Witch Water

(II)

Fanshawe showered, changed, and rested, nursing his carnal wounds in his room. I was choking her, he thought. I was…

He didn’t want to think on it further. Not being in control of himself was something he’d never experienced outside of his voyeurism. Images of Abbie and their primitive lovemaking kept flashing in his mind. It had been exquisite.

And now she’d agreed to leave with him, go to New York.

The prospect thrilled him, even in spite of her own much more destructive addictions. But there was something else that thrilled him as well.

He saw that Dr. Tilton had left another message, and so had Artie. They would have to wait. From the sweltering hidden room in the attic, Fanshawe retrieved Jacob Wraxall’s other diary, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading every handwritten line that had remained legible after over three centuries.

It was a demented tableau that unfolded before him. His stomach turned with each sentence he deciphered, yet the more he read the more grimly fascinated he found himself. The nighttime doings of Wraxall, Evanore, and Rood demonstrated an unprecedented exercise in systematic and cold-blooded diabolism, and in real-life atrocities that paled their 21st century counterparts. Murder, rape, and torture were mere commonplaces for these three; instead it was the nauseating intricacies of their occult regimen that placed them on so high a pedestal of evil: infanticide and patricide; the draining of blood and evisceration of live subjects, too often children and newborns; absolutely depressing sexual despoilments; and the alchemical distillation of fetuses, among other even more unspeakable things. Also, the sexual revelries of Evanore and her twelve coven members provided a level of moral abandon that Fanshawe simply could not conceive of. On occasions when certain coven members were thought to have lost a faith dark enough for further inclusion, the punishments they were subjected to were described to every iota that the style and lexicon of the 1600’s could convey, and to an assiduity that at one point forced Fanshawe to rush to his suite’s bathroom and throw up.

This is awful, he thought when he’d finished. And it’s all real. But as disgusted as the revelations left him, the more he regretted how much of the diary remained hopelessly unreadable. He even felt gypped by what he wasn’t able to read, which seemed contradictory, given his open disgust.

At eight, he had dinner at the pub, tended to by Mr. Baxter. He made sure not to bring up the topic of Wraxall this time, so not to seem obsessed. Instead, they talked of things more innocuous, including the weather, and at one point Fanshawe said, “I was thinking of inviting Abbie to go to New York with me for a little while, if that’s all right with you.”

Mr. Baxter had no problem with his daughter going to New York with a billionaire. After more harmless small-talk, Fanshawe thanked the older man and left.

By now, it felt more like instinct that any time Fanshawe meant to stroll the town, he’d wind up on the walking trails which led to Witches Hill. When he arrived at its peak, the sun was setting spectacularly.

Midnight, he told himself. It only works after midnight.

Through his pocket he felt the tubular bulk of the looking-glass…

The temptation was there, of course; there were still two hours to go before the clock struck twelve. As the sky darkened, and the stars blinked brighter, the many windows of the town began to blink as well—right at Fanshawe, baiting him to take out the glass and pursue more of his shame-laden weakness. Even this far off, with his naked eye, he glimpsed the joggers at the end of a run, entering the inn, but Fanshawe did not focus the glass on the window he knew to be theirs. And the Travelodge?

The time couldn’t have been more ripe for a good long “peep,” but Fanshawe didn’t do it. He thought about it, but soon realized he wasn’t going to succumb to the cheapness of his addiction. The delicious thrill he normally experienced did not rear its head.

Instead, he waited for midnight.

He crossed paths with several couples strolling the hill as well. Fanshawe nodded, engaged in some genial chit-chat, then moved on. He paused to view the horrific barrel, then the grave-plots of Wraxall and his daughter, the latter sunken by what had been plundered from it so long ago. Then he turned and found himself standing before the Gazing Ball.

What are you? he asked as if the arcane object were a person. An orangish moon rose behind it, the angle coincidently perfect for the metal sphere to eclipse the lunar body’s glowing circumference. The spectacle lasted only a moment, but in that moment the ball gave off an aura of shimmering, thread-thin light the color of molten lava.

Fanshawe had no choice but to recall the diagnosis of his own aura…

Black…

And the words of Letitia Rhodes: …the color of one’s aura reflects the true character of their heart….

But Fanshawe knew that he was not a black-hearted person.

Before he realized it, his watch read 11:55. Back on the highest peak, he withdrew the looking-glass and raised it to his eye.

Almost time…

The town beamed in the twilight. It looked beautiful…and modern. He ranged the glass around, never once coming near the Travelodge, nor the joggers’ window. Instead he found the clean white town hall. The expansive first-floor windows blazed, showing movement. Fanshawe focused and saw part of a conference table, along with several people sitting behind it. One was Abbie, her hair shining, and her lips moving as she referred to papers spread out before her. Her town council meeting, he thought. Did anyone on the council know about her problem? Fanshawe doubted it. But she’d hidden her drug addiction so well, he had to wonder what else she might be hiding. He knew the trouble he might be getting into but…

I don’t care.

Fanshawe knew he was falling in love with her.

He continued to scan the glass until movement in another window snagged his eye. It was one unit in the row of red-brick Federal Period town-style houses. The movement he detected in the window was composed of sleek bare flesh: a nude woman’s back, presumably, and slick, shining, as though she’d just stepped out of the shower. But the thrill-surge of adrenalin that would typically couple such a sight with Fanshawe’s heart…

Never came.

The nude woman turned for a moment, sporting modest, shapely breasts. It was Letitia Rhodes.

Fanshawe slid the glass away, first out of respect to the woman and, second, he felt no interest in privately spying on her. His weakness for such sights seemed neutered. It seemed like a favorite meal he’d eaten so many times, he’d grown tired of it.

But you will succeed in defeating this weakness, he remembered another of her prophesies at the parlor.

Fanshawe kept his perfunctory reactions in check. Some of the things she’d told him during the reading were quite true but he still knew he might be subconsciously fulfilling the prophesy himself. Time would tell.

And as for time?

His watch-alarm began to beep the arrival of midnight…

Here goes. This is it. Here’s where I prove to myself what I’m pretty sure I already know…

When he put the glass back to his eye, the watch-alarm faded away, to be replaced by the floating, baritone-deep yet uncannily brittle gongs from the church bell that no longer existed.

Now the town sat huddled, as if pushed down by the midnight sky; it was half the size of the town Fanshawe had left just before dusk. Far off, the rolling vista of forest stretched, where there was no