling diary penned by Wraxall himself, plus multiple containers of witch-water and more looking-glasses; and not only his curious fortune as told by Letitia Rhodes but also yet another 300-year-old diary penned by her linear ancestor Callister Rood…

My aura is black, which means my heart is black, he thought.

No, he didn’t know what any of it mean but he did know that all of these things had seemed to replace all of his previous priorities. I don’t even care about my businesses any more. I only care about…THIS…

The drone followed him back downstairs. When he crossed the atrium, the two joggers, shapely as ever in their perilously tight running gear, cast sideglances at him—and even smiles—as they entered through the automatic doors. Fanshawe nodded stiffly, though, barely noticing them. Where am I going? What am I doing? He felt driven just this moment but didn’t know what toward. Next thing he knew, he was walking into the Squire’s Pub.

“Aw, I’m sorry Mr. Fanshawe,” came Baxter’s crackly voice. He was stocking the bar shelves. “We ain’t open just yet,” but then he cracked a laugh. “Aw, shucks, what am I sayin’? I own the place, so if it’s a drink you’re lookin’ for, what’ll it be?”

For some reason, being addressed directly by another person brought more of his consciousness back to the surface. “Thanks for the offer, Mr. Baxter, but—”

What was he here for?

“—I just stopped by to see Abbie. Is she around?”

“Oh, sure!” Baxter replied with a little too much zeal. “She’s back in the storeroom.” He pointed out the bar entry. “It’s that door next to the check-in desk.”

“I don’t want to bother her if she’s busy working—”

Baxter flapped his hand. “Naw, naw, just you go right on in. And if that pipe-cleaner of a desk clerk gives ya any grief, just you tell him I said you can go in.”

“Thanks, Mr. Baxter.”

The clerk wasn’t even at the desk. Fanshawe opened the door indicated and entered a long corridor stacked high on either side with boxes of various supplies. It was fairly dark. He saw no sign of Abbie but did notice white fluorescent lights burning at the corridor’s end. Though it hadn’t consciously occurred to him before now, Fanshawe knew why he was seeking her: to ask her out on another date. Should he call out her name? No. With my luck she’s already left. He reached the end of the corridor, noticing that it T’d. He stepped into the light, turned left, didn’t see Abbie, then turned right—

Holy sh…

Abbie sat hunched over a metal desk lit by a hooded lamp. She looked intent, keenly focused, yet lost at the same time. With great care, her fingers tweezed a typical key, like a house key. Then, with a meticulous effort, she raised the key to a nostril and quickly sniffed an accumulation of something white off of it. She paused, sitting upright, then stuck the key into a plastic bag full of white powder, and repeated the process.

Fanshawe didn’t say a word. At once he wanted to leave unseen, but it was impossible for him even to move much less retreat out of the area.

After Abbie had done it a third time, she sat back and sighed, staring at the wall before her. She wiped her nose, seemed to grind her back teeth and swallow several times, then she rubbed her eyes. She stared out a moment more, and only then did she very slowly turn her head toward Fanshawe.

Her mouth fell open, then she thunked her head down on the desk. “Of all the shit,” she muttered, already sobbing. “How much more shit is going to happen to me?”

“Abbie, I…,” but Fanshawe could think of nothing to remark.

She kept her hands to her face, and her face still against the desk top. Her words croaked: “What are you doing here?”

“Your father said I could come in. I wanted to see you.”

“Why!” she somehow whispered and shrieked at the same time.

“To ask you out again.”

She sniffled and finally raised her face up. She managed a sardonic laugh. “Bet’cha don’t want to now.”

Before he could decide how to reply, he already had. “Yes. I do.”