Suddenly the back of a naked woman appeared in the window-his window. He focused closer and thought that her hair was a shimmering deep red. When she turned, he felt a jolt. The woman"s large, bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s jutted-more voyeur"s pay-dirt-but he scarcely paid the image mind, for there was something else much more paramount that he"d noticed first.

The woman was pregnant, very pregnant, undoubtedly close to term.

Her great, white belly stretched out pinp.r.i.c.k tight, the navel inverted like a b.u.t.ton of flesh. Was she talking to someone in the room? Her movements indicated an anxious expectation, though Fanshawe couldn"t imagine why he believed this. Moreover, he couldn"t believe any of what he was seeing.

How could he?

I must be dreaming, he tried to convince himself. Though nothing of the past few minutes seemed at all like a dream. The looking-gla.s.s"s eyepiece felt connected to him now. As he continued to stare into the window that could only be his, the pregnant woman began to crudely caress herself, and then- The window turned pitch dark, like a candle being blown out.

Fanshawe lowered the gla.s.s; he was too afraid to look anymore. What he"d seen, or thought he"d seen, made his mind feel like it was shredding. He shoved the looking-gla.s.s back into his pocket and stalked away down the path.

I think there"s something seriously wrong with me...

(IV).

His eyes felt peeled open when he returned to town. Both Back and Main Streets stretched out charming and quaint as always. Only a few pa.s.sersby were about, evidently on their way to or from the tavern, or one of the late-night cafes. What bothered Fanshawe most was the vibrancy of the street lamps- Street lamps that weren"t there a little while ago. But his unease toned down in a moment. He was a logical man, so there had to be a logical explanation.

Unsure steps took him back into the hotel. He crossed the near empty atrium, thought of putting the looking-gla.s.s back into the display case-though he still didn"t remember ever taking it out-but changed his mind when a pair of professors loped drunkenly out of the pub. I"ll put it back tomorrow, he resolved, and I better make d.a.m.n sure no one sees me. A quick glance into the pub showed him Mr. Baxter, not Abbie, idly tending the bar, but then he remembered seeing her: undressing, getting ready for bed. Yep, I"m a sc.u.mbag, all right-peeping on a girl I"ve got a DATE with tomorrow... He thought of stopping in to say h.e.l.lo but realized that conversation was the last thing he desired just now.

What the h.e.l.l was I seeing back there?

He hastened for the elevator, hoping Baxter hadn"t noticed him. What a day. A dead body and now...this... He couldn"t have gotten to his room faster; the hall"s m.u.f.fled silence seemed to chase him inside like a pursuer.

The pursuer, he knew, was guilt.

Not too long ago, he"d been spying on some women on this very floor.

He locked the door behind him, then sat on the high bed with a nervy sigh. Only now did a flattened sensation at his groin tell him that he"d m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed on the hill. Disgust drew lines in his face. Probably while looking at Abbie. What a sick slob. Ordinarily his mind would be swimming in all those delectable images, but now his anguish sabotaged them. Other images struck him now, images not of Abbie or the other women he"d seen, but images of the town.

Fanshawe took out the looking-gla.s.s, noting again how heavy it felt for such a small object. Acid trickled in his stomach.

Images of the town. The town...changed...

Yes, just after he"d spied Abbie naked in her room, her abundant b.r.e.a.s.t.s so apparent as she removed her contacts, his eyes showed him that the town had indeed changed. And it had seemed to change at the precise stroke of midnight- From a bell that doesn"t exist.

He dropped the gla.s.s on the bed like something that nauseated him.

Ridiculous. He shook his head, then put his brow into his hand. I"m not cracking up, am I? Now his watch-not a distant bell-beeped once.

Just go to bed...

He began to undress but found his eyes oddly lured upward, toward the ceiling. The trapdoor, he thought, staring at it. In a moment he was standing on the bed- feeling ludicrous in his boxer shorts and Gaultier shirt-reaching up. He pushed on the board, slid it off, then stood on tiptoes and patted his hand around just inside the egress. There, he thought, feeling something. He pulled it out: a rope ladder.

Why am I doing this? the question drifted but it never solidified. He hopped off the bed, slipped a penlight in his shirt pocket, then grabbed the unstable rungs, ignoring the rope"s sheer age. Carefully but with determination he couldn"t fathom, he climbed up. Eventually he was standing stooped in a long narrow wood-scented chamber. There were no dormer windows or vents-nothing to offer light or air; in seconds he was shedding sweat. He aimed the penlight around, finding nothing of interest, just several boxes-reading in Magic Marker XMAS DECORATIONS-and piles of what appeared to be old drapes. Dust lay an inch thick on the floor but his light showed him the footprints of someone else. They appeared very new.

Had someone been up here recently? Probably Mr. Baxter, putting the decorations away after Christmas.

But Fanshawe couldn"t figure why he"d come up here. What did he expect to find? I"m just getting nuttier and nuttier, I guess. Still, he walked down the narrow s.p.a.ce, fanning his light. Tree sap-more than likely cooked out of the rafters and wood slats from hundreds of years of hot summers-hardened like tinted glue everywhere he looked. When he made it to the chamber"s end, he stopped, sniffed. He wasn"t sure but he thought he smelled- Old cigar smoke?

But the fetid odor was gone just as he thought he"d detected it.

Enough Nosy Parkering for me. He climbed back down and replaced the trapdoor, shaking his head at himself. Snooping in other people"s business wasn"t like him, but then he laughed and frowned at the same time when he realized the outrage of that impression.

I"m a voyeur, a peeper. I"m the worst kind of snoop.

He went to bed, baffled by his actions. But at least the trip into the attic, if only temporarily, had freed his mind of the impossibilities he"d glimpsed-or thought he"d glimpsed-on the hill.

Some time later, he was sinking into sleep-sinking, as if in a trench of slime. He twitched under the sheets; the darkness clotted around him.

He dreamed...

A bright window comes into focus through a familiar binocular frame. A beautiful woman is undressing, in seeming slowness, but once she"s nude, she turns toward the window, showing all- Behind him a voice trumpets: "Freeze! Police!"

Fanshawe is slammed against the alley wall, his cheek rubbing bricks. Snap! Snap! and next his wrists have been handcuffed behind his back. "How do you like that s.h.i.t? A peeper..." Red and blue lights pulse blob-like within the alley.

Next, Fanshawe sweats on the pay phone in the booking section of the chaotic police station. "Artie, it"s me. I"m in big trouble. Call the lawyers and get me bailed out...," and then he tells his confidante what he"s been arrested for, his voice tinted by shame. Artie"s initial reaction is only a guttural silence, as though he were choking on the information- Next, Fanshawe stands haggard in the foyer of his luxury brownstone, his shirttail out, his hair mussed. A Tiffany clock on the mantle chimes three a.m. as Fanshawe"s silk night-gowned wife stares with a look that"s half-outrage and half stupefaction.

"You-you...were arrested for what?"

"I-"

Next, she"s haphazardly dressed in the s.p.a.cious bedroom, her head a blond blur as she maniacally crams clothes and toiletries into a suitcase. When she slams the case closed, tears fly off her face.

"Laurel, please," he croaks. "Let me ex-" but the words die as if his lungs have collapsed.

"You think you know someone," comes her shrill sob, "you think they love you so you give your life to him, and then you find out he"s a pervert!"

"Honey, I"m sorry, I-"

"You"re sick!" she shrieks.

He pleads now not to her but into his hands. "I"ll get help, I go to a counselor-I don"t know how to explain this to you because I don"t even understand it myself-"

Laurel"s face has contorted into a pink mask stamped by every conceivable negative emotion. "Explain what? That you"re a pervert? That you"re a common criminal who gets his jollies looking at women in windows?" but then the rictus deepens with a worse thought. "They were women, weren"t they?" She is teetering in place. "Or were they really children?"

Fanshawe feels flattened, like the ceiling has just collapsed on him. "No, no, I swear, it wasn"t anything like that."

Laurel spins round, grabs her purse and keys, then the suitcase. She doesn"t believe him. "Don"t ever speak to me again. Do you have any idea how much this hurts?"

Fanshawe sobs himself now. "Please don"t leave. I love you. I swear, I"ll never do it again. I-I...I just have this problem..."

"You"re sick! And that"s what you make me: sick! I want a divorce!"

The whole room concusses when she flies out and slams the door. Their wedding picture on the wall falls down and shatters.

Now Fanshawe sits on the couch in Dr. Tilton"s sterile office, and looking at him from behind the big desk is Dr. Tilton"s sterile face. "-a sickness, Mr. Fanshawe, a chronic paraphilic fixation that has reached a transitive state. This isn"t simple voyeurism, it"s an extremity of late-stage obsessive disorders such as Scoptolagnia and Parascopily..."

He feels as lost as one sitting in an electric chair. When he rubs his face, he feels sand-papery stubble. "What"s wrong with me?" he drones.

"You"re ill," she snaps back. "You need treatment. Otherwise you"ll never be able to function normally in public... All your money and lawyers may keep you out of jail, but you"ll always be a pervert in society"s eyes-always, unless you stop right this instant..."

"I will!" he pants, "I will!"

The doctor"s elegantly manicured finger raises up to touch her chin. "But I"d like to ask you something rather pertinent, as-and don"t be offended by this-most patients suffering from such anti-social habituations as this generally lie to their psychiatrists initially, but...are you being honest with me when you say that it was a woman you were spying on?"

Fanshawe glares.

"Not a child? Not an adolescent?"

"No, no, no!" he yells and wishes just then that he could crush his own head in his hands- *

-and that was when the clot-like darkness seemed to force its way down his throat, almost like someone"s hand, and when Fanshawe began to gag, he sprang awake.

Jesus...

Sweat sopped him like glue, drenching even the sheets beneath him. His open eyes jiggled in shock. Another nightmare, he thought; he grimaced when he dragged his forearm across his brow to wipe off the chill sweat. The final dream-fragment stuck in his head like a shard: Dr. Tilton"s stony face as she so wanted to imply that it might be children he"d been scoping all these years. The notion made him sick-sicker than he generally was of himself. It made him hate her.

The moonlight streaming in seemed lightened now, pale. Dawn was not far off. He sat for several minutes to catch the breath that the dream had robbed him of. It was with a determined force that he struggled not to think back to what he thought he"d seen on the hill, but the harder he pressed that force, the more the images leaked in. Not the sultry joggers nude in their room, and not even Abbie and her stunning physique-it was the other images, those that arrived later: the corroded town, the wild forest surrounding it-a forest that was not there now-the lampless streets, unpaved, not black-topped or brick-lined; the handful of windows dimly lit by candles, not electric bulbs. It"s almost like I was seeing the town as it looked hundreds of years ago... Then the final marauding image: the nude woman, red-haired, standing heavy-breasted and pregnant as if to burst...

"For G.o.d"s sake," he muttered. He must have dreamed all that, and just gotten confused. Yeah... The pregnant woman must surely be a product of his dreaming mind-some oblique reference, no doubt, to Evanore Wraxall, a witch kept pregnant by her own father.

He jerked around in bed, close to yelling, when he suddenly heard- That d.a.m.n dog again!

Enraged, he leapt up. Yes, he was sure he heard a dog barking, not too distant but not too close, either. It didn"t come from within the hotel.

Outside.

He rushed to the sitting room which faced the street. What the h.e.l.l is this? Now Fanshawe was not as bewildered as he was mad. He"d heard a dog several times during his stay but had seen not a single one. He threw back the drapes, glared down into the street...

The street stood still in the vestiges of nighttime. No people, no movement or traffic of any kind.

No dog...

He could tell dawn was fast approaching. It seemed impossible that the night had already pa.s.sed-the dream had seemed to last for hours. But perhaps, still groggy, he"d been disoriented, and had misplaced the location of the dog"s barks. Behind the hotel, he thought and hurried back to his bedroom. He grabbed the looking-gla.s.s and immediately pointed it into the rear parking lot- Fanshawe"s throat seemed to shrivel in on itself.

There was no dog.

There was no parking lot, either.

But, beyond, he could see the hillocks which formed the natural pedestal for Witches Hill. The hillocks looked different: wilder, overgrown, more heavily treed, and he could detect only one trail, not the webwork he was used to. Then...

Movement.

He stared into the looking-gla.s.s, more acid dumping into his stomach. He could see several people stalking up Witches Hill in the distance, and one of those people was walking a large black dog that barked viciously.

No...

He lowered the gla.s.s; he was shaking. He could hear the animal"s continued barks but now his head was filled with that same disorienting drone that had overcome him earlier. Thoughtless, he stumbled back into the sitting room, and re-aimed the gla.s.s through the window and out into the street.

He heard a moan, and he saw...

The looking-gla.s.s was zoomed in, as though it had adjusted itself. He knew this-like everything else-was impossible, but now he was looking at an abrupt close-up image, that of a woman in the shabbiest clothes locked by wrists and neck into the authentic pillory out front. Filthy hair hung down in strings; she"d been egged, for Fanshawe could easily detect the presence of eggsh.e.l.ls stuck to her hair, while more sh.e.l.ls and apparently rotten fruit lay on the street. Several men in the strangest attire lingered behind the woman. "Be quick about it!" shot one man"s hot whisper, for another seemed to be crudely fornicating with the woman from behind; his face, like his cohorts, was kept blacked out from the shadows of oddly shaped hats. Now Fanshawe could hear the woman"s sobs as she hitched in the cruel wooden brace. Still another man said "*Tis no transgression to defile a strumpet whose very life defiles our Savior," and another, "May we stay in the favor of the Lord thy G.o.d when we acteth out against His adversaries." "Offenses against the offender bespeaks a blessing." They both came around the front and began to expectorate on the woman"s head; then they began to urinate on her. Fanshawe made this out very clearly, even with the men standing with their backs to him. It was the looking-gla.s.s, demonstrating the most precise clarity; Fanshawe could see the streams of urine. Then, only to intensify the foulness of what took place, the pair of men stepped closer to the woman. Fanshawe didn"t have to speculate that they were masturbating on her.

Eventually the group sulked away, leaving the abused woman drenched and hitching in her misery.

Immediately, Fanshawe thought, Rape. Strange talk or not, some transients must have abducted the woman, put her in the antique pillory, and raped her. Fanshawe pulled on his robe, grabbed his key, and dashed out of the room.

Barefoot, hair sticking up, he took the elevator downstairs, burst through the atrium, and ran out the inn"s front door.

I should"ve known...

Before he"d even gotten halfway to the pillory, he saw plainly that it was unoccupied. No spit, fruit, eggsh.e.l.ls, or other debris was in evidence. The pillory and the street beneath it was clean.

CHAPTER SIX.

(I).

In the blaze of noonday sun, Fanshawe looked both ways up and down Main Street, and when satisfied that no one stood within earshot, he sat down on a bench and hunted for the number on his cellphone. Out of the corner of one eye, however, he saw the town church. There was clean white steeple but- No bell in it, he re-verified.

He"d thought he heard a church bell last night.

Hmm. He let the idea slide by, hoped it would leave his head.

But it didn"t.

Earlier, just after daybreak, he"d slept off and on in his room"s lounge chair, but awoke around ten feeling even less rested. His mind raced.

Then he showered, dressed, and let his daze take him out to the town square. Being in public made him feel safer from his own thoughts- And his fears of what he might see.

His hand shook holding the phone. "I"d like to speak to Dr. Tilton, please. My name is Stewart Fanshawe; I"m a patient of hers-"

A receptionist told him in crisp monotone that Dr. Tilton was not available.

"I need an emergency phone consultation," his voice rose, desperate. "You have my credit card number in my file-I"ll pay whatever you want, but, please, get me Dr. Tilton. I need help."

"One moment, please," and then music drifted over the line.