At once he was glancing abruptly upward, as though some inner monitor of his subconscious had so directed him. Why?

Yes, he was glancing upward, at the trapdoor...

Again: why?

He'd already been up in the attic, and had found-just as Mr. Baxter had-nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, next, he was standing once more on the bed, reaching up, and unprizing the trapdoor. Moments later, he was standing stooped in the warm, wood- and dust-scented s.p.a.ce. He swept his penlight to either side, and if anything- This place is even duller than it was when I first came up...

Why he paid this second visit to the attic he couldn't guess. He came back down, now sweating and irritable, and replaced the panel in the ceiling.

He undressed, presumed to prepare for bed but now...

Same as the impulse to return to the attic, he found himself standing before an opened dresser drawer. He was not conscious of the reason he'd chosen to do so, but then he looked down and saw...

...that d.a.m.n looking-gla.s.s.

He couldn't even remember opening the drawer that he'd stashed it in. Why haven't I put it back where it belongs? What might Baxter and Abbie wonder if they discovered it missing, so soon after Fanshawe had asked about it?

Tomorrow! he charged himself, I'll put it that thing back in the case and never touch it again! Enough s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around!

Once in bed, Fanshawe found it easy to ignore his previous aggravation, by thinking about Abbie. He smiled in the darkness, sinking into the pillow. My first date in ages... He fell asleep knowing that he couldn't wait to see Abbie again.

Wouldn't it be nice if he saw her in his dreams?

(II).

He doesn't see her, but he hears her, as he did so recently during his first nightmare in the Wraxall Inn. Her voice echoes like drips in a cavern as the black mental fog seeps away to show him a mob of irate townsfolk in colonial dress forming a riotous half-circle on Witches Hill. Two more townsmen drag a distraught young blond woman into the clearing's center-point. She's in shackles and dressed in rags, smudge-faced, and beaten.

They drag her to the barrel with the hole in it.

When the blond convict sees the barrel, she silently screams; her face reddens in horror as the townsmen lower her into the barrel.

"They'd put the witch in the barrel," Abbie's voice repeats, "pull her head out through the hole and keep it in place by sliding this thing called a U-collar around her neck..."

A townsman's hand reaches into the hole in the barrel, then pulls the woman's head through. Someone else immediately locks her head in place with the horse-shoe-shaped collar. The woman's eyes bulge each time she tries-and fails-to dislodge her head. She looks as though her very spirit is being wrenched out of her.

"Like a pillory only...with a barrel?" Fanshawe hears himself repeat the question he'd asked only hours ago.

"Well, sort of. See, after they did that-"

Sheer horror causes the whites of the blond woman's eyes to turn scarlet, for she sees something approaching...

"...they'd bring out the dog-"

A husky colonist steps out of the parting crowd, leading a slavering black Doberman on the end of a cord. The animal is gut-sucked, its ribs showing from the time it has been deliberately denied sustenance. Foam flies each time it barks in silence.

The townsman has trouble keeping the animal back, yet he seems amused, as does the crowd, each time he scuffles forward, letting the beast come only an inch from the screaming convict's face, only to pull it back to prolong her torment. Back and forth, back and forth-he does this for several minutes, until the sullen minister nudges the sheriff. Then Sheriff Patten nods solemn-faced to the dog's master.

The Doberman is released, and it lunges toward the barrel.

Abbie's voice seems to spiral away: "The dog would attack and...eat the flesh off the witch's head..."

The wide-open eye of Fanshawe's dreaming mind watches the Doberman's jaws close over the top of the woman's head-until it yank-yank-yanks off most of her scalp, woofs it down, then goes back for the ears, then the cheeks and lips, then the- -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.

d.a.m.n 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 b.u.t.t 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 ma.s.s 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 h.o.a.ry 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 t.i.tles 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 t.i.tle, 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 s.h.i.t.

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

Wraxall's writing?

Another diary. Each pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d of Sheep. In h.e.l.l, thou shalt be touch'd by ye Truth of Grand and Infernall Reward. A G.o.d of Sheep I am not, but a G.o.d of Promises Kept. Embosom faith, and I wilt shew thee.' Aye! to my Mind then verily it was come to Understand'g! Forsooth, their G.o.d is such an One like ours, onlie Lighte, not Dark, only soft of Heart, not st.u.r.dy 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 a.s.semble 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-Gla.s.s, 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 Gla.s.s 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 trespa.s.sing. 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 s.h.i.t, 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 circ.u.mspect. 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 p.r.i.c.ks 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 acc.u.mulations 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 ma.n.u.script 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.

A final bordered drawing amongst the stolen pages showed a scene that to even Fanshawe-now, and given his unease-came as no surprise: a hooded wizard in a surplice of shining jewels, standing in a pentagram with candles burning at each point. But the smoke of the candles contorted into thin, lurid figures like vexatious phantoms; some had warped faces that seemed to evaluate Fanshawe directly. Nude, sultry witches cavorted about the circle, some with fangs, some with horns, some with b.l.o.o.d.y grins; the artist's skill hid no details of their physicalities. Below the scene read PENETR. AD INTER. MORT. - NEK. SEPT. WILS. Of this, Fanshawe could decipher nothing, but why did the "Wils." make him think of "Wilson" or "Wilsonne," the name of the warlock Wraxall conferred with in England? And the "Nek." must be an abbreviation for "Necromancer." Whatever the case, the artist's rendition of the subject showed only thin, baneful eyes peering beyond the hood. The warlock's left hand grasped a limp loop of something-entrails?-while the right hand held, of all things, a looking-gla.s.s. And in the background?

An erect, orbed object very similar to the Gazing Ball on the hillock.

This is unreal, Fanshawe thought. The hot chill returned, along with the conception that this room was steeped in evil, the byproducts of a man who truly believed himself to be in league with forces contrary to all things decent. Fanshawe entertained that a malignancy hung in the air as thick as the centuries-old dust that he'd raised. These were not logical things to think but he couldn't escape the notion. He put the books away, his mind racing along with the apprehensions that kept rising with the dust. He had the impression that the cabineted books were those which Wraxall valued above the others. His most important reference material- Several more books and folders rested in the cabinet's age-scented maw, most protected by fabric wraps half decomposed. He couldn't wait to examine these as well, in good light, but there was something else that further fanned his excitement, however dark it may have been.

He nearly retreated when a second cabinet offered a sack full of mummified hands. f.u.c.k! he thought, but then deeper in the cabinet he found a several other small sacks, but these were full of bones-bones that were beyond a doubt human. Wraxall boiled them, for his rituals, for his...witch-water... In a third cabinet he found delicate wooden racks of corked gla.s.s cylinders that reminded him of overlarge test tubes. Could these contain the witch-water Wraxall had supposedly said was here?

Oh, G.o.d- A gulp and a shudder told him no, for when he held a tube up to the penlight's beam he detected a diminutive form in the bottom of the tube, a form suspended in murky liquid the color of honey. Fanshawe paled and put the rack back. The form was a human fetus.

Wraxall purchased aborted fetuses, he remembered. He ground them up and burned them for- But why finish the awful thought?

One last cabinet sat against the end wall. When he opened it, the hinge keened so loudly he feared it might be overheard, but... I've come too far to stop now. He opened the cabinet fully.

More verification of what Baxter scoffed at sat neatly stacked before Fanshawe's eyes. A dozen exact duplicates of the looking-gla.s.s down in his room.

He picked one out, and a ridge formed on his brow when it realized its duplicity wasn't quite exact.

A lot lighter than the other one, he told himself, hefting it. Then he noticed that it had no lenses in place.

The explanation was obvious: These looking-gla.s.ses aren't filled.

Because that's what Wraxall did. Abbie implied that "witch-water" had multiple uses for the pract.i.tioner of the witchcraft, but her words drifted back into his head: ...my guess is that Wraxall filled the inside of the looking-gla.s.s with the witch-water, and this would somehow produce an occult effect.

No, these gla.s.ses weren't filled but the one Fanshawe had stolen was. And when he looked through that same gla.s.s last night...

An hallucination? Or an occult effect?

He deflected a coughing fit from the dust when he rummaged further, but what he hoped to find wasn't far to seek. Several shelves on the bottom of the cabinet were lined with gla.s.s-stopped flasks-much like hip-flasks-sealed in black wax. Here it is...

His light showed him that yellowed labels adorned each flask, and on each label someone-probably Wraxall-had written tight, cursive initials.

J. C., S.O., E. H., and several others. The initials were obviously people-whose bones Wraxall had culled from their graves. Fanshawe immediately picked up a flask, knowing what it contained: water.

But not just ANY kind of water...

He dusted the flask off and shined his light through it, finding its contents almost but not completely clear.

Wraxall boiled the bones of witches and THIS is some of that water.

There could be no question: the occultist had planned to fill these gla.s.ses with the water in these same flasks, and then look through them.

What would he see?

And what did I see when I looked out last night?

Hunching lower, he quickly examined all of the flasks, twenty in all. Three of them had been labeled E.W.