Witch Water, page 24
It was the same clearing, but…not the same, either. The surrounding brush was much higher than it had been, while the clearing’s perimeter was closer, far less delineated, and was completely devoid of decorative gravel. A glance down to the town showed Fanshawe the same modest village he’d seen after midnight through the looking-glass…
Then he turned and faced the Gazing Ball.
At first the carved markings on the pedestal seemed infested by fitful movement, but Fanshawe’s shock since drinking the vile water left him disoriented. How could I NOT be disoriented? he reasoned with himself. However, the next shock gave him more to be disoriented about.
The Gazing Ball—or Bridle—stood before him in the moon-tinged darkness, straight as a chess piece. And as for the metal globe itself?
It bore no incrustations, no tarnish, no weather damage. Instead, it shined as if just polished.
The damn thing looks brand new, Fanshawe thought, but then an even darker thought insinuated itself. That’s because it IS brand new…
Fanshawe’s mind stayed relatively blank as he crept about the hillocks. No, the trails weren’t the same; where before they’d been gravel-paved and well-trimmed, now they were just meager weed-lined lanes beaten into existence by constant foot traffic. The scent of wood-smoke hung heavily throughout. Then an owl hooted from a high tree, its white blank face appearing distortedly human at first glance—Fanshawe thought of an invalid’s face. But his wanderings were quite aimless; in a sense he already knew his way around. Of course, the very peak of Witches Hill lacked the accompanying wooden sign explaining the spot’s historical significance, but it did not lack the barrel.
Fanshawe’s face blanched as whitely as the owl’s when he directed his flashlight to the foot of the barrel and saw a puddle of coagulating blood which crawled with flies. There was vomit there as well, and chunks of what appeared to be scalp tissue with long threads of hair still attached.
My God…
Fanshawe backed up, nauseous.
It was an undersense more than conscious impetus that guided his next steps. Consciously, he could not reckon the reality of where he was, what he’d done, and what he would next do. Instead, he let his feet take him where they may—
Down the straggly hill, toward the town.
Ramshackle horse-quarters stood where the Travelodge should be. Fanshawe heard the scuffs of his shoes answered by heavy snorting sounds. He’d just crossed Back Street—its teetering abodes and primitive service-buildings showing white-washed boards and crudely glazed window panes. All that lit the town was cloud-filtered moonlight. He thought of switching on his flashlight but felt alarm when he realized that might instantly make him a target for attention. The town was asleep, and he needed it to stay that way.
But he knew where he was going now…
Wraxall’s house should be just across the next street. When he slipped through an alley, he froze—at the sound of a bell—
A church bell.
It struck once, twice, then a third time. The nature of each peal sounded fat and buoyant in the air of the warm night, but also oddly brittle.
Fanshawe knew he’d heard this bell before.
Three o’clock in the morning, he deduced. Instead of emerging from the other side of the alley onto Main Street, he hung back, letting himself sink into shadow. The bell-ringer would come out of the church any moment, to walk into the tavern where he’d wait till it was time to sound the bell again, probably by the assistance of an hour-glass. Before Fanshawe’s eyes, the night-veiled dwellings of Main Street stretched, then, as suspected, a door was heard opening and closing. Footsteps crossed hard-packed dirt. Fanshawe glimpsed the bell-man approaching the tavern and disappearing into it.
Now.
He stepped out of the shadow-black alley, prepared to whisk himself across the street, but nearly shouted via the surprise that came next:
“Who be thither? Come for another go upon a helpless woman, have thee, thou stinkards? Well, I say pox on you, and may there be a plague upon all thy children! May they be borned with cloven faces and empty heads!”
Fanshawe’s heart slammed.
Just beside him stood a pillory, and in its long wooden brace hung a woman dressed in scraps of soiled fabric. Worse soiling left the color of her yard-long hair impossible to determine.
Another one, Fanshawe thought.
Sunken eyes in a gaunt face craned upward. “Glory!” she rasped in a whisper. Decayed teeth grinned at him in relief. “Pray, sir, ’tis not one’a them that you be, I can see as much! Hear my plea, I beg! Release me! ’Tis a fortnight they’ve kept me here. They spit on me in the name of God—hear me! Into mine womanhood they spurt their seed any time they’ve the mind to, and ‘tis only foul water and livestock gruel they let be my sustenance!”
“For God’s sake,” Fanshawe groaned, disgusted. He could see rings of scab and infection about the prisoner’s wrists and neck. “Kept quiet, I don’t want that guy to hear”—he fiddled with the latch on the brace.
She shivered, concealing a squeal of delight as he finally worked the latch and raised the wooden brace.
Joints cracked and she moaned when he helped her up. Between the tatters of her clothing, Fanshawe saw a body like a victim of a death camp. Immediately she hugged him, which caused Fanshawe to recoil from the power of her body odor.
“For thine kindness, I wilt do anything you may ask!” Rotten breath gusted into his ear, and then she caressed his crotch.
Fanshawe was revolted. “No, no—just run, get out of here!” he whispered. “These people are crazy.”
“Oh my great dark lord! May the Morning Star bless thee and keep thee safe!” and then the raddled woman crossed herself, but it was the sign of an upside-down cross that her hand gestured over her chest.
Fanshawe stared.
“Myself and all mine own shalt pray that Lucifer guide thee always. We shalt do anything you deem us worthy of, great necromancer!”
Fanshawe stammered, “Buh-but I’m not a necrom—”
The woman hobbled off, disappearing down another alley.
A witch…
“Halt, you!” another voice rose. It boomed down the street like a basso shout: a man’s voice.
Fanshawe ground his teeth in fear. A large man lumbered in his direction, and when a reef of clouds moved off to let the moon shine, Fanshawe grimly recognized the obese stature of the man: the vest about to break its buttons, the star-shaped metal badge, and the swollen, corroded nose and blemished face.
Patten, the high sheriff.
Fanshawe wanted to run, but his knees locked when he saw the fat, shambling man raise a flintlock pistol. “Be still and speak thy business on this Godly street at so an hour!”
Fanshawe opened his mouth—
More footsteps, then another voice boomed: “On my word, Sheriff, just now from my window I espied that fellow unfetter the harlot from her just and legal capture!” A slimmer man raced from another door, bearing a lit lantern.
“Oh, did he now?”
Fanshawe remained unmoving as the men converged, but when they got closer, their steps slowed as if intimidated. The sheriff’s out-broken face creased in fear.
“Behold his manner of dress…”
“Yea! Just the same as—”
“That one come only a week afore! Another warlock, turned up by deviltry to curse our Christian flock—”
The other man’s voice quavered. “What-what be that he’s got in his hand?”
“’Tis a weapon?”
Fanshawe raised the flashlight and turned it on. “No, listen—it’s just a…”
The slim man dropped his lantern in the road and fled, shrieking in nearly a feminine voice. The sheriff froze, terror open on his face. “A sorcerer’s scepter—surely! A wand that yields a spot of light like that of ye sun!”
Absurdly, Fanshawe said, “It’s just a damn flashlight, man. Look, I don’t want any trouble—”
Sheriff Patten’s lower lip trembled; his gun hand shook. But when Fanshawe shined the flashlight in the man’s face, he saw the expression slowly go from a gibbering panic to a slowly rising disregard for danger. He began to step forward.
Shit! What am I gonna do now?
“A Christian soldier such as I need have no fear. God shalt protect me always, as one of those with faith.” His gun hand was shaking less. “Now, keep thyself still and let go that scepter, lest thee find thy bosom with a hole large enough to admit my fist!”
With a reflex he didn’t think himself capable of, Fanshawe jerked to the left, to sprint across the street. There was a snap! a flash, then—
BOOM!
The entire street concussed from the pistol shot. Fanshawe’s teeth clacked, and he felt something substantial plow past his head, displacing air; his feet carried him through another alley as though he were on a tow-line. Behind him he heard bells clanging, shouts, and the sheriff’s voice booming nearly as loud as the shot: “All Christian men, awake—we’ve a wizard in our midst! Deputies, come out! Call ye parson! Someone fetch Humphreys and have him bring his beast!”
Beast, Fanshawe thought in horror, stumbling over rubbish in the alley. Then the thunderous barks of an immense dog overpowered all other sound; it was so loud Fanshawe wanted to scream.
He’d already seen the animal responsible for those sounds.
He tripped just as he would exit the alley—more rubbish. These people just piled their garbage in the alley? The Wraxall house stood in sight, bathed in moving moonlight, but—
I’m never going to make it, he realized, because he could already hear the nearly mule-sized dog race into the alley’s mouth.
“Fly, Pluto!” a voice shot. “Tear the wizard asunder!”
As Fanshawe scrabbled forward, he heard the huge paws tear toward him from behind. He clawed ahead; he knew that at any second the massive jaws would snap a foot off, then the other, and this would only be the beginning of a slow, unimaginable death—
The image of Abbie flashed in his mind; Fanshawe managed a smile…
He thought he could actually feel gusts of hot breath blowing into the back of his neck, when—
There was a pop! then a long sizzle which accompanied a broad, ball-shaped flash of light that was scarlet with moving veins of green. The light filled the alley; Fanshawe smelled acrid smoke. At the same time, resonant words drifted: “Nattel’gleg shebb m’gy-hotl…”
Fanshawe stared terrified over his shoulder. The blossom of light dissipated a moment later, but now, instead of hunting him, the mammoth Doberman was snarling as if wildly aggravated, and turning circles in the alley. It seemed to be chasing its own tail.
“Pluto! Sic!” one voice called from the alley’s other side.
“Of all the…”
“Look! The wizard’s bewitched the dog!”
Fanshawe still had spots in his eyes from the mysterious flash when he was hoisted to his feet and shoved. A sturdy man in dark clothing pointed toward the open front door of the Wraxall house.
“Who—”
“Stifle thy words!” a whisper snapped back. “And mind thy tongue lest it be the death of us…”
Fanshawe stared into the stranger’s face…
Callister Rood.
“Make haste and close Master’s door!”
“But—”
Another hard shove. “Be off!”
Fanshawe sprinted to the door to the house, closed it as quietly as he could, then turned to peer out of a small glass pane in the side-light.
By now the Doberman had churned its way out of the alley, still snarling, still chasing its tail. Sheriff Patten and the others lumbered after it through the trash-clogged by-way.
Rood rushed to meet them. “Good Sheriff! I glimpsed a hellish light, then spied a man in evil raiments flee thither! Pray, let me aid thee in thy chase!”
“Callister Rood, surely thy vigilance be blessed by God Himself!” Patten barked, then, behind him, “This way, men! Ye divell’s made off this way!” and then the sheriff, Rood, and the rest tramped off down the street till they were out of sight.
Fanshawe’s face pressed against the glass; he exhaled long and hard, and felt relieved when the last of the posse’s footsteps faded to silence.
He turned, to face almost total darkness. The entrance, which was probably just a narrow foyer back then, he guessed. The only light could be seen very dimly at the top of the first stairwell.
“I’m here to see Jacob Wraxall,” he announced loudly to the darkness.
There was no vocal response but—
What-what’s that?
Fanshawe heard the faintest sound, like a muffled, hot thumping…
A heartbeat!
Someone was in the room.
He raised his flashlight, was about to turn it on—
From behind, some form of garrote looped around his neck and tightened. A chuckling like bubbling tar gurgled. Fanshawe’s tongue shot out of his mouth from the tightness of the noose; he had no choice but to drop the flashlight so that he could raise his hands to hook his fingers under the rope.
“Might this break thy starch?” a man’s voice slithered up. Then Fanshawe’s eyes bugged when he was kicked from behind between the legs. Pain bloomed. He doubled over.
He began to choke at once. His heels pummeled the floor; he was being dragged by the noose across the floor, through horrid darkness, then—
thunk, thunk, thunk
—dragged up the stairs.
Fanshawe’s face ballooned as his attacker tugged him along as though he were a sack of feed. He continued to kick, twist, and contort in resistance, all for nothing.
“So,” the mocking voice resumed, “ye venturer desires to be a warlock, aye? He dares quest to be one with ye Squire?”
“No!” Fanshawe croaked out. “I just came to—”
A hard yank of the rope cut off the rest of his garbled words. Up another flight of steps, Fanshawe was hauled, then the last flight, and then down the hall. Splinters from the wood floor lanced through the rump of his slacks and into his flesh; he could only gargle his torment against the noose.
He was dragged to the left, into a room. For a moment, the noose’s pressure lessened; a needed rush of blood shot into his head. Got to get up! he realized, and he’d almost accomplished that when—
whap!
He toppled again when his attacker rammed a fist into his stomach.
If Fanshawe hadn’t summoned the strength to get his fingers back under the noose, he probably would have strangled, because just after the blow, his attacker began to climb the now-familiar rope ladder with one hand, while keeping the noose-rope attached to Fanshawe’s neck in the other.
“Up, up goes ye venturer!”
Fanshawe’s eyes could’ve popped out now: his back and then his feet left the floor as he was suspended aloft by his neck. In hard jerks, he was hoisted up into a room he’d seen three hundred years in the future…
Fanshawe’s vision dimmed, and the pressure made his face fit to erupt. Just as he thought he would die, he was slammed down onto a floor of wood planks.
The noose was taken off.
Fanshawe heaved in air while coughing at the same time. His mind spun like a child’s top; no coherent thoughts formed, which seemed understandable. But as his vision brightened, he was able to see exactly where he was: the secret section of the attic.
He sensed his attacker’s bulk just behind his head. Fanshawe was enraged now; he wanted to fight, as implausible as that instance was. Play dead, he thought.
And so he did.
He lay as if unconscious, while the man who’d dragged him up here puttered with some task. Fanshawe kept his eyes open only to the most narrow slits. He glanced in snatches, each glimpse revealing more of the hidden room: the book shelves, only new and clean, bereft of cobwebs and dust; rows and rows of lit candles; the woodstove, with fire-light showing in the grill-slits of its hatch; and the long tables which housed all manner of the laboratory apparatus of another day. An awful odor permeated the warm room, and that’s when Fanshawe guessed what its source might be:
A large cauldron sat atop the woodstove, eddying ribbons of steam.
He let his eyes veer to the right, and in the wall of candlelight, he got a full look at the man who’d hauled him up here.
Callister Rood.
He can’t be here! Fanshawe thought in consternation. I just saw him on the street!
“I know thy prank, sir,” the thick-jawed man said down to him. “Yet there be reason why feigning death wilt fool me not,” and then Rood leaned over and grinned broadly down at him.
Fanshawe leapt up, grabbed a knife from a rack on the table, then lunged at Rood.
Rood’s mouth ejected words thick as half-formed objects: “Nard’gurnlut do’blyn srug…”
Fanshawe fell limp. He could see and think, he could feel, but he couldn’t move. Had the alien words really caused his paralysis or had his neck been broken during the hoist into the attic. Suddenly rough hands were on him— “Venturer, first, thy garb must be got rid of,” Rood said, amused. Fanshawe felt his shoes pulled off, then his slacks, then his underpants, and his sports jacket and shirt. Then—
SPLAT!
—a bowl of something warm suddenly slapped Fanshawe’s face. The copper-salt taste that leaked into his mouth told him it was blood.
“Now,” Rood’s voice fluttered from above, “thine fit and proper anointment.”
Blood drooled down Fanshawe’s face and stung his eyes.
“And afore ye most unholy of imprecations—as mine Squire sayeth—thy gullet must be filled,” and then another bowl was wielded, and put to Fanshawe’s lips. “Drink all this up, good sarvant.”
Revolted, Fanshawe kept his lips sealed; he shook his head no. He knew it wasn’t merely blood Rood wanted him to swallow, but baby’s blood.
“Nay? Why dare displease the Squire?”
The edge of the bowl pushed at the seam of his lips.
“Heed, and take this down into thy belly, stranger. Thy worth must first be proved.”
Fanshawe kept shaking his head, eyes squeezed shut as tightly as his lips.
“Be an encumbrance not, or suffer…” and then Rood picked up a hand-forged linoleum knife whose inner curve had been honed to the sharpness of broken glass.
