Witch water, p.23
Witch Water, page 23
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 forest now. And through the glass the town’s dirt roads lay tinged by moonlight alone, not sodium light from streetlamps.
I knew it, he thought, surprisingly composed. There’s no mistake now. This looking-glass is for real, he thought, which meant—
His own hands now grasped the proof of supernaturalism.
The ramifications didn’t occur to him; no deep thinking accompanied his validation. Those considerations would come later. Instead, he simply looked—and marveled at—the utterly impossible.
The town house that would one day be owned by Letitia Rhodes—and whose taxes would be paid by Fanshawe himself—stood dreary and dark and weather-stained. In the closest pillory, a pitiable woman hung, her waste-blotched hair hanging nearly to the street. A sentinel in a tri-cornered hat, and with a star-shaped badge on his chest, walked rounds down Main Street, a lantern in one hand, a billy club in the other. Several horses stood still as statues while tied to their posts. From the entrance of the church, a man alighted, no doubt the bell-ringer. He walked straight from the church to the tavern across the street.
Fanshawe pulled back the focus, then swept the entire, decrepit town. Tonight, not a single window stood lit—
Wait!
—save for one.
He brought the glass to bear, and closed the focus.
A figure was waving at him, from a top-floor window of the Wraxall house. By now, Fanshawe was not surprised to see that it was the very room he would rent three-hundred-plus years later—clearly a room of indescribable horrors. And just as the room was no surprise, neither was its current occupant, the Van Dyked and emerald-eyed Jacob Wraxall, dressed in a long-tailed vest and ruffled linen shirt; around his neck hung the exact same pendant his likeness wore in the portrait. The cunning grin on the necromancer’s face made Fanshawe realize this:
He’s aware of me. He knows I’m looking…
On past nights, it had indeed seemed as though Wraxall and/or his daughter were personally addressing him through the glass, but this he’d dismissed as paranoia. Now, however, he knew it was nothing of the sort.
He knows I’m here. He’s back in his time, and I’m in mine but…he KNOWS I’m here…
It seemed as though Wraxall had somehow predicted Fanshawe’s use of the glass tonight. Next, Fanshawe remembered the wretched sorcerer’s epitaph: Convict’d of Sorcerie, Deviltrie, & Infernall Prophesie…
Prophesy, Fanshawe thought. Could Wraxall read the future?
It occurred to him that any man who could make such a looking-glass might well be able to read the future and quite a bit else.
Fanshawe adjusted the glass’s focus to the confines of the window. Candlelight wavered from within. Wraxall maintained the sly grin, but the disposition of his eyes changed, signaling to Fanshawe to be attentive…
In the window’s eerily-lit frame, Wraxall raised a hand, showing a scrap of folded paper. His other hand raised an over-sized black book with what looked like gold flake on the cover. Fanshawe thought back to his first intrusion into the hidden attic chamber and the large book kept in a traycase…
Is that the same book?
Wraxall turned the book over in his hand, opened the back cover, then inserted the folded piece of paper. His smile sharpened when he reclosed the book.
Fanshawe kept staring.
Wraxall may actually have even winked back at him. Then he turned and began to climb the rope ladder, taking the book with him.
The now-familiar drone of Fanshawe’s resolve filled his head like engine-noise. He ran full speed to the inn, forewent the elevator to take the stairs two at a time up to his floor, and barged breathless into his room. He locked the door and within minutes had slid off the trapdoor, dropped the ladder, and was up into the attic room that had been known to no one but Fanshawe for over three centuries.
His vigor raised clouds of dust as his feet scuffed over the blood-scribed pentagram. Fanshawe hacked in the floating grit; he was delirious to move on and plow forward. His hand shook when he found the bookcase and then the book itself that had triggered his memory. Here it is! He shined his penlight down. The ancient traycase crinkled when he lifted it open; gold leaf sparkled back at him when he read the volume’s bizarre title: DAEMONOLATREIA. He lifted the entire book out of the case, lay it face down, and opened the back cover. There, pressed between the book’s end pages, lay a dimly yellowed folding of paper…
Parchment, he realized when he touched it, and instantly more of Letitia Rhodes’s words echoed in his mind: Rood’s diary does say that the key to the Two Secrets was written down on parchment by Wraxall himself before he died.
Fanshawe let the invaluable book clunk to the floor, then rushed back down the ladder. He felt giddy when he sat at the complimentary desk and carefully unfolded the parchment. His heart raced.
The short passage commenced: To whosoever by Dark Providence and Adventuring Spirit shalt scruple to follow me: Make thyself sensible to these Words, Venturer, and Rejoyce! Be thy Will stalwart, and provideth thy Heart be Black… To larn ye Two Secrets—yea!—ye Unholiest Knowledge of Extream Evillness of ye sartain Rites of Transmigration and Riches unto like those of Croesus and all ye Pharaohs of Antient Aegypt putt to-gether! These Secrets wilt I make knowne unto thee, but onlie in that they maye be passed from mine Lips to thine Ears—
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Fanshawe grumbled aloud. “Your lips aren’t gonna tell me anything! You died three hundred years ago!”
But he read on: Thou must now grasp thy Intellect as if ‘tis ye throat of an Unhandsome Harlot, and forge thyself Stoutly Mindfull to my Instructions, which be thus: Taketh thy Black Heart and thy Bleeding Hand forthwith to ye Bridle!
“Finally! The Bridle!” Fanshawe exclaimed, then hoped the volume of his voice hadn’t awakened anyone. But he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the arcane “instructions.” Was Wraxall being subjective? Is there some riddle to this? Or did he just mean…
He looked at his hand. “Black heart and bleeding hand?”
A few more lines of the occultist’s writing remained. Afterwhilst thee must besmear ye Mystickal and Horrid Sphere with thine own Blood and then thee wilt take into thy Mouth one Driblet of ye Wretched and most Nefarious Aqua Wicce—
Fanshawe’s eyes peeled open as he easily translated. Wicce—wiccan: witch! Aqua: water! Witch-Water!
And the rest: Do this, Venturer, and I shalt gladlie receive thee amidst my Parlour and reveal the Secret Inwardness of that which I knowe.
That was all.
Fanshawe darted back into the attic, grabbed one of the flasks of Witch-Water, then drifted back out into the night.
— | — | —
CHAPTER ELEVEN
(I)
It was one-thirty in the morning when Fanshawe stood again in front of the crazily carved pedestal and the mysterious orb that crowned it. Before re-ascending Witches Hill, he’d stopped at his car and grabbed a larger flashlight. All the while, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing or what he expected.
The night was still stiflingly warm, yet when he placed his hand on the Gazing Ball—the bridle—it felt almost ice cold. He knew it was a trick of the moonlight but when he stared at the pedestal, the swaths of tiny occult symbols seemed to exude the faintest pale-green luminescence. But when the time came to do whatever it was he was going to do…he paused.
I could just go back to the inn, get Abbie, and get out of here. Start a new life…
He raised the looking-glass and aimed it precisely at his own window at the Wraxall Inn.
The creepily angled roof, gray wood slats, and black windows sat there like some hulking thing in wait.
Fanshawe, next, was examining the surface of the Gazing Ball: tarnished, encrusted, weather-pitted. But the strong white beam of light brought out a blemish that was obviously new.
A thin maroon stain, vaguely in the shape of a hand. Blood, he realized. And it hasn’t been there long, it still has red in it.
Then he thought: Karswell. He was here. A brief scan of the surrounding brush verified this almost beyond doubt, when Fanshawe discovered a fat cigar butt with a Monte-Cristo band, and—
Unbelievable.
—a small, clear jar. The jar’s lid lay right next to it.
Karswell must’ve made his own witch-water, Fanshawe deduced. New England’s full of unconsecrated graves of condemned witches… It was perfectly feasible that a writer of occult history and a Christian mystic would know how to make it. He challenged himself: All right. There’s only one more thing left to do…
He flicked open the tiny penknife on his key chain. He looked at the modest blade, then looked at the palm of his left hand. He winced at the initial puncture of the knife-tip into the middle of his palm. Blood welled up first as a pea-sized bead, but very quickly it formed a grim puddle in his hand. When he turned the flashlight off, the blood looked black in the moonlight.
Well?
Fanshawe spoke aloud the queer words he’d recently read on the centuries-old parchment: “Besmear ye mystickal and horrid sphere with thine own blood…”
He placed his bleeding hand on the orb, leaving a scarlet print.
“And then take into thy mouth one driblet of ye wretched and most nefarious aqua wicce…”
His slick hand wrapped around the flask’s glass stopper, twisted, then he felt the ancient black wax give way. He lifted the stopper out—
Fanshawe swayed in place, grimacing: he stood on solid ground like a man on a tight-rope. It was an appalling odor that issued from the flask’s aperture, like rotten-meat stench blended with the smell of basement mold. My GOD! I’ve got to DRINK this? Queasiness engulfed his stomach. But— Only a ‘driblet,’ he reminded himself, which he assumed could only be a minuscule unit of measure.
The odor’s foulness wafted before him; his eyes watered. Am I really going to…, but when a side breeze crept up and blew the reek off, Fanshawe didn’t even think about it.
He snatched in a breath, took one sip of the cryptic water, paused—
Down the hatch.
—and swallowed.
He stood still in the next pause. His brows popped up at the accommodating surprise: the water was absolutely tasteless and totally inoffensive.
For about two seconds.
An impalpable impact sent Fanshawe to his knees. A taste more revolting than anything he could conceive filled his mouth, a taste that could only be described as evil. At once, he gagged, then he began to dry heave, blundering about the clearing on hands and knees. My God my God my God! His mind spun. His equilibrium reversed, all the while his stomach spasming progressively harder, such that subsequent abdominal cramps flared pain as if he’d been sledgehammered in the gut. I’ve poisoned myself! he somehow was able to think through the shards of pain and waves of terror. When he rolled over on his back and opened his eyes—
He could see nothing. Fanshawe was blind.
A darkness slammed down on his psyche like an ax-fall, dragging him down and down and down until, only seconds later, he died.
««—»»
Or at least he thought he died, given the pain, loss of sight, and sheer blackness that had overwhelmed him. When he roused, he remained on his back, his eyes staring up. Low, coal-smoke-colored clouds slid swollen overhead. Only the faintest veiled luminosity tinged the edges of the clouds, as though the moon had been ingested by their tumorous shapes. Hooooooooly SHIT! he yelled at himself. I must’ve been out of my mind to drink ANYTHING that’s been sitting in an attic for three hundred years! Though he sensed some time had passed, his stomach muscles still ached sharply, and the dizziness lingered when he pulled himself to his feet. He calmed down and caught his breath…
He was looking around the clearing.
His jaw dropped.
