Witch Water (36 page)

Fanshawe clenched, losing his breath. His
eyes bugged.
What the hell is going on?
He feebly rolled
back, then shambled to his feet.

Baxter and his cohorts surrounded him.

“What the
fuck!
” Fanshawe yelled at
Baxter. “I want an explanation!”

Baxter picked up the looking-glass. “Well,
Mr.
Fanshawe, you’re the dag-blasted
last
person I’d
ever expect to catch stealing—”

Pain throbbed at Fanshawe’s stomach, while
anger forced his thoughts through the sheer bewilderment. “What are
you
talking
 about! What, you just kicked me in the
stomach because of that damn glass?”

Baxter remained with his arms crossed, while
the other two elderly men stood like gray-haired henchmen. “Wasn’t
till just today I noticed the glass missing, then I could’a kicked
myself for not checking the tapes from the security camera every
day.”

Fanshawe instantly made the deduction.
He
saw me take the glass, but…
 He was still enraged. “All
right, I admit, I took the damn glass! It wasn’t my intention to
steal it, I was just borrowing it!”

The Yankees Shirt let out a sarcastic
chuckle. “Yeah, borrowin’ it for a little window-peepin’. You beat
off when you do that, bub?”

Fanshawe felt his face redden. “It’s not
what you think, for God’s sake! I just needed it to…,” but then his
vocal wrath dissolved. What could he say? “Shit, if the
looking-glass is worth that much to you, I’ll buy the damn thing!
Name your price!”

“What Mr. Fanshawe here’s gotta understand,”
Baxter said, “is not all of us put so much stock in
money.
Money’s not worth much compared to things like
character
and
honesty.
Those are the things that make a man, Fanshawe. Not
how fat his goddamn wallet is.”

“I don’t believe this!” Fanshawe replied,
his mind twirling. “You don’t
kick a guy in the stomach
because he borrowed a piss-ant looking-glass!”

The Suited Man and the Yankees Shirt
grinned. Then Baxter said, “And it ain’t really even the glass
that’s got our dander up. It’s what you been doin’ with it.”

Fanshawe glared back at him.

“We don’t got room for
perverts
in
our nice little town, Fanshawe,” Baxter continued. “It’s so fuckin’
disheartening,
you know? Seems like the whole world these
days is full of perverts, weirdos, sickos, and creeps. But the
worst of the bunch are guys like you, hiding behind success and
respectability. No one knows.” Baxter’s eyes leveled. “But
I
knew, and I wish to hell I’d figured it out sooner. First, Sadie
Simpkins tells me she’s seen you loiterin’ around up here at
night—”

“
Who?
” Fanshawe bellowed.

“Aw, you seen Sadie. Wonderful gal. With the
poodle?”

Fanshawe ground his teeth.
That
BITCH!

“But when she told me that, I thought
nothin’ of it. ‘So what,’ I think. ‘Mr. Fanshawe just has a fancy
for late-night strolls.’ A couple of the gals at the convention
told me the same thing, as a matter of fact, and now that I think
of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was
their
window you’ve
been peeping in, good-looking as they are.”

Harvard and Yale,
Fanshawe realized
grimly.

“No,” Baxter went on, “like I said, I didn’t
think nothin’ of it—of course not! Mr. Fanshawe’s a billionaire!
Billionaire’s don’t get up to no good! Billionaires ain’t
deviants.
Ah, but then I notice the glass missing, checked
the security tape, and, presto! There it is—the truth starin’ me
right in the chops! I would never have thought it in a coon’s age.”
Baxter grimaced. “Mr. Billionaire is a fuckin’
peeping
tom!
”

“A
perv,
” added the Suit.

“A sick piece’a shit,” added Yankees
Shirt.

“Bet he was lookin’ for little girls.”

“Or little boys!”

“No!” Fanshawe’s blood was boiling. But what
could he do?

Then all three men took a foreboding step
closer.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Fanshawe
challenged. “You’re
threatening
me? Don’t you know I could
sue you for assault and battery, and imprisonment? Shit, my lawyers
could sue you right out of business.”

The men chuckled, and each took another step
closer.

This is ridiculous!
“Listen, Mr.
Baxter. I know I’m not exactly a kid anymore, but—no offense—you
guys are
old men.
I could take all three of you.”

“Think so?” Baxter asked coyly. “Was a
famous saying my daddy used to tell me: ‘Be a man large or small in
size,
Colonel Colt
will equalize…’”

Then the Suit and Yankees Shirt pulled
pistols.

Fanshawe froze. “All right!” he yelled.
“What more do you want?! I took the glass and, yeah! I looked in
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
clearing. He was in his seventies, balding and bespectacled, with a
large, gleaming forehead.

“Howdy, fellas,” he greeted.

“Hey, Monty,” Baxter said. “Thanks for
loanin’ Buster out.”

“Oh, it’s always a pleasure! Old men like us
need
a thrill every now and then.”

“I’ll drink to that!” exclaimed Yankees.

The man—Monty—came closer into moonlight,
and he brought a scampering shape with him. Fanshawe could only
stare in unreserved despair when he got a look at the snuffling,
snarling canine at Monty’s side. It was not quite the giant
Doberman he’d witnessed in the town of old, but instead an overly
large pit bull with strings of foam hanging from its maw and bumps
of muscles tensing. The animal’s eyes looked insane from the
beginning, but when the dog saw Fanshawe’s head sticking out of the
barrel—

“Ho, boy! Not yet, Buster!”

—it lunged, tugging its leash, and nearly
pulled Monty down. Terrifying barks ripped out of its throat. Those
insane eyes seemed as intent on Fanshawe’s face as if he were a
pile of raw steak.

“Mr. Fanshawe here says he wants his day in
court,” Baxter began, “but he knows full well that courts don’t
serve justice no more, and what they were designed to do is serve
justice.
For the
people.
The law-abiding people of
this great land. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted.”

“
You can’t kill a guy for looking in
windows!
” Fanshawe wailed.

“Aw, but nowadays? Things are just all
twisted up and messed about so bad there ain’t no real justice
left
anymore. Now, take a rich fella like you. Oh, sure we
could call the cops, give statements that we seen you peeping in
windows, not to mention the security tape of you stealing the
glass, but then you’d just hire yourself a Dream Team and get off
scot free. Damn, Fanshawe, the Founding Fathers would shit in their
graves if they knew what American Justice has turned into.
Politicians and rich men? They can do whatever they want.”