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their enticing bodies like drool. His
eyes would not close.
    No, no, no, words scarcely his own
pleaded. I can’t be doing this, I MUST NOT DO THIS… His
groin fidgeted, he snatched a breath through his teeth as he
continued to stare.
    No…
    His hand moved against the command of his
conscience, and slithered across his crotch, but just as he would
prepare to masturbate—outright, oblivious—he gnawed his own tongue
and dragged his eyes off the fleshy spectacle like nails being
dragged out of a plank. It was all he could do not to moan aloud in
anguish spliced with self-disgust.
    Pervert, scumbag, peeper…
    Moments later he’d forced himself well back
from the tree. Tears lay in the grooves of his narrowed eyes. He
stepped back and back and back until he nudged the large wooden
sign; and then he leaned there for a several minutes, regaining his
breath and his senses.
    This isn’t supposed to be happening…
    What if somebody else had walked up and seen
him? Or one of the women themselves? What could he say? What excuse
could he give?
    Nothing. Because his intent would’ve been
obvious to anyone, anyone in the world.
    He leaned against the sign for some time. He
felt jittery, like someone who’d lived on nothing but coffee for a
day. Was his heart beating irregularly? Soon he was slumping in
place. His mind felt dark, hollow, and blank, but in time he
realized he was looking at something with some focus, something he
hadn’t noticed when he’d first come up onto the hill. It sat by
itself, just before the wall of grasses, at the clearing’s
edge.
    A barrel.
    It was a large one, four feet high and three
wide, encircled by two rusting iron bands. Riled by termites and
creviced by water-damage, the grayed slats suggested that the
barrel was very old, but a closer glance showed him that a heavy
coat of some water-resistant resin covered the entire vessel, no
doubt a more recent application. A lone antique barrel sitting on
this history-laden hill struck Fanshawe as odd, yet he next made an
odder observation.
    The barrel had a single ten-inch-diameter
hole in its side.
    He looked perplexed at it. What the
hell’s an old barrel doing up here? Perhaps it was an
original-era rain barrel, preserved for its value as a relic. But
if so? What’s with the hole? A hole in the side of a barrel kind
of defeats its purpose.
    He shrugged and turned to leave. The
temptation raged: to steal a departing glance at the near-naked
joggers, but after a wince, he resisted and strode back toward the
path that would lead him out. Before he could fully leave the
hill’s perimeter, however…
    A shock riveted him, and he spun back
around.
    He’d heard a sound that couldn’t be denied.
A crisp, guttural growl, unmistakably that of a large dog.
    Wild dog… Fanshawe’s hand came to his
heart. His eyes darted for a branch or stone, something that might
serve as a weapon, but when his eyes pored back over the clearing
he saw that there was no dog to be seen.
     
    — | — | —
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    (I)
     
    The sun was just beginning to wester when
Fanshawe made it back to town. Recession be damned, he
thought. If anything, more tourists were apparent now, more cars in
various lots, more strollers enjoying the town’s quaint shops and
atmosphere. As a financial maven, he was pleased to see that people
had vacation money to spend. It also pleased him that some resolve
seemed to be filtering back into his conscience: he’d resisted the
impulse the pass the Travelodge and its alluring windows and
sunbathers, and instead had taken a more circuitous route via a
street farther off, mostly residential. He walked casually now,
more at peace with himself. He spotted several empty beer kegs
stacked behind the tavern; they made him think of the unlikely
barrel on Witches Hill. I’ll have to ask Abbie about that, he ventured. Later, he came around the back of the Wraxall Inn. Not
once did he look up at the windows of the upper floors. Back