meat for its supper…”
Fanshawe’s eyes popped. He could smell his own flesh burning, and as for his genitals, they shrunk and bubbled like marshmallows dropped in a campfire. Amid pain a thousand times worse than anything he could imagine, his fiery face turned to something like slab-bacon and his mouth opened and he screamed louder than a trumpet—
««—»»
—and collapsed, rolling in turmoil. Each time he let out a breath, smoke expelled. But as he flailed in the dirt—
He realized that the pain that had cocooned him was gone, and where his eyes had popped, he could now see the perfect, star-flecked twilight above. Fanshawe turned over and sat up…
He was intact.
No oil soaked his hair and clothing, and the porky smell of flesh roasting had vanished. His hands went to his crotch to find it dry and his slacks still fastened.
Then he looked up and saw the Gazing Ball. The metallic orb atop the pedestal was stained and tarnished, not clean and brand-new as he’d seen it last. Fanshawe heaved a sigh and dropped his face into his hands.
“I’m back…”
Rood’s and Evanore’s words refreshed his memory:
“Well, I sure as shit screamed loud enough for that when I was on fire,” he muttered. In spite of all he’d experienced, he jumped up, frenzied with excitement. A glance to his watch showed him it was ten minutes past midnight.
Fanshawe rushed out of the cove and dashed up to the highest point of Witches Hill.
Below, the town glittered in its lights. He stared down, knowing that this was the town of today, with its asphalt streets, its sidewalks, its streetlamps, its tourist hotel complete with swimming pool.
He squinted and could easily make out late-nighters sitting at the cafe, and several more crossing Main Street into the tavern. He even saw the annoying woman in tights, and her even more annoying dog, out for a nighttime stroll. At the town hall, the lights were blinking off, and several people were dispersing from the front doors. One of them seemed to be heading toward the inn.
Fanshawe reached into his pocket and withdrew the looking-glass. He raised it to his eye and looked at the exact same place in the street where he’d thought he’d seen Abbie…
Now, of course, she wasn’t there. The town of three hundred years ago was there instead, and what Fanshawe saw specifically, on the unpaved street, was the same torch- and pitchfork-wielding crowd that had just doused him with oil and set him aflame. At this moment, though, many of the townspeople were running away as if terrified, while the others stood with fear-stamped faces and mouths agape. Fanshawe thought he could even
He kept the glass to his eye and cupped his ear.
“By his magic, he’s escaped into thin air!” someone shouted.
Another voice: “And out of it he may reappear when we least expect!”
In the viewing field, Patten waved a torch back and forth. “Hear me, good Christians—the devil be near at hand tonight! Take to thy beds! Bolt thy doors and keep thy Bibles close!” and the parson added with a stammer, “If our pruh-prayers be sufficient intentful, then God shall keep ye adversary at bay!”
The remainder of the crowd scattered in all directions, boots tramping. Seconds later, the street stood empty and in utter silence.
Fanshawe could hear his own eyes blink.
He swerved the looking-glass to the Wraxall house.
One window after another stood dark; some were even shuttered closed. But…what did he expect to see? More of the atrocious sights he’d witnessed personally? Evanore, nude and beckoning? Instead, he found the drab, weathered windows blank, and shutters pale. None were lit—
Fanshawe had lost track of which floor he was surveying; nevertheless, one window seemed to emerge from its own uniform darkness until the most wan candlelight flickered within its frame. Soon, in a slowness that could be called ethereal, a shape moved from within—the shape of a man.
It took Fanshawe’s eyes a minute to acclimate.
The man in the window was Jacob Wraxall. The cuffed and collared sorcerer leaned out the window, peering for something. His narrowed eyes scanned back and forth, up and down, until—
He appeared to have found whatever it was he sought. Very slowly, he smiled, raised a similar looking-glass to his eye…
Chills that were strangely scalding flushed their way up Fanshawe’s back. For some inscrutable reason, he felt that Wraxall’s gesture of raising his own glass served as a
Fanshawe zoomed tighter, until the window came in close, then Wraxall’s
Then…closer, until only a third of the necromancer’s face filled Fanshawe’s circular viewing field, then—
Even closer.
Fanshawe zoomed directly into the
…then deeper and deeper and deeper, into the warlock’s very optic nerve and straight into his brain…
…then
Sensing a terror, he willed himself to retreat but all that responded to his efforts was an increase in the evil velocity that had taken over.
The darkness was just as incalculable as the speed by which he plummeted; it was a blackness that existed as far more than an absolute absence of light but as an
His soaring vision stopped.