The Witching Hour

  He took another step towards Michael, and Michael could see he was unsteady on his feet. A radiance emanated from him. And Michael realized what it was, contradicting reason and experience, but perfectly obvious in a hideous sort of way, that the thing looked newborn, that it had the soft resilient brilliance of a baby. Its long thin hands were baby smooth, and its neck was baby smooth, and the face had no stamp of character whatsoever.

  Yet the expression on its face was no baby's expression. It was filled with wonder, and seeming love, and a terrible mockery.

  Michael lunged at it, catching it by surprise. He held its thin powerful arms in his hands, and was astonished and horrified by the riff of soft virile laughter that broke from it.

  Lasher, alive before, alive again, back into the flesh, defeating you! Your child, your genes, your flesh and her flesh, love you, defeated you, used you, thank you, my chosen father.

  In blind rage, Michael stood, unable to move, his hands clutching the arms of the being, as it struggled to free itself, pulling loose suddenly with a great arching gesture, like a bird drawing back, made of rubber and steel and flexing and preening.

  A low shuddering roar came out of Michael.

  "You killed my child! Rowan, you gave him our child!" His cry was guttural and anguished, the words rushing together in his own ears like noise. "Rowan!"

  Away from him the creature dashed, crashing awkwardly against the dining room wall, again throwing up its hands and laughing. It thrust its arm out, its huge smooth hand slamming Michael in the chest with ease and throwing him over the dining room table.

  "I am your child, Father, step back. Look at me!"

  Michael scrambled back onto his feet.

  "Look at you? I'll kill you!"

  He flew at the creature, but it danced back into the pantry, arching its back and extending its hands as if to tease. It waltzed backwards through the kitchen door. Its legs tangled, then straightened as if it were a straw man. Again its laughter rose, rich and deep and full of crazy merriment. The laughter was crazed like the eyes of the being, full of mad and uncaring delight.

  "Oh, come on, Michael, don't you want to know your own child! You can't kill me! You can't kill your own flesh and blood! I have your genes in me, Michael. I am you, I am Rowan. I am your son."

  Lunging again, Michael caught it and hurled it back against the French doors, rattling the panes. High up on the front of the house, the alarm sounded as the glass protectors tripped, adding its maddening peal to the mayhem.

  The creature flung its long gangly arms up, gazing down at Michael in astonishment as his hands closed on its throat. Then it lifted its two hands in fists and slammed them into Michael's jaw.

  Michael's feet went out from under him, but hitting the floor he rolled over at once on his hands and knees. The French door was open, the alarm still screaming, and the creature was dancing, pivoting, and frolicking with a hideous grace towards the pool.

  As he went after it, he saw Rowan coming in the corner of his eye, rushing down the kitchen stairs. He heard her scream.

  "Michael, stay away from him!"

  "You did that, Rowan, you gave him our child! He's in our child!" He turned, his arm raised, but he couldn't hit her. Frozen, he stared at her. She was the very image of terror, her face blanched and her mouth wet and quivering. Helpless, shuddering, the pain squeezing in his chest like a bellows, he turned and glared at the thing.

  It was skipping back and forth on the snow covered flagstones beside the rippling blue water, pitching its head forward and placing its hands on its knees, and then pointing to Michael. Its voice, loud and distinct, rose over the shrilling of the alarm.

  "You'll get over it, as mortals say, you'll see the light, as mortals say! You've created quite a child, Michael. Michael, I am your handiwork. I love you. I have always loved you. Love has been the definition of my ambition, they are one and the same with me, I present myself to you in love."

  Me went out the door as Rowan rushed towards him. He went straight for the thing, sliding on the frozen snow, tearing loose from her as she tried to stop him. She went down on the ground as if she were made of paper, and a whipping pain stung his neck. She had caught the St. Michael medal by its chain, and she had the broken chain now in her hands, and the medal fell into the snow. She was sobbing and begging him to stop.

  No time for her. He spun round and his powerful left hook went up, bashing into the side of the creature's head. It gave another peal of laughter even as the red blood spurted from the ruptured flesh. It tipped and spun around, slipping on the ice and careening into the iron chairs and knocking them askew.

  "Oh, now look what you've done, oh, you can't imagine how that feels! Oh, I have lived for this moment, this extraordinary moment!"

  With a sudden pivot, it dove for Michael's right arm, catching it and twisting it painfully back, its eyebrows raised, lips drawn back in a smile, pearly teem flashing white against its pink tongue. All new, all shining, all pristine, like a baby.

  Michael drove another left into its chest, feeling the crunch of bones.

  "Yeah, you like it, you evil thing, you greedy son of a bitch, die!" He spit at it, driving his left fist into it again, even as it clung to his right wrist, like an unfurling flag tied to him. The blood squirted out of its mouth. "Yeah! You're in the flesh--now die in it!"

  "I'm losing patience with you!" the creature howled, glaring down at the blood dripping from its lip all over its shirt. "Oooh, look what you've done, you angry father, you righteous parent!" It jerked Michael forward, off balance, its grip on his wrist like iron.

  "You like it?" Michael cried. "You like your bleeding flesh," he roared, "my child's flesh, my flesh!" Wringing his right hand and unable to free it, he closed his left fingers around the thing's smooth throat, jabbing his thumb into its windpipe while his knee rammed into its scrotum. "Oh, she made you really complete, didn't she, right down to the outdoor plumbing!"

  In a flash he saw Rowan again, but it was the thing that knocked her down this time as it let go of Michael at last. She fell against the balustrade.

  The thing was shrieking in pain, the blue eyes rolling in its head. Before Rowan could get to her feet, it shot backwards, shoulders rising like wings, and then lowering its head, it cried, "You are teaching me, Father. Oh yes, you're teaching me well!" A growl overrode the words, and it ran at Michael, butting him in the chest with its head, striking him one fine blow that hurled him off his feet and out over the swimming pool.

  Rowan gave a deafening cry, far louder and more shrill than the siren of the alarm.

  But Michael had crashed into the icy water. He sank down, down, into the deep end, the blue surface glittering high above him. The freezing temperature shocked the breath out of him. He was motionless, scalded by the cold, unable even to move his arms, until he felt his body scrape along the bottom.

  Then in a desperate convulsion he started for the top, his clothes like fingers grabbing him and holding him down. And as his head passed through the surface into the blinding light, he felt another thudding blow and sank again, rising, only to be held under, his hands up in the air, free in the air, clawing futilely at the thing that held him, his mouth swallowing gulp after gulp of cold water.

  Happening again, drowning again, this cold cold water. No, not like this, not again. He tried to close his mouth, but the exploding pain in his chest was too great and the water poured into his lungs. His hands could feel nothing above; and he could no longer see either color or light, or even sense up from down. And in a flash he saw the Pacific again, endless and gray, and the lights of the Cliff-House dimming and vanishing as the waves rose around him.

  Suddenly his body relaxed; he wasn't struggling desperately to breathe or to rise, not clawing at anything. In fact, he wasn't in his body at all. He knew this feeling, this weightlessness, this sublime freedom.

  Only he wasn't traveling upward, not rising buoyant and free the way he had that long-ago day, right up into the leaden gr
ay sky and the clouds, from which he could see all the earth down there below with its millions upon millions of tiny beings.

  He was in a tunnel this time, and he was being sucked down, and it was dark and close and there seemed no end to the journey. In a great rush of silence, he plummeted, completely without will, and full of vague wonder.

  At last a great splashing red light surrounded him. He had fallen into a familiar place. Yes, the drums, he heard the drums, the old familiar Mardi Gras cadence of marching drums, the sound of the Comus parade moving swiftly through the winter dark on the tired dreary edge of Mardi Gras night, and the flicker of the flames was the flicker of the flambeaux beneath the twisted elbows of the oaks, and his fear was the all-knowing little boy's fear of long ago, and it was all here, everything he'd feared, happening at last, not a mere glimpse on the edge of dream, or with Deirdre's nightgown in his hands, but here, around him.

  His feet had struck the steaming ground, and as he tried to stand up, he saw the branches of the oaks had gone right up through the plaster roof of the parlor, catching the chandelier in a tangle of leaves, and brushing past the high mirrors. And this was really the house. Countless bodies writhed in the dark. He was stepping on them! Gray, naked shapes fornicating and twisting in the flames and in the shadows, the smoke billowing up to obscure the faces of all those surrounding him and looking at him. But he knew who they were. Taffeta skirts, cloth brushing him. He stumbled and tried to get his balance but his hand just passed right through the burning rock, his feet went down into the steaming muck.

  In a circle the nuns were coming, tall black-robed figures with stiff white wimples, nuns whose names and faces he knew from childhood, rosaries rattling, their feet pounding on the heart pine floor as they came, and they closed the circle around him. Stella stepped through the circle, eyes flashing, her marcelled hair shining with pomade, and suddenly reached for him and tugged him towards her.

  "Let him alone, he can climb up on his own," said Julien. And there he was, the man himself with his curling white hair and his small glittering black eyes, his clothes immaculate and fine, and his hand rising as he smiled and beckoned:

  "Come on, Michael, get up," he said, with the sharp French accent. "You're with us now, it's quite finished, and stop fighting at once."

  "Yes, get up, Michael," said Mary Beth, her dark taffeta skirt brushing his face, a tall stately woman, hair shot through and through with gray.

  "You're with us now, Michael." It was Charlotte with her radiant blond hair, bosom bulging over her taffeta decolletage, lifting him, though he struggled to get away. His hand went right through her breast.

  "Stop it, get away from me!" he cried. "Get away."

  Stella was naked except for the little chemise falling off her shoulder, the whole side of her head dripping with blood from the bullet.

  "Come on, Michael darling, you're here now, to stay, don't you see, it's finished, darling. Job well done."

  The drums were thudding closer and closer, battering at the keening song of a Dixieland band, and the coffin lay open at the end of the room, with the candles around it. The candles were going to catch the drapes and burn the place down!

  "Illusion, lies," he cried. "It's a trick." He tried to stand up straight, to find some direction in which to run, but everywhere he looked he saw the nine-paned windows, the keyhole doors, the oak branches piercing the ceiling and the walls and the whole house like a great monstrous trap re-forming around the struggling gnarled trees, flames reflected in the high narrow mirrors, couches and chairs overgrown with ivy and blossoming camellias. The bougainvillea swept over the ceiling, curling down by the marble mantels, tiny purple petals fluttering into the smoking flames.

  The nun's hand suddenly came down like a board against the side of his face, the pain shocking him and maddening him. "What do you say, boy! Of course you're here, stand up!" That bellowing coarse voice. "Answer me, boy!"

  "Get away from me!" He shoved at her in panic, but his hand passed through her.

  Julien was standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. And behind Julien stood handsome Cortland, with his father's same expression and his father's same mocking smile.

  "Michael, it should be perfectly obvious to you that you have performed superbly," said Cortland, "that you bedded her, brought her back, and got her with child, which is exactly what we wanted you to do."

  "We don't want to fight," said Marguerite, her haglike hair veiling her face as she reached out for him. "We're all on the same side, mon cher. Stand up, please, come to us."

  "Come now, Michael, you're making all this confusion yourself," said Suzanne, her big simpleton eyes flashing and snapping as she helped him to his feet, her breasts poking through the filthy rags.

  "Yes, you did it, my son," said Julien. "Eh bien, you have been marvelous, both of you, you and Rowan, you have done precisely what you were born to do."

  "And now you can go back through with us," said Deborah. She raised her hands for the others to step aside, the flames rising behind her, the smoke curling over her head. The emerald glimmered and winked against her dark blue velvet gown. The girl of Rembrandt's painting, so beautiful with her ruddy cheeks and her blue eyes, as beautiful as the emerald. "Don't you see? That was the pact. Now that he's gone through, we're all going to go back through! Rowan knows how to bring us back through, the same way that she brought him through. No, Michael, don't struggle. You want to be with us, earthbound here, to wait your turn, otherwise you'll simply be dead forever."

  "We're all saved now, Michael," said fragile Antha, standing like a little girl in her simple flowered dress, blood pouring down her face on both sides from the bashed-in wound on the back of her head. "And you can't imagine how long we've been waiting. One loses track of time here ... "

  "Yes, saved," said Marie Claudette. She was sitting in a big four-poster bed, with Marguerite beside her, the flames twining around the posts, eating at the canopy. Lestan and Maurice stood behind the bed, looking on with vaguely bored expressions, the light glimmering on their brass buttons, flames licking at the edges of their flared coats.

  "They burned us out in Saint-Dominigue," said Charlotte, holding the folds of her lovely skirt daintily. "And the river took our old plantation."

  "But this house will stand forever," said Maurice gravely, eyes sweeping the ceiling, the medallions, the listing chandeliers, "thanks to your fine efforts at restoration, and we have this safe and marvelous place in which to wait our turn to become flesh again."

  "We're so glad to have you, darling," said Stella, with the same bored air, shifting her weight suddenly so that her left hip poked out the silk chemise. "Surely you don't want to pass up an opportunity like this."

  "I don't believe you! You're lies, figments!" Michael spun round, head crashing through the peach-colored plaster wall. The potted fern went over on the floor. Couples writhing before him snarled as his foot went through them--through the back of the man and the belly of the woman.

  Stella giggled and sprinted across the floor, pitching herself back into the satin-lined coffin and reaching out for her glass of champagne. The drums were growing louder and louder. Why doesn't everything catch fire, why doesn't it all burn?

  "Because this is hell, son," said the nun, who raised her hand to slap him again. "And it just burns and burns."

  "Stop it, let me go!"

  He crashed into Julien, falling forward the flames flashing upward in a heated blast into his face.

  But the nun had him by his collar. She had the St. Michael medal in her hand. "You dropped this, didn't you? And I told you to take care of it, didn't I? And where did I find it? I found it lying on the ground, that's where I found it!" And wham, the slap struck him again, fierce and hurtful, and he seethed with rage. She shook him as he slipped onto his knees, hands struggling to shove her away.

  "All you can do now is be with us, and go back through!" said Deborah. "Don't you understand? The doorway is open; it's ju
st a matter of time. Lasher and Rowan will bring us through, Suzanne first, then I shall go and then--"

  "No, wait a minute now, I never agreed to any such order," said Charlotte.

  "Neither did I," said Julien.

  "Who said anything about order!" roared Marie Claudette, kicking the quilt off her legs as she sat forward in the bed.

  "Why are you being so foolish!" said Mary Beth, with a bored, matter-of-fact air. "My God, everything has been fulfilled. And there is no limit to how many times the transmutation can be effected, and you can imagine, can't you, the superior quality of the mutated flesh and the mutated genes. This is actually a scientific advance of stunning brilliance."

  "All natural, Michael, and to understand that is to understand the essence of the world, that things are--hmmmm, more or less predetermined," said Cortland. "Don't you know you were in our hands from the very beginning?"

  "That is the crucial point for you to understand," said Mary Beth reasonably.

  "The fire that killed your father," said Cortland, "that was no accident ... "

  "Don't say these things to me!" roared Michael. "You didn't do that. I don't believe it. I don't accept it!"

  " ... to position you exactly, and see to it that you had the desired combination of sophistication and charm, so as to command her attention and cause her to let down her guard ... "

  "Don't bother talking to him," the tall nun snapped, her rosary beads jangling together as they hung from her thick leather belt. "He's incorrigible. You just leave him to me. I'll slap the fire out of him."

  "It isn't true," he said, trying to shield his eyes from the glare of the flames, the drums pounding through his temples. "This is not the explanation," he cried. "This is not the final meaning." He outshouted the drums.

  "Michael, I warned you," came the piteous little voice of Sister Bridget Marie, who peeped around the side of the mean nun. "I told you there were witches in those dark streets."