Witch Water (5 page)

He shuddered at the cruelty of it all, and
the madness, then turned to leave. But at a break in the grasses
which rimmed the clearing, his eyes widened. This hill was, as he’d
thought, the highest around, and through the break he could see the
entire town down below.
Perfect as a picture on a postcard,
he mused, drinking up the view. Yes, he’d been in New York too
long. New York didn’t have views like this, just incalculable
skyscrapers, ubiquitous scaffolds and window-cleaning platforms,
and monolithic apartment buildings consuming entire city blocks.
Gazing at the little town now, it occurred to him that too much of
his life had passed since he’d experienced such a monumental sense
of wonder.

The faintest breeze brushed over his face,
and hidden within it, he heard, or thought he heard, a sound just
as faint. Just a drift of something, like a word spoken by someone
too close to a rushing surf. Yet, a word it had seemed to be, in a
feminine tenor. The word was this: “…lovely.”

Fanshawe paused to identify the direction
from which it had arrived: just off from the break in the grasses,
where a lone tree stood entwined by leafy vines.

Then two more words, even fainter: “…love
you…”

Before Fanshawe had stuck his head fully out
from the tree, he saw with a jolt that he was not alone. Just below
the immediate rise of the hill lay a lower elevation surrounded by
flanks of unkempt bushes, while two t-shirts draped over a bush
left a clue: HARVARD and YALE.
The joggers,
Fanshawe
remembered. Indeed, the two women were lying together in the lower
clearing, sunbathing on towels, and after a moment of peering,
Fanshawe recalled their headbands and well-toned bodies. Both women
were topless, yet they’d also rolled up the edges of their running
shorts as much as the fabric would permit. Fanshawe stared without
breathing.

Their age could not be determined, though he
suspected they were well out of the groves of higher learning. One,
Harvard, lay flat on her back, eyes closed, with a tiny grin
touching her face, while Yale lay on her side, on one elbow, to
gaze down in apparent adoration. “I love you,” came another
drift-like whisper, and Harvard replied, “I know,” and grinned with
more obviousness. They kissed daintily, then Yale ran a hand up her
companion’s belly and across her breasts in a single, fluid motion.
Harvard’s nipples erected, at once, to dark pink plugs of sensitive
flesh. Then Yale assumed her friend’s supine pose. There they both
lay now like a passionate secret, smiling, basking in brilliant
sun, their hands joined.

It was only when they both lay still that
Fanshawe’s emotions began to simmer. He gulped, his mouth going
dry. His gaze rolled over their enticing bodies like drool. His
eyes would not close.

No, no, no,
words scarcely his own
pleaded.
I can’t be doing this, I MUST NOT DO THIS…
His
groin fidgeted, he snatched a breath through his teeth as he
continued to stare.

No…

His hand moved against the command of his
conscience, and slithered across his crotch, but just as he would
prepare to masturbate—outright, oblivious—he gnawed his own tongue
and dragged his eyes off the fleshy spectacle like nails being
dragged out of a plank. It was all he could do not to moan aloud in
anguish spliced with self-disgust.

Pervert, scumbag, peeper…

Moments later he’d forced himself well back
from the tree. Tears lay in the grooves of his narrowed eyes. He
stepped back and back and back until he nudged the large wooden
sign; and then he leaned there for a several minutes, regaining his
breath and his senses.

This isn’t supposed to be happening…

What if somebody else had walked up and seen
him? Or one of the women themselves? What could he say? What excuse
could he give?

Nothing. Because his intent would’ve been
obvious to anyone, anyone in the world.

He leaned against the sign for some time. He
felt jittery, like someone who’d lived on nothing but coffee for a
day. Was his heart beating irregularly? Soon he was slumping in
place. His mind felt dark, hollow, and blank, but in time he
realized he was looking at something with some focus, something he
hadn’t noticed when he’d first come up onto the hill. It sat by
itself, just before the wall of grasses, at the clearing’s
edge.

A barrel.

It was a large one, four feet high and three
wide, encircled by two rusting iron bands. Riled by termites and
creviced by water-damage, the grayed slats suggested that the
barrel was very old, but a closer glance showed him that a heavy
coat of some water-resistant resin covered the entire vessel, no
doubt a more recent application. A lone antique barrel sitting on
this history-laden hill struck Fanshawe as odd, yet he next made an
odder observation.

The barrel had a single ten-inch-diameter
hole in its side.

He looked perplexed at it.
What the
hell’s an old barrel doing up here?
Perhaps it was an
original-era rain barrel, preserved for its value as a relic. But
if so?
What’s with the hole? A hole in the side of a barrel kind
of defeats its purpose.

He shrugged and turned to leave. The
temptation raged: to steal a departing glance at the near-naked
joggers, but after a wince, he resisted and strode back toward the
path that would lead him out. Before he could fully leave the
hill’s perimeter, however…

A shock riveted him, and he spun back
around.

He’d heard a sound that couldn’t be denied.
A crisp, guttural growl, unmistakably that of a large dog.

Wild dog…
Fanshawe’s hand came to his
heart. His eyes darted for a branch or stone, something that might
serve as a weapon, but when his eyes pored back over the clearing
he saw that there was no dog to be seen.

—
| — | —

CHAPTER THREE

(I)

The sun was just beginning to wester when
Fanshawe made it back to town.
Recession be damned,
he
thought. If anything, more tourists were apparent now, more cars in
various lots, more strollers enjoying the town’s quaint shops and
atmosphere. As a financial maven, he was pleased to see that people
had vacation money to spend. It also pleased him that some resolve
seemed to be filtering back into his conscience: he’d resisted the
impulse the pass the Travelodge and its alluring windows and
sunbathers, and instead had taken a more circuitous route via a
street farther off, mostly residential. He walked casually now,
more at peace with himself. He spotted several empty beer kegs
stacked behind the tavern; they made him think of the unlikely
barrel on Witches Hill.
I’ll have to ask Abbie about that,
he ventured. Later, he came around the back of the Wraxall Inn. Not
once did he look up at the windows of the upper floors. Back in New
York, when his sickness had been at full spate, the city’s endless
trove of windows had caused him to brim with something like
feverish delight. At night he’d walk the posh Upper West Side, to
duck into tactical alleyways and raise his mini-binoculars at the
gem-like glass frames that too-often presented the merchandise that
his warped mind shopped for. His office, with the door locked,
served as a veritable voyeur’s outpost on the countless nights he’d
tell his wife he’d be working late, and for this he possessed a
high-powered pair of Nikon field glasses and even a compact
telescope, both fitted with digital cameras. Worse, he’d gone on to
purchase a mini-van with custom one-way window-inserts; at night
he’d park in strategic lots and manipulate a small Zeiss-brand
spotter scope at the windows of the best condominiums.

Whacked in the head,
he thought. And
for years, his poor wife had never known, and never known either
that whenever they made love, Fanshawe’s mind was stuffed, steamy,
and delirious with the images of other women he’d viewed so
discretely and pervertedly. The inconceivableness of his addiction
struck even Fanshawe himself: a man of extraordinary financial
success enslaved by this lowly and risky crime. At least Dr. Tilton
understood—all too well—and he was encouraged to know that she’d
treated others suffering from his own diagnosis of chronic
scoptophilia. “For sure, Mr. Fanshawe, yours is a disorder that is
rather commonplace in a general realm but oh so uncanny in
particular regards to
you.
” “Pardon me?” he’d asked,
prickled by her insinuation. “You are most certainly an
unrepresentative
peeper”—and at this, Fanshawe winced—”in
that your bounteous wealth retails little mollification at all.” “I
don’t even know what that means,” he snapped. “For $1000 per hour,
could you
please
speak English?” And then she’d smiled in
that tiny, barely discernible way of hers, a way that made him feel
even lower. “A man of your vast financial solvency could certainly
enjoy the pleasures of the most beautiful call girls and strippers
available, but you’ll have none of that, hmm? Instead, you skulk
around alleys, or hide in your van to slake your dismal and
pathetic need from a distance.” He’d wanted to walk out then and
there, until he admitted that she was quite right, and that this
observation proved her clinical competence. The highest-class strip
clubs and the most preeminently attractive call girls did
nothing
for him. “It’s no good, is it, Mr. Fanshawe, unless
the lecherous images with which you quench your craving are
stolen,
from
victims,
not whores, from unknowing
targets,
not willing and morally oblivious pole-dancers? You
must
steal
from them, Mr. Fanshawe, you must look at them in
your unrestrained lust
without their permission,
otherwise
the satisfaction is useless, no better than a heroin addict
injecting tap water.” Fanshawe stared right back at her, insulted,
humiliated, but realizing that his hatred for her was just
camouflage for his hatred of himself. He croaked his reply: “You’re
absolutely right…”

Weird, weird,
he thought now. Of all
the addictions to be cursed with, Fanshawe had been cursed with
this.

When he slanted around the back lot of the
Inn, he saw that the closest half of it was filled with cars while
only one car sat far off in a space in the farthest section. It was
an old black Cadillac Deville; Fanshawe knew that the year was
early ‘60s because his own father had owned a similar vehicle when
he was a child, yet this one had been restored to almost show-room
condition.

He heard a slight scuff, then saw that the
trunk was up. A stooped, stout-bellied man placed a suitcase
inside, then thunked the lid closed and walked back.

The man was Mr. Baxter.

He reentered the hotel through a back door.
Did the Cadillac belong to Baxter? And was he going on a vacation
of his own?
Why park the Caddy way out there?
Fanshawe
wondered.

He walked around front, then paused to stand
a moment, taking closer notice of the old inn’s architectural
style, which he guessed would be called some manner of “Georgian,”
for England’s King George. The imposing cross-gable made the basic
structure seem even more classically timeworn; it gave the
sprawling mansion the form of an uncapitalized “t.” The building’s
roof segments were steeped at uncommonly high angles. Fanshawe
thought himself a modernist when it came to architecture, yet,
since he’d come here, he’d grown more and more fond of all this
historical archaicism.
This used to be a family house, a
patriarch’s,
he reminded himself; hadn’t Baxter referred to
Wraxall as an upstanding resident?
Talk about going downhill
fast.

He mused over what life must have been like
so many years ago.
Cutting your own woodslats, digging your own
wells, chopping wood every day of your life…
Evidently, Jacob
Wraxall had been the equivalent of a wealthy country squire; hence,
it had been his personal taste behind the mansion’s layout. But…an
occultist? Someone who
believed
he was a warlock? If he
believed that, then surely he believed in the Devil. Fanshawe
wondered what went on behind these baronial walls when the rest of
the town slept unaware.

A large double glass door had been
installed, but the rest of the building’s front face couldn’t have
appeared more authentic. A pillared portico surrounded the entire
house, while narrow lancet windows marked the second story; of the
third, Fanshawe noted small circular windows marking the hallway,
and wide bow-windows set into the faces of the extending
cross-gables. The gable he peered at now would offer a “peeper” a
bull’s eye view of the Travelodge and some of the Back Street upper
windows.
Thank God I didn’t get THAT room…

A stunning, multi-colored dusk bloomed
behind him when went back inside. The inn stood cozily quiet, save
only for the methodic ticking of an ancient grandfather clock. He
sighed happily; the lengthy walk had helped him unwind just as he’d
hoped. Now, a meal might be in order. He walked down the silent
hall, stopped for a moment, then went on. He knew he’d been about
to re-enter the display cove containing the bizarre looking-glass,
but…

Why do that? Why remind myself?
The
idea made about as much sense as an alcoholic looking at ad signs
pasted in the window of a liquor store.

But I’m NOT an alcoholic,
he
asserted. Across from the cove, the sign reminded him: SQUIRE’S
PUB; then a quick peek inside showed him that the bar was empty
save for—

Abbie…

And there she was.

Fanshawe felt a butterfly in his
stomach.

“Hi, Stew!”

He looked to the bar to be confronted by a
smile that hit his eyes like a strong, white light.
God, she’s
beautiful…
He tried to seem casual as he approached the modest
bar but instead felt hopelessly nervous. “Hi, Abbie. I meant to
come in for a drink earlier but the place was packed.”