Lasher lotmw-2

by Anne Rice

  A night came on, peaceful, warm. It must have been midsummer when I died! Surely it was. The crape myrtles were full of pink blossoms. Surely I have not imagined such a thing.

  And I had sent everyone away from me. I knew it was coming. I lay quiet on a heap of pillows looking out at the clouds above the crape myrtle.

  I wanted to go back and back to Riverbend, I wanted to sit with Marie Claudette, I wanted to know, honestly, to know who had been that young man who kidnapped slaves and brought them to Marguerite’s chambers for her wild experiments? Who had been that thoughtless knave?

  I lay there, and then a most dreadful truth seized me. A little truth, really. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift myself up. I could not make my arms obey. Death was stealing over me like a winter chill. It was freezing me.

  And then, as if there were a God for raconteurs and lechers, there appeared Evelyn above the edge of the roof, her white hands on the green vines.

  Up she came and across the porch top and I could hear her voice through the thick glass, “Open the window, Oncle Julien! It’s Evie, open to me.”

  I couldn’t move. I stared at her, my eyes brimming. “Oh darling,” I whispered in my heart.

  And then Evie called on her witches’ gifts, and with her hands and her gifts she sent the window rattling upward. She reached inside and took me by my shoulders, so frail and small I must have been by then. She brought me forward and kissed me.

  “Oh darling, yes, yes…”

  And beyond her, spreading out over the whole sky, the storm gathered. I heard the first raindrops strike the porch roof beneath her. I felt them on my face. I saw the trees begin to move in their fury. And I heard the wind, wailing as if he were wailing, lashing the trees and crying in his grief as he had on the death of my mother, and on the death of her mother.

  Yes, it was a storm for the death of the witch, and I was the witch. And it was my death and my storm.

  Twenty-four

  THEY STOOD IN the mist, forming a vague circle. What was that low grinding sound? Was it thunder? They were the most dangerous people he had seen. Ignorance, poverty, that was their heritage, and everywhere he saw the common imperfections of the poor and the untended, the hunchback, the man with the club foot, the child whose arms were too short, and all the others, thin-faced, coarse, misshapen and frightening, in their gray and brown garments, to behold. The grinding noise went on and on, too monotonous for thunder. Could they hear it?

  The sky above pressed down upon them, down upon the entire grassy floor of the glen. The stones did have carvings, the old man in Edinburgh had told Julien the truth. The stones were enormous, and they were all together in the circle.

  He sat up. He was dizzy. He said, “I don’t belong here. This is a dream. I have to go back where I belong. I can’t wake up here. But I don’t know how to get back there.” The grinding sound was driving him mad. It was so low, so insistent. Did they hear it? Maybe it was some awful rumble from the earth itself, but probably not. Anything could happen here. Anything could happen. The important thing was to get out.

  “We would like to help you,” said one of the men, a tall man with flowing gray hair. He stepped forward, out of the little circular gathering. He wore black breeches and his mouth was invisible beneath his gray mustache. Only a bit of lip showed as the deep baritone voice came from him. “But we do not know who you are or what you are doing here. We do not know where you come from. Or how to send you home.”

  This was English, modern English. This was all wrong. A dream.

  What is that rumbling? That grinding. I know that sound. He wanted to reach out and stop it. I know that sound. The stone nearest to him must have been some twenty feet high, jagged, like a crude knife rising from the earth, and on it were warriors in rows, with their spears and their shields. “The Picts,” he said.

  They stared at him as if they did not understand him. “If we leave you here,” said the gray-haired man, “the little people may come. The little people are full of hatred. The little people will take you away. They’ll try to make a giant with you, and reclaim the world. You have the blood in you, you see.”

  A sharp ringing sound carried over the blowing grass, suddenly, beneath the great span of boiling gray clouds. It came again, that same familiar peal. It was louder than the low grinding noise that ran on, uninterrupted, beneath it.

  “I know what that is!” he said to them. He tried to stand, but then he fell down again into the damp grass. How they stared at his clothes. How different theirs were.

  “This is the wrong time! Do you hear that sound? That sound is a telephone. It’s trying to bring me back.”

  The tall man drew closer. His bare knees were filthy, his long legs streaked with dirt. Rather like a man who has been splashed with dirty water, and has let it dry on his skin. His clothing was matted with dirt.

  “I’ve never seen the little people for myself,” he said. “But I know they are something to fear. We cannot leave you here.”

  “Get away from me,” he said. “I’m getting out of here. This is a dream and you ought to leave it. Don’t wait around. Just go. I have things to do! Important things that must be done!”

  And this time he rose full to his feet, and was thrown backwards and felt the floorboards beneath his hands. Again the telephone rang. Again and again. He tried to open his eyes.

  Then it stopped. No, I have to wake up, he thought. I have to get up. Don’t stop ringing. He brought his knees up close to his chest and managed to get up on all fours. The grinding noise. The Victrola. The heavy arm with its crude little needle caught at the end of the record, grinding, grinding, looking for a new way to begin.

  Light in the two windows. His windows. And there the Victrola under Antha’s window, the little letters VICTOR printed in gold on the wooden lid, which was propped open.

  Someone was coming up the stairs.

  “Yes!” He climbed to his feet. His room. The drafting board, his chair. The shelves filled with his books. Victorian Architecture. The History of the Frame House in America. My books.

  There was a knocking at the door.

  “Mr. Mike, are you in there? Mr. Mike, Mr. Ryan is on the phone!”

  “Come in, Henri, come in here.” Would Henri hear his fear? Would he know?

  The doorknob turned as if it were alive. The light fell in from the landing, Henri’s face so dark with the little chandelier behind him that Michael couldn’t see it.

  “Mr. Mike, it’s good news and bad news. She’s alive, they’ve found her in St. Martinville, Louisiana, but she’s sick, real sick, they say she can’t move or speak.”

  “Christ, they’ve found her. They know for sure it’s Rowan!”

  He hurried past Henri and down the stairs. Henri came behind him, talking steadily, hand out to steady Michael when he almost fell.

  “Mr. Ryan’s on his way over here. Coroner called from St. Martinville. She had papers in her purse. She fits the description. They say it’s Dr. Mayfair, for sure.”

  Eugenia was standing in his bedroom holding the phone in her hand.

  “Yes, sir, we’ve found him.”

  Michael took the receiver.

  “Ryan?”

  “She’s on her way in now,” came the cool voice on the other end. “The ambulance is taking her straight to Mercy Hospital. She’ll be there in about an hour, if they use the siren all the way. Michael, it doesn’t look good. They can’t get any response from her. They’re describing a coma. We’re trying to reach her friend Dr. Larkin, at the Pontchartrain. But there’s no answer.”

  “What do I do? Where do I go?” He wanted to get on I-10 and drive north till he saw the oncoming ambulance, then swing around, cutting across the grass, and follow it in. An hour! “Henri, get me my jacket. Find my wallet. Down in the library. I left my keys and my wallet on the floor.”

  “Mercy Hospital,” said Ryan. “They’re ready for her. The Mayfair Floor. We’ll meet you there. You haven’t seen Dr. Larkin, have you?�
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  Michael had on his jacket within seconds. He drank the glass of orange juice Eugenia pushed at him, as she reminded him in no uncertain terms that he had had no supper, that it was eleven o’clock at night.

  “Henri, go bring the car around. Hurry.”

  Rowan alive. Rowan would be at Mercy Hospital in less than an hour. Rowan coming home. Goddamnit to hell, I knew it, knew she would come back, but not like this!

  He hurried down to the front hall, taking his keys from Eugenia, and his wallet and stuffing it in his pocket. Money clip. Didn’t need it. Mayfair Floor. Where he himself had lain after the heart attack, hooked to machines and listening to them, like the grinding of that Victrola. And she was going to be there.

  “Listen to me, Eugenia, there’s something real important you gotta do,” he said. “Go upstairs to my room. There’s an old Victrola on the floor. Wind it and start the record. OK?”

  “Now? At this hour of the night? For what?”

  “Just do it. Tell you what. Bring it down to the parlor. That will make it easier. Oh, never mind, you can’t carry it. Just go up there, and play that record a few times and then go to bed.”

  “Your wife is found, your wife is alive, and you’re headed to the hospital to see her, and you don’t know whether she’s all right or been hit in the head or what, and you’re telling me to go play a phonograph record.”

  “Right. You got it all exactly right.”

  There was the car, a great dark fish sliding beneath the oaks. He hurried down the steps, turning quickly to Eugenia:

  “Do it!” he said, and went out. “The point is, she is alive.” He climbed into the backseat of the limo. “Take off.” He slammed the door. “She is alive, and if she is alive, she’ll hear me, I’ll talk to her, she’ll tell me what happened. Jesus Christ, Julien, she is alive. The hour is not yet come.”

  As the car moved onto Magazine Street and headed downtown, the rest of the poem came back to him, all of it, a long string of dark and dreamy words. He heard Julien’s voice, with the fancy French accent illuminating the letters, just as surely as the old monks had illuminated letters when they painted them bright red or gold and decorated them with tiny figures and leaves.

  Beware the watchers in that hour

  Bar the doctors from the house

  Scholars will but nourish evil

  Scientists would raise it high.

  “Isn’t it the most terrible thing?” Henri was saying. “All of those poor women. To think of it, all of them dead the same way.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Michael. He wanted a cigarette. He could smell that sweet cheroot of Julien’s. The fragrance clung to his clothes. Like a bolt it came back. Julien lighting that cheroot, inhaling and then waving to him. And the deep glint of the brass bed in the room, and Violetta singing to all those men.

  “What poor women? What are you talking about? It’s like I’m Rip Van Winkle. Give me the time.”

  “The time is eleven-thirty p.m., boss,” said Henri. “I’m talking about the other Mayfair women, Miss Mona’s mother dying uptown, and poor Miss Edith downtown, though best I can remember I never met her, and I don’t even remember the name of the other lady, and the lady in Houston and the one after that.”

  “You’re telling me all these women are dead? These Mayfair women?”

  “Yes, boss. All died the same way, Miss Bea said. Mr. Aaron called. Everybody was calling. We didn’t even know you were home. The lights were out upstairs in that room. How would I know you were asleep on the floor?”

  Henri went on, something about looking all over the house for Michael, saying to Eugenia this and that, and going outside to look for him, and on and on. Michael didn’t hear it. He was watching the decayed old brick buildings of Magazine Street fly by; he was hearing the poem.

  Pain and suffering as they stumble

  Blood and fear before they learn.

  Twenty-five

  SO THIS IS Stolov. He knew the moment he stepped off the plane. They had tracked him all the way. And here was the big man, waiting for him, a bit overmuscular in his black raincoat, with large eyes of a pale indistinct color which nevertheless shone rather bright like clear glass.

  The man had near-invisible blond eyelashes and bushy brows, and his hair was light. He looked Norwegian to Yuri. Not Russian. Erich Stolov.

  “Stolov,” Yuri said, and, shifting his bag to the left, he extended his hand.

  “Ah, you know me,” said the man. “I wasn’t sure that you would.” Accent, Scandinavian with a touch of something else. Eastern Europe.

  “I always know our people,” said Yuri. “Why have you come to New Orleans? Have you been working with Aaron Lightner? Or are you here simply to meet me?”

  “That is what I’ve come to explain,” said Stolov, placing his hand very lightly on Yuri’s back as they followed the carpeted corridor together, passengers streaming by them, the hollow space itself seeming to swallow all warm sounds. The man’s tone was very cooperative and open. Yuri didn’t quite believe it.

  “Yuri,” said the other. “You shouldn’t have left the Motherhouse, but I understand why you did. But you know we are an authoritarian order. You know obedience is important. And you know why.”

  “No, you tell me why. I am excommunicated now. I feel no obligation to talk to you. I came to see Aaron. That’s the only reason I am here.”

  “I know that, of course I do,” said the other, nodding. “Here, shall we stop for coffee?”

  “No, I want to go to the hotel. I want to meet with Aaron as soon as I can.”

  “He couldn’t see you now if he wanted to,” said Stolov in a low conciliatory voice. “The Mayfair family is in a state of crisis. He is with them. Besides, Aaron is an old and loyal member of the Talamasca. He won’t be happy that you’ve come so impulsively. Your show of affection may even embarrass him.”

  Yuri was silently infuriated by these words. He didn’t like this big blond-haired man.

  “So I will find him and find out for myself. Listen, Stolov, I knew when I left I was out. Why are you talking this way to me-so patient, so agreeable? Does Aaron know you are here?”

  “Yuri, you are valuable to the Order. Anton is a new Superior General. Perhaps David Talbot would have handled things much better. It’s in times of transition that we sometimes lose people whom we come, very much, to miss.”

  The man gestured to the empty coffee shop, where china cups shimmered on smooth Formica tables. Smell of weak, American coffee, even here in this town.

  “No, I want to go on,” said Yuri. “I am going to find Aaron. Then the three of us can talk, if you like. I want to tell Aaron I’m here.”

  “You can’t do that now. Aaron is at the hospital,” said Stolov. “Rowan Mayfair has been found. Aaron is with the family. Aaron is in danger. That’s why it’s so important you listen to what I have to say. Don’t you see? This misunderstanding amongst us-it came about because we were trying to protect Aaron. And you.”

  “Then you can explain it to both of us.”

  “Hear me out first,” the man said gently. “Please.”

  Yuri realized the man was virtually blocking his path. The man was larger than he was. He wasn’t so much a menace as he was a great obstacle, forceful and stubborn and believing in himself. His face was agreeable and intelligent, and once again he spoke in the same even, patient tone.

  “Yuri, we need your cooperation. Otherwise Aaron may be hurt. You might say this is a rescue mission involving Aaron Lightner. Aaron Lightner has been drawn into the Mayfair family. He is no longer using good judgment.”

  “Why not?”

  But even as he asked this question, Yuri yielded. He turned, allowed himself to be led into the restaurant, and capitulated, taking a chair opposite the tall Norwegian, and watching in silence as the waitress was instructed to bring coffee, and something sweet to eat.

  Yuri figured Stolov was perhaps ten years older than he. That meant Stolov was perhaps
forty. As the black raincoat fell open, he saw the conventional Talamasca suit, expensive cut, tropical wool, but not ostentatious. The look of this generation. Not the tweed and leather patches of David and Aaron and their ilk.

  “You’re very suspicious and you have a right to be,” said Stolov. “But Yuri, we are an order, a family. You shouldn’t have gone out of the Motherhouse the way you did.”

  “You told me that already. Why did the Elders forbid me to speak to Aaron Lightner?”

  “They had no idea that it would have such repercussions. They wanted only silence, an interval, in which to take measures to protect Aaron. They did not imagine those words spoken in a booming voice.”

  The waitress filled their china cups with the pale, weak coffee. “Espresso,” said Yuri. “I’m sorry.” He pushed the pallid cup away.

  The woman laid down rolls for them to eat, sweet-smelling, iced and sticky. Yuri wasn’t hungry. He had eaten something wholly unappetizing and very filling on the plane.

  “You said they found Rowan Mayfair,” said Yuri, staring at the rolls, and thinking how sticky they would be if he touched them. “You mentioned a hospital.”

  Stolov nodded. He drank his pale amber-colored coffee. He looked up with those peculiar soft light eyes. The absence of any color made them look vacant and then suddenly unaccountably aggressive. Yuri couldn’t figure why.

  “Aaron is angry with us,” said Stolov. “He is not being cooperative. On Christmas Day something happened with the Mayfair family. He believes that if he had been present, he could have helped Rowan Mayfair. He blames us that he did not go to Rowan. He’s wrong. He would have died. That is what would have happened. Aaron is old. His investigations have seldom if ever involved this sort of direct danger.”

  “That wasn’t my impression,” said Yuri. “The Mayfair family tried to kill him once before. Aaron has seen plenty of danger. Aaron has been in danger in other investigations. Aaron is a treasure to the Order because he has seen and done so much.”