Witch Water

some windows! You’re pulling guns on me for that? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna kill me for that?”

“Howard,” Baxter said. “Prop the sombitch up.”

The Suit handed Baxter his pistol, then took Fanshawe from behind, chicken-winging him quite like the colonist had when Fanshawe had been doused with oil.

Baxter grinned in the moonlight. “Howard’s stronger than he looks, huh? Go ahead, try and throw him off. After all, he ain’t nothin’ but a old man.”

When Fanshawe tried to jerk his arms, he found his captor’s grip tenacious as metal straps. Then he tried to haul himself away but remained planted in place. “This doesn’t make sense!” he yelled, mortified now.

“Well, tell me if this makes sense,” Baxter said, and then walked up very quickly and kicked Fanshawe between the legs.

The burst of pain folded Fanshawe up, and again he was face-first in the dirt.

Laughter rose.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” exclaimed Yankees Shirt.

The Suit: “No jerkin’ off for him tonight!”

“Tickles me pink,” Baxter joined in, “to give a low-down lyin’ thievin’ scumbag a good old fashioned kick in the nuts!”

Fanshawe’s cheeks ballooned from the pain. Clutching his crotch, he rolled over, cross-eyed. “You’ve got to be out of your minds!”

“Naw,” Baxter said very calmly. “We’re just three old duffers sick to death of watchin’ this fine world go straight down the toilet.” Baxter shrugged. “Every so often, well…we do somethin’ about it…”

“Here here,” said Yankees, keeping his gun on Fanshawe.

“Old days were the best days,” said Howard.

“I hear that,” Baxter rambled. “The ooooooold days.”

“Listen to me!” Fanshawe spat, still crumpled in pain. Did these men really mean to kill him? Whether they did or not, Fanshawe had no choice but to tell what he knew. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I can prove it!”

“Prove what, Fanshawe?”

“Prove that you’re a pervert and kiddy diddler?” Yankees added with a chuckle. “Bet he hangs out at toy stores in his spare time!”

Fanshawe snarled, addressing Baxter. “The glass! I swear to God. It works!”

Baxter’s lips pursed. “Say again?”

“The looking-glass! It’s not folklore—it’s true! Jacob Wraxall didn’t just think he was a warlock, he was a warlock! He can manipulate time, he can see the future! And the witch-water looking-glass works!”

Baxter laughed. “Oh, I get it, you’re tryin’ to distract me with all that witchcraft poppycock and silly warlock drivel. Well I won’t fall for no pish-posh. Ya can’t bamboozle me.”

“I’m serious! It really works!”

“It does, huh?”

“If you look in it after midnight, you see the time period in which it was made!” Fanshawe nearly screamed. “Go ahead!”

Baxter stalled, eyeing the glass.

“What he hell is he yammerin’ about?” asked Yankees.

“Probably on the drugs,” said Howard.

“Go on!” Fanshawe insisted. “Look in the damn thing!”

Baxter sighed with a smile, and turned. He raised the looking-glass to his eye, pointing it toward the town.

He froze. “God damn…,” then he lowered the glass.

“There!” Fanshawe said. “I told you, it works! You saw the town as it was three hundred years ago, right?”

Baxter turned back to Fanshawe, looking more disgusted than ever. “The only thing I saw, Fanshawe, was my daughter buck-naked in her room, gettin’ ready for bed.”

Fanshawe wilted in the dirt. I should’ve known. It only works for people with the blackest hearts—like me…

Baxter dropped the looking-glass, then turned back, rubbing his hands. “Time to get this party rollin’. Fellas?”

Chuckling, Howard and Yankees approached Fanshawe, who was about to jump up, but—

smack!

Baxter cracked him on the top of the head with the pistol. For the third time that night, his face met the dirt.

My God, they can’t be serious… The blow had been not quite hard enough to knock him out, but sufficient to impair his motor skills: trying to move with all his might only resulted in the most feeble motions of his arms and legs, no more formidable than a man in a nursing home.

Dizziness marauded him; he felt himself being picked up and carried away from the Bridle. It was Howard and the Yankees Shirt who did the carrying. Baxter followed, gun in hand.

Fanshawe mumbled incoherent words. The stars he was seeing from the blow merged confusingly with the stars of twilight. Eventually he was carried into one of the other clearings…

“Up ya go, Mr. Pervert,” Yankees grunted.

Baxter’s two lackeys, in spite of their age, easily elevated Fanshawe’s limp form, then lowered him down into something rimmed, like a hole…

Fanshawe’s cognition lolled, head aching. A manhole? A grave? but…no—

At first he thought they meant to bury him alive but as more of his senses throbbed back he knew full well where they were putting him.

Holy mother of…

They were putting him in the barrel.

Fanshawe yelped when a rough hand shoved his head down. Moonlight showed in the hole cut into the barrel’s front, and from there another hand appeared, reached in, and snatched Fanshawe’s hair. He yelped again, louder, when the hand yanked his head out of the hole, and then a u-shaped wooden collar with leather treatments was dropped over his neck and fastened.

Reeling, Fanshawe tried to look upward but could only see the feet of his attackers.

“Been a while since we seen a good barrelin’,” remarked Yankees.

Spittle flew when Fanshawe yelled, “You can’t do this!”

“Sure we can, and why not?” said Baxter from above. “What this world needs is a look back to the old days, Fanshawe. It was majority rules back then, the way the Founding Fathers intended. And criminals were punished in the ways the majority agreed. It was for the greater good, see? To protect the good people from the bad.”

Horror dumped adrenalin into Fanshawe’s brain, rousing him from the grogginess inflicted by the blow. His fists beat on the inside of the barrel. “Let me out!”

“Oh, we’ll let you out, all right,” Howard chuckled, “once we’re done.”

“Name your price! Just let me out!”

“There you go with your ever-lovin’ money again,” Baxter chided. “You just don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand you can’t kill a guy for looking in windows! Call the police, have me arrested! I deserve my day in court.”

The other three cackled like witches.

“But this is your court, Fanshawe,” Baxter went on. He whistled high and loud.

“And here comes the judge!” Howard celebrated.

The mad growling could already be heard. Footsteps crunched, and in a moment another man entered the