Witch Water (4 page)

He walked back toward the entrance, paused,
then ducked into a cove. He wasn’t aware of what induced him to do
so, yet next he found himself looking back down at that bottom
shelf, at the shiny optical device.

He re-read the label: WITCH-WATER
LOOKING-GLASS, MADE BY JACOB WRAXALL, CIRCA 1672.

Witch-water,
he reflected.
What on
earth could that be?

(II)

Sports jacket over his shoulder, Fanshawe
strolled around town, first the older, quainter Back Street, then
Main. Most of the shops, buildings, etc., were single-story; he
forced his eyes away from the few that weren’t.
I’ve just got to
be careful, I’ve just got to be strong.
How much strength must
it take to choose
not
to be a “peeper?” The arcane question
always baffled him, but then Dr. Tilton never ceased with her
reminders that he was not a typical man; instead he was plagued by
a “deep-seated paraphilic addiction.” Though Fanshawe appreciated
seeing attractive women as much as any natural man, merely
witnessing them did not kindle his strange obsession. It was seeing
them in a
forbidden
way, seeing them when they didn’t know
it. Somehow,
that
was the unreckonable key to…

To my sickness,
he confessed.

But he was here to forget about all that. He
hadn’t peeped in a window for over a year, as difficult as the
resistance had been.
That’s strength, isn’t it?
he tried to
reassure himself.

He was often prone to self-condemnation, but
then he felt he deserved it. He’d done outrageous things made even
more outrageous considering his financial and professional status.
It sounded incredulous: a business mogul, a financial genius, and a
small-scale
billionaire
…who was also a voyeur or, worse, to
use Dr. Tilton’s unwelcome supplement, “a clinical
scoptophile.”

Jesus…

“Forget about it all, forget it,” he
whispered to himself, clenching a fist. When a shapely,
sable-haired woman passed him on the sidewalk, her curvaceous body
seemed to slide around within her silk top and shining chiffon
skirt as though her garments were actually some magical liquid that
served to highlight her physique as enticingly as possible. Her
eyes met his and she smiled. “Hi,” he said too quickly, and then
she was gone. But on the street like this, her upper-class beauty
was only generic: she’d only truly be beautiful to Fanshawe if
looked upon unaware through a private window…

Forget about it!
He was supposed to
be “cured” by now; Tilton had said so.

Instead he let his mind wander.
What do
normal people think about when they walk around in a neat little
tourist town?
He blankly eyed passing cars, various street
signs, the herringbone-style pattern of the brick sidewalks. When
he stopped before a flower shop, he focused on the colorful
bouquets, then realized he felt insensible about them in spite of
their arresting colors and fascinating scents. Tourists passed this
way and that, mostly elderly couples, but several families with
chattering children; Fanshawe felt unseen, like a ghost, amongst
them.
Regular people living regular lives,
he thought with
more of that same self-condemnation. Every observation he made—and
as hard as he tried to feel positive—left him barren-minded.
Snap out of it. You’re just in a bad mood, and financial tycoons
have NO RIGHT to be in bad
moods
. Finally he passed one
of the pillories and snorted under his breath, smiling.
Back
then? They would’ve put ME in one of those things
.

He crossed the meager intersection, scarcely
aware of what he wanted to do. More tourists milled about here,
eyeing restaurant menus or simply absorbing the town’s impressive
architecture. From the mouth of a curving alley, two women in
polyester shorts and mid-waist T-shirts emerged, hands fisted as
they jogged, talking briskly with their eyes straight ahead. One’s
tight top read YALE, the other’s, HARVARD; both had headbands,
ponytailed hair, and toned, lissome physiques. The Harvard woman
seemed more robustly breasted, while Yale’s nipples jutted like
diminutive teepees beneath the tight fabric. Fanshawe watched them
both as if hypnotized; they bobbed up and down on silent sneakers,
bosoms bobbing as well, in perfect synchronicity. Knowing that they
weren’t aware of his glances left him tingling in some abstract
visual fervor. They jogged on, and when he pulled his eyes off
them, he gave a start because the first thing he saw next was a
display in a curiosity shop window: a mounted skeleton whose
yellow-boned hand held—of all things—a pair of binoculars to its
face. Fanshawe frowned. He hoped the grotesque thing was artificial
but had the edgy notion that it wasn’t.
Who the HELL is going to
buy that?
Next was the Starbucks—
Some things never
change,
he thought—and, next, an information kiosk tended by a
spry, elderly woman with a crown of frost-white hair. “Just out for
a gallivant, sir?” she piped up in surprising British accent.
“Yes,” he said, still distracted, “I just arrived. Not really sure
what to do.” “Well, sir, if you’re of the type to fancy such
things”—she pointed across the street—“you might have a look in the
waxworks, but if you’re easily dispirited, be forewarned to steer
clear of the back hall,” yet she pronounced “hall” as
’all.
Fanshawe followed her finger to glimpse a pair of Revolutionary War
soldiers “guarding” the wax museum’s entrance. At first he thought
the pair were living actors in costumes but in a few moments their
perfect stillness betrayed them as mannequins, lifelike to an
unnerving degree.
That’s pretty good work,
he realized,
though he’d never been particularly impressed by waxworks. He was
amused, though, by the elder woman’s reverse psychology.
She’s
daring me to go in.
“I don’t know if I’m easily dispirited,” he
said, “but I guess there’s a torture chamber and the whole
witchcraft theme.” “That there is, sir,” she replied. “It’ll give
you a case of the creepers, it will.”

Fanshawe smiled. “And, of course, a lifelike
mannequin of Jacob Wraxall, hmm?”

“’Tis nothing more than the truth, ole limb
of the Devil that he was, and that wretched daughter of his. Oh,
the carryin’ on
they
got up to? Heavens!”

But Fanshawe had had enough of Jacob Wraxall
for one day. “Thanks for the information,” he said, glancing at the
town map. On the index, he spotted the words: FORTUNE TELLER, and
its numbered code indicated it to be close to the waxworks. He
looked back across the street and saw it. LETITIA RHODES - PSYCHIC,
announced the small window sign in gaudy neon. PALMISTRY, CHARTS,
TAROT. It occurred to Fanshawe that he’d never had his palm
read.

“I see you’re eyein’ the
palmist’s
,
sir. Well, I can only speak like what my heart tells me and say
you’re a-better off passin’ that one up.”

“Oh? Why’s that, ma’am?”

“An odd card that Letitia Rhodes is, sir,
yes, sir, not that I’m speakin’ ill, mind you, not one word of it.
But one day I was just havin’ me my stroll to the tea shop, and I
passed her, I did, and she look me right in the eye and say, ‘I’m
sorry for your loss, Mrs. Anstruther”—that bein’ my name,
o’course—Anstruther,
Delores,
Anstruther, sir. So I say
back, ‘What loss might you be referring to, Ms. Rhodes?’ and then
she go all white in the face and eyes big ‘round as saucers, and
she rush off, apologizin’ under her breath. I just took her to be
daft, I did, but then when the daily post come I get a letter from
Merseyside sayin’ me brother died a week before. A massive
stroke
it was he ’ad, on his way to the train.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Fanshawe said for
lack of anything else, but now he saw that she was merely using her
previous trick, daring him to test the palm-reader’s authenticity.
“But I don’t think having my fortune told is on my to-do list
today, Mrs. Anstruther.” Nevertheless, he enjoyed the old woman’s
lively candor; and the accent was a hoot. “What do
you
recommend, ma’am?”

“Well, sir, if’n you’re in want of some
exercise, you can always rent a bystickle down at Mr. Worby’s shop,
and if that ain’t to your likin’, sir, you might find it pleasin’
to ’ave an amble ‘bout the scenic walkaways.”

The idea immediately appealed to him.
A
good long walk might get rid of this lousy mood.
“That sounds
perfect, Mrs. Anstruther.” He turned the map at an angle, trying to
get a bearing. “But where are they exactly?”

“Just cross the cobbles out front of the
Travelodge, sir, and you’ll gander the signs hard by. Next door to
impossible to miss ’em”—she smiled—”unless you’re in your
cups.”

“Thanks very much—” A tip jar with several
dollar bills in it sat on her booth shelf. Fanshawe put in a
ten.

“Why
bless
you, sir, and thank you
from the bottom of my heart! A
pleasure
it’s been a-meetin’
you, and may it be a
lovely
 day the Lord ’as comin’
your way.”

“The pleasure’s been mine,” and Fanshawe
headed away.
That woman is a TRIP,
he thought.
I’ll bet
the accent is fake, she’s probably from Jersey.
He laughed when
he thought one of the Revolution soldiers flinched, then he found
himself looking again at the palm-reader’s parlor. It was just a
narrow rowhouse of old, faded brick, with interesting pediments and
stone sills. He wondered what the palm reader looked
liked—
Probably older than Mrs. Anstruther
—then he ground his
teeth when he glanced up the store front to the second floor.

Windows, always windows…

He scanned the map some more, then passed
the Travelodge, the two-story structure forming an L-shape. A
splash turned his gaze. Bright beneath the summer sun extended an
outdoor swimming pool. It was mostly older children wading around
with their parents, tipping over rafts or volleying inflatable
balls. A tanned, muscular lifeguard sat bored up in his chair: The
Thinker in swim trunks with a whistle around his neck. Fanshawe
noticed a fair number of attractive women in hats and sunglasses,
stretched out on lounge chairs, all agleam in suntan oil. He gave
them a bland glance, but then caught himself looking much more
intently at the rows of sliding-glass doors facing the pool. He
barely heard the sound of frolic from the water.

Damn it. There I go again.
He could
not resist roving his gaze across all those windows. Then his eyes
locked on. In one window, a woman crossed his view in a spare,
orange bikini…

He winced and pulled his gaze away.

He stalked off fast, crossed the cobble road
as the British woman had instructed, then loosened in relief.
SCENIC NATURE PATH, the sign read with an arrow pointing.

He followed the arrow.

He tried to ignore the guilt that came along
with him, like another stroller several steps behind. The
Travelodge had bothered him, and so had the immediacy with which
he’d scanned all the tempting windows. In New York, after a year of
therapy, he never succumbed to the same temptation.
Why
here?
Why now?
He walked faster, lengthening his strides
as if to out-pace his disarray. Soon his outrage at himself bled
over into despair, and he felt lost.

I am NOT going to relapse…

But he felt better the more he walked,
through winding gravel paths up into low hills. It was a
smorgasbord of natural beauty for as far as he could see.
Butterflies floated over the high, sweeping grass. Wild flowers of
every color seemed to shift with some manner of sentience, begging
his eyes to appreciate them. Fanshawe walked for some time, each
step loosening another tight stitch in his malformed mood…

The paths, he saw, comprised a web-work
about the hillocks, and would’ve served as a tricky maze had there
not been wooden, plaqued maps at every fork. When he glanced over
his shoulder, he was taken aback by how high he’d ascended, and
when he strode atop a risen nob, the view of the countryside
pilfered his breath. The hills seemed to extend to endlessness,
loomed over by the ghost of a distant mountain. There was a
baby-blue sky and blazing sun; sparse clouds seemed to exist in a
whiteness
 more perfect than he could conceive.
Fresh
air, and the great outdoors,
the rigid Dr. Tilton had
instructed.
Well, it doesn’t come any better than this…

But…where was he?

He stepped down off the nob to discover a
rest stop with an ornate bench and another map on a plaque. One
dotted guide-mark read THE WITCHES PATH, then after a few more
steps, another sign announced that he’d reached it.

The more the hill rose, the higher the
grasses on either side seemed to grow. Fanshawe followed the path,
intrigued without knowing why.
More tourist stuff,
and he
mocked,
The Witches Path? It’s just a friggin’ path!

But as he approached what seemed to be the
most elevated of the hills, he stopped. Facing him now was a sign
larger than the others, as well as a clearing in the grasses,
leaving only bald dirt. Engraved letters on the sign began: WITCHES
HILL: IN JULY, 1671, THIRTEEN WITCHES WERE…

Fanshawe, eyes intent, read the words aloud.
“Witches Hill. In July, 1671, thirteen witches were executed here,
including Evanore Wraxall, the notorious coven leader. Dozens more
practitioners of the Black Arts would be executed on this very hill
for another fifty years…” Fanshawe chuckled without much mirth.
Sounds like somebody needed a hug.

But he tried to contemplate the gravity of
the words.
What I’m standing on right now was the Colonial
equivalent of a gas-chamber.
People—witches or not—but
living people
had died on this very ground over three
hundred years ago.