The Witching Hour

  But in all fairness, it must be admitted that there were no such stories associated with Stella or her generation. And certainly no such stories in relationship to other contemporary residents of the First Street house. (The exceptions, of course, are the playground stories concerning Stella and Antha. They were accused of using their invisible friend to hurt other little children. But there is nothing comparable about Stella as an adult.)

  Also the full story of Antha's nurse who died of a fall in Rome was not then known to the Talamasca. And it is possible that Stuart knew nothing about this incident at all.

  Nevertheless Stuart was not fully prepared for such a mission. And when one reviews his comments to the council and to other members it becomes obvious that Stuart had fallen in love with Stella Mayfair. He had fallen in love with her under the very worst circumstances--that is, he had fallen in love with her image in her photographs, and with the Stella who emerged from people's descriptions of her. She had become a myth to him. And so, full of zeal and romance, he went to meet her, dazzled not only by her powers but by her proverbial charms.

  It is also obvious to anyone who considers this case dispassionately that Stuart was not the best person for this mission, for a number of reasons.

  And before we go with Stuart to New Orleans, allow us to explain briefly who Stuart was. A full file on Stuart exists in the archives, and it is certainly worth reading in its own right. For some twenty-five years, he was a devoted and conscientious member of the order and his investigations of cases of possession cover some one hundred and fourteen different files.

  THE LIFE OF STUART TOWNSEND

  How much of Stuart's life is relevant to what happened to him, or to the story of the Mayfair Witches, I cannot say. I know that I am including more of it here than I need to include. And especially in view of what little I say of Arthur Langtry, I must explain.

  I think I have included this material here as some sort of memorial to Stuart, and as some sort of warning. Be that as it may ....

  Stuart came to the attention of the order when he was twenty-two years old. Our offices in London received from one of its many investigators in America a small newspaper article about Stuart Townsend, or "The Boy Who Had Been Somebody Else for Ten Years."

  Stuart had been born in a small town in Texas in the year 1895. His father was the local doctor, a deeply intellectual and widely respected man. Stuart's mother was from a well-to-do family, and engaged in charity work of the fashionable sort for a lady of her position, having two nurses for her seven children, of which Stuart was the firstborn. They lived in a large white Victorian house with a widow's walk, on the town's one and only fashionable street.

  Stuart went to boarding school in New England when he was six years old. He was from the beginning an exceptional student, and during his summer vacations home, he was something of a recluse, reading in his attic bedroom until late in the night. He did have a number of friends, however, among the town's small but vigorous aristocracy--sons and daughters of city officials, lawyers, and well-to-do ranchers; and he seems to have been well liked.

  When he was ten years old Stuart came down with a serious fever which could not be diagnosed. His father concluded finally that it was of infectious origin, but no real explanation was ever found. Stuart went into a crisis during which he was delirious for two days.

  When he recovered, he wasn't Stuart. He was somebody else. This somebody else claimed to be a young woman named Antoinette Fielding who spoke with a French accent and played the piano beautifully, and seemed generally confused about how old she was, where she lived, or what she was doing in Stuart's house.

  Stuart himself did know some French; but he did not know how to play the piano. And when he sat down at the dusty grand in the parlor and began to play Chopin the family thought they were losing their minds.

  As for his believing he was a girl, and crying miserably when he saw his reflection in a mirror, his mother could not endure this and actually ran from the room. After about a week of hysterical and melancholic behavior, Stuart-Antoinette was persuaded to stop asking for dresses, to accept the fact that she had a boy's body now, and to believe that she was Stuart Townsend, and get back to doing what Stuart was expected to do.

  However, any return to school was out of the question. And Stuart-Antoinette, who became known to the family as Tony for the sake of simplicity, spent his or her days playing the piano endlessly and scribbling out memories in a huge diary as she-he tried to solve the mystery of who she was.

  As Dr. Townsend perused these scribbled recollections he perceived that the French in which they were written was far beyond the level of expertise which ten-year-old Stuart had attained. He also began to realize that the child's memories were all of Paris, and of Paris in the 1840s, as direct references to operas and plays and modes of transportation clearly showed.

  It emerged from these written documents that Antoinette Fielding had been of English-French parentage, that her Frenchman father had not married her English mother--Louisa Fielding--and that she had lived a strange and reclusive life in Paris, the pampered daughter of a high-class prostitute who sought to protect her only child from the filth of the streets. Her great gift and consolation was her music.

  Dr. Townsend, enthralled, and reassuring his wife that they would get to the bottom of this mystery, began an investigation by mail with a view to discovering whether or not this person Antoinette Fielding had ever existed in Paris.

  This occupied him for some five years.

  During that time, "Antoinette" remained in Stuart's body, playing the piano obsessively, venturing out only to get lost or into some dreadful scrape with the local toughs. At last Antoinette never left the house, and became something of a hysterical invalid, demanding that meals be left at her door, and going down to play the piano only at night.

  Finally, through a private detective in Paris, Dr. Townsend ascertained that a certain Louisa Fielding had been murdered in Paris in 1865. She was indeed a prostitute, but there was no record whatsoever of her having a child. And at last Dr. Townsend came to a dead end. He was by this time weary of trying to solve the mystery. And he came to terms with the situation as best he could.

  His handsome young son Stuart was gone forever, and in his place was a wasted, warped invalid, a white-faced boy with burning eyes and a strange sexless voice, who lived now entirely behind closed blinds. The doctor and his wife grew used to hearing the nocturnal concerts. Every now and then the doctor went up to speak to the pale-faced "feminine" creature who lived in the attic. He could not help but note a mental deterioration. The creature could no longer remember much of "her past." Nevertheless they conversed pleasantly in French or in English for a little while; then the emaciated and distracted young person would turn to his books as if the father weren't there, and the father would go away.

  It is interesting to note that no one ever discussed the possibility that Stuart was "possessed." The doctor was an atheist; the children were taken to the Methodist church. The family knew nothing of Catholics or Catholic rites of exorcism, or the Catholic belief in demons or possession. And as far as we know the local minister, whom the family did not like, was never personally consulted as to the case.

  This situation continued until Stuart was twenty years old. Then one night he fell down the steps, suffering a severe concussion. The doctor, half awake and waiting for the inevitable music to rise from the parlor, discovered his son unconscious in the hallway and rushed him to the local hospital, where Stuart lay in a coma for two weeks.

  When he woke up, he was Stuart. He had absolutely no recollection of ever having been anyone else. Indeed, he believed he was ten years old, and when he heard a manly voice issuing from his own throat, he was horrified. When he discovered he had a grown man's body, he was speechless with shock.

  Dumbfounded he sat in his hospital bed listening to stories of what had been happening to him for the last ten years. Of course he did not understand French. He'd had a ter
rible time with it in school. And of course he couldn't play the piano. Why, everybody knew he had no musical ability. He could not even carry a tune.

  In the next few weeks, he sat staring at the dinner table at his "enormous" brothers and sisters, at his now gray-haired father, and at his mother, who could not look at him without bursting into tears. Telephones and automobiles--which had hardly existed in 1905 when he had ceased to be Stuart--startled him endlessly. Electric lights filled him with insecurity. But the keenest source of agony was his own adult body. And the ever deepening realization that his childhood and adolescence were now gone without a trace.

  Then he began to confront the inevitable problems. He was twenty with the emotions and education of a ten-year-old boy. He began to gain weight; his color improved; he went riding on the nearby ranches with his old friends. Tutors were hired to educate him; he read the newspapers and the national magazines by the hour. He took long walks during which he practiced moving and thinking like an adult.

  But he lived in a perpetual state of anxiety. He was passionately attracted to women, but did not know how to deal with this attraction. His feelings were easily hurt. As a man he felt hopelessly inadequate. At last he began to quarrel with everyone, and discovering that he could drink with impunity, he began to "hit the bottle" in the local saloons.

  Soon the whole town knew the story. Some people remembered the first "go round" when Antoinette had been born. Others only heard the whole tale in retrospect. Whatever the case, there was ceaseless talk. And though the local paper never, out of deference to the doctor, made mention of this bizarre story, a reporter from Dallas, Texas, got wind of it from several sources, and without the family's cooperation, wrote a long article on it which appeared in the Sunday edition of a Dallas paper in 1915. Other papers picked up this story. It was eventually forwarded to us in London about two months after it appeared.

  Meantime curiosity seekers descended upon Stuart. A local author wanted to write a novel about him. Representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell. The family was up in arms. Stuart was once again driven indoors, and sat brooding in the attic room, staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person Antoinette, and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him, and he was now a hopeless misfit, driven to antagonizing everyone he knew.

  No doubt the family received a great deal of unwelcome mail. On the other hand, communication in that day and age was not what it is now. Whatever the case, a package from the Talamasca reached Stuart in late 1916, containing two well-known books about such cases of "possession," along with a letter from us informing him that we had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk to him about it, and about others who had experienced the same thing.

  Stuart at once fired off a reply. He met with our representative Louis Daly in Dallas in the summer of 1917, and gratefully agreed to go with us to London. Dr. Townsend, at first deeply concerned, was finally won over by Louis, who assured him that our approach to such things was entirely scholarly, and at last Stuart came to us on September 1, 1917.

  He was received into the order as a novice the following year, and he remained with us from then on.

  His first project of course was a thorough study of his own case, and a study of every other known case of possession on record. His conclusion finally, and that of the other Talamasca scholars assigned to this area of research, was that he indeed had been possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.

  He believed then and ever after that the spirit of Antoinette Fielding could have been driven out of him, if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted, even a Catholic priest. For though the Catholic Church holds that such cases are purely demonic--which we do not--there is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work.

  For the next five years Stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over. He interviewed victims by the dozens, taking voluminous notes.

  He came to the conclusion long held by the Talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who engage in possession. Some may be ghosts; some may be entities who were never human; some may be "other personalities" within the host. But he remained convinced that Antoinette Fielding had been a real human being, and that like many such ghosts, she had not known or understood that she was dead.

  In 1920 he went to Paris to find evidence of Antoinette Fielding. He was unable to discover anything at all. But the few bits of information about the dead Louisa Fielding did fit with what Antoinette had written about her mother. Time, however, had long ago erased any real trace of these persons. And Stuart remained forever dissatisfied on this account.

  In late 1920 he resigned himself to the fact that he might never know who Antoinette was, and then he turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the Talamasca. He went out with Louis Daly to intervene in cases of possession, carrying out with Daly a form of exorcism which Daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of the victim-host.

  Daly was very impressed with Stuart Townsend. He became Stuart's mentor, and Stuart was throughout these years noted for his compassion, patience, and effectiveness in this field. Not even Daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way Stuart could do it. After all, Stuart had been there. Stuart knew.

  Stuart worked in this field tirelessly until 1929, reading the File on the Mayfair Witches only when a busy schedule allowed. Then he made his plea to the council and won.

  At that point in time, Stuart was thirty-five. He stood six feet tall, had ash-blond hair and dark gray eyes. He was lean of build and had a light complexion. He tended to dress elegantly, and was one of those Americans who deeply admires English manners and ways of doing things, and aspires to imitate them. He was an attractive young man. But his greatest appeal to friends and acquaintances was a sort of boyish spontaneity and innocence. Stuart was really missing ten years of his life, and he never got them back.

  He was capable at times of impetuousness, and of flying off the handle, of getting furious when he encountered even small obstacles to his plans. But he controlled this very well when he was in the field; and when he threw a tantrum in the Motherhouse he could always be brought round.

  He was also capable of falling deeply and passionately in love, which he did with Helen Kreis, a member of the Talamasca who died in an auto accident in 1924. He grieved excessively and even dangerously for Helen for two years after her death.

  What happened between him and Stella Mayfair we may never know. But it is possible to conjecture that she was the only other love of his life.

  I should like to add my personal opinion here that Stuart Townsend never should have been sent to New Orleans. It was not only that he was too emotionally involved with Stella; it was that he lacked experience in this particular field.

  In his novitiate, he had dealt with various kinds of psychic phenomena; and undoubtedly he read widely in the occult all his life. He discussed a great variety of cases with other members of the order. And he did spend some time with Arthur Langtry.

  But he did not really know anything about witches, per se. And like so many of our members who have dealt only with hauntings, possessions, or reincarnation, he simply did not know what witches can do.

  He did not understand that the strongest manifestations of discarnate entities come through mortal witches. There are even some suggestions that he thought the Talamasca was being archaic and silly in calling these women witches. And it is very likely that though he accepted the seventeenth-century descriptions of Deborah Mayfair and her daughter Charlotte, he could not "relate" this material to a clever, fashionable twentieth-century "jazz baby" like Stella, who seemed to be beckoning to him across the Atlantic with a smile and a wink.

  Of course the Talamasca encounters a certain amount of incredulity in all new workers in the witchcraft field. The same holds true for the investigation of vampires. More than one member of the order has had to see these creatures in action before h
e or she could believe in them. But the solution to that problem is to introduce our members to fieldwork under the guidance of experienced persons, and in cases which do not involve direct contact.

  To send an inexperienced man like Townsend to make contact with the Mayfair Witches is like sending a little child directly to hell to interview the devil.

  In sum Stuart Townsend went off to New Orleans unprepared and unwarned. And with all due respect to those who governed the order in 1929, I do not believe that such a thing would happen today.

  Lastly, let me add that Stuart Townsend, to the best of our knowledge, possessed no extraordinary powers. He wasn't "psychic," as they say. So he had no extrasensory weapons at his command when he confronted the foe, whom he did not even perceive to be a foe.

  Stuart's disappearance was reported to the New Orleans police on July 25, 1929. This was a full month after his arrival in New Orleans. The Talamasca had tried to reach him by telegram and by phone. Irwin Dandrich had tried to find him but in vain. The St. Charles Hotel, from which Stuart claimed to have written his only letter from New Orleans, denied ever having such a person registered. No one remembered such a person ever having been there.

  Our private investigators could discover nothing to prove Townsend had ever reached New Orleans. And the police soon came to doubt that he had.

  On July 28, the authorities told our local investigators that there was nothing further that they could do. But under severe pressure both from Dandrich and from the Talamasca the police finally agreed to go to the Mayfair house and ask Stella if she had ever seen or spoken to the young man. The Talamasca held out no hope at this point, but Stella surprised everyone by recalling Stuart at once.

  Yes indeed, she had met Stuart, she said, the tall Texan from England, how could she ever forget such an interesting person? They had had lunch together and later dinner, and spent an entire night in talk.