The Witching Hour

  "But Deirdre didn't want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes."

  "For his own aims."

  "Which were what?"

  "That is old now, unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you returned. You were freed from Carlotta."

  "But you saw to it, and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland."

  "For your sake, Rowan. I love you."

  "Ah, but you see, there's a pattern here, isn't there? And you don't want me to understand it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That's what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn't it?"

  "You misjudge me. When I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong."

  "You went against the wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the thirteen witches, and that was for your own aims. You have always worked for your own aims, haven't you?"

  "You are the thirteenth and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical."

  "I think not."

  She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.

  "Were you ever a living human being?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you think?"

  "That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder."

  "It came from matter."

  "It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation."

  "You and the others who were already there."

  "In timelessness already there."

  "Did it draw your attention?"

  "Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe."

  "How?"

  "The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers; they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves."

  "So you learned self-consciousness from us."

  "All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent."

  "Then there are others of you with ambition."

  "Julien said, 'Matter created man and man created the gods.' That is partially correct."

  "Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne."

  "I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?"

  "Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca."

  "Are you certain of this?"

  "Of course. How can Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron's coming before there was Aaron. Arthur Langtry's warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron."

  "But how does Aaron lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?"

  "Aaron has a mission. So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand."

  "What is this secret knowledge? This mission?"

  "To protect man from us. To make sure there are no more doorways."

  "You mean there have been doorways before now?"

  "There have. There have been mutations. But you are the greatest of all doorways. What you can achieve with me shall be unparalleled."

  "Wait a minute. You mean other discarnate entities have come into the realm of the material?"

  "Yes."

  "But who? What are they?"

  "Laughter. They conceal themselves very well."

  "Laughter. Why did you say that?"

  "Because I am laughing at your question, but I don't know how to make the sound of laughter. So I say it. I laugh at you that you don't think this would have happened before. You, a mortal, with all the stories of ghosts and monsters of the night, and other such horrors. Did you think there was not even a kernel of truth to these old tales? But it is not important. Our fusion shall be more nearly perfect than any in the past."

  "Aaron knows this, that's what you're saying, that others have come through."

  "Yes."

  "And why does he want to stop me from being the doorway?"

  "Why do you think?"

  "Because he believes you're evil."

  "Unnatural, that is what he would say, which is foolish, for I am as natural as electricity, as natural as the stars, as natural as fire."

  "Unnatural. He fears your power."

  "Yes. But he is a fool."

  "Why?"

  "Rowan, as I have told you before, if this fusion can be achieved once, it can be achieved again. Do you not understand me?"

  "Yes, I understand you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door."

  "Aye, Rowan. Now you are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your imagination enormous; you were what men fear--the doctor with the vision of a poet. And you turned your back on your visions, Rowan. In the laboratory of Lemle, you could have created new beings from the parts of existent beings. You reached for brutal tools because you feared what you could do. You hid behind the surgical microscope and substituted for your power the crude micro tools of steel with which you severed tissues, rather man creating them. Even now you act from fear. You will build hospitals where people are to be cured, when you could create new beings, Rowan."

  She sat still and quiet. No one had ever spoken to her about her innermost thoughts with greater accuracy. She felt the heat and size of her own ambition. She felt the amoral child in her who had dreamed of brain grafts and synthetic beings, before the adult put out the light.

  "Haven't you a heart to understand why, Lasher?"

  "I see far, Rowan. I see great suffering in the world. I see the way of accident and blundering, and what it has created. I am not blinded by illusions. I hear the cries everywhere of pain. And I know my own loneliness. I know my own desire."

  "But what will you give up when you become flesh and blood? What's the price for you?"

  "I do not shrink from the price. A fleshly pain could be no worse than what I have suffered these three centuries. Would you be what I am, Rowan? Drifting, timeless and alone, listening to the carnal voices of the world, apart, and thirsting for love and understanding?"

  She couldn't answer.

  "I have waited for all eternity to be incarnate. I have waited beyond the scope of memory. I have waited until the fragile spirit of man has finally attained the knowledge so that the barrier can come down. And I shall be made flesh, and it shall be perfect."

  Silence.

  "I see why Aaron is afraid of you," she said.

  "Aaron is small. The Talamasca is small. They are nothing!" The voice grew thin with anger. The air in the room was warm and moving like the water in a pot moves before it boils. The chandeliers moved yet they made no sound, as if the sound were carried away by the currents in the air.

  "The Talamasca has knowledge," he said, "t
hey have power to open doorways, but they refuse to do so for us. They are the enemy of us. They would keep the world's destiny in the hands of the suffering and the blind. And they lie. All of them lie. They have maintained the history of the Mayfair Witches because it is the history of Lasher, and they fight Lasher. That is their avowed purpose. And they trick you with their attention to the witches. It is Lasher whose name should be emblazoned on the covers of their precious leather-bound files. The file is in a code. It is the history of the growing power of Lasher. Can you not see through the code?"

  "Don't harm Aaron."

  "You love unwisely, Rowan."

  "You don't like my goodness, do you? You like the evil."

  "What is evil, Rowan? Is your curiosity evil? That you would study me as you have studied the brains of human beings? That you would learn from my cells all that you could to advance the great cause of medicine? I am not the enemy of the world, Rowan. I merely wish to enter into it!"

  "You're angry now."

  "I am in pain. I love you, Rowan."

  "To want is not to love, Lasher. To use is not to love."

  "No, don't speak these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me."

  "If you kill Aaron, I will never be your doorway."

  "Such a small thing to affect so much."

  "Lasher, kill him and I will not be the doorway."

  "Rowan, I am at your command. I would have killed him already were I not."

  "Same with Michael."

  "Very well, Rowan."

  "Why did you tell Michael that he couldn't stop me?"

  "Because I hoped that he could not and I wanted to frighten him. He is under the spell of Aaron."

  "Lasher, how am I to help you come through?"

  "I will know when you know, Rowan. And you know. Aaron knows."

  "Lasher, we don't know what life is. Not with all our science and all our definitions do we know what life is, or how it began. The moment when it sprang into existence from inert materials is a complete mystery."

  "I am already alive, Rowan."

  "And how can I make you flesh? You've gone into the bodies of the living and the dead. You can't anchor there."

  "It can be done, Rowan." His voice had become as soft as a whisper. "With my power and your power, and with my faith, for I must yield to achieve the bond, and only in your hands is the full merging possible."

  She narrowed her eyes, trying to see shapes, patterns in the airy dark.

  "I love you, Rowan," he said. "You are weary now. Let me soothe you, Rowan. Let me touch you." The resonance of the voice deepened.

  "I want--I want a happy life with Michael and our child."

  Turbulence in the air, something collecting, intensifying. She felt the air grow warmer.

  "I have infinite patience. I see far. I can wait. But you will lose your taste for others now that you have seen and spoken to me."

  "Don't be so certain, Lasher. I'm stronger than the others. I know much more."

  "Yes, Rowan." The shadowy turbulence was growing denser, like a great wreath of smoke, only there was no smoke, circling the chandelier, moving out. Like cobwebs caught in a draft.

  "Can I destroy you?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Rowan, you torture me."

  "Why can't I destroy you?"

  "Rowan, your gift is to transmute matter. I have no matter in me for you to attack. You may destroy the matter I bring into organization to make my image, but then I do this myself when I disintegrate. You have seen it. You could hurt my transitory image at such a moment of materialization, and you have already done so. When I first appeared to you. When I came to you near the water. But you cannot destroy me. I have always been here. I am eternal, Rowan."

  "And suppose I told you it was finished now, Lasher, that I would never recognize you again. That I would not be the doorway. That I am the doorway for the Mayfairs into the future centuries, the doorway for my unborn child, and for things of which I dream with my ambition."

  "Small things, Rowan. Nothing compared to the mysteries and possibilities which I offer you. Imagine, Rowan, when the mutation is complete and I have a body, infused with my timeless spirit, what you can learn from this."

  "And if it's done, Lasher, if the doorway is opened, and the fusion is effected, and you stand before me, flesh and blood, how will you treat me then?"

  "I would love you beyond all human reason, Rowan, for you would be my mother and my creator, and my teacher. How could I not love you? And how tragic my need of you will be. I will cleave to you to learn how to move with my new limbs, how to see, how to speak and laugh. I will be as a helpless infant in your hands. Can't you see? I would worship you, my beloved Rowan. I would be your instrument in anything that you wished, and twenty times as strong as I am now. Why do you cry? Why are there tears in your eyes?"

  "It's a trick, it's a trick of sound and light, the spell you induce."

  "No. I am what I am, Rowan. It's your reason which weakens you. You see far. You always have. Twelve crypts and one doorway, Rowan."

  "I don't understand. You play with me. You confuse me. I can't follow anymore."

  Silence and that sound again, as if the whole air were sighing. Sadness, sadness enveloping her like a cloud, and the undulating layers of smoky shadow moving the length of the room, weaving through and around the chandeliers, filling the mirrors with darkness.

  "You're all around me, aren't you?"

  "I love you," he said, and his voice was low again as a whisper and close to her. She thought she felt lips touch her cheek. She stiffened, but she had become so drowsy.

  "Move away from me," she said. "I want to be left alone now. I have no obligation to love you."

  "Rowan, what can I give you, what gift can I bring?"

  Again, something brushed her face, something touched her, bringing the chills up over her body. Her nipples were hard beneath the silk of the nightgown, and a low throbbing had started inside her, a hunger she could feel all through her throat and her chest.

  She tried to clear her vision. It was dark in here now. The fire had burnt down. But only moments ago it had been a blaze.

  "You're playing tricks on me." The air seemed to be touching her all over. "You've played tricks on Michael."

  "No." It was a soft kiss against her ear.

  "When he was drowned, the visions. You made them!"

  "No, Rowan. He was not here. I could not follow him to where he went. I am of the living only."

  "Did you make the ghosts he saw when he was alone here that night, when he went alone into the pool?"

  "No."

  She shivered all over, her hands up to brush away the sensations as if she'd been caught in cobwebs.

  "Did you see the ghosts Michael saw?"

  "Yes, but through Michael's eyes, I saw them."

  "What were they?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why don't you know?"

  "They were images of the dead, Rowan. I am of this earth. I do not know the dead. Do not talk to me of the dead. I do not know of God or of anything which is not of the earth."

  "God! But what is this earth?" Something touching the back of her neck, gently lifting the tendrils of her hair.

  "Here, Rowan, the realm in which you exist and the realm in which I exist, parallel and intermingled yet separate, in the physical world. I am physical, Rowan--natural as anything else which is of the earth. I burn for you, Rowan, in a purity in which fire has no end, in this our world."

  "The ghosts Michael saw on our wedding night," she said, "in this very room. You made him see them."

  "No."

  "Did you see them?" Like a feather stroking her cheek.

  "Through Michael's eyes. I do not have all the answers you demand of me."

  Something touching her breasts, something stroking her breasts and her thighs. She curled her legs back under her. The hearth was cold now.

  "Get away from me!" she whispered. "You are evil."

&nb
sp; "No."

  "Do you come from hell?"

  "You play with me. I am in hell, desiring to give you pleasure."

  "Stop. I want to get up now. I'm sleepy. I don't want to stay here."

  She turned and looked at the blackened fireplace. There were no embers anymore. Her eyes were heavy and so were her limbs. She struggled to her feet, clinging to the mantel. But she knew she could not possibly reach the steps. She turned, and sank down again on her knees and stretched out on the soft Chinese rug. Like silk beneath her, and the hardness and the cool air felt so good to her. She felt she was dreaming when she looked up into the chandelier. The white plaster medallion appeared to be moving, its acanthus leaves curling and writhing.

  All the words she'd heard were suddenly swimming in her brain. Something touching her face. Her nipples throbbed and her sex throbbed. She thought of Michael miles and miles away from her, and she felt anguish. She had been so wrong to underestimate this being.

  "I love you, Rowan."

  "You're above me, aren't you?" She stared up into the shadows, thankful for the coolness, because she was burning as if she'd absorbed all the heat of the fire. She could feel the moisture pumping between her legs, and her body was opening like a flower. Stroking the inside of her thighs where the skin was always softest and had no down, and her legs were turning outward like petals opening.

  "I'm telling you to stop, that I'll hate it."

  "Love you, my darling." Kissing her ears, and her lips, and then her breasts. The sucking came hard, rhythmic, teeth grazing her nipples.

  "I can't stand it," she whispered, but she meant the very opposite, that she would cry out in agony if it stopped.

  Her arms were flung out, and the nightgown was being lifted off her. She heard the silk tearing and then the cloth was loose and she was sweetly, deliciously naked lying there, the hands stroking her sex, only they weren't hands. It was Lasher, Lasher sucking her and stroking her, lips on her ears, on her eyelids, all of his immense presence wrapped around her, even under her, stroking the small of her back, and parting her backside and stroking the nether mouth.

  Yes, opening, like the dark purple iris in the garden. Like the roses exploding on the ends of their coarsened and darkened stems and the leaves with so many points and tiny veins to them. She tossed and twisted on the carpet.

  And when she writhed like a cat in heat ... Go away, old woman, you are not here! This is my time now.

  "Yes, your time, our time."

  Tongues licked her nipples, lips closing on them, pulling them, teeth scratching her nipples.