The Witching Hour

  "Come here at once, and have some champagne," said Stella. "And stop creating all these hellish images. Don't you see, when you're earthbound you create your surroundings."

  "Yes, you are making it so ugly here!" said Antha.

  "There are no flames here," said Stella. "That's in your head. Come, let's dance to the drums, oh, I have grown so to love this music. I do like your drums, your crazy Mardi Gras drums!"

  He thrashed with both his arms, his lungs burning, his chest about to burst. "I won't believe it. You're all his little joke, his trick, his connivance--"

  "No, mon cher," said Julien, "we are the final answer and the meaning."

  Mary Beth shook her head sadly, looking at him. "We always were."

  "The hell you are!"

  He was on his feet at last. He twisted loose from the nun, ducking her next slap, and gliding through her, and now he sped through Julien's thickening form, blind for a moment, but emerging free, ignoring the laughter, and the drums.

  The nuns closed ranks but he went through. Nothing was going to stop him. He could see the way out, he could see the light pouring through the keyhole door. "I will not, I will not believe ... "

  "Darling, think back to the first drowning," said Deborah, suddenly beside him, trying to capture his hand. "It was what we explained to you before when you were dead, that we needed you, and you did agree, but of course we knew you were just bargaining for your life, lying to us, you see, and we knew that if we didn't make you forget, you would never never fulfill--"

  "Lies! Lasher's lies!" He pulled free of her.

  Only a few more feet to the door, and he could make it. He pitched forward, stumbling again over the bodies that littered the floor, stepping on backs and shoulders and heads, smoke stinging his eyes. But he was getting closer to the light.

  And there was a figure in the doorway, and he knew that helmet, that long mantle, he knew that garb. Yes, knew it, very familiar to him.

  "I'm coming," he cried out.

  But his lips had barely moved.

  He was lying on his back.

  His body was shot through and through with pain, and the frozen silence closed around him. And the sky high above was that dizzying blue.

  He heard the voice of the man over him saying, "That's right, son, breathe!"

  Yes, knew that helmet and that mantle, because it was a fire fighter's garb, and he was lying by the pool, sprawled on the icy cold flagstones, his chest burning, his arms and legs aching, and it was a fireman bending over him, clapping the plastic oxygen mask to his face and squeezing the bag beside him, a fireman with a face just like his dad's face, and the man said again: "That's it, son, breathe!"

  The other firemen stood over him, great shadowy shapes against the moving clouds, all familiar by virtue of their helmets and their coats, as they cheered him on with voices so like his father's voice.

  Each breath he took was a raw throb of pain, but he drew the air down into his lungs, and as they lifted him, he closed his eyes.

  "I'm here, Michael," Aaron said. "I'm at your side."

  The pain in his chest was enormous and pressing against his lungs, and his arms were numb. But the darkness was clean and quiet and the stretcher felt as if it were flying as they wheeled him along.

  Argument, talk, the crackle of those walkie-talkie things. But none of it mattered. He opened his eyes and saw the sky flashing overhead. Ice dripping from the frozen withered bougainvillea, as they went past, all its blossoms dead. Out the gate, wheels bouncing on the uneven flagstones.

  Somebody pressed the little mask hard over his face as they lifted him into the ambulance. "Cardiac emergency, coming in now, requesting ... " Blankets all around him.

  Aaron's voice again, and then another:

  "He's fibrillating again! Damn it! Go!"

  The doors of the ambulance slammed, his body rocking to the side slightly as they pulled away from the curb.

  The fist came down on his chest, once, twice, again. Oxygen pumping into him through the plastic mask, like a cold tongue.

  The alarm was still going, or was it their siren singing like that, a faraway cry, like the cries of those desperate birds in the early morning, crows cawing in the big oaks, as if scratching at the rosy sky, at the dark deep moss-covered silence.

  EPILOGUE

  Fifty-three

  SOME TIME BEFORE nightfall, he understood he was in the critical care unit, that his heart had stopped in the pool, and again on the way in, and a third time in the Emergency Room. They were regulating his pulse now with a powerful drug called lidocaine, which was why he was in a mental fog, unable to hang on to any complete thought.

  Aaron was allowed in to see him for five minutes during every hour. At some point Aunt Vivian was there too. And then Ryan came.

  Various faces appeared over his bed; different voices spoke to him. It was daylight again when the doctor explained that the weakness he felt was to be expected. The good news was that he had sustained relatively little damage to the heart muscle; in fact he was already recovering. They would keep him on the regulating drugs, and the blood thinners, and the drugs that dissolved the cholesterol. Rest and heal were the last words he heard as he went under again.

  It must have been New Year's Eve that they finally explained things to him. By then the medication had been reduced and he was able to follow what they were saying.

  There'd been no one on the premises when the fire engine arrived. Just the alarm screaming. Not only had the glass protectors gone off, but somebody had pushed the auxiliary buttons for fire, police, and medical emergency. Rushing through the gate and back the side path, the fire fighters had immediately spotted the broken glass outside the open French doors, the overturned furniture on the veranda, and the blood on the flagstones. Then they spotted the dark shape floating just beneath the surface of the swimming pool.

  Aaron had arrived about the time they were bringing Michael around. So had the police. They had searched the house, but could find no one. There was unexplained blood in the house, and evidence of some sort of fire. Closets and drawers were open upstairs, and a half-packed suitcase was open on the bed. But there was no other evidence of a struggle.

  It was Ryan who determined, later that same afternoon, that Rowan's Mercedes convertible was gone, and that her purse and any and all identification were also gone. No one could find her medical bag, though the cousins were sure they had seen such a thing.

  In the absence of any coherent explanation of what had happened, the family was thrown into a panic. It was too soon to report Rowan as a missing person, nevertheless police began an unofficial search. Her car was found in the airport parking garage before midnight, and it was soon confirmed that she had purchased two tickets to New York earlier that afternoon, and that her plane had safely landed on schedule. A clerk remembered her, and that she'd been traveling with a tall man. The stewardesses remembered both parties, and that they were talking and drinking during the entire flight. There was no evidence of coercion or foul play. The family could do nothing but wait for Rowan to contact them, or for Michael to explain what had happened.

  Three days later, on December 29, a wire had been received from Rowan from Switzerland, in which she explained that she would be in Europe for some time and instructions regarding her personal affairs would follow. The wire contained one of a series of code words known only to the designee of the legacy and the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair. And this confirmed to the satisfaction of everyone involved that the wire had indeed come from Rowan. Instructions were received the same day for a substantial transfer of funds to a bank in Zurich. Once again the correct code words were used. Mayfair and Mayfair had no grounds for questioning Rowan's instructions.

  On January 6, when Michael was moved out of the critical care unit into a regular private room, Ryan came to visit, apparently extremely confused and uncomfortable about the messages he had to relay. He was as tactful as possible.

  Rowan would be gone "indefinitely." Her
specific whereabouts were not known, but she had been in frequent touch with Mayfair and Mayfair through a law firm in Paris.

  Complete ownership of the First Street house was to be given to Michael. No one in the family was to challenge his full and exclusive right to the property. It was to remain in his hands, and his hands only, until the day he died, at which time it would revert--according to law--to the legacy.

  As for Michael's living expenses, he was to have carte blanche to the full extent that Rowan's resources allowed. In other words, he was to have all the money he wanted or ever asked for, without specified limit.

  Michael said nothing when he heard this.

  Ryan assured him that he was there to see to Michael's smallest wish, that Rowan's instructions were lengthy and explicit, and that Mayfair and Mayfair was prepared to carry them out to the smallest detail. Whenever Michael was ready to go home, every preparation would be made for his comfort.

  He didn't even hear most of what Ryan was saying to him. There was no need really to explain to Ryan, or anyone else, the full irony of this turn of events, or how his thoughts were running, day in and day out, in a druggy haze, over all the events and turns of his life from the time of his earliest memories.

  When he closed his eyes, he saw them all again, in the flames and the smoke, the Mayfair Witches. He heard the beat of the drums, and he smelled the stench of the flames, and he heard Stella's piercing laughter.

  Then it would slip away.

  The quiet would return, and he would be back in his early childhood, walking up First Street that long-ago Mardi Gras night with his mother, thinking, Ah, what a beautiful house.

  Some time later, when Ryan had stopped talking and sat patiently in the room merely studying Michael, a load of questions obviously crowding Ryan's brain, all of which he was afraid to voice, Michael asked if the family hated his being in the house. If they wanted him to relinquish it.

  Ryan explained that they did not hate it at all. That they hoped Michael would live in the house. That they hoped Rowan would return, that some sort of reconciliation could be effected. And then Ryan seemed at a loss. Embarrassed and obviously deeply distressed, he said in a raw voice that the family "just couldn't understand what had happened."

  A number of possible responses ran through Michael's mind. From a cool distance, he imagined himself making mysterious remarks that would richly feed the old family legends; obscure allusions to the thirteen and to the door, and to "the man"; remarks that would be discussed for years to come perhaps, on lawns and at dinners, and in funeral parlors. But it was really unthinkable to do that. In fact, it was absolutely crucial to remain silent.

  Then he heard himself say, with extraordinary conviction, "Rowan will come back." And he didn't say anything after that.

  Early the next day, when Ryan came again, Michael did make one request--that his Aunt Vivian move into the house, if she wanted to. He didn't see any reason now for her to be alone in her apartment on the avenue. And if Aaron could be his guest at the house, that too would make him happy.

  Ryan went into a long-drawn-out lawyerly confirmation that the house was Michael's house, and that Michael need ask no one's permission or approval to implement his smallest or greatest wish with regard to things at First Street. To this Ryan added his own deepest concern that Michael call upon him for "absolutely anything."

  Finally in the silence which ensued, Ryan broke down. He said he couldn't understand where he and the family had failed Rowan. Rowan had begun shifting enormous sums of money out of their hands. The plans for Mayfair Medical had been put on hold. He simply couldn't understand what had happened.

  Michael said, "It wasn't your fault. You had nothing to do with it." And after a long time, during which Ryan sat there, apparently ashamed of his outburst, and looking confused and defeated, Michael said again: "She'll come back. You wait and see. It isn't over."

  On February 10, Michael was released from the hospital. He was still very weak, which was frustrating to him, but his heart muscle had showed remarkable improvement. His overall health was good. He rode uptown in a black limousine with Aaron.

  The driver of the car was a pale-skinned black man named Henri, who would be living in the back garconniere behind Deirdre's oak, and taking care of everything for Michael.

  The day was clear and warm. There had been a bitter freeze again right after Christmas, and several inundating rains, but the weather was now like spring, and the pink and red azaleas were blooming all over the property. The sweet olive had regained all of its beautiful green leaves in the aftermath of the freeze, and a new bright color was coming out on the oak trees.

  Everybody was happy, explained Henri, because Mardi Gras was "just around the corner." The parades would be starting any day now.

  Michael took a walk around the garden. All the dead tropical plants had been cleared away, but the new banana trees were already springing up from the dark freeze-killed stumps, and even the gardenias were coming back, dropping their shriveled brown leaves and breaking out in dark glossy new foliage. The bony white crepe myrtle trees were still bare, but that was to be expected. All along the front fence the camellias were covered with dark red blossoms. And the tulip magnolias had only just dropped their great saucerlike blooms; the flagstones were littered with their large pink petals.

  The house itself was shining clean and in perfect order.

  Aunt Vivian had taken the bedroom which had belonged to Carlotta, and Eugenia was still at the very far end of the second floor, near the kitchen stairway. Aaron slept in the second bedroom in the front, the room that had once belonged to Millie Dear.

  Michael did not want to return to the front room, and they had readied the old northside master bedroom for him. It was quite inviting--even with the high-backed wooden bed in which Deirdre had died, now heaped with white down comforters and pillows. He liked in particular the small northside front porch on which he could go out and sit at the iron table and look out over the corner.

  For days there was a procession of visitors. Bea came with Lily, and then Cecilia and Clancy and Pierce, and Randall came by with Ryan who had various papers to be signed, and others dropped in, whose names he had trouble remembering. Sometimes he talked to them; sometimes he didn't. Aaron was very good at taking care of things for him. Aunt Vivian was very proficient at receiving people as well.

  But he could see how deeply the cousins were troubled. They were chastened, restrained, and above all, bewildered. They were uneasy in the house, even at times a little jumpy.

  Not so Michael. The house was empty, and clean as far as he was concerned. And he knew every little repair that had been done; every shade of paint that had been used; every bit of restored plaster or woodwork. It was his greatest accomplishment, right up to the new copper gutters, and down to the heart pine floors he'd stripped and stained himself. He felt just fine here.

  "I'm glad to see you're not wearing those awful gloves anymore," Beatrice said. It was Sunday, and the second time she had come, and they were sitting in the bedroom.

  "No, I don't need them now," said Michael. "It's the strangest thing, but after the accident in the pool, my hands went back to normal."

  "You don't see things anymore?"

  "No," he said. "Maybe I never used the power right. Maybe I didn't use it in time. And so it was taken away from me."

  "Sounds like a blessing," said Bea, trying to conceal her confusion.

  "Doesn't matter now," said Michael.

  Aaron saw Beatrice to the door. Only by chance did Michael wander past the head of the steps, and happen to hear her saying to Aaron, "He looks ten years older." Bea was crying, actually. She was begging Aaron to tell her how this tragedy had come about. "I could believe it," she said, "that this house is cursed. It's full of evil. They should never have planned to live in this house. We should have stopped them. You should make him get away from here."

  Michael went back into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

&n
bsp; When he looked into the mirror of Deirdre's old dresser, he decided that Bea was right. He did look older. He hadn't noticed the gray hair at his temples. There was a little sparkle of gray mixed in with all the rest too. And he had perhaps a few more lines in his face than he'd had before. Maybe even a lot of them. Especially around his eyes.

  Suddenly he smiled. He hadn't even noticed what he put on this afternoon. Now he saw that it was a dark satin smoking jacket, with velvet lapels, which Bea had sent to him at the hospital. Aunt Viv had laid it out for him. Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de Winter at Manderley. He gave a melancholy smile at his image, with one eyebrow raised. And the gray at his temples making him look, what? Distinguished.

  "Eh bien, Monsieur," he said, striving to sound to himself like the voice of Julien he'd heard on the street in San Francisco. Even his expression had changed somewhat. He felt he had a touch of Julien's resignation.

  Of course this was his Julien, the Julien he had seen on the bus, and whom Richard Llewellyn had once seen in a dream. Not the playful smiling Julien of his portraits, or the menacing laughing Julien of the dark hellish place full of smoke and fire. That place hadn't really existed.

  He went downstairs, slowly, the way the doctor recommended, and went into the library. There had never been anything in the desk since it was cleaned out after Carlotta's death, and so he had made it his, and he kept his notebook there. His diary.

  It was the same diary he'd started to keep on his first visit to Oak Haven. And he continued to write in it--making entries almost every day, because it was the only place that he could express what he really felt about what had happened.

  Of course he had told Aaron everything. And Aaron was the only person he would ever tell.

  But he needed this quiet, contemplative relationship with the blank page in which to voice his soul completely. It was beautiful to sit here, only now and then looking up through the lace curtains at the passersby who were headed up to St. Charles Avenue to see the Venus parade. Only two more days until Mardi Gras.

  But the one thing he didn't like was that he could sometimes hear the drums in the quiet. That had happened yesterday, and he hated it.