Witch 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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the hard work of this author.

— | — | —

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.”