The witching hour lotmw-1

by Anne Rice

  The house itself was shining clean and in perfect order.

  Aunt Vivian had taken the bedroom which had belonged to Carlotta, and Eugenia was still at the very far end of the second floor, near the kitchen stairway. Aaron slept in the second bedroom in the front, the room that had once belonged to Millie Dear.

  Michael did not want to return to the front room, and they had readied the old northside master bedroom for him. It was quite inviting-even with the high-backed wooden bed in which Deirdre had died, now heaped with white down comforters and pillows. He liked in particular the small northside front porch on which he could go out and sit at the iron table and look out over the corner.

  For days there was a procession of visitors. Bea came with Lily, and then Cecilia and Clancy and Pierce, and Randall came by with Ryan who had various papers to be signed, and others dropped in, whose names he had trouble remembering. Sometimes he talked to them; sometimes he didn’t. Aaron was very good at taking care of things for him. Aunt Vivian was very proficient at receiving people as well.

  But he could see how deeply the cousins were troubled. They were chastened, restrained, and above all, bewildered. They were uneasy in the house, even at times a little jumpy.

  Not so Michael. The house was empty, and clean as far as he was concerned. And he knew every little repair that had been done; every shade of paint that had been used; every bit of restored plaster or woodwork. It was his greatest accomplishment, right up to the new copper gutters, and down to the heart pine floors he’d stripped and stained himself. He felt just fine here.

  “I’m glad to see you’re not wearing those awful gloves anymore,” Beatrice said. It was Sunday, and the second time she had come, and they were sitting in the bedroom.

  “No, I don’t need them now,” said Michael. “It’s the strangest thing, but after the accident in the pool, my hands went back to normal.”

  “You don’t see things anymore?”

  “No,” he said. “Maybe I never used the power right. Maybe I didn’t use it in time. And so it was taken away from me.”

  “Sounds like a blessing,” said Bea, trying to conceal her confusion.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” said Michael.

  Aaron saw Beatrice to the door. Only by chance did Michael wander past the head of the steps, and happen to hear her saying to Aaron, “He looks ten years older.” Bea was crying, actually. She was begging Aaron to tell her how this tragedy had come about. “I could believe it,” she said, “that this house is cursed. It’s full of evil. They should never have planned to live in this house. We should have stopped them. You should make him get away from here.”

  Michael went back into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

  When he looked into the mirror of Deirdre’s old dresser, he decided that Bea was right. He did look older. He hadn’t noticed the gray hair at his temples. There was a little sparkle of gray mixed in with all the rest too. And he had perhaps a few more lines in his face than he’d had before. Maybe even a lot of them. Especially around his eyes.

  Suddenly he smiled. He hadn’t even noticed what he put on this afternoon. Now he saw that it was a dark satin smoking jacket, with velvet lapels, which Bea had sent to him at the hospital. Aunt Viv had laid it out for him. Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de Winter at Manderley. He gave a melancholy smile at his image, with one eyebrow raised. And the gray at his temples making him look, what? Distinguished.

  “Eh bien, Monsieur,” he said, striving to sound to himself like the voice of Julien he’d heard on the street in San Francisco. Even his expression had changed somewhat. He felt he had a touch of Julien’s resignation.

  Of course this was his Julien, the Julien he had seen on the bus, and whom Richard Llewellyn had once seen in a dream. Not the playful smiling Julien of his portraits, or the menacing laughing Julien of the dark hellish place full of smoke and fire. That place hadn’t really existed.

  He went downstairs, slowly, the way the doctor recommended, and went into the library. There had never been anything in the desk since it was cleaned out after Carlotta’s death, and so he had made it his, and he kept his notebook there. His diary.

  It was the same diary he’d started to keep on his first visit to Oak Haven. And he continued to write in it-making entries almost every day, because it was the only place that he could express what he really felt about what had happened.

  Of course he had told Aaron everything. And Aaron was the only person he would ever tell.

  But he needed this quiet, contemplative relationship with the blank page in which to voice his soul completely. It was beautiful to sit here, only now and then looking up through the lace curtains at the passersby who were headed up to St. Charles Avenue to see the Venus parade. Only two more days until Mardi Gras.

  But the one thing he didn’t like was that he could sometimes hear the drums in the quiet. That had happened yesterday, and he hated it.

  When he was tired of writing, he took his copy of Great Expectations off the shelf, sat down at the end of the leather couch nearest the fireplace, and started reading. In a little while, Eugenia or Henri would come, he figured, and bring him something to eat. And maybe he’d eat it and maybe he wouldn’t.

  Fifty-four

  “TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, Mardi Gras Night.

  “I will never believe that what I saw the second time was a true vision. I maintain now and always will that it was Lasher’s doing. Those weren’t the Mayfair Witches, because they are not here, earthbound and waiting to pass through the door, though that might have been a lie he told them during their individual lives, and part of the pact which he used to gain their cooperation.

  “I believe that as each one of them died, he or she either ceased to exist or attained a greater wisdom. And there was no intent to cooperate with any plan on this earth. If anything, attempts were made to thwart it.

  “Such an attempt was made when Deborah and Julien came to me the first time. They told me about the plan and that I had to intervene, to subvert Rowan so that Rowan could not be seduced by Lasher and his deceptions. And in San Francisco, when they told me to go home, they were trying to get me to intervene again.

  “I believe this because there is no other sensible explanation. I would never have agreed to do anything so evil as father the child by which that greedy monster could come through. And if I had even been privy to such a horror, I would have awakened not with a sense of zeal and purpose, but in an utter panic, and with a deep revulsion against those who tried to use me.

  “No. It was all Lasher’s doing, that last hallucinatory vision of hellish earthbound souls and their ugly, ignorant morality. And the tip-off, of course, and I don’t know why Aaron can’t see it, was the appearance of the nuns in the vision. For the nuns most certainly didn’t belong there. And the drums of Comus-they didn’t belong there either. They were from my childhood fears.

  “The whole hellish spectacle was drawn from my childhood fears and dreads; and Lasher tumbled them all up with the Mayfair Witches, to create a hell for me that would keep me dead and drowned and in despair.

  “If his plan had worked, I would have really died, of course, and his vision of hell would have vanished, and maybe, just maybe, in some life after I would have found the true explanation.

  “It’s difficult to think about that last part, however. Because I didn’t die. And what I have now, for what it’s worth, is a second chance to stop Lasher, simply by being alive, and being here.

  “After all, Rowan knows I’m here, and I can’t believe that every vestige of love for me in Rowan is dead. It doesn’t check with the evidence of my senses.

  “On the contrary, Rowan not only knows I’m waiting, she wants me to wait, and that is why she’s given the house to me. In her own way she has asked me to remain here and continue to believe in her.

  “My worst fear, however, is now that that greedy thing is in the flesh, it will h
urt Rowan. It will reach some point where it doesn’t need her anymore, and it will try to get rid of her. I can only hope and pray that she destroys it before that time comes, though the more I think things over, the more I come to realize how hard it will be for her to do that.

  “Rowan always tried to warn me that she had a propensity for evil that I didn’t have. Of course I’m not the innocent that she supposed. And she isn’t really evil. But what she is-is brilliant and purely scientific. She’s in love with the cells of that thing, I know she is, from a purely scientific point of view, and she’s studying them. She’s studying the whole organism and how it performs and how it moves through the world, and concentrating on whether or not it is indeed an improved version of a human being, and if so, what that improvement means, and how it can eventually be used for good.

  “Why Aaron can’t accept that, I don’t know either. He is so sympathetic but so persistently noncommittal. The Talamasca really are a bunch of monks, and though he keeps pleading with me to go to England, it’s just not possible. I could never live with them; they are too passive; and much too theoretical.

  “Besides, it is absolutely essential that I wait here for Rowan. After all, only two months have passed, and it may be years before Rowan can finally resolve this. Rowan is only thirty years old, and that is really young in this day and age.

  “And knowing her as I do, being the only one who knows her at all, I am convinced that Rowan will move eventually towards true wisdom.

  “So that is my take on what happened. The Mayfair Witches as an earthbound coven don’t exist and never did, and the pact was a lie; and my initial visions were of good beings who sent me here in the hopes of ending a reign of evil.

  “Are they angry with me now? Have they turned away from me in my failure? Or do they accept that I tried, using the only tools I had, and do they see perhaps, what I see, that Rowan will return and that the story isn’t finished?

  “I can’t know. But I do know that there is no evil lurking in this house, no souls hanging about in its rooms. On the contrary, it feels wonderfully clean and bright, just the way I intended it to be.

  “I’ve been slowly going through the attics, finding interesting things. I’ve found all of Antha’s short stories, and they are fascinating. I sit upstairs in that third-floor room and read them by the sunlight coming in the windows, and I feel Antha all around me-not a ghost, but the living presence of the woman who wrote those delicate sentences, trying to voice her agony and her struggle, and her joy at being free for such a short time in New York.

  “Who knows what else I’ll find up there. Maybe Julien’s autobiography is tucked behind a beam.

  “If only I had more energy, if only I didn’t have to take things so slowly, and a walk around the place wasn’t such a chore.

  “Of course it is the most exquisite place for walking imaginable. I always knew that.

  “The old rose garden is coming back, gorgeously, in these warm days, and just yesterday, Aunt Viv told me that she had always dreamed of having roses to tend in her old age, and that she would care for them from now on, that the gardener only needed to give her a little assistance. Seems he remembered ‘old Miss Belle’ who had taken care of these roses in the past, and he’s been filling her head with the names of the various species.

  “I think it’s marvelous, that she is so happy here.

  “I myself prefer the wilder, less tended flowers. Last week, after they had put the screens back up on Deirdre’s old porch and I had gotten a new rocking chair for it, I noticed that the honeysuckle was crawling over the new wooden railing in full force, and on up the cast iron, just the way it was when we first came here.

  “And outside, in the flower beds, beneath the fancy camellias, the wild four o’clocks are coming back, and so is the little lantana that we called bacon and eggs with its orange and brown flowers. I told the gardeners not to touch those things. To let it have its old wild look again. After all, the patterns are too dominant at the moment.

  “I feel as if I’m moving from diamonds to rectangles to squares when I walk around, and I want it softened, obscured, drenched in green, the way the Garden District always was in my memory.

  “Also it isn’t private enough. Today of all days, when people were trooping through the streets, heading for the parade route on St. Charles to see Rex pass, or just to wander in their carnival costumes, too many heads turned to peer through the fence. It ought to be more secretive.

  “In fact, regarding that very question, the strangest thing happened tonight.

  “But let me briefly review the day, being that it was Mardi Gras, and the day of days.

  “The Mayfair Five Hundred were here early, as the Rex parade passes on St. Charles Avenue at about eleven o’clock. Ryan had seen to all the arrangements, with a big buffet breakfast set out at nine, followed by lunch at noon, and an open bar with coffee and tea all day.

  “Perfect, especially since I didn’t have to do a damned thing but now and then come down in the elevator, shake a few hands, kiss a few cheeks, and then plead fatigue, which was no lie, and go back upstairs to rest.

  “My idea of how to run this place exactly. Especially with Aaron there to help, and Aunt Vivian enjoying every minute of it.

  “From the upstairs porches, I watched the children running back and forth from here to the avenue, playing on the lawn outside, and even swimming, on account of its being just a perfectly lovely day. I wouldn’t go near that pool for love nor money, but it’s run to see them splashing in it, it really is.

  “Wonderful to realize that the house makes all this possible, whether Rowan is here or not. Whether I am here or not.

  “But around five o’clock, when things were winding down, and some of the children were napping, and everyone was waiting for Comus, my lovely peace and quiet came to an end.

  “I looked up from War and Peace to see Aaron and Aunt Viv standing there before me, and I knew before they spoke what they were going to say.

  “I ought to put on clothes, I ought to eat something, I ought to at least sample the salt-free dishes Henri had so carefully prepared for me. I ought to come downstairs.

  “And I ought to at least walk up to the avenue to see Comus, said Aunt Viv, the very last parade of Mardi Gras night.

  “As if I didn’t know.

  “Aaron stood quiet all this time saying nothing, and then he ventured that maybe it would be good for me to see the parade after all these years, and sort of dispel the mystique which had built up around it and of course he would be there with me the whole time.

  “I don’t know what got into me but I said yes.

  “I dressed in a dark suit, tie, the works, combed my hair, thrilling at the sight of the gray, and feeling uncomfortable and constrained after weeks of robes and pajamas, I went downstairs. Lots of hugs and kisses, and warm greetings from the dozens of Mayfair lolling about everywhere. And didn’t I look good? And didn’t I look much better? And all those tiresome but well-intentioned remarks.

  “Michael, the cardiac cripple. I was out of breath from simply coming down the stairs!

  “Whatever the case, by six-thirty I started walking slowly towards the avenue with Aaron, Aunt Viv having gone ahead with Bea and Ryan and a legion of others, and there came those drums all right, that fierce diabolical cadence as if accompanying a convicted witch in a tumbrel to be burned at the stake.

  “I hated it with all my heart, and I hated the sight of the lights up there, but I knew Aaron was right. I ought to see it. And besides, I wasn’t really afraid. Hate is one thing. Fear is another. How completely calm I felt in my hate.

  “The crowds were sparse since it was the very end of the day and the whole season, and there was no problem at all finding a comfortable place to stand on the neutral ground, in all the beaten-down grass and litter from the day-long mayhem, and I wound up leaning against a trolley line pole, hands behind my back, as the first floats came into view.

  “Ghastly, ghastly as it
had been in childhood, these mammoth quivering papier-mâché structures rolling slowly down the avenue beyond the heads of the jubilant crowds.

  “I remembered my dad bawling me out when I was seven. ‘Michael, you’re not scared of anything real, you know it? But you gotta get over your crazy fear of those parades.’ And he was right of course. By that time, I had had a terrible fear of them, and been a real crybaby about it, ruining Mardi Gras for him and my mother, that was true. I got over it soon enough. Or at least I learned to hide it as the years passed.

  “Well, what was I seeing now, as the flambeau carriers came marching and prancing along, with those beautiful stinking torches, and the sound of the drums grew louder with the approach of the first of the big proud high school bands?

  “Just a mad, pretty spectacle, wasn’t it? It was all much more brightly lighted for one thing, with the high-powered street lamps, and the old flambeaux were included for old times’ sake only, not for illumination, and the young boys and girls playing the drums were just handsome and bright-faced young boys and girls.

  “Then came the king’s float, amid cheering and screaming, a great paper throne, high and ornate and splendidly decorated, with the man himself quite fine in his jeweled crown, mask, and long curling wig. What extravagance, all that velvet. And of course he waved his golden cup with such perfect composure, as if this wasn’t one of the most bizarre sights in the world.

  “Harmless, all of it harmless. Not dark and terrible and no one about to be executed. Little Mona Mayfair tugged at my hand suddenly. She wanted to know if I would hold her on my shoulders. Her daddy had said he was tired.