Lasher

  "Will she give birth to this child?"

  "Yes, bide your time, and wait. You shall make a great witch with her."

  "And she herself?"

  "The greatest of all," he said with an audible voice and sigh. "Unless one counts Julien."

  Michael, that was my greatest triumph. I learnt what I have told you now, its name, its history, that it was of our blood, but more than that I never discovered!

  Ashlar, it was all connected with that name. But was the daemon Ashlar, and if so which of the Ashlars in the pages of the old man's books? The first or one who came after?

  The following morning, I left Edinburgh, leaving only a note for Mary Beth, and I traveled north to Donnelaith, going from Darkirk again on horseback. I was too old to make this journey on my own, but I was crazed with my discoveries.

  Once again I searched the Cathedral, under the cool Highlands sun coming down in beautiful rays through the clouds, and then I walked out to the circle of stones, and stood there.

  I called upon it. I cursed it. I said, "I want you to go back to hell, St. Ashlar! That is your name, that is who you are, a two-legged man, who would have been worshiped, and in pride you have survived, an evil daemon to torment us."

  My voice rang out in the glen. But I was alone. It had not even deigned to answer me. But then as I stood in the circle, I suddenly felt that awful woozy feeling, as if I'd been dealt a blow, which meant the thing was coming into me.

  "No, back into hell!" I screamed, but I was falling to the grass. The world had become the wind itself, roaring in my ears, and carrying all distinct shapes and points of reference away with it.

  It was night when I awoke. I was bruised. My clothes were torn. The thing had run rampant in me, and here of all places.

  I was for a moment in fear for my life, sitting there in the dark, not knowing what had become of my horse, or which way to walk to leave this awful haunted glen. Finally I staggered to my feet, and realized a man held me by the shoulders.

  It was he, strong again, material again, guiding me, his face very near to mine, in the dark. We were walking towards the castle. He was so real I could smell the leather of his jerkin, and I could smell the grass clinging to him, and the fragrance of the woods hanging about him. He vanished and I staggered on alone, only to have him reappear again and help me.

  At last we entered a broken doorway to the floor of the great hall, and there I fell down to sleep, too exhausted to go further. He was sitting there in the dark, a vapor, and now and then solid, and sometimes merely there, wrapped around me.

  In my sheer exhaustion and despair, I said, "Lasher, what do I do? What is it you will do finally?"

  "To live, Julien, that is all I want. To live, to come back out into the light. I am not what you think. I am not what you imagine. Look at your memories. The saint is in the glass, is he not? How could I be the saint if I could see him in the window? I never knew the saint; the saint was my downfall!"

  I had never seen the saint in the window. I had seen only the colors, but now as I lay on the ground I remembered the church again, I was there, in a former time, and I was intimately recalling how I had, in that time, gone into the transept and entered the chapel of the saint, and yes, there he was emblazoned in the gorgeous glass, with the sun pouring through his image, the warrior priest, long-haired, bearded. St. Ashlar, crushing the monsters beneath his foot: St. Ashlar.

  I found myself saying, in this former time, desperately from my soul: St. Ashlar, how can I be this thing? Help me. God help me. They were taking me away. What choice had I been given?

  Such longing, such pain!

  I blacked out. All consciousness left me. I was never to know the fiend again so vividly as I had in that moment, when I stood in its flesh in the Cathedral. St. Ashlar! I even heard his voice, my voice, echoing beneath the lofty stone roof. How can I be this thing, St. Ashlar! And the brittle shining glass gave no reply. It did what pictures always do--remain constant, remain dominant.

  Blackness.

  When I awoke that morning, in the ruins of the castle, guides from Darkirk had come to find me. They brought food and drink and blankets and a fresh horse. They had feared for me. My mount had gone all the way home without me.

  In the splendor of the morning, the valley looked innocent, lovely. I wanted to lie down and sleep, but alas, I could not until

  I was in the inn at Darkirk, and there I slept on and off for two days, suffering a bit of fever, but in general merely resting.

  When I returned to Edinburgh Mary Beth was in a panic. She had thought me gone forever. She had accused Lasher of doing me harm. He had wept.

  I told her to come and sit by the fire, and I told her everything. I told her the history and what it meant. I told her again the memories.

  "You must be stronger than this thing to the last of your days," I said. "You must never let it get the better of you. It can kill; it can dominate! It can destroy; it wants to be alive, yes, and it is a bitter thing, a thing not of transcendent wisdom but under God, you see, something of blackness and utter despair, something that has been defeated!"

  "Aye, suffered," she said, "that's the word. But Julien, you are past all patience. You cannot go on with this opposition to it. You must from now on leave this thing entirely to me."

  She rose to her feet and began to declaim in her calm voice, with few gestures, as was her manner.

  "I shall use this thing to make our family richer than your wildest imaginings. I shall build a clan so great that no revolution, no war, no uprising could ever destroy it. I shall unite our cousins when I can, encourage marriage within the clan, and see to it that the family name is borne by all who would be part of us. I shall triumph in the family, Julien, and this it understands. This it knows. This is what it wants. There is no battle between us."

  "Is that so?" I asked. "Has it told you what I would do for it next? That I should father a witch by you?" I was trembling with apprehension and rage.

  She smiled at me in a soft appeasing and calm way, and then, stroking my face, said: "Now, really, when the time comes, will that be so very hard, my darling?"

  That night I dreamed of witches in the glen. I dreamed of orgies. I dreamed of all manner of things I would forget but never did. From Edinburgh we went to London. There we remained until Mary Beth gave birth to Belle in 1888, and from the beginning we knew the radiant child was not normal only because Lasher had told us.

  In London, I procured a large book with a leather cover and fine-quality parchment paper, and I wrote down everything I knew of Lasher in it. I wrote down everything I knew of our family. I had much such writing at home, other books started, stopped, forgotten. But now, from memory I collected everything.

  I recorded any and all details about Riverbend, Donnelaith, the legends, the saint. All of it. I wrote fast and in a fury. For I didn't know but that, at any moment, the monster might stop me.

  But the monster did nothing.

  Letters came to me daily from the old scholar, but mostly they were stories of St. Ashlar, that St. Ashlar would grant a miracle to a young girl, for he was their special protector. And the rest was repetitive of what we had discovered. Some excavations were begun at Donnelaith but that work would take a century. And what would we find that I did not now know?

  Yet I wrote enthusiastically to my professor and his friends, increased the endowments and gave in to their wishes in any project to further the study of Donnelaith and its complex of ruins.

  Each letter I copied out into my book.

  Then I took up another book and began to write my own life story in it. This book too was chosen for its strong binding and good paper. I never dreamt that both books would perish before I did.

  Lasher meantime did not trouble me while I did this, but spent his time with Mary Beth, who almost up to the hour of giving birth went traipsing all about London and down to Canterbury and off to Stonehenge. She was ever in the company of young men. I believe there were two of them with her,
Oxford scholars both, deeply in love, when she gave birth to baby Belle in the hospital.

  I have never felt so separate from her as during this time. She was in love with the city and all the ancient sites and the newfangled things, rushing to see factories and theaters and all sorts of new inventions. She went to the Tower of London, of course, and the wax museum, which was all the rage. Her pregnancy was nothing to her. She was so tall, so strong, so hearty; the impersonation of a man was more than natural to her. And yet she was a woman, through and through, beautiful and eager for the child, though she had been told by now that it would not be the witch.

  "It is mine," she would say. "It is mine. Its name is Mayfair, as is my name. That is what matters."

  I was locked up in my rooms with the past, desperate to make a record which might invite a later interpretation. And the more I was left alone to it, and the more I realized I had written everything I knew, the more helpless and hopeless I felt.

  Finally Lasher appeared.

  He was as he had been that day we walked to the castle. A friend to me, a comfort. I let him stroke my brow; I let him soothe me with kisses. But secretly I lamented. I had found the thing I needed to know, and it would not help me. I could do no more. Mary Beth loved him, and did not see his power any more than any other witch who had ever dabbled with him, or commanded him or been kissed by him.

  Finally, I asked him politely and kindly to go away, to go back to the witch and see to her. He consented.

  Mary Beth, who had only the day before given birth, was still with the blessed baby girl in the hospital, resting comfortably, surrounded by nurses.

  I went walking by myself through London.

  I came to an old church, perhaps from those times, I don't know. I don't even know what it was, only I went into it, and sat in a rear pew, and bowed my head and gave myself over to almost praying.

  "God help me," I said. "I have never in my life really prayed to you, except when I felt I was in the memory of that creature in the old Cathedral, standing in his flesh before the window of St. Ashlar. I have learnt how to pray from that one single moment of possession, when I was in him, and he prayed. Now I am trying. I am praying now. What do I do? If I destroy this thing, do I destroy my family?"

  I was deep in this prayer when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up to see a young man standing there, dressed neatly in black, with a black silk tie, and looking a little too well-dressed and well-bred to be ordinary. He had beautifully groomed dark hair, and startling eyes, small but very gray and bright.

  "Come with me," he said.

  "Why, are you the answer to my prayer?"

  "No, but I would know what you know. I am from the Talamasca. Do you know who we are?"

  Of course I knew these were the Amsterdam scholars. These were the men the old professor had described to me. My ancestor Petyr van Abel had more than likely been one of these.

  "Ah, that is true, Julien, you know more than I thought," said the man. "Now come, I would talk with you."

  "I'm not so certain," said I. "Why should I?"

  At once I felt the air around me stir, grow warm, and suddenly a gust of wind swept through the church, banging the doors, and startling this man so that he looked about him frightened.

  "I thought you wanted to know what I know," said I. "You seem afraid now."

  "Julien Mayfair, you don't know what you do," he said.

  "But you know, I am to suppose?"

  The wind grew stronger and banged the doors open, letting in a flood of ugly daylight among the dusty statues and carved wood, the sanctified shadows of the place.

  The man backed away. He stared at the faraway altar. I felt the air collecting itself, I felt the wind growing strong, and rolling towards this man. I knew it would strike him one fine blow and then it did. He went sprawling on the marble floor, scrambling quickly to his feet and backing away from me. Blood ran from his nose, down his lips and his chin, and with a fancy handkerchief, he went to blot it.

  But the wind wasn't finished. The church was now giving off a low rumble as if the earth beneath it were moving.

  The man rushed from the church. He was gone. The wind died down. The air was still, as if nothing had ever happened here. The shadows closed upon the nave. The dusty sun came only through the windows.

  I sat down again, and peered once more at the altar.

  "Well, spirit?" I said.

  Lasher's secret voice spoke to me out of the emptiness and the silence.

  "I would not have those scholars near you. I would not have them near my witches."

  "But they know you, do they not? They have been to the glen. They know you. My ancestor Petyr van Abel..."

  "Yes, yes and yes. I have told you the past is nothing."

  "There is no power in knowing it? Then why did you drive the scholar away? Spirit, I must tell you, all this is most suspicious to me."

  "For the future, Julien. For the future."

  "Ah, and this means that what I have learnt may stop what you see in the future."

  "You are old, Julien, you have served me well. You will serve me again. I love you. But I would not have you speak to the men of the Talamasca ever, at any time, nor would I have them trouble Mary Beth or any of my witches."

  "But what do they want? What is their interest? The old professor in Edinburgh told me they were antiquarians."

  "They are liars. They tell you they are scholars and scholars only. But they harbor a horrid secret, and I know what it is. I would not have them come close to you."

  "You know them then as they know you?"

  "Yes. They feel an irresistible attraction to mysteries. But they lie. They would use their knowledge for their own ends. Tell them nothing. Remember what I say. They lie. Protect the clan from them."

  I nodded. I went out. I went up to my rooms and opened my big book, the book of the clan and of Lasher.

  "Spirit, I know not whether you can read these words, whether you are here or not, or whether you have gone to protect your witch. I know none of these things. But this I wonder. If you really feared those scholars, as you say, if you would really shut them out, why in the name of God did you make such a show of power for them?

  "Why did you show your undeniable presence and force to that man, as you have seldom ever shown it to others? And he, a scholar who has gone to the Glen of Donnelaith, who knows something of you? Oh, vain childish spirit, I would be rid of you."

  I closed the book.

  Later in the week, as Mary Beth came back to our rooms in triumphant motherhood, and commenced to buy out every baby shop in London for its lace and trinkets and trash, I went to make my own historical study of this mysterious order.

  The Talamasca.

  Indeed, this was no easy task. Mentions were fewer than of St. Ashlar, and inquiries among the professors at Cambridge gave me only vague suggestions: antiquarians, collectors, historians.

  I knew this could not be the entire picture. I remembered too vividly that gray-eyed young man, and his manner. I remembered too vividly his fear when the wind knocked him down.

  At last I discovered the Motherhouse of the place, but it was impossible for me to draw close to it. I came to the entrance to the park. I saw the high windows and chimneys. But the daemon stood between me and it, and said: "Julien, go back, these men are evil. These men will destroy your family. Julien, go back. Julien, you must make a witch with Mary Beth. You have your purpose. I see far and I see ever more clearly."

  The battle was simply too much for me. I realized Lasher had let me acquire what little knowledge of the Talamasca I had acquired because it was meaningless. Anything further he would prevent.

  All this I wrote in my book. But I was highly suspicious now of this order.

  And now let me conclude my tale, let me tell you briefly of those last years, and of one last small bit of knowledge I acquired with which you must be armed now. It is nothing much, only what I think you have come to suspect, that you must trust in n
o one, no one but your own self, to destroy this being, and destroy Lasher you must. Now it is in the flesh. It can be killed; it can be driven out; and where it shall then go, and whence return, who knows but God? But you can put an end to its tyranny here; an end to its horror.

  After I returned home, I urged Mary Beth into marriage with Daniel McIntyre, one of my own lovers and a man of great charm, of whom she was fond, yet Lasher egged me on to couple with her. Her first child by Daniel became a willful and grim young girl, Carlotta by name, who was of a strict Catholic mind from the beginning. It was as if the angels claimed Carlotta at birth. I wish they'd taken her straight to heaven. Lasher was ever at me to father a new daughter.

  But we were in a new age. The modern age. You cannot imagine the impact of the changes around us. And Mary Beth had been so powerful in her resolve, and so successful, that the great concrete reality of the family seemed everything.

  The knowledge of Lasher she kept to herself, and ordered me not to show my books to anyone. Lasher she would make a ghost and legend, and thereby insignificant even among our own, who were shut out now, far and wide, from all secrets.

  At last--when she had given birth by Daniel to two children, neither of whom could serve her purposes, for the second, Lionel, was a boy and more unsuitable even than Carlotta--I did what she wanted me to do and what Lasher wanted me to do, and from that union--of an old man and his daughter--was born my beautiful Stella.

  Stella was the witch; she saw Lasher. Her gifts were great, yes, but from early girlhood she had a love of fun which outstripped any other passion. She was carefree, wanton, gay, loving to sing and dance. And there were times in my old age when I wondered how in the world she would ever bear the burden of the secrets at all, and whether or not she had been created merely to give me happiness.

  Stella, my beautiful Stella. She wore the secrets as if they were light veils she could tear off at will. But she showed no signs of madness, and that was enough for Mary Beth. This was her heiress, this was Lasher's link to the witch who would someday bring him into the world again.

  I was so old by the turn of the century!

  I still rode my horse up the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue. At Audubon Park, I would dismount and I would walk with my horse along the lagoon there, and I would look back at the great facades of the universities. All changed, all changed. The whole world changed. No more the pastoral paradise of Riverbend, no more those who would work sorcery with evil spells and candles and chants, no more.