The Witching Hour

  Silence.

  "It was good of you to bring me here."

  Silence.

  "Maybe ... "

  "Maybe what?" He turned around.

  She stood with her back to the lights again. She'd taken off her coat, and she looked angular and graceful in the huge cable-knit sweater, and all long legs, magnificent cheekbones, and fine narrow wrists.

  "Could it be that you were supposed to forget?" she asked. That had never occurred to him. For a moment, he didn't answer.

  "Do you believe me about the visions?" he asked. "I mean, did you read what they said in the papers? It was true, that part. I mean the papers made me sound stupid, crazy. But the point is there was so much to it, so much, and ... "

  He wished he could see her face just a little better.

  "I believe you," she said simply. She paused, then went on. "It's always frightening, a close call, a seeming chance thing that makes a large impact. We like to believe it was meant ... "

  "It was meant!"

  "I was going to say that in this case the call was very close, because it was almost dark when I saw you out there. Five minutes later I might not have seen you at all, couldn't possibly have seen you."

  "You're casting around for explanations, and that's very gracious of you, I really appreciate it, I do. But you see, what I do remember, the impression I mean, it's so strong that nothing like that is necessary to explain it. They were there, Dr. Mayfair. And ... "

  "What is it?"

  He shook his head. "Just one of those frissons, those crazy moments when it's as if I do remember, but then it's gone. I got it out there on the deck, too. The knowledge that, yes, when I opened my eyes I did know what had happened ... and then it was gone ... "

  "The word you spoke, the murmur ... "

  "I didn't catch it. I didn't see myself speak a word. But I'll tell you something. I think I knew your name out there. I knew who you were."

  Silence.

  "But I'm not sure." He turned around, bewildered. What was he doing? Where was his suitcase, and he really did have to go, only he was so tired, and he didn't want to.

  "I don't want you to go," she said again.

  "You mean it? I could stay for a while?" He looked at her, at the dark shadow of her long lean figure against the distant faintly illuminated glass. "Oh, I wish I'd met you before this," he said. "I wish I ... I like ... I mean, it's so stupid, but you're very ... "

  He moved forward, the better to see her. Her eyes became visible, seeming very large and long for deep-set eyes, and her mouth so generous and soft. But a strange illusion occurred as he drew closer. Her face in the soft glow from beyond the walls appeared perfectly menacing and malicious. Surely it was a mistake. He wasn't making out any true expression. The figure facing him seemed to have lowered her head, to be peering up at him from beneath the fringe of her straight blond hair, in an attitude of consummate hatred.

  He stopped. It had to be a mistake. Yet she stood there, quite still, either unaware of the dread he felt now, or uncaring.

  Then she started towards him, moving into the dim light from the northern doorway.

  How pretty and sad she looked! How could he have ever made such an error? She was about to cry. In fact, it was simply awful to see the sadness in her face, to see the sudden silent hunger and spill of emotion.

  "What is it?" he whispered. He opened his arms. And at once, she pressed herself gently against him. Her breasts were large and soft against his chest. He hugged her close, enfolding her, and ran his gloved fingers up through her hair. "What is it?" he whispered again, but it wasn't really a question. It was more a little reassuring caress of words. He could feel her heart beating, her breath catching. He himself was shaking. The protective feeling aroused in him was hot, alchemizing quickly into passion.

  "I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know." And now she was silently crying. She looked up, and then opening her mouth, she moved very gently into kissing him. It was as if she didn't want to do it against his will; she gave him all the time in the world to draw back. And of course he hadn't the slightest intention of doing so.

  He was engulfed at once as he'd been in the car when he touched her hand, but this time it was her soft, voluptuous, and all too solid flesh that embraced him. He kissed her over and over, feeding on her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. With his gloved fingers he stroked her cheek, felt her smooth skin beneath the heavy woolen sweater. God, if only he could take off the gloves, but if he took off the gloves, he'd be lost, and all passion would evaporate in that confusion. He was desperate to cling to this, desperate; and she already mistakenly believed, she was already foolishly afraid ...

  "Yes, yes, I do," he said, "how could you think I didn't want to, that I wouldn't ... how could you believe that? Hold me, Rowan, hold me tighter. I'm here now. I'm with you, yes."

  Crying, she collapsed in his arms. Her hand ripped at his belt, at the zipper of his pants, but these were clumsy, unsuccessful gestures. A soft cry came out of her. Pure pain. He couldn't endure it.

  He kissed her again, kissed her neck as her head fell back. Then he picked her up and gently carried her across the room and up the iron stairs, walking slowly round curve after curve, and then into a large and dark southern bedroom. They tumbled down into the low bed. He kissed her again, smoothing her hair back, loving the feel of her even through the gloves, looking down at her closed eyes, her helpless half-open lips. As he pulled at the sweater, she struggled to help, and finally ripped it over her head, her hair beautifully tousled by it.

  When he saw her breasts through the thin covering of nylon, he kissed them through the cloth, deliberately teasing himself, his tongue touching the dark circle of the nipple before he forced the cloth away. What did it feel like, the black leather touching her skin, caressing her nipples? He lifted her breasts, kissing the hot curve of them underneath--he loved this particular juicy crevice--then he sucked the nipples hard, one after the other, rubbing and gathering the flesh feverishly with the palm of his hand.

  She was twisting under him, her body moving helplessly it seemed, her lips grazing his unevenly shaven chin, then all soft and sweet over his mouth, her hands slipping into his shirt and feeling his chest as if she loved the flatness of it.

  She pinched his nipples as he suckled hers. He was so hard he was going to spill. He stopped, rose on his hands, and tried to catch his breath, then sank down next to her. He knew she was pulling off her jeans. He brought her close, feeling the smooth flesh of her back, then moving down to the curve of her soft clutchable and kneadable little bottom.

  No waiting now, he couldn't. In a rage of impatience he took off his glasses and shoved them on the bedside table. Now she would be a lush soft blur to him, but all the physical details he'd seen were ever present in his mind. He was on top of her. Her hand moved against his crotch, unzipped his pants, and brought out his sex, roughly, slapping it as if to test its hardness--a little gesture that almost brought him over the edge. He felt the prickly curling thatch of pubic hair, the heated inner lips, and finally the tight pulsing sheath itself as he entered.

  Maybe he cried out. He didn't know. She rose on the pillow, her mouth on his mouth, her arms pulling him closer to her, her pelvis clamped against him.

  "Ride me hard," she whispered. It was like the slap--a sharp goad that sent his pent-up fury to the boiling point. Her fragile form, her tender bruisable flesh--it only incited him. No imagined rape he had ever committed in his secret unaccountable dream soul had ever been more brutal.

  Her hips slammed against his; and dimly he saw the red flush in her face and naked breasts as she moaned. Driving into her again and again, he saw her arms flung out, limp, just before he closed his eyes and exploded inside her.

  Finally, exhausted, they tumbled apart into the soft flannel sheets. Her hot limbs were tangled under his outstretched arm, his face buried in her fragrant hair. She snuggled close. She drew the loose neglected sheet over them both; she turned towards him and nuzzle
d into his neck.

  Let the plane wait, let his purpose wait. Let the pain go and the agitation. In any other time and place, he would have found her irresistible. But now she was more than that, more than succulent, and hot and full of mystery and seemingly perfect fire. She was something divine, and he needed it so it saddened him.

  Her tender silky arm slid up around his neck as he gathered her to himself. He could hear her heart beating against him.

  Long moments later, swinging perilously close to deep sleep, he sat up with a start, and groggily stripped off his hot clothes. Then he lay naked with her, except for the gloves, his limbs against her limbs, breathing her warmth and hearing her soft drowsy sigh like a kiss, as he fell to dreaming beside her.

  "Rowan," he whispered. Yes, knew all about her, knew her.

  They were downstairs. They said, Wake, Michael, come down. They had lighted a great fire in the fireplace. Or was it simply a fire around them, like a forest blazing? He thought he heard the sound of drums. Michael. Faint dream or memory of the Comus parade that long-ago winter night, of the bands beating the fierce, dreadful cadence while the flambeaux flickered on the branches of the oak trees. They were there, downstairs, all he had to do was wake up and go down. But for the first time in all these weeks since they'd left him, he didn't want to see them, he didn't want to remember.

  He sat up, staring at the pale milky morning sky. He was sweating, and his heart was pounding.

  Stillness; too early for the sun. He picked up his glasses and put them on.

  There was no one in this house, no drums, no smell of fire. No one at all, except the two of them, but she was no longer in the bed at his side. He could hear the rafters and the pilings singing, but it was only the water making them sing. Then came a deep vibrant sound, more a tremor than a noise at all, and he knew it was the big cruiser rocking in its mooring. That ghastly leviathan saying I am here.

  He sat for a moment, staring dully at the Spartan furnishings. All well made of the same beautiful fine grain wood he had seen downstairs. Someone lived here who loved fine wood, who loved things put together perfectly. Everything quite low in this room--the bed, the desk, the scattered chairs. Nothing to interrupt the view from the windows that rose all the way to the ceiling.

  But he was smelling a fire. Yes, and when he listened carefully he could hear it. And a robe had been set out for him, a nice thick white terry-cloth robe, just the kind he loved.

  He put on the robe and went down the stairs in search of her.

  The fire was blazing, on that account he'd been right. But no horde of dream beings hovered around it. She sat alone, legs crossed, on the deep stone hearth, in a robe of her own, her thin limbs almost lost in its folds, and again she was shaking and crying.

  "I'm sorry, Michael. I'm so sorry," she whispered in that deep velvety voice. Her face was streaked and weary.

  "Now, honey, why would you say a thing like that?" he asked. He sat beside her, enfolding her in his arms. "Rowan, what in the world are you sorry for?"

  In a rush her words came, spilling so fast he could scarcely follow--that she had placed this immense demand upon him, that she had wanted so to be with him, that the last few months had been the worst of her life, and that her loneliness had been almost unbearable.

  Again and again he kissed her cheek.

  "I like being with you," he said. "I want to be here. I don't want be anyplace in the world ... "

  He stopped, he thought of the New Orleans plane. Well, that could wait. And awkwardly he tried to explained that he'd been trapped in the house on Liberty Street.

  "I didn't come because I knew this would happen," she said, "and you were right, I wanted to know, I wanted you to touch my hand with your hands, to touch the kitchen floor, there, where he died, I wanted ... you see, I'm not what I appear to be ... "

  "I know what you are," he said. "A very strong person for whom any admission of need is a terrible thing."

  Silence. She nodded. "If only that were all of it," she said. Tears overflowing.

  "Talk to me, tell me the story," he said.

  She slipped out of his arms and stood up. She walked barefoot back and forth across the floor, oblivious apparently to its coldness. Again, it came so fast, so many long delicate phrases pouring out with such speed, he strained to listen. To separate the meaning from the beguiling beauty of her voice.

  She'd been adopted when she was a day old, she'd been taken away from her home, and did he know that was New Orleans? She'd told him that in the letter he'd never received. And yes, he ought to know that because when he'd wakened, he grabbed her hand and held onto it, as if he didn't want to let her go. And maybe then some mingled crazy idea had come through, some sudden intensity connected to that place. But the thing was, she'd never really been there! Never seen it. Didn't even know her mother's full name.

  Did he know there was a paper in the safe, over there, behind the picture there, by the door, a letter she'd signed saying she'd never go back to New Orleans, never seek to find out anything about her family, her real parents? Cut off, ripped out of it, the past cut away like the umbilical cord and no way that she could recapture what had been thrown away. But she'd been thinking about that of late, that awful black gulf and the fact that they were gone, Ellie and Graham, and the paper in the safe, and Ellie had died making her repeat her promise, over and over.

  They'd taken her out of New Orleans to Los Angeles on a six o'clock plane the very day she was born. Why, for years she'd been told she was born in Los Angeles. That's what her birth certificate said, one of those phony jobs they concoct for adopted children. Ellie and Graham had told her a thousand times about the little apartment in West Hollywood, and how happy they had been when they brought her home.

  But that wasn't the point, the point was they were gone, dead, and with them their whole story, wiped out with a speed and totality that utterly terrified her. And Ellie in such pain. Nobody should have to suffer like that. And theirs had been the great modern life, just great, though it was a selfish, materialistic world, she had to admit. No tie to anyone--family or friend--ever interrupted their self-centered pursuit of pleasure. And at the bedside, no one but Rowan as Ellie lay screaming for the morphine.

  He was nodding, how well he understood. Hadn't his own life become the same thing? A sudden flash of New Orleans struck him, screen door closing, cousins around the kitchen table, red beans and rice, and talk, talk, talk ...

  "I tell you I almost killed her," Rowan said, "I almost ended it. I couldn't ... I couldn't ... Nobody could lie to me about it. I know when people are lying. It's not that I can read minds, it's more subtle. It's as if people are talking out loud in black-and-white words on a page, and I'm seeing what they say in colored pictures. I get their thoughts some times, little bits of information. And anyway, I'm a doctor, they didn't try, and I had full access to the information. It was Ellie that was always lying, trying to pretend it wasn't happening. And I knew her feelings, always. I had since I was a little girl. And there was this other thing, this talent for knowing, I call it the diagnostic sense but it's more than that, I laid my hands on her and even when she was in remission, I knew. It's in there, it's coming back. She's got six months at most. And then to come home after it was all over--to this house, this house with every conceivable gadget and convenience and luxury that one could possibly ... "

  "I know," he said softly. "All the toys we have, all the money."

  "Yes, and what is this without them now, a shell? I don't belong here! And if I don't belong, nobody does, and I look around me ... and I'm scared, I tell you. I'm scared. No, wait, don't comfort me. You don't know. I couldn't prevent Ellie's death, that I can accept, but I caused Graham's death. I killed him."

  "No, but you didn't do that," he said. "You're a doctor and you know ... "

  "Michael, you are like an angel sent to me. But listen to what I'm telling you. You have a power in your hands, you know it's real. I know it's real. On the drive over you demon
strated that power. Well, I have a power in me that's equally strong. I killed him. I killed two people before that--a stranger, and a little girl years ago, a little girl on a playground. I've read the autopsy reports. I can kill, I tell you! I'm a doctor today because I am trying to deny that power, I have built my life upon compensation for that evil!"

  She took a deep breath. She ran her fingers back through her hair. She looked waifish and lost in the big loose robe, cinched tight at the waist, a Ganymede with the soft tumbled pageboy hair. He started to go to her. She gestured for him to stay where he was.

  "There's so much. You know I made this fantasy of telling you, you of all people ... "

  "I'm here, I'm listening," he said. "I want you to tell me ... " How could he put into words that she fascinated him and utterly absorbed him, and how remarkable that was after all these weeks of frenzy and craziness.

  She talked in a low voice now of how it had gone with her, of how she had always been in love with science, science was poetry to her. She never thought she'd be a surgeon. It was research that fascinated her, the incredible, almost fantastical advances in neurological science. She wanted to spend her life in the laboratory where she thought the real opportunity for heroism existed; and she had a natural genius for it, take that on faith. She did.

  But then had come that awful experience, that terrible Christmas Eve. She had been about to go to the Keplinger Institute to work full-time on methods of intervention in the brain that did not involve surgery--the use of lasers, the gamma knife, miracles she could scarcely describe to the layman. After all, she had never had any easy time with human beings. Didn't she belong in a laboratory?

  And take it from her the latest developments were full of the miraculous, but then her mentor, never mind his name--and he was dead now anyway, he'd died of a series of little strokes shortly after that, ironically enough, and all the surgeons in the world hadn't been able to clip and suture those deadly ruptures ... but she hadn't even found out about that until later. To get back to the story, he had taken her up into the Institute in San Francisco on Christmas Eve because that was the one night of all nights when no one would be there, and he was breaking the rules to show her what they were working on, and it was live fetal research.