Witch Water

“But as bearing with all great gifts, a price must be exacted—”

“What? My soul?”

Wraxall laughed out of the darkness. “You squandered that some while back, my friend.”

“What, then? What’s the price?” Fanshawe demanded, no longer even caring.

“Something thee wilt freely give, so am I certain. Alas, our disquisition be nearly as its end. Naught remains save for this,” and then Wraxall leaned out of the darkness, green eyes ablaze. But the image of the necromancer’s face seemed to switch back and forth between glimpses of vibrant youth and great age. His hair shifted from dark to gray, back and forth; his posture stooped, then straightened, and the hand on Fanshawe’s shoulder wavered between that of a teenager and that of a hundred-year-old man. That same hand felt hot through Fanshawe’s jacket, and then he noticed tendrils of white smoke wafting off Wraxall’s head. “‘Tis history you and I shall make—a most evil history,” and then Wraxall began to whisper into Fanshawe’s ear…

««—»»

The moment felt like weeks. Fanshawe stood dazed in the barely lit foyer. Wraxall was gone, but a second later, a figure stepped out of the blocks of darkness: Rood.

Rood opened the front door, showing the twilit street.

“I don’t know what to do next!” Fanshawe exclaimed in a whisper.

Rood’s smile was like a mask of wax. “Just but one test remains—”

“Bullshit!” Fanshawe’s voice boomed. “I already passed the fuckin’ test!”

“A challenge most final of thy fiber, sir. Into the even-time you must now go—”

“But the sheriff! His men!”

“—and ride thy must upon the night-wind with all things born of darkness. Should thy heart be not as stoutly black as it must, then thou shalt die most horrible, as did the interloper called Karswell.”

“This is a pile of shit! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put—”

“But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves,” another voice floated from the darkness. In increments, Evanore emerged. It was only the icy moonlight from the door that revealed her: nude, curvaceous, her bosom thrusting, and her grin wet. “Would thou take thy leave without so much as a bid of farewell?” she asked coyly. Her white hands reached out to him. Like the last glimpses of Wraxall, Evanore’s aspect changed, shifting, from adolescence to adulthood, and back again. With each impossible metamorphosis, her blood-red hair lengthened down to her buttocks, then shrunk back up again. It was as though Fanshawe’s presence here had triggered some kind of flux that was leaking in from various time periods, which made sense once he thought about it. The same tendrils of smoke wafted off of the woman’s perfect skin. With one step, she was lissome and slim, but with each step after that her belly grew and grew till it looked close to rupture, only to shrink back down to flatness. Fanshawe stood still as a post in the ground as he watched, and he didn’t even flinch when one manner or another of Evanore wrapped her arms around him. Her mouth found his at once, her tongue invading; as she pressed closer, Fanshawe sickeningly felt her belly expand and contract, expand and contract, to mimic each infernal pregnancy. Then—

“Oww!” Fanshawe roared.

Evanore was giggling, her mouth red. She’d bitten down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. Fanshawe’s reaction was faster than instantaneous, his rage leapt up and he clamped his hands about her throat and squeezed for all he was worth. Harder, harder. No conscious thoughts entered his head, just the reflex…

Harder, harder.

Evanore’s face turned pink, then blue, yet all through Fanshawe’s act, she smiled. Now the nameless flux showed the smoking brand-marks of crosses burned into her breasts, belly, and pubis; he could hear them sizzling. Then her face and the flesh on her head disappeared in strips as if torn by an invisible beast, then…

Fanshawe’s hands were clamped to the throat of a corpse stripped of almost all its flesh.

“To thee I bid my love forever,” the corpse said but it was with a voice like someone talking and vomiting at the same time, after which came an even more loathsome laugh.

Rood’s strong hands shoved Fanshawe out the door. The door clicked shut, then its bolt snapped closed. Fanshawe stood alone in the street; he glanced terrified back and forth. Moonlight streamed down on him. Where did they go? but the question was answered a moment later:

“There he is!”

“Wizard! Get thee hence!”

A rabble of men shambled southward down the street. They carried torches and pitchforks. Fanshawe’s heart felt like it turned inside-out—he raced across the dirt road, into the alley he’d crossed earlier, but—

BAM!

Muzzleflash bloomed at the other end of the alley. More enraged townsmen leapt toward him over the rubbish.

Out of here, Fanshawe thought. He backtracked, jerked north, began to sprint, but stopped in his tracks.

More townsmen poured down the street. He was being converged upon by all accessible directions…

I’m caught, I’m dead, he thought. Patten and his deputies were the first to seize him. The grossly overweight sheriff’s pocked face and red, bulbous nose looked huge in the moonlight. When Fanshawe raised his flashlight, Patten slapped it away. “Thy tools of Lucifer are of no use to thee,” the lawman said, “for our tools—faith—be empowered by Almighty God who hast power to rub thee to dust!”

Another man in a tri-cornered hat chicken-winged Fanshawe from behind. Now over a dozen men encircled the scene, shouting, waving torches. “To the barrel I say!” one shouted. “Wither has Humphreys taken his cur?” someone else asked. And another: “Whilst we pass this night in our beds, ’tis best that this warlock pass it in the belly of the dog!”

Fanshawe couldn’t think beyond the contemplation of that massive dog. Several men spit on him, and one prodded hard him with a stick. Fanshawe yelled when the man propping him up yanked his elbows higher to twist his shoulder joints.

“Pray, Sheriff, Humphreys and his cur be in ye fields!”

“We’ve not time to wait!” Patten blared. “We must kill this sarvant of Satan before he speaks hexes upon us!”

Fanshawe strained in his captor’s clench; a frantic glance to the Wraxall house showed him Rood and Evanore peeking out a front window. They were grinning.

“Keep him in thy clutches, Cooper,” the sheriff said. “Hold him fast and still…” Patten was unscrewing the cap on an unlit lantern. “Let him decide if hellfires be so hot as this!” and then the lantern was upended over Fanshawe’s head.

His face wanted to suck in on itself. A thick, fishy smelling oil saturated his hair, then drooled down his face and chest. Next, his pants were unfastened, his underwear pulled out, and more oil was poured. “No doubt ye fiend hath defiled many a Christian woman with this,” Patten said, “and put many a devilish babe in her belly. Well, warlock, here be recompense!”

The crowd surrounding Fanshawe quickly stepped back, then he was released. He only had time to attempt one lunging step before—

“Burn the monster!” Patten ordered.

—a lit torch was plunged right between his legs.

Flames erupted from his groin; Fanshawe was suddenly dressed in a suit of fire. His hair smoked off his head in a single burst; his face crackled and shrunk. The more he wheeled about in the street, the hotter the flames grew.

“Aye,” someone said approvingly, “tonight Humphrey’s beast shalt have cooked