The Witching Hour

  The house was burning. It had to be burning. She was burning. The heat was throbbing inside of her, and she thought she saw the flames rising, but it was only a great lurid blast of red light. And somehow she had managed to climb up on her hands and knees, again, and she knew her body was empty, her child was gone, and she was struggling now only to escape, reaching out once more, desperately and in her fierce relentless pain, for the knob of the door.

  "Michael, Michael help me! Oh God, I tried to trick it, I tried to kill it. Michael, it's in the child." Another shock of pain caught her, and a fresh gush of blood poured out of her.

  Sobbing, she sank down, dizzy, unable to command her arms or legs, the heat blasting her, and a great raw crying filled her ears. It was a baby's crying. It was that same awful sound she'd heard over and over in her dream. A baby's mewling cry. She struggled to cover her ears, unable to bear it, wailing for it to stop, the heat suffocating her.

  "Let me die," she whispered. "Let the fire burn me. Take me to hell. Let me die."

  Rowan, help me. I am in the flesh. Help me or I will die. Rowan, you cannot turn your back on me.

  She tightened the grip on her ears, but she couldn't shut out the little telepathic voice that rose and fell with the baby's sobs. Her hand slipped in the blood and her face fell down in it, sticky and wet under her, and she rolled over on her back, seeing again the shimmer of the heat, the baby's screams louder and louder as though it was starving or in agony.

  Rowan, help me! I am your child! Michael's child. Rowan, I need you.

  She knew what she would see even before she looked. Through her tears and through the waves of heat, she saw the manikin, the monster. Not out of my body, not born from me. I didn't ....

  On its back it lay, its man-sized head turning from side to side with its cries, its thin arms elongating even as she watched it, tiny fingers splayed and groping and growing, tiny feet kicking, as a baby's feet kick, working the air, the calves stretching, the blood and mucus sliding off it, sliding down its chubby cheeks, and off its slick dark hair. All those tiny organs like buds inside. All those millions of cells dividing, merging with his cells, like a nuclear explosion going on inside this flesh and blood thing, this mutant thing, this child that had come out of her.

  Rowan, I am alive, do not let me die. Do not let me die, Rowan. Yours is the power of saving life, and I live. Help me.

  She struggled towards it, her body still throbbing with sharp bursts of pain, her hand out for that tiny slippery leg, that little foot pumping the air, and then as her hand closed on that soft, slick baby flesh, the darkness came down on her, and against her closed eyelids she saw the anatomy, saw the path of the cells, saw the evolving organs, and the age-old miracle of the cells coming together, forming corpuscles and subcutaneous tissue, and bone tissue, and the fibers of the lungs and the liver and the stomach, and fused with his cells, his power, the DNA merging, and the tiny chains of chromosomes whipping and swimming as the nuclei merged, and all guided by her, all the knowledge inside her like the knowledge of the symphony inside the composer, note after note and bar after bar, and crescendo following upon crescendo.

  Its flesh throbbed under her fingers, living, breathing through its pores. Its cries grew hoarser, deeper, echoing as she dropped down out of consciousness and rose up again, her other hand groping in the dark and finding his forehead, finding the thick mass of manly curls, finding his eyes fluttering under her palm, finding his mouth now half closed with the sobs coming out of it, finding his chest, and the heart beneath it and the long muscular arms flopping against the boards, yes, this thing so big now that she could lay her head on its pumping chest, and the cock between his legs, yes, and the thighs, yes, and struggling upwards, she lay on top of him, both hands on him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her, the lungs enlarging, filling, the heart pumping, and dark silky hair sprouting around his cock, and then it was a web again, a web shining in the darkness, full of chemistry and mystery and certainty, and she sank down into the blackness, into the quiet.

  A voice was talking to her, intimate and soft.

  "Stop the blood."

  She couldn't answer.

  "You're bleeding. Stop the blood."

  "I don't want to live," she said. Surely the house was burning. Come, old woman, with your lamp. Light the drapes.

  Lemle said, "I never said it wasn't possible, you know. The thing is that once an advance has been envisioned, it is inevitable. Millions of cells. The embryo is the key to immortality."

  "You can still kill him," said Petyr. He was standing over her, looking down at her.

  "They're figments of your imagination, of your conscience."

  "Am I dying?"

  "No." He laughed. Such a soft silky laugh. "Can you hear me? I am laughing, Rowan. I can laugh now."

  Take me to hell now. Let me die.

  "No, my darling, my precious beautiful darling, stop the bleeding."

  The sunlight waked her. She lay on the living room floor, on the soft Chinese rug, and her first thought was the house had not burned. The awful heat had not consumed it. Somehow it had been saved.

  For a moment she didn't understand what she was seeing.

  A man was sitting beside her, looking down at her, and he had the smooth unblemished skin of a baby--over the structure of a man's face, but it resembled her face. She had never seen a human being who looked this much like her. But there were definite differences. His eyes were large and blue and fringed with black lashes, and his hair was black like Michael's hair. It was Michael's hair. Michael's hair and Michael's eyes. But he was slender like her. His smooth hairless chest was narrow as her chest had been in childhood, with two shining pink nipples, and his arms were narrow, though finely muscled, and the delicate fingers of his hand, with which he stroked his lip thoughtfully as he looked at her, were narrow and like her fingers.

  But he was bigger man she was, as big as a man. And the dried mucus and blood was all over him, like a dark ruby red map covering him.

  She felt a moan coming up out of her throat, pushing against her lips. Her whole body moved with it, and suddenly she screamed. Rising off the boards, she screamed. Louder, longer, more wildly than she had ever screamed last night in all her fear. She was this scream, leaving herself, leaving everything she'd seen and remembered in total horror.

  His hand came down over her mouth, pushing her flat against the rug. She couldn't move. The scream was turning around inside, like vomit that could choke her. A deep convulsion of pain moved through her. She lay limp, silent.

  He leaned over her. "Don't do it," he whispered. The old voice. Of course, his voice, with his unmistakable inflection.

  His smooth face looked perfectly innocent, a picture of astonishment with its flawless and radiant cheeks, and its smooth narrow nose, and the great blue eyes blinking at her. Snapping open and closed like the eyes of the manikin on the table in her dreams. He smiled. "I need you," he said. "I love you. And I'm your child."

  After a while, he took his hand away.

  She sat up. Her nightgown was soaked with blood and dry and stiff with it. The smell of blood was everywhere. Like the smell of the Emergency Room.

  She scooted back on the rug and sat forward, her knee crooked, peering at him.

  Nipples, perfect, yes, cock perfect, yes, though the real test would come when it was hard. Hair perfect, yes, but what about inside? What about every precise little interlocking part?

  She drew closer, staring at his shoulders, watching the rise and fall of his chest with his breath, then looking into his eyes, not seeing him look back, not caring if he did, just studying the texture of the flesh and the lips.

  She laid her hand on his chest and listened. A strong, steady rhythm coming from him.

  He didn't move to stop her as she laid her hands on both sides of his skull. Soft, like a baby's skull, able to heal after blows that would kill a man of twenty-five. God, but how long was it going to be that way?

  S
he put her finger against his lower lip, opening his mouth and staring at his tongue. Then she sat back, her hands lying limp on her folded legs.

  "Are you hurting?" he asked her. His voice was very tender. He narrowed his eyes, and for just a second there was a little bit of mature expression in the face, and then it returned to baby wonder. "You lost so much blood."

  For a long moment she stared at him in silence.

  He waited, merely watching her.

  "No, I'm not hurt," she murmured. Again she stared at him for the longest time. "I need things," she said finally. "I need a microscope. I need to take blood samples. I need to see what the tissues really are now! God, I need all these things! I need a fully equipped laboratory. And we've got to leave here."

  "Yes," he said, nodding. "That should be the very next thing that we do. Leave here."

  "Can you stand up?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, you're going to try," She climbed to her knees, and then grasping the edge of the marble mantel, climbed to her feet.

  She took his hand, nice tight grip. "Come on, stand up, don't think about it, just do it, call on your body to know, the musculature is there, that's what differentiates you completely from a newborn, you have the skeleton and musculature of a man."

  "All right, I'll try," he said. He looked frightened and also strangely delighted. Shuddering, he struggled to his knees first, as she had done, and then to his feet, only to tumble backwards, catching himself from falling with one hasty back step after another.

  "Ooooh ... " He sang it out. "I'm walking, I am, I'm walking ... "

  She rushed towards him and wrapped her arm around him and let him cling to her. He grew quiet looking down at her, and then raised his hand and stroked her cheek, the gesture imperfectly coordinated, rather like a drunken gesture, but the fingers silky and tingling.

  "My beautiful Rowan," he said. "Look, the tears are rising in my eyes. Real tears. Oh, Rowan."

  He tried to stand freely and to bend down to kiss her. She caught him and steadied him as his lips closed over hers, and that same powerful sensual shock passed through her that had always come with his touch.

  "Rowan," he moaned aloud, crushing her against him, then slipping backwards until she brought him up short again in her arms.

  "Come, we haven't much time," she said. "We have to find some place safe, some place completely unknown ... "

  "Yes, darling, yes ... but you see it's all so new and so beautiful. Let me hold you again, let me kiss you ... "

  "There isn't time," she said, but the silken baby lips had clamped on hers again, and she felt his cock pressing against her sex, pressing into the soreness. She pulled away, drawing him after her.

  "That's it," she said, watching his feet, "don't think about it. Just look at me and walk."

  For one second, as she found herself in the doorway, as she was conscious of its keyhole shape, and the old discussions of its significance, all the misery and beauty of her life passed before her eyes, all her struggles and all former vows.

  But this was a new door all right. It was the door she'd glimpsed a million years ago in her girlhood when she'd first opened the magical volumes of scientific lore. And it was open now, quite beyond the horrors of Lemle's laboratory, and the Dutchmen gathered around the table in a mythical Leiden.

  She guided him slowly through the door and up the stairs, walking patiently, step by step, at his side.

  Fifty-two

  HE WAS TRYING to wake up, but every time he came near the surface, he went down again, heavy and drowsy and sinking into the soft feathery covers of the bed. The desperation would grip him and then it would go away.

  It was the sickness that finally woke him. It seemed forever that he sat on the bathroom floor, against the door, vomiting so violently that a pain locked around his ribs each time he retched. Then there was nothing more to heave up, and the nausea just lay on him with no promise of relief.

  The room was tilting. They had finally got the lock off the door, and they were picking him up. He wanted to say that he was sorry he'd locked it, reflex action, and he had been trying to get to the knob to open the door, but he couldn't make the words come out.

  Midnight. He saw the dial of the clock on the dresser. Midnight of Christmas Eve. And he struggled to say mere was a meaning to it, but it was impossible to do more than think of that thing standing behind the crib in the sanctuary. And he was sinking again, as his head hit the pillow.

  When next he opened his eyes, the doctor was talking to him again, but he couldn't recall just when he'd seen the doctor before. "Mr. Curry, do you have any idea what might have been in the injection?"

  No. I thought she was killing me. I thought I was going to die. Just trying to move his lips made him sick. He only shook his head, and that too made him sick. He could see the blackness of night still beyond the frost on the windows.

  " ... at least another eight hours," said the doctor.

  "Sleep, Michael. Don't worry now. Sleep."

  "Everything else normal. Clear liquids if he should ask for something to drink. If there's the slightest change ... "

  Treacherous witch. Everything destroyed. The man smiling at him from above the crib. Of course it had been the time. The very time. He knew that he had lost her forever. Midnight Mass was over. His mother was crying because his father was dead. Nothing will ever be the same now.

  "Just sleep it off. We're here with you."

  I've failed. I didn't stop him. I've lost her forever.

  "How long have I been here?"

  "Since yesterday evening."

  Christmas morning. He was staring out the window, afraid to move for fear of being sick again. "It's not snowing anymore, is it?" he said. He barely heard the answer, that it had stopped some time before daybreak.

  He forced himself to sit up. Nothing as bad as before. A headache yes, and a little blur to his vision. Nothing worse than a hangover.

  "Wait, Mr. Curry. Please. Let me call Aaron. The doctor will want to see you."

  "Yeah, that would be fine, but I'm getting dressed."

  All his clothes were in the closet. Nice little traveler's kit under plastic on the bathroom vanity. He showered, fighting an occasional bout of dizziness, shaved recklessly and fast with the little throwaway, and then came out of the bathroom. He wanted to sink down into the bed again, no doubt about it, but he said:

  "I gotta go back there, find out what went down."

  "I'm begging you to wait," said Aaron, "to take some food, see how you feel."

  "Doesn't matter how I feel. Can you give me a car? I'll hitch if you can't."

  He looked out the window. Snow still on the ground. Roads would be dangerous. Had to go now.

  "Look, I can't thank you enough for taking care of me like this."

  "What do you mean to do? You don't have any idea what you'll find. Last night she told me that if I cared about you, to see that you didn't come back."

  "Hell with what she said. I'm going."

  "Then I'm going too."

  "No, you stay here. This is between me and her. Get me a car, now, I'm leaving."

  It was a big bulky gray Lincoln Town Car, hardly his choice though the soft leather seat felt good, and the thing really cruised when he finally reached the interstate highway. Up until that point, Aaron had been following in the limo. But there was no sight of him now, as Michael passed one car after another.

  The snow was dirty at the sides of the road. But the ice was gone. And the sky above was that faultless mocking blue which made everything look clean and wide open. The headache gripped him, throwing a curve of dizziness and nausea at him every fifteen minutes. He just shook it off, and kept his foot on the gas pedal.

  He was going ninety when he cruised into New Orleans, going up past the cemeteries of Metairie and through the rooftops and then past the ludicrous surreal spectacle of the Superdome amphitheater, like a space saucer just touching down amid skyscrapers and church steeples.

&
nbsp; He braked too fast, nearly skidding as he took the St. Charles Avenue turnoff. Traffic crawled amid the frozen strips of soiled snow.

  Within five minutes, he made the left turn onto First, and then the car skidded dangerously again. He braked and crept his way over the slick asphalt, until he saw the house rising up like a somber fortress on its dark, shady snow-covered corner.

  The gate was open. He put his key into the front door and let himself in.

  For a moment, he stood stock-still. There was blood all over the floor, smeared and streaked, and the bloody print of a hand on the door frame. Something that looked like soot covered the walls, thinning out to a pale grime as it reached the ceiling.

  The smell was foul, like the smell of the sickroom in which Deirdre died.

  Smears of blood on the doorway to the living room. Tracks of bare feet. Blood all over the Chinese carpet, and some viscous mucuslike substance smeared on the boards, and the Christmas tree with all its lights burning, like an oblivious sentinel at the end of the room, a blind and dumb witness who could testify to nothing.

  The ache was exploding in his head, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest, and the rapid knocking in his heart. The adrenaline was flooding his veins. And his right hand was curling convulsively into a fist.

  He turned around, went out of the parlor and into the hall, and headed towards the dining room.

  Without a sound, a figure stepped into the high keyhole door, peering at him, one slender hand moving up on the door frame.

  It was a strange gesture. Something distinctly unsteady about the figure as if it too were reeling from shocks, and as it came forward into the light from the sun porch, Michael stopped, studying it, straining to understand what he was seeing.

  This was a man, clothed in loose disheveled pants and shirt, but Michael had never seen a man like him. The man was very tall, maybe six feet two inches in height and disproportionately slender. The pants were too large, and apparently cinched tight at the waist, and the shirt was Michael's shirt, an old sweatshirt. It hung like a tunic on the slender frame. He had rich black curly hair and very large blue eyes, but otherwise he resembled Rowan. It was like looking at a male twin of Rowan! The skin was like Rowan's smooth and youthful skin, only even more youthful than that, stretching over Rowan's cheekbones, and this was almost Rowan's mouth, just a little fuller, and more sensuous. And the eyes, though large and blue, had Rowan in them, and there was Rowan in the man's sudden thin, cold smile.