The Witching Hour

  She turned back, staring at the woman who sat at the end of the table. Her thick wavy hair looked very white in the dark, massed more softly around her face than before, and the candlelight made two distinct and frightening flames in her round glasses.

  "Sit down, Rowan Mayfair," she said. "I have many things to say to you."

  Was it stubbornness that caused her to take one last slow look around her, or merely her fascination which wouldn't be interrupted? She saw that the velvet curtains were almost ragged in some places, and the floor was covered with threadbare carpet. A smell of dust or mold rose from the upholstered seats of the carved chairs. Or was it from the carpet, perhaps, or the sad draperies?

  Did not matter. It was everywhere. But there was another smell, another delicious smell that made her think of wood and sunlight, and strangely, of Michael. It smelled good to her. And Michael, the carpenter, would understand that smell. The smell of the wood in the old house, and the heat which had built up in it all day long. Faintly blended with the whole was the smell of the wax candles.

  The darkened chandelier above caught the candlelight, reflecting it in hundreds of crystal teardrops.

  "It takes candles," said the old woman. "I'm too old now to climb up to change them. And Eugenia is also too old. She can't do it." With a tiny gesture of her head, she pointed to the far corner.

  With a start Rowan realized that a black woman was standing there, a wraith of a creature with scant hair and yellowed eyes and folded arms, seemingly very thin, though it was hard to tell in the dark. Nothing was visible of her clothes but a soiled apron.

  "You can go now, dear," said Carlotta to the black woman. "Unless my niece would like something to drink. But you don't, do you, Rowan?"

  "No. No thank you, Miss Mayfair."

  "Call me Carlotta, or Carl if you will. It doesn't matter. There are a thousand Misses Mayfair."

  The old black woman moved away, past the fireplace, and around the table and out the door into the long hall. Carlotta watched her go, as if she wanted to be completely alone before she said another word.

  Suddenly there was a clanging noise, oddly familiar yet completely undefinable to Rowan. And then the click of a door being shut, and a dull deep throb as of a great motor churning and straining within the depths of the house.

  "It's an elevator," Rowan whispered.

  The old woman appeared to be monitoring the sound. Her face looked shrunken and small beneath the thick cap of her hair. The dull clank of the elevator coming to a halt seemed to satisfy her. She looked up at Rowan, and then gestured to a lone chair on the long flank of the table.

  Rowan moved towards it, and sat down, her back to the windows that opened on the yard. She turned the chair so that she might face Carlotta.

  More of the murals became visible to her as she raised her eyes. A plantation house with white columns, and rolling hills beyond it.

  She looked past the candles at the old woman and was relieved to see no reflection any more of the tiny flames in her glasses. Only the sunken face, and the glasses gleaming cleanly in the light, and the dark flowered fabric of the woman's long-sleeved dress, and her thin hands emerging from the lace at the sleeves, holding with knotted fingers what seemed a velvet jewel box.

  This she pushed forward sharply towards Rowan.

  "It's yours," she said. "It's an emerald necklace. It's yours and this house is yours and the land upon which it stands, and everything of any significance contained in it. Beyond that, there is a fortune some fifty times beyond what you have now, perhaps a hundred times, though that is now beyond my reckoning. But listen to what I say before you lay claim to what is yours. Listen to all I have to tell you."

  She paused, studying Rowan's face, and Rowan's sense of the agelessness of the woman's voice, indeed of her manner altogether, deepened. It was almost eerie, as if the spirit of some young person inhabited the old frame, and gave it a fierce contradictory animation.

  "No," said the woman. "I'm old, very old. What's kept me alive is waiting for her death, and for the moment I feared above all, the moment of your coming here. I prayed that Ellie would live a long life, that Ellie would hold you close in those long years, until Deirdre had rotted in the grave, and until the chain was broken. But fate has dealt me another little surprise. Ellie's death. Ellie's death and not a word to tell me of it."

  "It was the way she wanted it," Rowan said.

  "I know." The old woman sighed. "I know what you say is true. But it's not the telling of it, it's the death itself that was the blow. And it's done, and couldn't be prevented."

  "She did what she could to keep me away," Rowan said simply. "She insisted I sign a promise that I'd never come. I chose to break it."

  The old woman was silent for a moment.

  "I wanted to come," Rowan said. And then as gently, as imploringly as she could, she asked: "Why did you want me kept away? Was it such a terrible story?"

  The woman sat silent regarding her. "You're a strong woman," she said. "You're strong the way my mother was strong."

  Rowan didn't answer.

  "You have her eyes, did they tell you that? Were there any of them old enough to remember her?"

  "I don't know," Rowan answered.

  "What have you seen with your eyes?" asked the old woman. "What have you seen that you knew should not be there?"

  Rowan gave a start. At first she had thought she misunderstood the words; then in a split second she realized she had not, and she thought instantly of the phantom who had appeared at three o'clock, and confused with it suddenly and inexplicably was her dream on the plane of someone invisible touching her and violating her.

  In confusion she saw the smile spread over the old woman's face. But it wasn't bitter or triumphant. It was merely resigned. And then the face went smooth again and sad and wondering. In the dim light, the old woman's head looked like a skull for a moment.

  "So he did come to you," she said with a soft sigh, "and he laid his hands on you."

  "I don't know," Rowan said. "Explain this to me."

  But the woman merely looked at her and waited.

  "It was a man, a thin elegant man. He came at three o'clock. At the hour of my mother's death. I saw him as plainly as I see you, but it was only for a moment."

  The woman looked down. Rowan thought she had closed her eyes. Then she saw the little gleam of light beneath her lids. The woman folded her hands before her on the table.

  "It was 'the man'," she said. "It was 'the man' who drove your mother mad, and drove her mother mad before her. 'The man' who served my mother who ruled all those around her. Did they speak of him to you, the others? Did they warn you?"

  "They didn't tell me anything," she said.

  "That's because they don't know, and at last they realize they don't know, and now they leave the secrets to us, as they should have always done."

  "But what did I see? Why did he come to me?" Once again, she thought of the dream on the plane, and she could find no answer for connecting the two.

  "Because he believes that you are his now," said the woman. "His to love and his to touch and his to rule with promises of servitude."

  Rowan felt the confusion again, and a dull heat in her face. His to touch. The haunting ambience of the dream came back.

  "He will tell you it's the other way around," said the old woman. "When he speaks into your ear so that no one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he's passed to you from Deirdre. But it's a lie, my dear, a vicious lie. He'll make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he's done to them all." She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes drifting off across the dusty surface of the table. "Except for those who were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be, and use him for their own ends ... " Her voice trailed off. "Their own endless wickedness."

  "Explain it to me."

  "He touched you, did he not?"

  "I don't know."

  "Oh yes you do. The
color flies into your cheeks, Rowan Mayfair. Well, let me ask you, my girl, my independent young girl who has had so many men of her own choice, was it as good as a mortal man? Think before you speak. He'll tell you that no mortal man could give you the pleasure he gives. But was it true? It carries a terrible price, that pleasure."

  "I thought it was a dream."

  "But you saw him."

  "That was the night before. The touching was in a dream. It was different."

  "He touched her until the very end," said the woman. "No matter how much drugs they gave her. No matter how stupid her stare, how listless her walk. When she lay in bed at night he came, he touched her. Like a common whore she writhed on the bed, under his touch ... " She bit down on her words, then the smile came again playing on her lips, like the light. "Does that make you angry? Angry with me that I tell you this? Do you think it was a pretty sight?"

  "I think she was sick and out of her mind, and it was human."

  "No, my dear, their intercourse was never human."

  "You want me to believe that this is a ghost I saw, that he touched my mother, that I have somehow inherited him."

  "Yes, and swallow back your anger. Your dangerous anger."

  Rowan was stunned. A wave of fear and confusion passed over her. "You're reading my mind, you've been doing it all along."

  "Oh yes, as best as I can, I do. I wish I could read it better. Your mother was not the only woman in this house with the power. Three generations before I was the one meant for the necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in the air, yes, lift my body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him."

  "And this necklace now, it comes to me because I can see him?"

  "It comes to you because you are the only girl child and choice is not possible. It would come to you no matter how weak your powers were. But that doesn't matter. Because your powers are strong, very strong, and always have been." She paused, considering Rowan again, her face unreadable for a moment, perhaps devoid of any specific judgment. "Imprecise, yes, and inconsistent, of course, and uncontrolled perhaps--but strong."

  "Don't overestimate them," said Rowan softly. "I never do."

  "Long ago, Ellie told me all about it," said the old woman. "Ellie told me you could make the flowers wither. Ellie told me you could make the water boil. 'She's a stronger witch than ever Antha was, or Deirdre was,' that's what she told me, crying and begging me for advice as to what she could do! 'Keep her away!' I said. 'See that she never comes home, see that she never knows! See that she never learns to use it.' "

  Rowan sighed. She ignored the dull pain at the mention of Ellie, of Ellie speaking to these people about her. Cut off alone. And all of them here. Even this wretched old woman here.

  "Yes, and I can feel your anger again, anger against me, anger for what you think you know that I did to your mother!"

  "I don't want to be angry with you," said Rowan in a small voice. "I only want to understand what you're saying, I want to know why I was taken away ... "

  Again, the old woman lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Her fingers hovered over the jewel case and then folded down upon it and lay still, all too much like the flaccid hands of Deirdre in the casket.

  Rowan looked away. She looked at the far wall, at the panorama of painted sky above the fireplace.

  "Oh, but don't these words bring you even the slightest consolation? Haven't you wondered all these years, were you the only one in the world who could read others' thoughts, the only one who knew when someone near you was going to die? The only one who could drive a person back away from you with your anger? Look at the candles. You can make them go out and you can light them again. Do it."

  Rowan did nothing. She stared at the little flames. She could feel herself trembling. If only you really knew, if only you knew what I could do to you now ...

  "But I do, you see, I can feel your strength, because I too am strong, stronger than Antha or Deirdre. And that is how I have kept him at bay in this house, that is how I have prevented him from hurting me. That is how I have put some thirty years between him and Deirdre's child. Make the candles go out. Light them again. I want to see you do it."

  "I will not. And I want you to stop playing with me. Tell me what you have to tell. But stop your games. Stop torturing me. I have never done anything to you. Tell me who he is, and why you took me from my mother."

  "But I have. I took you from her in order to get you away from him, and from this necklace, from this legacy of curses and wealth founded upon his intervention and power." She studied Rowan, and then went on, her voice deepening yet losing nothing of its preciseness. "I took you away from her to break her will, and separate her from a crutch upon which she would lean, and an ear into which she would pour her tortured soul, a companion she would warp and twist in her weakness and her misery."

  Frozen in anger, Rowan gave no answer. Miserably, she saw in her mind's eyes the black-haired woman in her coffin. She saw the Lafayette Cemetery in her mind, only shrouded with the night, and still and deserted.

  "Thirty years you've had to grow strong and straight, away from this house, away from this history of evil. And what have you become, a doctor the like of which your colleagues have never seen, and when you've done evil with your power, you've drawn away in righteous condemnation of yourself, in shame that drove you on to greater self-sacrifice."

  "How do you know these things?"

  "I see. What I see is imprecise, but I see. I see the evil, though I cannot see the acts themselves, for they're covered up in the very guilt and shame that advertises them."

  "Then what do you want of me? A confession? You said yourself I turned my back on what I've done that was wrong. I sought for something else, something infinitely more demanding, something finer."

  " 'Thou shalt not kill,' " whispered the woman.

  A shock of raw pain passed through Rowan, and then in consternation she watched the woman's eyes grow wide, mocking her. In confusion, Rowan understood the trick, and felt defenseless. For in a split second the woman had, with her utterance, provoked the very image in Rowan's mind for which the old woman had been searching.

  You have killed. In anger and rage, you have taken life. You have done it willfully. That is how strong you are.

  Rowan sank deeper into herself, peering at the fiat round glasses as they caught the light and then let it go, and the dark eyes scarcely visible behind them.

  "Have I taught you something?" the woman asked.

  "You try my patience," Rowan said. "Let me remind you that I have done nothing to you. I have not come to demand answers of you. I have made no condemnation. I haven't come to claim this jewel or this house or anything in it. I came to see my mother laid to rest, and I came through that front door because you invited me to do so. And I am here to listen. But I won't be played with much longer. Not for all the secrets this side of hell. And I don't fear your ghost, even if he sports the cock of an archangel."

  The old woman stared at her for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows and laughed, a short, sudden little laugh, that had a surprisingly feminine ring to it. She continued to smile. "Well put, my dear," she said. "Seventy-five years ago, my mother told me he could have made the Greek gods weep with envy, so beautiful was he, when he came into her bedroom." She relaxed slowly in her chair, pursing her lips, then smiling again. "But he never kept her from her handsome mortal men. She liked the same kind of men you do."

  "Ellie told you that too?"

  "She told me many things. But she never told me she was sick. She never told me she was dying."

  "When people are dying, they become afraid," said Rowan. "They are all alone. Nobody can die for them."

  The old woman lowered her eyes. She remained still for a long moment, and then her hands moved over the soft dome of the jewel box again, and grasping it, she snapped
it open. She turned it ever so slightly so that the light of the candles blazed in the emerald that lay inside, caught on a bed of tangled golden chain. It was the largest jewel Rowan had ever seen.

  "I used to dream of death," Carlotta said, gazing at the stone. "I've prayed for it." She looked up slowly, measuring Rowan, and once again her eyes grew wide, the soft thin flesh of her forehead wrinkling heavily above her gray brows. Her soul seemed closed and sunk in sadness, and it was as if for a moment, she had forgotten to conceal herself somehow, behind meanness and cleverness, from Rowan. She was merely staring at Rowan.

  "Come," she said. She drew herself up. "Let me show what I have to show you. I don't think there's much time now."

  "Why do you say that!" Rowan whispered urgently. Something in the old woman's change of demeanor terrified her. "Why do you look at me like that?"

  The woman only smiled. "Come," she said. "Bring the candle if you will. Some of the lights still burn. Others are burnt out or the wires have long ago frayed and come loose. Follow me."

  She rose from the chair, and carefully unhooked her wooden cane from the back of it, and walked with surprising certainty across the floor, past Rowan who stood watching her, guarding the tender flame of the candle in the curve of her left hand.

  The tiny light leapt up the wall as they proceeded down the hallway. It shone for a moment on the gleaming surface of an old portrait of a man who seemed suddenly to be alive and to be staring at Rowan. She stopped, turning her head sharply to look up, to see that this had only been an illusion.

  "What is it?" said Carlotta.

  "Only that I thought ... " She looked at the portrait, which was very skillfully done and showed a smiling black-eyed man, most certainly not alive, and buried beneath layers of brittle, crazed lacquer.

  "What?"

  "Doesn't matter," Rowan said, and came on, guarding the flame as before. "The light made him look as though he'd moved."

  The woman looked back fixedly at the portrait as Rowan stood beside her. "You'll see many strange things in this house," she said. "You'll pass empty rooms only to double back because you think you've seen a figure moving, or a person staring at you."