Witch Water (8 page)

What’s the big deal about a financial
mogul going on a date?
he asked himself, but he knew, and he
knew what Dr. Tilton might say. The situation was unique because it
represented his re-emergence into “the regulated societal
stream”—which was her way of referring to the everyday, normal
world. For most of his adult life, exceptionally attractive women
had made themselves all too available, with sexual implications all
too apparent. Fanshawe had never been interested; they did not
exist at the other end of a telescope or pair of binoculars;
therefore, the were
un
exciting. Even in the year since his
marriage had detonated, he had not been interested.
Tilton’s
right. Now that I’ve removed myself from the “purveying
environment” I WANT to go out with a woman, not lust after her
through a window.
True, he’d felt the pangs during his walk
through town, but since he’d been in Abbie’s presence at the bar,
those old demons had barely reared their heads.

Any other time, he’d be itching to go on a
“peep.”

Maybe I really am getting cured…

Half-tipsy, he walked down his hall which
stood in total silence. The elegant tulip-shaped lamps branched out
from the flower-papered walls; they looked a hundred years old, and
added to the inn’s rich authenticity. He frowned when he reached
into his pocket for his card-key and found a twenty-dollar bill.
Unbeknownst to him, Abbie had slipped his tip money back, a
pick-pocket in reverse.
Classy,
he thought.

He went to bed and fell asleep instantly,
something that hadn’t happened in a long time.

But it would not be a sound sleep.

—
| — | —

CHAPTER FOUR

(I)

The silence stretches like the neck of a
decomposing corpse on a gibbet; the darkness brims. And through it,
images rise and fall akin to chunks of unclassifiable meat bubbling
in a horrific stew. Fanshawe’s dreams whirl slow, putrid: he sees
women in windows through the infinity-shaped viewing field,
beautiful
 women, nude, sultry, and, best of all,
unknowing.
Their sexual features are pinpoint-sharp, focused
to a preternatural clarity. One is exercising; one seems to be
talking to herself as if in argument, anger coning her nipples.
Another lay flushed on a couch, her tight stomach sucks in and out
as she masturbates with a peculiarly curved rubber phallus. But
then the women clump together, squashed to nauseous misshape, and
drain away into a swirl of liquescing breasts, navels, and pubic
triangles, to be replaced by
more
images: faces. The
disgusted face of the police officer, the agape stares of residents
in lit windows as red and blue lights throb, the vision of
pock-cheeked drug addicts, winos, thieves, and, likely, rapists,
child-molesters, and murderers. One of them buckles over to vomit,
hitching in silence. Some of the vomit splatters noiselessly on
Fanshawe’s thousand-dollar shoes, for he sits there with these men
in the deplorable holding cell, being appraised by the scum of the
earth. A man standing hip-cocked in the cell’s corner looks at him
with a smirking grin and mouths
You’re MY bitch tonight…
Then more faces, a
parade
of faces: Artie’s face when he
bails Fanshawe out, the judge’s face at the arraignment, the faces
of the lawyers at the pre-trial conferences…all expressions of
blank disgust. But the last face to haunt his dreams is the worst:
his wife’s, Laurel’s, a face whose expression radiates heartbreak,
outrage, revulsion, and hatred concurrently. She stares as the
nightmare stares back.
I hate you,
her lips speak without
sound.
You make me siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick,
yet after a
moment, the face warps as if before heat-waves on asphalt, then
mutates and grows, not like a balloon expanding but instead a tumor
or cyst in aberrant hyper-development, and just when the throbbing
mass seems about to erupt, it collapses into a black void…

Fanshawe cannot close his eyes against the
dream’s blackness, which goes on for what seems hours. He hears
nothing save for his anguished breaths and thudding heart.
Then—

A voice, echoic, as if speaking in a
rock-hewn grotto miles deep.

Abbie’s
voice.

“Jacob Wraxall, one of the founding members
of the town. He lived here with his daughter, Evanore—”

Fanshawe sees what he believes is the great
portrait again, until its subjects move. Wraxall and his
tantalizing yet somehow obscenely visaged daughter are taking slow
steps up a dark, narrow stairwell, the elder in coattails and
ruffled bib, his pendant of stars and sickle moons glittering, the
sibling with her blood-red hair and plunging bustline, the smooth
stark-white flesh nearly luminous in the plunge. They each hold a
candle whose flickering light turns their eyes into green-crystal
pools. Jacob’s expression is solemn as an undertaker’s, while
Evanore’s is one of deep, intractable rapture. They enter a
room…

A black fog sweeps over Fanshawe’s vision,
thickens, then dissipates, and now— Wraxall stands in a hooded
cloak of sackcloth, in a plank-boarded, windowless room. He reads
silently from an old book with a cord holding in the folded sheets
in place rather than a typical binding. Candlelight wavers,
throwing light that seems leprous; smoke rises from the eyeholes of
a skull serving as a censer, a
baby’s
skull.

Evanore now stands bereft of clothing; her
lambent skin shines either in sweat or oil. Fanshawe can feel
himself trembling as he looks at her in the dream: the slim,
curvaceous body, long white legs, breasts so deliciously swollen
she could be lactating yet her abdomen shines lean and flat. It’s a
jarring contrast: all that glistening skin, white as fresh snow,
shimmering below the dark-crimson hair. Indeed, her hair is combed
back wet now, rendering the appearance of actually being dipped in
blood; the tuft at her pubis shines similarly. She is reciting
words of some unhallowed prayer that Fanshawe remains deaf to. His
gaze stays riveted to her stimulating physique until something
unsought drags his eyes down to show him that the nude woman is
standing within a queerly angled pentagram inscribed on the bare
wood floor. The inscription has been fashioned with some black
substance akin to char. Immediately he notices the sticks of burnt
bones lying aside.

The candle-lit spectacle recedes, to reveal
a dozen other cloaked figures looking on from the background…

Abbie’s reverberating voice continues, “They
practiced their witchcraft in secret. Years went by, but the town
never knew…”

The black mental fog creeps back, then
disperses.

The room is gone. The night seems to
seethe
as Fanshawe is looking at a clearing deep in a
woodland where trees hulk like dryadic miscreations. Their knotted
arms outstretch, soon to be mimicked by Evanore, now dressed in her
own hooded gown, and the remaining twelve in her coven. In
gangrenous moonlight, they stand in a circle in the clearing, some
bearing torches. But as Evanore raises a newborn babe in her
hands—

Chaos unfolds.

More torches plunge into the circle, these
held by townsmen with stern, determined faces. Other townsfolk
wield pitchforks, and others, muskets. Male coven members are
butt-stroked in the face; the women are dragged to the ground and
stripped, then slapped dizzy by hard opened palms. The black mass
had been encircled without anyone ever knowing, and as remaining
members try to flee, they are beaten to the ground by still more
men in tri-cornered hats, then hog-tied. Several armed deputies
part, allowing the stout and basilisk-eyed Sheriff Patten to enter
the scene; he is followed by the black-cassocked town pastor whose
large silver cross flashes in torchlight. The infant which had
nearly been murdered is delivered to the pastor’s hands. Patten
looks this way and that, then his gaze seems to find what it seeks:
Evanore Wraxall. She’s already been stripped naked, and stands
defiant as one deputy keeps her in place by elbows pinned behind
her back. The sheriff pauses to stare at the white, raving body,
but then the pastor’s reproving glance reminds him that lust is a
grievous sin.

Patten crosses himself. Duly shackled now,
the other heretics are being roughly led out of the wood, but three
of the sheriff’s raiding party hold several torches together,
boosting the potency of their flame, and into this flame, four
branding irons are held. Minutes pass.

The pastor nods consent; Patten stands, arms
crossed, the fire-light in his eyes. Four of the deputies pull the
irons out when they’re smoking hot, then they turn them toward
Evanore…

The witch’s nude body seems to relax, even
in what she must know awaits her; the guard behind her holds her
fast.

The branding irons are each formed in the
shape of the cross.

One iron is pressed into the front of the
right breast, then another is pressed into the left. Flesh silently
sizzles. A third iron burns into her white abdomen, cooking the
flesh. But the fourth is handed to Sheriff Patten himself. He
whispers a prayer, then approaches, then sinks the iron into the
abundant plot of pubic hair, searing first the hair, then the
private flesh beneath. Only after an extended allotment of time is
the iron withdrawn, leaving a smoking indentation in the shape of
the Savior’s symbol.

But Patten’s lower lip twitches as if he’s
secretly infuriated, while the pastor’s face seems made of stone;
for not once through the agonizing ministration did Evanore scream
or even flinch. Instead, she simply smiles back at her persecutors
as the brand-marks continue to effuse smoke.

More black fog, then the field of Fanshawe’s
nightmare shifts, to that of a quiet hillock webbed by footpaths
and askew brush. A gray sky yawns over all, low clouds shedding
drizzle, as the queue of shackled heretics, now dressed in rags, is
led up at musket-point. The sheriff and his deputies take their
places about the hill’s crown; so do the town’s citizens. The
pastor reads from a Bible, then closes it.

Sheriff Patten steps toward the
stoop-shouldered captives. He reads from a scroll…

Abbie’s voice echoes back through the
dream’s black blood: “Evanore and the coven were all condemned to
death…”

Now, a horse-driven carriage pulls into the
town square. Jacob Wraxall gets out with his personal attendant,
Callister Rood. Rood bears a large suitcase, then takes a crate
down from the coach. A town man immediately rushes over to tell
them something silently. Jacob’s reaction is one of alarm. And
next?

Jacob is standing in the cemetery, looking
solemnly down at some graves.

“Jacob and Callister Rood were abroad in
England at the time,” Abbie’s voice wavers; however, a long silence
follows, broken only by the sounds of Fanshawe’s quickening
breaths. “But when they returned, Jacob’s daughter had already been
executed…”

(II)

Was it the sound of a growling dog that
Fanshawe woke to? He churned irritably out of his sleep, then sat
up.

He grimaced.

At once, the long smear of nightmare poured
back like reeking slop through his mind. His subconscious had
concocted imagery to accompany Abbie’s grim recital of Wraxall and
his daughter.
Christ…
The dream’s aftermath left him feeling
faintly sick; the moderate hangover didn’t help. But then he
winced, recalling what had roused him out of his sleep.

A growling dog?
He rubbed his face.
His eyes ached; they felt dry.
I thought I’d heard a dog
growling yesterday too, on the hill…
But outside, then, he
heard a rudely loud motorcycle in the distance.
There’s your
growling dog…

His brows shot up when he noticed that
morning as well as most of the afternoon was already gone.
Jesus! How could I have slept so long?
For years—for
decades, actually—he’d risen at four-thirty in the morning.
Now
I don’t have to anymore.
The Wall Street pressure-cooker was
finally behind him; perhaps his body was taking back the rest it
had been robbed of after so many years of ceaseless thinking,
speculation, buy-outs, and re-organizations.

But
this?

He’d slept sixteen hours.
Maybe I’m
getting a cold…
Could the faint headache be a cold coming on
rather than too much alcohol last night? But either way…
So
what?
he thought.
If I want to sleep sixteen hours, I can. I
can do anything I want; I’m on vacation…sort of.

But he felt worn out even with the extra
sleep.
The dream…
Why would a dream—unpleasant but not
excruciating—cause such exhaustion?
The Witch-Blood
Shooters,
he suspected
. Smart move, Fanshawe.
At least
the window promised spectacular weather.
Now, if I can only
enjoy it without feeling like shit…
A cool shower helped a
little, plus more casual dress, including a lighter sports jacket.
Downstairs, he noticed no sign of Abbie or Mr. Baxter. An older
woman he hadn’t seen before was preparing to open the bar, while a
pair of college-aged waitresses set tables in the dining room, in
preparation for the upcoming dinner hour.
The Professors,
he
thought next, noticing several of them browsing the display coves.
The long hair and beards were the giveaway. Bloodshot eyes were a
giveaway, too, that at least their hangovers must be worse than
Fanshawe’s. He heard the elevator open and close, then came a soft,
regulated pattering as Harvard and Yale walked briskly down the
carpeted hall and across the atrium. They wore blank, midriff
running tops today, with no designation, but he thought he saw
Harvard glance once at him, then say to her companion, “Where have
I seen that guy before?” They jogged out into blazing sunlight and
were gone. Fanshawe’s hangover pulsed at his temple. For an instant
he thought of inconspicuously following them, to see if they
repeated yesterday’s topless coddling at the hidden nook, but then
rebuked himself for even considering it. He grabbed some
complimentary candies off the check-in desk, then milled around the
displays. It was not his own volition that guided him toward the
display with the looking-glass, but when he found it—