Witch Water Read online

  1Witch-Water

  by Edward Lee

  Smashwords Edition

  Necro Publications

  — 2012 —

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  WITCH WATER

  © 2012 by Edward Lee

  Cover art © 2012 David G. Barnett

  This Smashwords edition © 2012 Necro Publications

  ISBN: 9781452471518

  Cover, Book Design & Typesetting:

  David G. Barnett

  Fat Cat Graphic Design

  http://www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com

  a Necro Publication

  5139 Maxon Terrace • Sanford, FL 32771

  http://www.necropublications.com

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  DEDICATION: For Don D’Auria. Thank you for making my professional dreams come true for the past ten years. I owe you bigtime.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Foremost, I must acknowledge the great British horror writer M.R. James (1862-1936) whose work, as many times as I’ve re-read it, continues to entertain me in a way that I can only describe as superlative. The bulk of James’ work, I believe, demonstrates something very close to a model of perfection in the field, while there are numerous of his scenes which I deem as among the scariest ever written. (If you haven’t read James, do.) This humble novel is my contemporary tribute to Mr. James, wherein I’ve taken the liberty of, in a sense, sequelizing my two very favorite stories by him, “A View From A Hill” and “Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance.” Personally, I rank James as second only to H.P. Lovecraft as the most unique, influential, and important author to ever wield a pen in the horror genre.

  Next, I must acknowledge the following for their loyalty, support, help and encouragement with regard to my career: Don D’Auria, Wendy Brewer, Dave Barnett, Bob from Melbourne, Larry Roberts, Sergeant Andrew Myers, Bob Strauss, Corie Fromkin, Robert Price, Thomas Bauduret, Greg James, Qwee, reelsplatter, Joey Lombardo, Scott Berke, Alex McVey, Sandy Brock and Tony, Kyle N., Sheri Gambino, Tastybabysyndrome, Shroud Magazine, Monrozombi, Zombified420, sikahtik, rhfactornl, wm ollie, Konnie, Dianna Busby; Gorch; Jeff, Rose, and Carlton at Deadite; Ashton Heyd, Bob Chaplin, Southern Blood, Hexsyn, KK, Kim, Jan, Bartek Czartoryski, Michael Preissl, K in D, TravisD, Dancingwith2leftfeet, Dathar, eubankscs, brownie, and mypaperpast, Big T, brownie, drunk yorkshireman.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  (I)

  Like stepping from one world into another, Stewart Fanshawe mused. Manhattan was hours behind him now, and the turnpike’s monotonous panorama of asphalt, concrete, and flurries of cars had suddenly lapse-dissolved into a scape of plush foliage, hundred-foot-tall trees, and shaded, curving forest roads. Fanshawe had to catch his breath from all that green, green that seemed bright to the point of surreality. The more distance I put between myself and New York, the better… His black Audi glided around each tree-lined road, with brilliant sunlight bursting in through myriad leaf-laden boughs. Gorgeous out here, he reflected. All this stunning scenery made it difficult to keep his eyes focused on the road, yet he welcomed the distraction.

  Distractions kept his mind off the memories.

  The car sucked down to the clean pavement through each deep, winding turn. New Hampshire, indeed, was another world.

  Fanshawe was fifty but looked forty, which he attributed to good genes, exercise, and a prudent diet. He was also, either by luck or aptitude, phenomenally wealthy. His eyes widened behind the leather-sleeved wheel. I’ve got everything any man could want, so why…

  He didn’t allow the thought to finish itself. The truth was, Fanshawe felt haunted by ghosts of himself. Who would know looking at me? he asked his reflection in the rearview. Every involuntary glance to the mirror was escorted by a hostile invective: Pervert! Scumbag! And the worst: Peeper! He was letting his ruminations turn sour against his will. His expression transformed to outright stolidness as his eyes continued to re-find themselves in the silver oval of glass.

  He muttered this to himself: “Remove yourself from the purveying environment…,” and at once he recollected his most recent appointment with Dr. Tilton who, in spite of her well-tended good looks, seemed always to have a reserved cast to her face, as though she were keeping too many thoughts unvoiced. Fanshawe could never figure that out: she was either captivated by him, or disgusted. This was how she always regarded him from behind her desk, and with that stiff, clinical aura about her head. Fanshawe himself lay on the proverbial “couch.”

  “Addicts,” she began, “even in the arena of paraphilic addictions such as yours, see the best recovery statistics when they willingly remove themselves from the purveying environment.”

  “Purveying? Paraphilic?” Her terminology never ceased to irritate him. “Give it to me straight, Doctor.”

  “Paraphilia, Mr. Fanshawe, as we’ve discussed, is a fetish syndrome that’s become advanced enough to have destructive repercussions.”

  “I just hate the sound of the word. It makes me feel like a pervert.”

  The ink-black hair shimmered in a slice of sunlight from the window. She was probably his age but at this precise moment, when a constrained smile came to her lips, she could’ve been teen-aged; he could easily imagine her thinking, That’s because you ARE a pervert, Mr. Fanshawe. You ARE a pervert… “The fact that your obsession cost you your marriage is proof of its destructive properties—”

  “It cost me more than that, it cost me millions in settlement money. Not to mention what my own shylock lawyers fleeced out of me.”

  A berating smirk reverted the chisel-sharp woman back to middle age. “And, as we’ve also discussed, it’s your good fortune that your ex-wife agreed to settle out of court rather than taking the matter public. You’re luckier still to have been able to engage the lawyers who got you acquitted criminally. It seems to me that you can hardly argue with their competence.”

  Fanshawe’s sigh conceded to her. “I know, you’re right. I’m lucky that I had the money, and that I’ve made something of myself.”

  “Yes, and you’d do well to remember that. It could’ve been much worse. Instead, your therapy has gone well, you’ve defeated your paraphilic tendencies, but now…”

  “I can’t come to a shrink for the rest of my life.”

  The woman’s immaculately manicured nails strummed once on the desktop. “Correct. It’s time to move on, to remove yourself from the…” She raised a finger, like an elementary school teacher attempting to goad answers from her students, to test their attention. “From the what, Mr. Fanshawe?”

  He almost sputtered. “From the purveying environment—”

  “Exactly. In other words, the environment which provides you with the target-objects of your…problem.”

  “That might be tough. My companies—”

  “Your companies run themselves, you’ve said so many times. You don’t need to be in the city anymore, Mr. Fanshawe. My advice? Now? Go somewhere far away for six months at least, someplace different, someplace therapeutic.”

  “Okay. But where?”

  And here was the where, as he now drove on roads he’d never seen, through a state whose sheer beauty nearly shocked him. Yes, he’d been in the city far, far too long, while his constant business trips of the past had taken him to
still more cities—all the same, just different names. He felt abstractedly naked for once not being surrounded by skyscrapers and urban rush hour. Dr. Tilton’s voice seemed to trace behind his mind: Where? Somewhere you’ve never been, the country perhaps, fresh air, the great outdoors. Someplace where your former demons can no longer tempt you into a relapse…

  A half an hour later, the large wood-stained sign greeted him: WELCOME TO HAVER-TOWNE, NEW HAMPSHIRE - POP. 154 - EST. 1641. “So I guess this is it,” he told himself, idling the Audi over Main Street’s paving of intricate cobblestones. Quaint shops and cafes lined either side, all surprisingly new for a town founded so long ago. Progress, he figured. It’s just another tourist town. I’ll bet there’s even a Starbucks, and at the exact moment he’d thought that, a Starbucks did indeed come into view; and next, a Travelodge. Down the road, however, a meeting hall could be seen, and a church of painted clapboard; its steeple lacked a bell, sporting instead a figure of Christ with outstretched arms.

  For whatever reason, Fanshawe wished that at least some of the town’s structures went back to older times, and now his wish was being granted. BACK STREET, announced the sign at the next turn; Fanshawe followed his Mapquest printout, then marveled at the difference. Here shops were called “Shoppes,” old brick rather than new ones comprised walls, while several antique dealers sat in a queue, boasting storefronts that could’ve been a hundred years old. There were even old horse-posts and feeding troughs, probably fabricated, but Fanshawe still liked the feel they rendered to the town at large. He smiled, then, when he passed a tavern called YE OLDE DRAUGHT-HOUSE. It was all for show, he knew, but any appearance other than the metropolic was the appearance he craved.

  Metropolises were rife with windows, more than the eye could count. Fanshawe knew that windows were, to him, what drugs were to the addict…

  Sedate pedestrians strolled along the sidewalk, passing shops that one would expect in such a place: candle shops, a glass-blower, Colonial prints, “Georgian Era” furniture, a tobacconist’s, a chocolatier’s. More horse-posts passed him, then an elevated “town-crier” pedestal complete with a dummy crier. Next, he slowed to eye what appeared to be an authentic pillory, imagining some poor petty thief centuries ago on humiliating display and a target for rotten tomatoes. Behind it sat several old men chatting in rocking chairs, one of whom unbelievably smoked a long, thin-stemmed meerschaum pipe.

  “Here it is,” Fanshawe verified to himself. Shadows crossed his face, and then he parked before a manse-style, four-story hotel built with an impressive cross-gable. Next he noticed the old-fashioned swing-sign: THE WRAXALL INN - A HISTORIC HOTEL, yet a smaller sign beside it read: WELCOME TO THE SALEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.

  “The Salem of New Hampshire, huh?”

  He got out of the Audi, then peered down the street, noticing that virtually no residential buildings or other hotels could be seen from this vantage point. Any other time, the discovery would have irked him but now it brought relief.

  “Not a lot of windows for prying eyes…”

  He’d long ago discarded his mini-binoculars and other voyeur’s gear, vowing to never own such instruments again.

  The hotel’s pre-Revolutionary decor pleased him a great deal, in spite of its being a bit exaggerated. Greeting him in the small, cozy atrium was a six-foot high oil painting of George Washington in full military accouterments, standing proud next to another officer.

  “No, Washington never slept here,” a crisp, crackly voice declared behind him. Fanshawe turned to face a stout, amiable-appearing man with a bald head and visor like an old bank teller. He looked in his sixties. “But the man next to him did, General Nathanael Greene. Greene kicked Cornwallis right in the tail, he did. Turned the tide of the war.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not up on the Revolution,” Fanshawe said, “but it’s quite an imposing painting.”

  “And though Washington never stayed here,” the man continued, bemused, “he did get drunk in the Draught House after the surrender. They still have the same stool that he sat on.”

  Fanshawe doubted it but he was entertained by the thought. “I’ll have to sit on it sometime, and feel closer to history.”

  The bald man let out a crotchety laugh, then extended his hand. “I’m Bill Baxter. Would you be—”

  “Stew Fanshawe,” Fanshawe said and shook hands.

  “Glad to have you, Mr. Fanshawe. Follow me up and I’ll show you your room. I hope you’ll be pleased—when you booked online, the suite you wanted was unavailable—”

  “Yeah, but that’s no big deal,” Fanshawe said and began to follow Baxter’s stout frame up a curving stairwell.

  “No, but I was about to say, the man who’d booked it previously…left earlier than we expected, so the room is yours.”

  “That’s great,” but Fanshawe had detected something odd about Baxter’s revelation, a pause, a hesitation that seemed undue. Why didn’t he just say the guy checked out early?

  The heavily carpeted fourth-floor hall stood as rife with antique furniture as the rest of the hotel. Ensconced marble busts seemed to take brooding stock of him as Fanshawe passed. Baxter led him through an immaculate nine-paneled door into a plush two-chamber suite which could have passed for the rooms of a Colonial governor or eighteenth-century plantation owner: aged paneling, a carven-mantled fireplace, faux candles in genuine Sheffield holders, ornately tasseled throw carpets, etc. A wood-stained armoire occupied one corner, with fine brass fixtures. The bed was a great high four-poster without veils.

  “This really is something,” Fanshawe complimented. He felt already at ease by the place. A glance through a dormer window showed him sharp sunlight bathing the cobblestones and store-faces below, while a cushioned bow window on the wall perpendicular revealed mellow green hills, a grassy rise of hillocks, and, beyond, the fringe of the forest belt. The sights calmed Fanshawe faster than a Xanax. “I couldn’t ask for a better room,” he finally said. “It’s just the change of surroundings I need.”

  Baxter grinned, thumbing out of date suspenders. “A city fella, I take it?”

  “New York, New York.”

  “No surprise, sir. Lotta city folks come to Haver-Towne for a quick weekend getaway. No rat race here, no road rage, none of that nonsense. Just quiet nights, fresh air, the great outdoors…”

  Fanshawe smiled involuntarily. “You sound exactly like my therapist, Mr. Baxter.”

  “We ain’t got those here either!” the proprietor laughed, but then his voice quieted. “Oh, and don’t worry. We’re very tight-lipped here. Your secret’s safe with us.”

  Fanshawe’s eyes snapped to him; he gulped. “Secret?”

  “Well, I read Forbes, the WSJ, and such, and see your picture on occasion, yes, sir. It’s exciting to have someone famous choose our hotel. Just want you to know that your privacy will be respected like nobody’s business.”

  Fanshawe released a relieving breath. What had he been thinking? Buddy, if you knew MY secret, you’d probably call the cops and have me thrown out on my ass. ”Thanks very much. But I wouldn’t exactly call myself famous. I’m just a financier, not a sports star.”

  “Oh, we get them too, ’specially in the winter. That man A-Rod, I don’t care what the papers say, he’s a dang nice guy. Now, if you’d care to give me your car keys, I’ll have someone bring up your bags.”

  Fanshawe relinquished the keys. “It’s the black Audi. Thanks.”

  Baxter turned for the door. “If you need anything, just ring the desk. And be sure to have a look at our relic displays downstairs once you’ve settled in.”

  “Relic displays? What kind of r—”

  But Baxter had left faster than a blink. Relics? He must mean Colonial knickknacks. Fanshawe took a slow walk through both rooms, maintaining approval. He ran his hand over a lyre-back chair, then peeked through more rich, velvety drapes over the bedroom’s most westward window, to see still more luxuriant hills: a comforting vision. “Thank God,” he whispered, his face to
the curtain-edge. “Not a single window to be seen. No target-object access…”

  More of the room’s details stole his attention. A miniature wheel-clock ticked from a relief nook in the wall; a statuette of a Minute Man stood poised, bayoneted musket at the ready; a small vase spouted delicate roses fashioned from paper-thin curls of crimson glass. Cool, he thought. But next he was eyeing a framed engraving, or maybe it was an old tintype: a rather creepy manor house drenched in moonlight. Fanshawe moved his face closer, for it seemed that a thin, bent figure was climbing into a first-floor window. Was there also the tiniest image of a nude woman inside, screaming at the figure’s appearance?

  No…, because he blinked and saw that the “figure” was just an oddly shaped bush. There must’ve been dust or something in Fanshawe’s eye.

  He wasn’t sure what impelled him to look upward, but when he did, his eyes found an oblong panel in the ceiling. Trapdoor? he wondered. More than likely, either an access way or an attic. Next, he found himself scanning an in-wall bookshelf, noticing the gilded spines of tomes that appeared to be very old but actually weren’t when he took some out. They were merely “classic” editions of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Edgar Allen Poe, and the like, made to look old. However, lower on the shelf…

  Hmm…

  The next book he picked was no “classic” but instead a calfskin-bound smaller-format book with a faded cover. Ye Witch-Tryalls of Haver-Towne. Fanshawe’s eyes narrowed when he carefully flipped to the copyright page and found the printing date: 1699. Immediately, he felt an abstract wallop nearly like a physical blow. This is REALLY old. It must be quite valuable, so why was it sitting here? He flipped through pages fine as rice paper, noticing the tight, antique type-style of the day, with all nouns capitalized and very often the word “ye” used for “the.” One page was an elaborate engraving, with the heading: “Ye Arrest of Jacob Wraxall by High-Sheriff Patten.” The plate depicted a stout man with a star-shaped badge and a tri-cornered hat, solemn-faced, escorting a thin older man toward a Colonial gaol-house. The prisoner wore buckled shoes, knee breeches, and a pleated tunic front; the expression on his Van Dyked face could only be described as sinister.