Witch Water (20 page)

—Fanshawe awoke as if shaken violently by
the shoulders. The heart-hammering fright bolted him upright—he
actually feared someone was in the room but then he blindly snapped
on the bedside lamp, and as he did so his mind raced: what might he
use as a makeshift weapon?

Of course, no one occupied the room besides
Fanshawe, but he checked the door as a formality, which was still
locked.
Just what I need. Another whacked out dream.
Was it
some mode of
tactile
nightmare that made him feel the
impressions of fingers on his shoulders? Did such a type of
hallucination actually exist?

It must’ve been backwash from the morbid
dream.

creeeeeeeeeeek—

He’d heard the noise the instant he’d
returned to the bedroom.
It’s just a house noise!
he
insisted.
Old rafters settling! There’s no one in the friggin’
attic!

Still…he had no choice but to look up to the
trapdoor.

DAMN it!
Not convinced by his own
common sense, once again, Fanshawe was standing on his bed, pushing
out the panel, and extracting the rope ladder. Penlight in hand,
and glazed in sweat from the nightmare, he climbed back into the
attic.

The warm, steep-roofed chamber seemed
smaller, more narrow than earlier, and hotter even though the
temperature had dropped with the sun. Nothing differed about the
sight that greeted him: dingy storage boxes, piles of threadbare
drapes, and
lots
of cobwebs. Fanshawe aimed to step into his
previous footprints in the dusty floor, but as he looked closer, he
noticed prints that couldn’t have been his own from previous
visits; they were smaller. He’d thought nothing of them the first
time, presumed they were Baxter’s…

But he didn’t think that now.

Hmm…

They seemed to lead an entire circuit about
the attic’s outermost walls—and seemed to stop at various
places.

At the back of the chamber, his nose
crinkled. A faint but unpleasant odor like old cigars revealed
itself. Fanshawe recalled smelling it the first time he’d been up,
and now he saw why: a fat cigar butt sat in the corner. Using thumb
and forefinger, he picked it up and examined the band, but why he
was inclined to do so he couldn’t imagine. MONTE CRISTO # 1, the
band read. HABANA.

This is a good cigar,
he thought. He
knew this only because Artie was very much imbued with the current
rage of elitist cigar-mania.
Yuck,
he thought and dropped
it.

Of all his bewilderment lately, Fanshawe was
conscious of this: what bewildered him most was himself.
What am
I DOING up here?
He felt silly now, underwear-clad, dripping
sweat. He leaned back against the bare-wood panel and sighed—

click

Fanshawe felt the wall behind
him…
give.

He turned, sweeping his light up and down,
and found the wall-frame cleverly hinged.
Not a wall, a
door…

A
hidden
door, evidently.

Ancient rust grated when he pushed the wall
frame back, paused, then stepped into another attic chamber even
longer and more narrow than the original.
Well, what could this
be?
Beyond, dust lay inches thick, with no evidence of prints.
Where the accessible chamber smelled “woody,” this one smelled
interminably stale, such that he gagged. Garlands of cobwebs
stretched across his face as he proceeded; he had to push through
the webs to make out any details at all…

But there
were
details.

Long tables, sets of shelves, then rows of
wide cylindrical objects too festooned to be identifiable. He waded
closer through fetid dark, then began to clear the mass of cobwebs
off the arcane objects…

Big cans?
he guessed, but they were
open-topped and felt thick.
Pots?

Or—

Cauldrons!

Even in the trickling heat, Fanshawe felt a
refreshing excitement. Here was the cove that Jacob Wraxall had
written of but had never been found—
The place he performed his
rituals in. No wonder the authorities never found it—it’s been
hidden all this time…

Next, his hand plowed through more and more
webs, revealing rotten shelved books. There were dozens. In the
corner, he swept off a hoary cast-iron wood stove with an
exceedingly long exhaust pipe. The pipe led all the way down the
center ceiling beam, then branched into the back of the chimney.
Fanshawe studied the pipe’s trek with his light, thinking.
Why
not just put an exhaust pipe up through the roof above the stove?
It would’ve been easier and cheaper.
But maybe…

Had Wraxall deliberately gone to the extra
trouble, to conceal the fact that there was a stove in the attic?
No one would ask questions about chimney smoke…

He pulled out several decrepit books, some
of which nearly fell apart in his hands. Close examination with his
light revealed titles either too eroded to be deciphered or simply
non-existent. But another book, larger than most, lay in a wooden
traycase; he carefully set it on the dust-cloaked table, lifted the
hinged lid, and made out:
DAEMONOLATREIA,
presumably the
title, and presumably in gold leaf. He gasped to find the Latin
text inside unflawed and the condition of the paper nearly mint.
There was another gasp when he looked at the copyright page:
Lyons, 1595.

Other books lacking traycases were severely
worm-holed, some with pages that had turned soft and tenuous as
cheesecloth, but the last one he pulled out…

Holy shit.

Fanshawe squinted in the tiny light-beam.
This was no printed book; the coarse off-color pages revealed
ghostly blurs of what had to be hand-written lines.

Wraxall’s writing?

Another diary. Each passage was prefixed by
a date between 1670 and 1675—
The last five years of Wraxall’s
life,
he recalled—and was followed by tight identical
script.

29 Aprill 1670 - ‘Twas enraptur’d in
Contemplation, and reckon’d ye Impression as if ye Prince of Air
himself sat betwixt myself and ye Clutterham Girl,
read one
line
. It smote me like a blow ye intellection that Master into
mine Ear whisper’d thus: ‘Yea, never must thou scruple to render
Expression of their Ilk,
though thou sit with them at
Service-Time. Instead, forbear such Trifles, for Trifles they are,
and let come into thy head Blasphemies, not Altruisms, extreame
Evillness, not Generosity; muse of Murther and Unwilling Consorte,
not Charitie, for this sarve as Poyson to ye God of Sheep. In Hell,
thou shalt be touch’d by ye Truth of Grand and Infernall Reward. A
God of Sheep I am not, but a God of Promises Kept. Embosom faith,
and I wilt shew thee.’ Aye! to my Mind then verily it was come to
Understand’g! Forsooth, their God is such an One like ours, onlie
Lighte, not Dark, only soft of Heart, not sturdy of Will. For such
kindly Sheep, Lucifer hath naught. ‘Tis in thy Holy Darkness that
we must needs to esteem ye Darker Visions and - shout out Praise! -
our true Intendment! As ye porridge-faced Parson qouth Scripture, I
mused upon ye Image of severing ye Clutterham Girl’s head from her
Bodie whilst ravaging her of ye Loins.

Fanshawe’s wince couldn’t have been more
intense; he didn’t know what to make of such scribbling. His
penlight scanned down to another line, which he eventually
decrypted.
2 Maye 1670 - To-day with ye Post deliverie arrived
what I have so long desir’d: ye missive from ye most laudable
Wilsonne in Wilsthorpe, grant’d license most pleas’d that he
shou’dst receive me. When my trust’d Rood was at an end of
smothering ye Poor-House Boye in ye Attick, I order’d him to
assemble all necessarie Appurtenances for ye Long Journie across ye
Great Sea.

This reference was recognizable to Fanshawe.
Wilson, Wilsonne,
he thought.
Has to be the warlock
Wraxall went to Europe to meet with—the man he bought the Gazing
Ball from…

He flipped forward several leafs, and let
the penlight beam fall on another entry.
25 December 1671 - With
Spayd and Mattock myself and Rood, at a graven Hour, un-interr’d ye
Bones of one Rose Mothersole, Grandam of a Witch of some Repute in
Regions nere Castringham. These Bones we stole away downe the
Verge, in Fish-Baskets so not to allarm ye Working-Men on their
waye to ye Woode next morn. ‘Twas a heady Brew we boil’d said Bones
into - yea, a most stout and pungent Draught of Witch-Water yet.
‘Shall I be grant’d Privilege of espying through a Looking-Glass,
my lord?’ ask’d ye loyal Sarvant Rood, and I answer’d, ‘Thou shalt,
but not this Daye and not with this Water. For ye next Glass I hath
deemed it best to use ye thus unprepar’d Water from ye Bones of
mine own Beautiful and Horrid Daughter, whom we shall un-entomb at
the especial tyme, and split me if I lie.’ Which after Rood made
Inquiry, shew’g extream fervor. ‘What, then, Master, is ye Thing we
shall venture by this Witch-Water hither?’ No long Time expir’d
when the virile Rood’s Answer was at Hand, for I engaged the
Mothersole Water in the Affordment of a
Channell
with
ye
Dead
and so call’d up ye Soul of a sartain
Wretch’d Wizard and Chymist of skille once hail’d of Old Dunnich,
one Harken Whateley, whom Wilsonne much impress’d was utmost
Important, and, indeed, ye Wizard answer’d with Ghoulish Lighte
hard by and a Stench to cause a Corpse to Gust, and grant’d what It
was I most ask’d in mine Mind - yes! - the second of ye Two
Secrets, just as was Wilsonne’s Pledge! I told Rood that our Time
would soon be next to us - whereat Lucifer be prais’d!

The second of the Two Secrets?
Fanshawe questioned.
What’s the first?
A chill that was
somehow hot made him recoil; his head ached from the constant
squint.
I’m the first person to see this in over three hundred
years, and the first to even set foot in this place since then…
Without forethought, he felt obliged to tell Abbie and Mr. Baxter
about the discovery—he was certain they’d be avid about it—but when
he mulled the prospect over, an obvious frustration made him sigh.
How would I explain coming up here in the first place? I’m
technically trespassing. Booking the room doesn’t give me the right
to rummage around in their attic.
Would they even believe him
if he told the truth, that he’d heard a sound like a footstep
creaking on old wood?
I wouldn’t believe it, so why should
they?
 And what would Abbie think of such an explanation?
She likes me, and I like her…
She’d probably think I’m
full of shit, a crackpot…

Fanshawe knew he’d have to give it more
thought. The discovery of the secret room and its contents were
distracting him; he was too excited to think with circumspect. This
additional diary alone was quite a prize. He flipped through more
leaves but found most pages blurred to illegibility. He put it away
for now.

What else is up here?
His heart
thumped at the consideration. And…

What was it Baxter
also
said?

A pentagram on the floor. A pentagram drawn
in blood.

Fanshawe held the penlight between his teeth
now, as he went to his knees and began to crawl about. His hands
ploughed away the drifts of dust, to disclose bare, very dry wooden
planks that so many centuries had turned ashen gray. He swore at
the pricks of several splinters, and sweat from his brow dripped to
the floor, leaving dark spots, but when one such spot appeared
two-toned…

He leaned down closer.

Yeah, there’s something…

A strip of something darker seemed to emerge
from his efforts, a
curved
strip. Fanshawe turned frantic,
sweeping the dust away in the direction of the marking’s layout;
the action raised a gritty fog that made him cough.
Christ, what
if a guest in another room hears me?
but the fear of that
vanished when he realized he was uncovering a
circle
on the
floor.

Unbelievable. They were right.

A few minutes’ time was all it took for
Fanshawe to sufficiently clear the intended space. Marking the wood
was a circle, six feet wide, and within the circle was a crude but
obvious five-pointed star. Now, if he leaned any closer, his nose
would touch the floor. It wasn’t paint that crafted the diagram,
but some manner of
stain.

The passage of so many years had dimmed the
stain, of course, but Fanshawe knew it was blood.

Just like Baxter said.

Several other unidentifiable characters,
geometric shapes, and letters had been drawn within the pentagram’s
inner spaces, similar to those he noticed on the pedestal of the
Gazing Ball. They
reeked
of occultism. Furthermore, at each
of the pentagram’s five points he found what might be accumulations
of wax…

Fanshawe was up and about, searching all the
more. Everything he’d found thus far verified what Baxter had said
so cynically: that Wraxall’s diary claimed the existence of
cauldrons, ritual paraphernalia, and a blood-forged pentagram in
the attic, none of which had ever been found until now.

But there was something else, too.

Shelves toward the end revealed several
cabinets. When Fanshawe opened the first one, the door actually
fell out when the rusted hinges gave way, but he caught it,
stifling a surprised shout. More books here, only better preserved
than those he’d found previously. One archaic folder with a cover
made of runneled sheet metal contained more parchment of Wraxall’s
tight handwriting. Fanshawe could barely make out what headed the
top sheet:
Copy’d & Transcript’d by J.Wraxall, Esq., from ye
Latin - Al Azif, pps. 713-751.
Next he unwrapped a tome draped
in an old white cloth with cross embroidered on it in red. Inside
the folder were countless sheets of manuscript copy, all in
different hands, and apparently torn samples of hand-scrivened
Bibles eons old. There were also drawings and engravings whose
subject matter was obvious: crouched and smiling demons, cloaked
monstrosities, smoke-belching pits just revealing wan faces in
torment. The images unsettled Fanshawe to the point of faint
nausea; they even made him feel watched, but he alternately
interrupted his inspection with quick turns of his light as if
expecting to find a face in the chamber’s dust-veiled darkness, a
grimacing
face, a
dead
face.