“That’s quite an achievement.” She seemed delighted to add, “Oh, and my father owns some of your stock.”
“God bless him!”
Now Abbie was slowly walking about the bedroom, touching up with a dust cloth. “What brings you out our way?”
Fanshawe didn’t feel the least uncomfortable answering, “I’m on what my therapist calls a respite. Just looking around at first, trying to find a place to relax for six months or so.”
“Well, most of our guests love it here, mostly tourists but we also get lots of visitors from Boston, New York, and Manchester, and some smaller conventions and business conferences.”
“I just happened to run across an article about Haver-Towne in one of the travel mags—” but then a reminder seemed to blare in his head. “Oh, yeah. I wanted to tell you”—he picked up the old book he’d been flipping through. “This must be here by mistake. I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the copyright date.”
Abbie squinted, took the book, and showed recognition. “Oh, that’s right. We usually keep it downstairs in one of the display cases but very recently a guest asked to borrow it.”
“It must be worth a fortune.”
“Not as much as you think; it’s in pretty poor condition. But it’s much more valuable here because it deals with some of the history of the town. More and more, people seem to be interested in things from the old days.”
“Witch trials?” Fanshawe questioned.
Abbie mocked an ominous expression. “The first major witch trials in America happened here. They pre-date Salem by twenty years.”
“Ah. That explains the ‘Salem of New Hampshire’ line outside.”
“Well, that was my father’s idea, but, yeah, exactly. Look here—”
Abbie took him to the front room and steered him toward one of the windows. She held back the curtain for him; Fanshawe saw the main drag out front. “See the pillory?”
“Yeah, I noticed it when I was driving up.”
“That’s one of the originals, and a lot of people spent some hard times in it.” She vaguely touched his shoulder as she led him to the westward bow window with the cushioned seat. “And there…” She pointed.
Fanshawe peered, noticing the rise of hillocks and their most prominent elevation. He made the deduction based on her previous remarks, “Let me guess. Hangman’s Hill?”
Abbie sounded mirthful. “Close. Witches Hill. No one was hanged there, or burned at the stake. But that is where all the witches and warlocks were executed.”
“How charming!”
Abbie made to leave with the book, smiling over a shoulder. Her eyes sparkled, a lavish dove-gray. “I have to check in more guests now but I can tell you all about it later if you’d like.”
“I’d love that, thanks. And what’s this relic display your father mentioned?”
A sharper, almost mischievous grin. “It’s a little museum that showcases torture devices and witchcraft paraphernalia… ’Bye!”
She drifted out of the room, leaving some vague but erotic shampoo-scent in her wake.
“Torture devices.” Fanshawe chuckled. Meeting Abbie left him upbeat. He went back to the bedroom to unpack but he hadn’t even gotten the suitcase open when that unknown impulse revisited him, goading him to look up…
At the trapdoor in the ceiling.
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWO
(I)
Later in the afternoon, Fanshawe meandered downstairs, aiming to have a stroll about town. But first, he thought and searched off the now-noisy atrium, noisy due to an influx of guests waiting their turn at the front desk. But from the plush atrium, small coves branched, each lit by the familiar bow windows, and furnished with leather arm chairs. It was in these coves that the display cases were found: great shining intricate cases with gold-painted frameworks, curved glass, and mirrored shelves. The cases alone looked fabulously old and valuable, but then so must be the relics and books they quartered. This place really IS a museum, Fanshawe thought, stooping before a case. Each object was displayed upon trivet-like pedestals, and bore an information label. First, a pair of iron rings the size of medium hose-clamps, each fitted with a hand-forged screw whose turning-head had been hammered flat. THUMBSCREWS, 1649, the label notified. When Fanshawe imagined his thumb within the tiny contraption, his stomach flipped. Next was a narrow metal spike with a wood handle: BODKIN DAGGER, 1669. And next, a pair of crude pliers: TOOTH-BREAKERS, 1697. Worst of all was a contraption akin to a tiny, jawed animal trap but with a handle on one end like a spade: TONGUE-PULLER, 1658.
The contemplations dizzied him. People must’ve been nuts back then. Believing in witchcraft was bad enough, but then to actually use these things on people… Fanshawe shuddered when he imagined it: the amount of aberrant will necessary to do something like that, to break someone’s teeth, to pull out their tongue. Did they really believe the victims were witches, or were they just sick in the head? What had attracted Fanshawe as a mere novelty now left him disturbed, and the effect doubled when he realized that all of these morbid tools had most likely been used for the precise purpose indicated. More, even nastier-looking implements sat in the case, but Fanshawe turned away before discerning what they were. He didn’t want to know.
So much for that…
But in another cove, he found a case free of such heinous devices and filled instead with time-worn books. It was here that Abbie had obviously replaced Ye Witch-Tryalls of Haver-Towne, next to The Diary of Jacob Wraxall, Tephramancy: the Magick of Gems & Ashes, and The Slate-Writings of Jacob Wraxall, among a host of others of similar themes. Jacob Wraxall? Fanshawe questioned, but then he remembered the engraving in the first book, of the poshly-dressed nobleman with the Van Dyke, being shackled by the town sheriff. For a billionaire, I’m pretty damn dense, he thought when the obvious struck him. The name of the hotel was the Wraxall Inn; it had taken him till now to put two and two together. This place is NAMED after this guy, but…why? Given the titles of the books and their insinuations, Wraxall had clearly been arrested for witchcraft. Why would somebody name their hotel after someone like that?
A small plaque read: PLEASE HANDLE BOOKS WITH CARE. Fanshawe was astonished; he would expect lock and key. In a New York hotel, books this old sitting out like this would get ripped off in two seconds. But he saw no harm, so he opened the case and removed a volume larger than most. Compendium Maleficarum, the spine informed, yet when he opened the book, he found it full of tight, double-columned type too monotonous to read. One section, however, seemed devoted to warlocks, and Fanshawe amused himself by scanning the various engravings of somber-faced men in queued wigs and ruffled collars, holding scepters or crystal balls. The more Fanshawe perused the book, the more foolish he felt. I guess people really did believe in this stuff back then. He put the book away, noticing a damp, vaguely rotten fetor.
Boredom shadowed him. He wandered to a third cove to look out the window. The main thoroughfare stretched quietly off in clean cobblestones while invigorated tourists began to window-shop. When he craned his neck—
He frowned.