Lasher

by Anne Rice

  I won't hurt you anymore, she thought. Without words, in gratitude and with love, it answered her.

  Good God, it was alive, he was right. It was alive and it could hear her. It was in pain.

  "It won't take very long," he said. "I'll care for you with all my heart. You are my Eve, yet you are sinless. And once it's born, then if you wish, you can die."

  She didn't answer him. Why should she? For the first time in two months, there was someone else there to talk to. She turned her head away.

  Thirteen

  ANNE MARIE MAYFAIR sat stiffly on the smooth beige plastic couch in the hospital lobby. Mona saw her as soon as she came in. Anne Marie wore her funeral suit, still, of navy blue, and her usual prim blouse with its score of ruffles. She was reading a magazine, her legs crossed, her black glasses down on her nose, and there was something cute about her as always, with her black hair drawn back in a twist, and her small nose and mouth, and the big glasses made her look both stupid and intelligent.

  She looked up as Mona approached. Mona pecked her on the cheek and then flopped down beside her.

  "Did Ryan call you?" asked Anne Marie, her voice hushed and private though there were very few other people moving in the brightly lighted lobby. Elevator doors opened and closed in an alcove far away. The reception desk with its high impersonal counter was empty.

  "You mean about Mother?" Mona said. She hated this place. It occurred to her that when she was very rich and a huge Mayfair Mogul with mutual funds in every sector of the economy, she would spend some time on interior design, trying to liven up places as sterile and cold as this. Then she thought of Mayfair Medical! Of course that plan had to go forward! She had to help Ryan. They couldn't shut her out. She'd talk to Pierce about it tomorrow. She'd speak to Michael, soon as he felt a little better.

  She looked at Anne Marie. "Ryan said Mother was in here."

  "Yes, well, she is, and according to the nurses she thinks we're trying to permanently commit her. That's what she told them this morning when they brought her in. She's been asleep ever since they stuck a needle in her arm. The nurse is supposed to call me if she wakes up. What I meant was--did Ryan call you about Edith?"

  "No, what happened to Edith?" Mona barely knew Edith. Edith was Lauren's granddaughter, a timid belligerent recluse who lived on Esplanade Avenue and spent all her time with her cats, a predictable and boring woman, never went anywhere ever, not even to funerals apparently. Edith. What did she look like? Mona wasn't sure.

  Anne Marie sat up, slapped the magazine on the table, and pushed her glasses up against her pretty eyes. "Edith died this afternoon. Hemorrhage same as Gifford. Ryan says for none of the women in the family to be alone. It might be something genetic. We're to be around people all the time. That way if something happens, we can call for help. Edith had been all alone, like Gifford."

  "You're kidding me. You mean Edith Mayfair is dead? This really actually happened?"

  "Yeah, I know. Believe me. Think how Lauren feels. Lauren went over there to scold her for not showing up at Gifford's funeral. And there was Edith lying on the bathroom floor. Bled to death. And her cats were all around her licking up the blood."

  Mona didn't say anything for a moment. She had to reflect, not only upon what she knew, but upon how much of it she could tell anybody else, and to what purpose. Partly she was simply shocked.

  "You're saying this was a uterine hemorrhage too."

  "Yeah, possible miscarriage, they said. I would say impossible on that, myself, knowing Edith. Same with Gifford. Neither could have been pregnant. They're doing an autopsy this time. So at least the family is doing something other than burning candles and saying prayers, and giving each other the evil eye."

  "That's good," Mona said in a dull voice, drawing back into herself, hoping her cousin would keep quiet for a moment. No such luck.

  "Look, everybody is very upset," said Anne Marie. "But we have to follow the directive. A person can have a hemorrhage without it being a miscarriage, obviously. So don't go off by yourself. If you feel faint, or any unusual physical symptoms, you need to be able to get help immediately."

  Mona nodded, staring off at the blank walls of this place, at its sparse signs and its large sand-filled cylindrical ashtrays. One half hour ago, Mona had been sound asleep when something waked her as surely as a hand touching her--a smell, a song coming from a Victrola. She pictured that open window again, the sash all the way up, the night outside bending in with its dark yews and oaks. She tried to remember the smell. "Talk to me, kid," said Anne Marie. "I'm worried about you."

  "Yeah, well, I'm fine. OK. Everybody better follow that advice, don't be alone, whether they think they could be pregnant or not. You're right. Doesn't matter. I'm going upstairs to see Mother."

  "Don't wake her up."

  "You said she's been sleeping since morning? Maybe she's in a coma. Maybe she's dead."

  Anne Marie smiled and shook her head. She picked up her magazine and started reading again. "Don't get in an argument with her, Mona," she said, just as Mona turned away.

  The elevator doors opened quietly on the seventh floor. This was where they always put Mayfairs, unless there was some pressing reason to be in a special department. Mayfairs had rooms with parlors here, and little kitchens where they could make their own microwave coffee, or store their ice cream. Alicia had been in here before, four times as a matter of fact--dehydrated, malnourished, broken ankle, suicidal--and vowed never to be brought back. They'd probably had to restrain her.

  Mona padded softly down the corridor, catching a glimpse of herself in the dark glass of an observation room, and hating what she saw--the chunky white cotton dress, shapeless on a person who wasn't a little girl. Well, that was the least of her problems.

  She caught the fragrance as soon as she reached the doors to Seventh Floor West. That was it. The exact same smell.

  She stopped, took a deep breath and realized that for the first time in her life she felt really afraid of something. It made her disgusted. She stood, head cocked to the side, thinking it over. There was an exit to the stairs. There were the doors ahead. There was an exit on the other side of the ward. There were people right inside at the desk.

  If only she had Michael here, she'd push open that exit door, see if someone was standing in the stairwell, someone who gave off this odor.

  But the smell was already weak. It was going away. And as she stood there, considering this, getting quietly furious that she didn't have the guts to just open that damned door, someone else opened it, and let it swing shut as he went down the corridor. A young doctor with a stethoscope over his shoulder. The landing had been empty.

  But that didn't mean somebody wasn't hiding above or below. Either the smell was going away, however, or Mona was simply getting used to it. She took a deep slow breath; it was so rich, so sensuous, so delicious. But what was it?

  She pushed through the double doors into the ward. The smell grew stronger. But there were the three nurses, sitting, writing away, in an island of light surrounded by high wooden counters, one of them whispering on a phone as she wrote, the others seemingly in deep concentration.

  No one noticed as Mona walked past the station and passed into the narrow corridor. The smell was very strong here.

  "Jesus Christ, don't tell me this," Mona whispered. She glanced at the doors to her left and her right But the smell told her before she even saw the chart that said "Alicia (CeeCee) Mayfair."

  The door was ajar, and the room was dark; its one window opened upon an airwell. Blank wall stared in through the glass at the still woman, lying with her head to the wall, beneath the white covers. A small digital machine recorded the progress of the IV--a plastic sack of glucose, clear as glass, feeding down through a tiny tube into the woman's right hand, beneath a mass of tape, the hand itself flat on the white blanket.

  Mona stood very still, then pushed open the door. She pushed it all the way back, so that she could see into the open bathroom to the ri
ght Porcelain toilet Empty shower stall. Quickly, she examined the rest of the room, and then turned back to the bed, confident that she and her mother were alone.

  Her mother's profile bore a remarkable resemblance to that of her sister, Gifford, in the coffin. All points and angles, the emaciated face sunk into the large, softly yielding pillow.

  The covers made a mound over the body. All white except for a small irregular blotch of red in the very center of the covers, very near to where the hand lay with its tape and its tubing and needle.

  Mona drew closer, clamped her left hand on the chrome bar of the bed, and touched the red spot. Very wet Even as she stared at it the blotch grew bigger. Something seeping up through the covers from below. Roughly Mona pulled the blanket down from under Alicia's limp arm. Her mother didn't stir. Her mother was dead. The blood was everywhere. The bed was soaked with it

  There was a sound behind Mona; and then a female voice spoke in a rasping, unfriendly whisper.

  "Don't wake her up, dear. We had a hell of a time with her this morning."

  "Check her vital signs lately?" Mona asked, turning to the nurse. But the nurse had already seen the blood. "I don't think there's much chance of waking her up. Why don't you call my cousin Anne Marie? She's down in the lobby. Tell her to come up here immediately."

  The nurse was an old woman; she picked up the dead woman's hand. At once she set it down, and then she backed away from the bed, and out of the room.

  "Wait a minute," said Mona. "Did you see anybody come in here?"

  But in an instant she knew the question was pointless. This woman was too afraid of being blamed for this to even respond. Mona followed her, and watched her rush down to the station, walking about as fast as a person can walk without running. Then Mona went back to the bed.

  She felt the hand. Not ice-cold. She gave a long sigh; she could hear footsteps in the corridor, the muffled sound of rubber-soled shoes. She leaned over the bed, and brushed her mother's hair back from her face, and kissed her. The cheek held only a tiny bit of fading warmth. Her forehead was already cold.

  She thought sure her mother would turn her head and look up at her and shout out: "Be careful what you wish for. Didn't I tell you? It might come true."

  Within minutes the room was filled with staff. Anne Marie was in the hallway, wiping her eyes with a paper handkerchief. Mona backed off.

  For a long time she stood at the nurses' station just listening to everything. An intern had to be called to say that Alicia was legally dead. They had to wait for him, and that would take twenty minutes. It was past eight o'clock. Meantime the family doctor had been summoned. And Ryan, of course. Poor Ryan. Oh, God help Ryan. The phone was ringing now continuously. And Lauren? What shape was she in?

  Mona walked off down the hall. When the elevator door opened, it was the young intern who came out--a kid who didn't look old enough to know if somebody was dead. He passed her without even looking at her.

  In a daze Mona rode down to the lobby and walked out the doors. The hospital was on Prytania Street, only one block from Amelia and St. Charles, where Mona lived. She walked slowly along the pavement, under the lunar light of the street lamps, thinking quietly to herself.

  "I don't mink I want to wear dresses like this anymore." She said it out loud when she stood on the corner. "Nope, it's time to dump this dress and this ribbon." Across the street, her home was brightly lighted for once. There were people climbing out of cars. All the crisp excitement already begun.

  Several Mayfairs had seen her; one was pointing to her. Someone was walking to the corner to reach out towards her as if that might mean she might not be run down as she crossed the street.

  "Well, I don't think I like these clothes anymore," she said under her breath as she walked fast before the distant oncoming traffic. "Nope, sick of it Won't do it anymore."

  "Mona, darling!" said her cousin Gerald.

  "Yeah, well, it was just a matter of time," said Mona. "But I sure didn't count on both of them dying. No, didn't see that coming at all." She walked past Gerald, and past the Mayfairs assembled around the gate and the path to the steps.

  "Yeah, OK," she said to those who tried to speak to her. "I've got to get out of these ridiculous clothes."

  Fourteen

  JULIEN'S STORY

  IT IS NOT the story of my life which you require, but let me explain how I came upon my various secrets. As you know I was born in the year 1828, but I wonder if you realize what this means. Those were the very last days of an ancient way of life--the last decades in which the rich landowners of the world lived pretty much as they had for centuries.

  We not only knew nothing of railroads, telephones, Victrolas, or horseless carriages. We didn't even dream of such things!

  And Riverbend--with its vast main house crammed with fine furniture and books, and all its many outbuildings sheltering uncles and aunts and cousins, and its fields stretching as far as the eye could see from the riverbank, south, and east and west--truly was Paradise.

  Into this world I slipped almost without notice. I was a boy child, and this was a family that wanted female witches. I was a mere Prince of the Blood, and the court was a loving and friendly place, but no one observed that a little boy had been born who possessed probably greater witches' gifts than any man or woman ever in the family.

  In fact, my grandmother Marie Claudette was so disappointed that I was not a girl child that she stopped speaking to my mother, Marguerite. Marguerite had already given birth to one male, my older brother, Remy, and now, having had the audacity to bring another into the world, she crashed down completely from favor.

  Of course Marguerite rectified this mistake as soon as possible, giving birth in 1830 to Katherine, who was to become her heiress and designee of the legacy--my darling little sister. But a coldness by then existed between mother and daughter, and was never healed in Marie Claudette's lifetime.

  Also I personally suspect that Marie Claudette took one look at Katherine and thought, "What an idiot," for that is just what Katherine turned out to be. But a female witch was needed, and Marie Claudette would lay eyes upon a granddaughter before she died, so on to this little witless baby who was bawling in the cradle Marie Claudette passed the great emerald.

  Now as you know, by the time Katherine was a young woman I had come into my own as a family influence, was much valued as a carrier of witches' gifts, and it was I who fathered, by Katherine, Mary Beth Mayfair, who was the last in fact of the great Mayfair Witches.

  I fathered Mary Beth's daughter Stella, as I am sure you also know, and fathered by Stella her daughter, Antha.

  But let me return to the perilous times of my early childhood, when men and women both warned me in hushed voices to be well-behaved, ask no questions, defer to the family customs in every regard, and pay no attention to anything strange that I might see pertaining to the realm of ghosts and spirits.

  It was made known to me in no uncertain terms that strong Mayfair males did not do well; early death, madness, exile--those were the fates of the troublemakers.

  When I look back on it, I think it is absolutely impossible that I could have become one of the great Passive Well-Behaved, along with my Oncle Maurice and Lestan and countless other goody-two-shoes cousins.

  First of all, I saw ghosts all the time; heard spirits; could see life leaving a body when the body died; could read people's minds, and sometimes even move or hurt matter without even really getting angry or meaning to do it. I was a natural Utile witch or warlock or whatever the word might be.

  And I can't remember a time when I couldn't see Lasher. He was standing by my mother's chair many a morning when I went in to greet her. I saw him by Katherine's cradle. But he never cast his eyes on me, and I'd been warned very early on that I must never speak to him, nor seek to know who or what he was, or say his name, or make him look at me.

  My uncles, all very happy men, said, "Remember this, a Mayfair male can have everything he desires--wine, women, and we
alth beyond imagining. But he cannot seek to know the family secrets. Leave it in the hands of the great witch, for she sees all and directs all, and upon that principle our vast power has been founded."

  Well, I wanted to know what this was about. I had no intention of merely accepting the situation. And my grandmother, never someone not to catch the eye, became for me an extreme magnet of curiosity.

  Meantime, my mother, Marguerite, grew rather distant. She snatched me up and kissed me whenever we chanced to meet but that wasn't often. She was always going into the city to shop, to see the opera, to dance, to drink, to do God knows what, or locking herself in her study screaming if anyone dared to disturb her.

  I found her most fascinating of course. But my grandmother Marie Claudette was more a constant figure. And she became for me in my idle moments--which were few--a great irresistible attraction.

  First let me explain about my other learning. The books. They were everywhere. That wasn't so common in the Old South, believe me. It has never been common among the very rich to read; it is more a middle-class obsession. But we had all been lovers of books; and I cannot remember a time when I couldn't read French, English and Latin.

  German? Yes, I had to teach myself that, as well as Spanish and Italian.

  But I cannot recall a point in childhood where I had not read some of every book we possessed, and in this case that meant a library of such glory you cannot envision it. Most of those volumes have over the years simply rotted away; some have been stolen; some I entrusted many decades later to those who would cherish them. But then I had all I wanted of Aristotle, Plato, Plautus and Terence, Virgil and Horace. And I read the night away with Chapman's Homer, and Golding's Metamorphoses, a mammoth and charming translation of Ovid. Then there was Shakespeare, whom I adored, naturally enough, and lots of very funny English novels. Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones and Robinson Crusoe.

  I read it all. I read it when I didn't know what it meant until I did. I dragged my books with me about the house, pulling on skirts and jackets and asking, "What does this mean?" and even asking uncles, aunts, cousins or slaves to read various puzzling passages aloud to me.