The Witching Hour

He must have looked like a drunk now, for sure stranded there, staring at the firehouse, with all the fire fighters having sense enough to be inside where it was warm. All those years ago, at Christmas, his father dying in that fire.

  When he looked up at the sky, he realized it was the color of slate now, and the daylight was dying. Christmas Eve and absolutely everything had gone wrong.

  No one answered his call when he came in the door. Only the tree gave off a soft glow in the parlor. He wiped his feet on the that and walked back through the long hallway, his hands and face hurting from the cold. He unpacked the bag and put the turkey out, thinking that he would go through with all the steps, he'd do it the way he'd always done it--and tonight, at midnight, the feast would be ready, just at that hour when in the old days they'd be crowded into the church for Midnight Mass.

  It wasn't Holy Communion, but it was their meal together, and this was Christmas and the house wasn't haunted and ruined and dark.

  Go through the motions.

  Like a priest who's sold his soul to the devil, going to the altar of God to say Mass.

  He put the packages in the cupboard. It wasn't too soon to begin. He laid out the candles. Have to find the candlesticks for them. And surely she was around here somewhere. She'd gone out walking too perhaps and now she was home.

  The kitchen was dark. The snow was falling again. He wanted to turn on the lights. In fact, he wanted to turn them on everywhere, to fill the house with light. But he didn't move. He stood very still in the kitchen, looking out through the French doors over the back garden, watching the snow melt as it struck the surface of the pool. A rim of ice had formed around the edges of the blue water. He saw it glistening and he thought how cold that water must be, so awfully hurtfully cold.

  Cold like the Pacific on that summer Sunday when he'd been standing there, empty and slightly afraid. The path from that moment seemed infinitely long. And it was as if all energy or will had left him now, and the cold room held him prisoner, and he could not move a finger to make himself comfortable or safe or warm.

  A long time passed. He sat down at the table, lighted a cigarette and watched the darkness come down. The snow had stopped, but the ground was covered in a fresh clean whiteness again.

  Time to do something, time to begin the dinner. He knew it, yet he couldn't move. He smoked another cigarette, comforted by the sight of the tiny burning red flame, and then as he crushed it out, he merely sat still, doing nothing, the way he had for hours in his room on Liberty Street, drifting in and out of a silent panic, unable to think or move.

  He didn't know how long he sat there. But at some time or other, the pool lights came on, shining brilliantly up through the blackness of the night, making a great piece of blue glass of the pool. The dark foliage came alive around it, spattered with the whiteness. And the ground took on a ghostly lunar glow.

  He wasn't alone. He knew it, and as the knowledge penetrated, he realized he had only to turn his head and see her standing there, in the far doorway to the pantry, with her arms folded, her head and shoulders outlined against the pale cabinets behind her, her breath making only the smallest, the most subtle sound.

  This was the purest dread he'd ever known. He stood up, slipped the pack of cigarettes into his pocket, and when he looked up she was gone.

  He went after her, moving swiftly through the darkened dining room and into the hallway again, and then he saw her all the way at the far end, in the light from the tree, standing against the high white front door.

  He saw the keyhole shape perfect and distinct around her, and how small she looked in it, and as he came closer and closer, her stillness shocked him. He was terrified of what he'd see when he finally drew close enough to make out the features of her face in the airy dark.

  But it wasn't that awful marble face he'd seen last night. She was merely looking at him, and the soft colored illumination from the tree filled her eyes with dim reflected light.

  "I was going to fix our supper. I bought everything. It's back there." How uncertain he sounded. How miserable. He tried to pull himself together. He took a deep breath and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. "Look, I can start it now. It's just a small turkey. It will be done in a few hours, and I have everything. It's all there. We'll set the table with the pretty china. We've never used any of the china. We've never had a meal on the table. This is ... this is Christmas Eve."

  "You have to go," she said.

  "I ... I don't understand you."

  "You have to get out of here now."

  "Rowan?"

  "You have to leave, Michael. I have to be alone here now."

  "Honey, I don't understand what you're telling me."

  "Get out, Michael." Her voice dropped lower, becoming harder. "I want you to go."

  "It's Christmas Eve, Rowan. I don't want to go."

  "It's my house, Michael, I'm telling you to leave it. I'm telling you to get out."

  He stared at her for a moment, stared at the way her face was changing, at the twist of her drawn lips, at the way her eyes had narrowed and she had lowered her head slightly and was looking up at him from under her brows.

  "You ... you're not making any sense, Rowan. Do you realize what you're saying?"

  She took several steps towards him. He braced himself, refusing to be frightened. In fact his fear was alchemizing into anger.

  "Get out, Michael," she hissed at him. "Get out of this house and leave me here to do what I must do."

  Suddenly her hand swung up and forward, and before he realized what was happening, he felt the shocking slap across his face.

  The pain stung him. The anger crested; but it was more bitter and painful than any anger he'd ever felt. Shocked and in a fury, he stared at her.

  "It's not you, Rowan!" he said. He reached out for her, and the hand came up and as he went to block it, he felt her shove him backwards against the wall. In rage and confusion, he looked at her. She came closer, her eyes firing in the glow from the parlor.

  "Get out of here," she whispered. "Do you hear what I'm saying?"

  Stunned, he watched as her fingers dug into his arm. She shoved him to the left, towards the front door. Her strength was shocking to him, but physical strength had nothing to do with it. It was the malice emanating from her; it was the old mask of hate again covering her features.

  "Get out of this house now, I'm ordering you out," she said, her fingers releasing him, and grabbing at the doorknob and turning it and opening the door on the cold wind.

  "How can you do this to me!" he asked her. "Rowan, answer me. How can you do it?"

  In desperation, he reached for her and this time nothing stopped him. He caught her and shook her, and her head fell to the side for an instant and then she turned back, merely staring at him, daring him to continue, silently forcing him to let her go.

  "What good are you to me dead, Michael?" she whispered. "If you love me, leave now. Come back when I call you. I must do this alone."

  "I can't. I won't do it."

  She turned her back on him and walked down the hall, and he went after her.

  "Rowan, I'm not going, do you hear me? I don't care what happens, I'm not leaving you. You can't ask me to do that."

  "I knew you wouldn't," she said softly as he followed her into the dark library. The heavy velvet drapes were closed and he could barely see her figure as she moved towards the desk.

  "Rowan, we can't go on not talking about it. It's destroying us. Rowan, listen to me."

  "Michael, my beautiful angel, my archangel," she said, with her back turned to him, her words muffled. "You'd rather die, wouldn't you, than trust in me?"

  "Rowan, I'll fight him with my bare hands if I have to." He came towards her. Where were the lamps in this room? He reached out, trying to find the brass lamp beside the chair, and then she wheeled around and bore down on him.

  He saw the syringe raised.

  "No, Rowan!"

  The needle sank into his arm in the same
instant.

  "Christ, what have you done to me!" But he was already falling to the side, just as if he had no legs, and then the lamp went over on the floor, and he was lying beside it, staring right at the pale sharp spike of the broken bulb.

  He tried to say her name, but his lips wouldn't move.

  "Sleep, my darling," she said. "I love you. I love you with my whole soul."

  Far far away he heard the sound of buttons on a phone. Her voice was so faint and the words ... what was she saying? She was talking to Aaron. Yes, Aaron ...

  And when they lifted him, he said Aaron's name.

  "You're going to Aaron, Michael," she whispered. "He's going to take care of you."

  Not without you, Rowan, he tried to say, but he was sinking down again, and the car was moving, and he heard a man's voice: "You'll be OK, Mr. Curry. We're taking you to your friend. You just lie still back there. Dr. Mayfair said you're going to be fine."

  Fine, fine, fine ...

  Hirelings. You don't understand. She's a witch, and she's put me under a spell with her poison, the way Charlotte did it to Petyr, and she's told you a damnable lie.

  Fifty-one

  ONLY THE TREE was lighted, and the whole house slumbered in warm darkness, except for that soft wreath of light. The cold tapped at the glass but couldn't come inside.

  She sat in the middle of the sofa, her legs crossed, her arms folded, staring down the length of the room at the long mirror, barely able to see the pale glow of the chandelier.

  The hands of the grandfather clock moved slowly towards midnight.

  And this was the night that meant so much to you, Michael. The night when you wanted us to be together. You couldn't be farther from me now if you were on the other side of the world. All such simple and graceful things are far from me, and it is like that Christmas Eve when Lemle took me through door after door into his darkened and secret laboratory. What have such horrors to do with you, my darling?

  All her life, if her life was long or short, or almost over--all her life--she'd remember Michael's face when she slapped him; she'd remember the sound of his voice when he pleaded with her; she'd remember the look of shock when she'd jabbed the needle into his arm.

  So why was there no emotion? Why only this emptiness and this shriveling stillness inside her? Her feet were bare, and the soft flannel nightgown hung loose around her, and the silky Chinese rug beneath her feet was warm. Yet she felt naked and isolated, as if nothing of warmth or comfort could ever touch her.

  Something moved in the center of the room. All the limbs of the tree shivered, and the tiny silver bells gave off a faint barely perceptible music in the stillness. The tiny angels with their gilded wings danced on their long threads of gold.

  A darkness was gathering and thickening.

  "We are close to the hour, my beloved. To the time of my choosing."

  "Ah, but you have a poet's soul," she said, listening to the faint echo of her own voice in this big room.

  "My poetry I have learned from humans, beloved. From those who, for thousands of years, have loved this night of all nights."

  "And now you mean to teach me science, for I don't know how to bring you across."

  "Don't you? Haven't you always understood?"

  She didn't answer. It seemed the film of her dreams thickened about her, images catching hold and then letting go, so that her coldness and her aloneness grew harder and more nearly unbearable.

  The darkness grew denser. It collected itself into a shape, and in the swirling density, she thought she saw the outline of human bones. The bones appeared to be dancing, gathering themselves together, and then came the flesh over them, like the light from the tree pouring down over the skeleton, and the brilliant green eyes were suddenly peering at her from his face.

  "The time is almost at hand, Rowan," he said.

  In amazement she watched the lips moving. She saw the glimmer of his teeth. She realized she'd risen to her feet and she was standing very close to him, and the sheer beauty of his face stunned her. He looked down at her, his eyes darkening slightly, and the blond eyelashes golden in the light.

  "It's nearly perfect," she whispered.

  She touched his face, slowly, running her finger down the skin and stopping on the firmness of the jawbone. She placed her left hand very gently against his chest. She closed her eyes, listening to the heart beat. She could see the organ inside, or was it the replica of an organ? Shutting her eyes tighter she envisioned it, its arteries and valves, and the blood rushing through it, and coursing through the limbs.

  "All you need to do is surrender!" She stood, staring at him, seeing his lips spread in a smile. "Let go," she said. "Don't you see, you've done it!"

  "Have I?" he asked, the face working perfectly, the fine muscles flexing and releasing, the eyes growing narrow as the eyes of any human in their concentration. "You think this is a body? This is a replica! It's a sculpture, a statue. It's nothing, and you know it. You think you can lure me into this shell of minuscule lifeless particles so you can have me at your command? A robot? So that you can destroy me?"

  "What are you saying?" She stepped backwards. "I can't help you. I don't know what you want of me."

  "Where are you going, my darling?" he asked, eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. "You think you can flee from me? Look at the face of the clock, my beautiful Rowan. You know what I want. It is Christmas Eve, my darling. The witching hour is at hand, Rowan, when Christ was born into this world, when the Word was finally made flesh, and I would be born, too, my beautiful witch, I am done with waiting."

  He lunged forward, his right hand locking on her shoulder, the other on her belly, a searing shimmer of warmth penetrating her, sickening her, even as he held her.

  "Get away from me!" she whispered. "I can't do it." She called upon her anger and her will, eyes boring into those of the thing in front of her. "You can't make me do what I won't do!" she said. "And you can't do it without me."

  "You know what I want and what I have always wanted. No more shells, Rowan, no more coarse illusions. The living flesh inside you. What other flesh in all the world is ready for me, plastic, and adaptable and swarming with millions upon millions of tiny cells which it will not use in its perfection, what other organism has grown to a thousand times its size in the first few weeks of its beginning, and is ready now to unfurl and lengthen and swell as my cells merge with it!"

  "Get away from me. Get away from my child! You're a stupid, crazed thing. You won't touch my child! You won't touch me!" She was trembling as if her anger was too great to be contained; she could feel it boiling in her veins. Her feet were wet and slippery on the boards as she backed away, drawing on her anger, struggling to direct it against him.

  "Did you think you could trick me, Rowan?" he said in that slow, patient, beautiful voice, his handsome image holding. "With your little performance before Aaron and Michael? Did you think. I couldn't see into the depths of your soul? I made your soul. I chose the genes that went into you. I chose your parents, I chose your ancestors, I bred you, Rowan. I know where flesh and mind meet in you. I know your strength as no one else knows it. And you have always known what I wanted of you. You knew when you read the history. You saw Lemle's fetus slumbering in that little bed of tubes and chemicals. You knew! You knew when you ran from the laboratory what your brilliance and courage could have done even then without me, without the knowledge that I waited for you, that I loved you, that I had the greatest gift to bestow on you. Myself, Rowan. You will help me, or that tiny simmering child will die when I go into it! And that you will never allow."

  "God. God help me!" she whispered, her hands moving down over her belly, in a crisscross as if to ward off a blow, eyes fixed on him. Die, you son of a bitch, die!

  The hands of the clock made their tiny click as they shifted, the little hand straight up in line with the big hand. And the first chime of the hour sounded.

  "Christ is born, Rowan," he cried out, his voice huge as the image of
the man dissolved in a great boiling cloud of darkness, obscuring the clock, rising to the ceiling, turning in on itself like a funnel. She screamed, struggling backwards against the wall. A shock ran through the rafters, through the plaster. She could hear it like the roar of an earthquake.

  "No, God, no!" In sheer panic, she screamed. She turned and ran through the parlor door into the hallway. She reached out for the knob of the front door. "God help me. Michael, Aaron!"

  Somebody had to hear her screams. They were deafening in her own ears. They were ripping her apart.

  But the rumbling grew louder. She felt his invisible hands on her shoulders. She was thrown forward, hard against the door, her hand slipping off the knob as she fell to her knees, pain shooting up her thighs. The darkness was rising all around her, the heat was rising.

  "No, not my child, I'll destroy you, with my last breath, I'll destroy you." She turned in one last desperate fury, facing the darkness, spitting at it in hate, willing it to die, as the arms wound around her and dragged her down on the floor.

  The back of her head scraped the wood of the door, and then banged against the floorboards, as her legs were wrenched forward. She was staring upwards, struggling to rise, her arms flailing, the darkness bubbling over her.

  "Damn you, damn you in hell, Lasher, die. Die like that old woman! Die!" she screamed.

  "Yes, Rowan, your child, and Michael's child!"

  The voice surrounded her like the darkness and the heat. Her head was forced back again, slammed down again, and her arms pinned, wide and helpless.

  "You my mother and Michael my father! It is the witching hour, Rowan. The clock is striking. I will be flesh. I will be born."

  The darkness furled again, it coiled in upon itself and it shot downward. It shot into her, raping her, splitting her apart. Like a giant fist it shot upwards inside her womb, and her body convulsed as the pain caught her in a great lashing circle that she could see, shining bright, against her closed eyes.

  The heat was unbearable. The pain came again, shock after shock of it, and she could feel the blood gushing out of her, and the water from her womb, gushing onto the floor.

  "You've killed it, you damnable evil thing, you've killed my baby, damn you! God help me! God, take it back to hell!" Her hands knocked against the wall, struggled against the slimy wet floor. And the heat sickened her, caught her lungs now as she gasped for breath.