The nausea rose in Fanshawe"s gut, even after the scene disappeared, leaving him to sit in a dark parlor room. He didn"t have to be told that the blood he"d drunk was that of his own child.

"Forsooth, sir-these be ye secrets I design to teach."

Fanshawe"s mind spun. "I don"t want your secrets! I don"t want to know any of this, and I don"t want to be here!" Spittle flew from his lips. "I"m not evil! I don"t want to be a f.u.c.kin" warlock!"

"Nay?" Only one candle lit the room. Wraxall looked like little more than a shadow. ""Twas of thine own will that thee are here. You sought such secrets. You engaged ye looking-gla.s.s. And, you, sir, were all too eager to ride ye Bridle."

Fanshawe went limp in his chair.

"To thee I shalt bequeath ye Two Secrets of which you hath willingly read already. The test thee hath pa.s.sed. Thy mettle hath been proved. Only one other such venturer has come here, claiming to seek ye same."

Something small and dark flapped on the table before Fanshawe. He picked it up.

It was a wallet.

Fanshawe opened it to find a New York driver"s license and a picture of- "Eldred Karswell. So he did come here."

"This he did, seeking secrets such as you. Aye, but at a glance I knew that his poise was but a feign. He claimed to serve ye Benefactor, yet one of such he was not."

Karswell was a Christian mystic, Fanshawe remembered, and a former minister.

"Yet his aspect here at once introduced quite an incongruous element, and with but a glance I espied his falsehood, for his truth I glimpsed in the tone of his aura..."

Fanshawe"s gaze was dragged up by the statement. "What color? What color was Karswell"s aura?"

"White as new-felled snow-"

"And mine?" Fanshawe shook where he sat. "What color is mine?"

"Black," the word grated from Wraxall"s throat. "Same as ye hue of thy heart, like deepests earth"s blackest ichors." Wraxall"s shape paused; he seemed to be appraising Fanshawe"s reaction. "But this thee know already. In matters appertaining to ye imposture called Karswell, from the house he was cast, then encaptured by ye sheriff and deputies. "Twas a joyous sight to behold-his end."

Fanshawe remembered the image of Karswell"s face, or lack thereof. They barreled him...

Now Wraxall"s words in the dark seemed to vibrate like some suboctave groan. "You too wilst have such power as I, to play with time as thou see fit, and to thine own great gain, whereat Lucifer be praised."

The word-Lucifer-seemed to hang in the darkness like the face of a barely seen watcher.

"To one such as thyself, such things seem impossible, since we know time to be of ye Nature G.o.d hath put upon us. How wondrous, then, must it be to have in thy hands such black endowment to corrupt G.o.d"s will, and forge the impossible into that which be more than possible? Let us look then back into the countenance of G.o.d and hurl our laughter as we subvert his givings for our whimsey!"

Fanshawe let the echos of the words melt away.

"But as bearing with all great gifts, a price must be exacted-"

"What? My soul?"

Wraxall laughed out of the darkness. "You squandered that some while back, my friend."

"What, then? What"s the price?" Fanshawe demanded, no longer even caring.

"Something thee wilt freely give, so am I certain. Alas, our disquisition be nearly as its end. Naught remains save for this," and then Wraxall leaned out of the darkness, green eyes ablaze. But the image of the necromancer"s face seemed to switch back and forth between glimpses of vibrant youth and great age. His hair shifted from dark to gray, back and forth; his posture stooped, then straightened, and the hand on Fanshawe"s shoulder wavered between that of a teenager and that of a hundred-year-old man. That same hand felt hot through Fanshawe"s jacket, and then he noticed tendrils of white smoke wafting off Wraxall"s head. "*Tis history you and I shall make-a most evil history," and then Wraxall began to whisper into Fanshawe"s ear...

The moment felt like weeks. Fanshawe stood dazed in the barely lit foyer. Wraxall was gone, but a second later, a figure stepped out of the blocks of darkness: Rood.

Rood opened the front door, showing the twilit street.

"I don"t know what to do next!" Fanshawe exclaimed in a whisper.

Rood"s smile was like a mask of wax. "Just but one test remains-"

"Bulls.h.i.t!" Fanshawe"s voice boomed. "I already pa.s.sed the f.u.c.kin" test!"

"A challenge most final of thy fiber, sir. Into the even-time you must now go-"

"But the sheriff! His men!"

"-and ride thy must upon the night-wind with all things born of darkness. Should thy heart be not as stoutly black as it must, then thou shalt die most horrible, as did the interloper called Karswell."

"This is a pile of s.h.i.t! I don"t know what you"re talking about!"

"Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put-"

"But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves," another voice floated from the darkness. In increments, Evanore emerged. It was only the icy moonlight from the door that revealed her: nude, curvaceous, her bosom thrusting, and her grin wet. "Would thou take thy leave without so much as a bid of farewell?" she asked coyly. Her white hands reached out to him. Like the last glimpses of Wraxall, Evanore"s aspect changed, shifting, from adolescence to adulthood, and back again. With each impossible metamorphosis, her blood-red hair lengthened down to her b.u.t.tocks, then shrunk back up again. It was as though Fanshawe"s presence here had triggered some kind of flux that was leaking in from various time periods, which made sense once he thought about it. The same tendrils of smoke wafted off of the woman"s perfect skin. With one step, she was lissome and slim, but with each step after that her belly grew and grew till it looked close to rupture, only to shrink back down to flatness. Fanshawe stood still as a post in the ground as he watched, and he didn"t even flinch when one manner or another of Evanore wrapped her arms around him. Her mouth found his at once, her tongue invading; as she pressed closer, Fanshawe sickeningly felt her belly expand and contract, expand and contract, to mimic each infernal pregnancy. Then- "Oww!" Fanshawe roared.

Evanore was giggling, her mouth red. She"d bitten down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. Fanshawe"s reaction was faster than instantaneous, his rage leapt up and he clamped his hands about her throat and squeezed for all he was worth. Harder, harder. No conscious thoughts entered his head, just the reflex...

Harder, harder.

Evanore"s face turned pink, then blue, yet all through Fanshawe"s act, she smiled. Now the nameless flux showed the smoking brand-marks of crosses burned into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, belly, and pubis; he could hear them sizzling. Then her face and the flesh on her head disappeared in strips as if torn by an invisible beast, then...

Fanshawe"s hands were clamped to the throat of a corpse stripped of almost all its flesh.

"To thee I bid my love forever," the corpse said but it was with a voice like someone talking and vomiting at the same time, after which came an even more loathsome laugh.

Rood"s strong hands shoved Fanshawe out the door. The door clicked shut, then its bolt snapped closed. Fanshawe stood alone in the street; he glanced terrified back and forth. Moonlight streamed down on him. Where did they go? but the question was answered a moment later: "There he is!"

"Wizard! Get thee hence!"

A rabble of men shambled southward down the street. They carried torches and pitchforks. Fanshawe"s heart felt like it turned inside-out-he raced across the dirt road, into the alley he"d crossed earlier, but- BAM!.

Muzzleflash bloomed at the other end of the alley. More enraged townsmen leapt toward him over the rubbish.

Out of here, Fanshawe thought. He backtracked, jerked north, began to sprint, but stopped in his tracks.

More townsmen poured down the street. He was being converged upon by all accessible directions...

I"m caught, I"m dead, he thought. Patten and his deputies were the first to seize him. The grossly overweight sheriff"s pocked face and red, bulbous nose looked huge in the moonlight. When Fanshawe raised his flashlight, Patten slapped it away. "Thy tools of Lucifer are of no use to thee," the lawman said, "for our tools-faith-be empowered by Almighty G.o.d who hast power to rub thee to dust!"

Another man in a tri-cornered hat chicken-winged Fanshawe from behind. Now over a dozen men encircled the scene, shouting, waving torches. "To the barrel I say!" one shouted. "Wither has Humphreys taken his cur?" someone else asked. And another: "Whilst we pa.s.s this night in our beds, "tis best that this warlock pa.s.s it in the belly of the dog!"

Fanshawe couldn"t think beyond the contemplation of that ma.s.sive dog. Several men spit on him, and one prodded hard him with a stick. Fanshawe yelled when the man propping him up yanked his elbows higher to twist his shoulder joints.

"Pray, Sheriff, Humphreys and his cur be in ye fields!"

"We"ve not time to wait!" Patten blared. "We must kill this sarvant of Satan before he speaks hexes upon us!"

Fanshawe strained in his captor"s clench; a frantic glance to the Wraxall house showed him Rood and Evanore peeking out a front window. They were grinning.

"Keep him in thy clutches, Cooper," the sheriff said. "Hold him fast and still..." Patten was uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap on an unlit lantern. "Let him decide if h.e.l.lfires be so hot as this!" and then the lantern was upended over Fanshawe"s head.

His face wanted to suck in on itself. A thick, fishy smelling oil saturated his hair, then drooled down his face and chest. Next, his pants were unfastened, his underwear pulled out, and more oil was poured. "No doubt ye fiend hath defiled many a Christian woman with this," Patten said, "and put many a devilish babe in her belly. Well, warlock, here be recompense!"

The crowd surrounding Fanshawe quickly stepped back, then he was released. He only had time to attempt one lunging step before- "Burn the monster!" Patten ordered.

-a lit torch was plunged right between his legs.

Flames erupted from his groin; Fanshawe was suddenly dressed in a suit of fire. His hair smoked off his head in a single burst; his face crackled and shrunk. The more he wheeled about in the street, the hotter the flames grew.

"Aye," someone said approvingly, "tonight Humphrey"s beast shalt have cooked meat for its supper..."

Fanshawe"s eyes popped. He could smell his own flesh burning, and as for his genitals, they shrunk and bubbled like marshmallows dropped in a campfire. Amid pain a thousand times worse than anything he could imagine, his fiery face turned to something like slab-bacon and his mouth opened and he screamed louder than a trumpet- *

-and collapsed, rolling in turmoil. Each time he let out a breath, smoke expelled. But as he flailed in the dirt- What the- He realized that the pain that had coc.o.o.ned him was gone, and where his eyes had popped, he could now see the perfect, star-flecked twilight above. Fanshawe turned over and sat up...

He was intact.

No oil soaked his hair and clothing, and the porky smell of flesh roasting had vanished. His hands went to his crotch to find it dry and his slacks still fastened.

Then he looked up and saw the Gazing Ball. The metallic orb atop the pedestal was stained and tarnished, not clean and brand-new as he"d seen it last. Fanshawe heaved a sigh and dropped his face into his hands.

"I"m back..."

Rood"s and Evanore"s words refreshed his memory: Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put- But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves...

"Well, I sure as s.h.i.t screamed loud enough for that when I was on fire," he muttered. In spite of all he"d experienced, he jumped up, frenzied with excitement. A glance to his watch showed him it was ten minutes past midnight. It was a lot later than that when I was in the town..., but then he recalled what Wraxall had told him about time: He who masters it OWNS it.

Fanshawe rushed out of the cove and dashed up to the highest point of Witches Hill.

Below, the town glittered in its lights. He stared down, knowing that this was the town of today, with its asphalt streets, its sidewalks, its streetlamps, its tourist hotel complete with swimming pool.

But that"s not where I just came from...

He squinted and could easily make out late-nighters sitting at the cafe, and several more crossing Main Street into the tavern. He even saw the annoying woman in tights, and her even more annoying dog, out for a nighttime stroll. At the town hall, the lights were blinking off, and several people were dispersing from the front doors. One of them seemed to be heading toward the inn. Probably Abbie, he guessed, now that her meeting"s over, but he couldn"t be sure.

Fanshawe reached into his pocket and withdrew the looking-gla.s.s. He raised it to his eye and looked at the exact same place in the street where he"d thought he"d seen Abbie...

Now, of course, she wasn"t there. The town of three hundred years ago was there instead, and what Fanshawe saw specifically, on the unpaved street, was the same torch- and pitchfork-wielding crowd that had just doused him with oil and set him aflame. At this moment, though, many of the townspeople were running away as if terrified, while the others stood with fear-stamped faces and mouths agape. Fanshawe thought he could even hear them- He kept the gla.s.s to his eye and cupped his ear.

"By his magic, he"s escaped into thin air!" someone shouted.

Another voice: "And out of it he may reappear when we least expect!"

In the viewing field, Patten waved a torch back and forth. "Hear me, good Christians-the devil be near at hand tonight! Take to thy beds! Bolt thy doors and keep thy Bibles close!" and the parson added with a stammer, "If our pruh-prayers be sufficient intentful, then G.o.d shall keep ye adversary at bay!"

The remainder of the crowd scattered in all directions, boots tramping. Seconds later, the street stood empty and in utter silence.

Fanshawe could hear his own eyes blink.

What now? he asked himself, but he already knew the answer...

He swerved the looking-gla.s.s to the Wraxall house.

One window after another stood dark; some were even shuttered closed. But...what did he expect to see? More of the atrocious sights he"d witnessed personally? Evanore, nude and beckoning? Instead, he found the drab, weathered windows blank, and shutters pale. None were lit- Wait...

Fanshawe had lost track of which floor he was surveying; nevertheless, one window seemed to emerge from its own uniform darkness until the most wan candlelight flickered within its frame. Soon, in a slowness that could be called ethereal, a shape moved from within-the shape of a man.

It took Fanshawe"s eyes a minute to acclimate.

Why am I not surprised?

The man in the window was Jacob Wraxall. The cuffed and collared sorcerer leaned out the window, peering for something. His narrowed eyes scanned back and forth, up and down, until- He appeared to have found whatever it was he sought. Very slowly, he smiled, raised a similar looking-gla.s.s to his eye...

Chills that were strangely scalding flushed their way up Fanshawe"s back. For some inscrutable reason, he felt that Wraxall"s gesture of raising his own gla.s.s served as a cue for Fanshawe...

Fanshawe zoomed tighter, until the window came in close, then Wraxall"s face came in close...

Then...closer, until only a third of the necromancer"s face filled Fanshawe"s circular viewing field, then- Even closer.

More. Closer.

Fanshawe zoomed directly into the lens of Wraxall"s looking-gla.s.s, then he kept turning the supernatural ring tighter and tighter, delving deeper and deeper, such that he thought-impossibly-that he was actually zooming in through the iris of Wraxall"s eye itself...

More!

...then deeper and deeper and deeper, into the warlock"s very optic nerve and straight into his brain...

Holy s.h.i.t...

...then out of his brain and down, down as if down into the earth. Fanshawe"s vision descended akin to a drill, boring through, first, soil, then the rocky crust of the world. He stood electrified as he was forced to bear this resistless black witness, yet soon the notion of what propelled him...changed. Where first it had been actions of his own will that had begun this phantasmagoric trek, he now realized it was another will which had superseded: his vision through the gla.s.s was no longer doing the delving but instead it had been commandeered and pulled, as though a berserk pair of hands at the bottom of this seemingly bottomless journey were pulling on a rope, and the rope was Fanshawe"s eyesight.

Sensing a terror, he willed himself to retreat but all that responded to his efforts was an increase in the evil velocity that had taken over. Helpless, came the whimpering thought, but with it came a sound like a distant yet incalculably vast chuckle. From here, Fanshawe descended fast and sure as a stone dropped into a mineshaft miles deep, dropped, yes, into darkness.

The darkness was just as incalculable as the speed by which he plummeted; it was a blackness that existed as far more than an absolute absence of light but as an ent.i.ty of its own, that magnified as the screaming, plunging lightlessness rose. Fanshawe was deafened by this speed; he felt his psyche begin to boil from the unearthly, brain-jarring friction. Was he going mad? He may have even shrieked laughter as his senses were pulled further; he managed to think of a roller-coaster car fired through a cannon barrel, but just when the "car"-Fanshawe-would make impact and explode- His soaring vision stopped.

The termination of the manic velocity left him staring at still more of the absolute blackness of this realm, but after the pa.s.sage of some time, that blackness seemed to take on a glistening, like something wet, and then?

It began to move.