Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  ‘Those are very good questions,’ said the man with a sigh. ‘Did you say the number thirteen?’

  ‘Did I? Is that what I said? I don’t… I guess I did say that. Yes, it was the number thirteen. Christ, I’ve got that back now. Yes, it was the number thirteen.’

  ‘Now I want you to listen to me. I don’t want you to call Rowan. I want you to get dressed and to come with me.’

  ‘Wait a second, my friend. You’re a very interesting guy. You look better in a smoking jacket than anybody I’ve ever seen in the movies and you have a very persuasive and charming manner. But I’m right here, exactly where I want to be. And I’m going back to that house after I call Rowan…’

  ‘And what exactly are you going to do there? Ring the bell?’

  ‘Well, I’ll wait till Rowan comes. Rowan wants to come, you know. She wants to see her family. That’s got to be what this is all about.’

  ‘And the man, what do you suppose he has to do with it all?’ asked Lightner.

  Michael was stopped. He sat there staring at Lightner. ‘Did you see that man?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He didn’t allow time for that. He wanted you to see him. And why is what I would like to know.’

  ‘But you know all about him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, it’s your turn to talk, and I wish you’d start right now.’

  ‘Yes, that’s our bargain,’ said Lightner. ‘But I find it’s more important than ever that you know everything.’ He stood up, and walked slowly over to the table, and began to gather up the papers that were scattered all over it, placing them neatly into a large leather folder. ‘And everything is in this file.’

  Michael followed him. He looked down at the impossibly large mass of materials which the man was cramming into the folder. Mostly typewritten sheets, yet some were in longhand as well.

  ‘Look, Lightner, you owe me some answers,’ Michael said.

  ‘This is a compendium of answers, Michael. It’s from our archives. It’s entirely devoted to the Mayfair family. It goes back to the year 1664. But you must hear me out. I cannot give it to you here.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘We have a retreat house near here, an old plantation house, quite a lovely place.’

  ‘No!’ Michael said impatiently.

  Lightner gestured for quiet. ‘It’s less than an hour and a half away. I must insist that you dress now and you come with me, and that you read the file in peace and quiet at Oak Haven, and that you save all your questions until you’ve done so, and all the aspects of this case are clear. Once you’ve read the records you’ll understand why I’ve begged you to postpone your call to Dr Mayfair. I think you’ll be glad that you did.’

  ‘Rowan should see this record.’

  ‘Indeed, she should. And if you were willing to place it in her hands for us, we would be eternally grateful indeed.’

  Michael studied the man, trying to separate the charm of the man’s manner from the astonishing content of what he said. He felt drawn to the man and reassured by his knowledge on the one hand; yet suspicious on the other. And through it all, he was powerfully fascinated by the pieces of the puzzle which were falling into place.

  Something else had come clear to him also. The reason he so disliked this power in his hands was that once he had touched another, or the belongings of another, a certain intimacy was established. In the case of strangers, it was fairly quickly effaced. In the case of Lightner it was gradually increasing.

  ‘I can’t go with you to the country,’ Michael said. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that you’re sincere. But I have to call Rowan and I want you to give this material to me here.’

  ‘Michael, there is information here which is pertinent to everything you’ve told me. It concerns a woman with black hair. It concerns a very significant jewel. As for the doorway, I don’t know the meaning. As for the number thirteen, I might. As for the man, the woman with the black hair and jewel are connected to him. But I shall let it out of my hands only on my terms.’

  Michael narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re saying this is the woman I saw in the visions?’

  ‘Only you can determine that for yourself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t play games with me.’

  ‘No. Of course not. But don’t play games with yourself either, Michael. You always knew that man was not… what he appeared to be, didn’t you? What did you feel last night when you saw him?’

  ‘Yeesss, I knew…" Michael whispered. He felt the disorientation again. Yet a dark unsettling thrill ran through him. He saw the man again peering down at him through the fence. ‘Christ,’ he whispered. And before he could stop himself, the most surprising thing happened. He raised his right hand and made a quick, reflexive sign of the cross.

  Embarrassed he looked at Lightner.

  Then the clearest thought came to him. The sense of excitement in him was rising. ‘Could they have meant for me to meet you?’ Michael asked. ‘The woman with the black hair, could she have meant for this meeting between you and me to take place?’

  ‘Only you can be the judge of that. Only you know what these beings said to you. Only you know who they actually were.’

  ‘God, but I don’t.’ Michael put his hands to the side of his head. He found that he was staring down at the leather folder. There was writing on it in English. Large letters, embossed in gold, but half worn away. ’ "The Mayfair Witches,"’ he whispered. ‘Is that what those words say?’

  ‘Yes. Would you dress now and come with me? They can have breakfast waiting for us in the country. Please?’

  ‘You don’t believe in witches!’ Michael said. But they were coming. Again the room was fading. And Lightner’s voice was once again distant, his words without meaning, merely faint, innocuous sounds coming from far away. Michael shuddered all over. Sick feeling. He saw the room again in the dusty morning light. Aunt Vivian had sat over there years ago, and his mother had sat here. But this was now. Call Rowan…

  ‘Not yet,’ said Lightner. ‘After you’ve read the file.’

  ‘You’re afraid of Rowan. There’s something about Rowan herself, some reason you want to protect me from Rowan…’ He could see the dust swirling around him in motes. How could something so particular and so material give the scene an air of unreality? He thought of touching Rowan’s hand in the car. Warning. He thought of Rowan afterwards, in his arms.

  ‘You know what it is,’ Lightner said. ‘Rowan told you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s crazy. She imagined it.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. Look at me. You know I’m telling you the truth. Don’t ask me to search out your thoughts for it. You know. You thought of it when you saw the word "Witches."’

  ‘I didn’t. You can’t kill people simply by wishing them dead.’

  ‘Michael, I’m asking for less than twenty-four hours. This is a trust I am placing in you. I ask for your respect for our methods, I ask that you give me this time.’

  Michael watched in confused silence as Lightner removed his smoking jacket, put on his suit coat, and then folded the jacket neatly and put it in the briefcase along with the leather file.

  He had to read what was in that leather folder. He watched Lightner zipper the briefcase and lift it and hold it in both arms.

  ‘I don’t accept it!’ said Michael. ‘Rowan is no witch. That’s crazy. Rowan’s a doctor, and Rowan saved my life.’

  And to think it was her house, that beautiful house, the house he’d loved ever since he was a little boy. He felt the evening again as it had been yesterday with the sky breaking violet through the branches and the birds crying as if they were in a wild wood.

  All these years he’d known that man wasn’t real. All his life he’d known it. He’d known it in the church…

  ‘Michael, that man is waiting for Rowan,’ Lightner said.

  ‘Waiting for Rowan? But, Lightner, why, then, did he show himself to me?’

  ‘Listen, my friend.’ The Englishman put his hand
on Michael’s hand and clasped it warmly. ‘It isn’t my intention to alarm you or to exploit your fascination. But that creature has been attached to the Mayfair family for generations. It can kill people. But then so can Dr Rowan Mayfair. In fact, she may well be the first of her kind to be able to kill entirely on her own, without that creature’s aid. And they are coming together, that creature and Rowan. It’s only a matter of time before they meet. Now, please, dress and come with me. If you choose to be our mediator and to give the file on the Mayfair Witches to Rowan for us, then our highest aims will have been served.’

  Michael was quiet, trying to absorb all this, his eyes moving anxiously over Lightner but seeing countless other things.

  He could not entirely account for his feelings towards ‘the man’ now, the man who had always seemed vaguely beautiful to him, an embodiment of elegance, a wan and soulful figure, almost, who seemed to possess, in his deep garden hideaway, some serenity that Michael himself wanted to possess. Behind the fence last night, the man had tried to frighten him. Or was that so?

  If only in that instant, he’d been rid of his gloves, and had been able to touch the man!

  He did not doubt Lightner’s words. There was something ghastly in all this, something ominous, something dark as the shadows that enclosed that house. Yet it seemed familiar. He thought of the visions, not in a struggle to remember, but merely to sink once more in the sensations evoked by them, and a conviction of goodness settled on him, as it had before.

  ‘I’m meant to intervene,’ he said, ‘surely I am. And maybe I’m meant to use this power through touching. Rowan said…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Rowan asked why I thought the power in my hands had nothing to do with it, why I kept insisting it was separate…’ He thought again of touching the man. ‘Maybe it is part of it, maybe it’s not just a little curse visited on me to drive me crazy and off course.’

  ‘That’s what you thought?’

  He nodded. ‘Seemed like it. Like it was the thing preventing me from coming. I holed up on Liberty Street for two months. I could have found Rowan sooner…" He looked at the gloves. How he hated them. They made his hands into artificial hands.

  He could think no further. He couldn’t grasp all the aspects of this fully. The feeling of familiarity lingered, taking the edges off the shocks of Lightner’s revelations.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. Til go with you. I want to read that file, all of it. But I want to be back here as soon as possible. I’m leaving word for her that I’ll be back in case she should call. She matters to me. She matters to me more than you know. And it’s got nothing to do with the visions. It’s got to do with who she is, and how much I… care about her. She can’t be subordinated to anything else.’

  ‘Not even to the visions themselves?’ Lightner asked respectfully.

  ‘No. Twice, maybe three times in a lifetime you feel about someone the way I do about Rowan. That involves its own priorities, its own purposes.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Lightner. ‘I’ll be downstairs to meet you in twenty minutes. And I wish that you would call me Aaron, from now on, if you’d like to. We have a long way to go together. I’m afraid I lapsed into calling you Michael quite some time ago. I want us to be friends.’

  ‘We’re friends,’ said Michael. ‘What the hell else could we possibly be?’ He gave a little uneasy laugh, but he had to admit, he liked this guy. In fact, he felt distinctly uneasy letting Lightner, and the briefcase, out of his sight.

  Michael showered, shaved, and dressed in less than fifteen minutes. He unpacked, except for a few essentials. And only as he picked up his suitcase did he see the message light still pulsing on the bedside phone. Why in the world hadn’t he responded the first time he’d seen it? It infuriated him suddenly.

  At once he called the switchboard.

  ‘Yes. A Dr Rowan Mayfair called you, Mr Curry, about five fifteen a.m.’ The woman gave him Rowan’s number. ‘She insisted that we ring, and that we knock.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘We did, Mr Curry. We didn’t get any answer.’

  And my friend Aaron was there all the time, Michael thought angrily.

  ‘We didn’t want to use the passkey to go in.’

  ‘That’s fine. Listen, I want to leave word with you for Dr Mayfair if she calls again.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Curry?’

  ‘That I arrived safely, and that I’ll call within twenty-four hours. That I have to go out now, but I’ll be here later on.’

  He laid a five-dollar bill for the maid on the coverlet and walked out.

  The small narrow lobby was bustling when he came down. The coffee shop was crowded and cheerfully noisy. Lightner, having changed from his dark tweed into an immaculate seersucker suit, stood by the doors, looking very much the southern gentleman of the old school.

  ‘You might have answered the phone when it rang,’ said Michael. He did not add that Lightner looked like the old white-haired men he remembered from the old days who used to take their evening walks through the Garden District and along the avenue uptown.

  ‘I didn’t feel I had the right to do that,’ said Aaron politely. He opened the door for Michael and gestured to the gray car -a stretch limousine — at the curb. ‘Besides, I was afraid it was Dr Mayfair.’

  ‘Well, it was,’ Michael said. Delicious gust of August heat. He wanted to take off on foot. How comfortable the pavement felt to him. But he knew he had to make this journey. He climbed into the backseat of the car.

  ‘I see,’ Lightner was saying. ‘But you haven’t called her back.’ He seated himself beside Michael.

  ‘A deal is a deal,’ Michael said with a sigh. ‘But I don’t like it. I’ve tried to make it clear to you how things are with me and Rowan. You know, when I was in my twenties, falling in love with a person in one evening would have been damn near impossible. Least it never happened. And when I was in my thirties? Well maybe, but again it didn’t happen, though now and then I saw just the promise… and maybe I ran away. But I’m in my late forties now, and I’m either more stupid than ever, or I know enough finally that I can fall in love with a person in one day or one night, I can size up the situation, so to speak, and figure when something is just about perfect, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The car was somewhat old but plenty agreeable enough, with well-kept gray leather upholstery and the little refrigerator tucked to one side. Ample room for Michael’s long legs. St Charles Avenue flashed by all too rapidly beyond the tinted glass.

  ‘Mr Curry, I respect your feelings for Rowan, though I have to confess I’m both surprised and intrigued. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The woman’s extraordinary by any standard, an incomparable physician and a beautiful young creature of rather amazing demeanor. I know. But what I ask that you understand is this: The File on the Mayfair Witches would never normally be entrusted to anyone but a member of our order or a member of the Mayfair family itself. Now I’m breaking the rules in showing you this material. And the reasons for my decision are obvious. Nevertheless, I want to use this precious time to explain to you about the Talamasca, how we operate, and what small loyalty, in exchange for our confidence, we should like to claim from you.’

  ‘OK, don’t get so fired up. Is there some coffee in this glorified taxi?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Aaron. He lifted a thermos from a pocket in the side door, and a mug with it, and started to fill the mug.

  ‘Black will do just fine,’ Michael said. A lump rose in his throat suddenly as he saw the big proud houses of the avenue gliding past, with their deep porches and colonnettes and gaily painted shutters, and the pastel sky enmeshed in a tangle of groping branches and softly fluttering leaves. A sudden crazy thought came to him, that some day he would buy a seersucker suit like Lightner’s suit, and he would walk on the avenue, like the gentlemen of years past, walk for hours, round curve after curve as the avenue followed the distant bends of the river, past all th
ese graceful old houses that had survived for so long. He felt drugged and crazy drifting through this ragged and beautiful landscape, in this insulated car, behind dimming glass.

  ‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ Lightner said. ‘Very beautiful indeed.’

  ‘O K, tell me about this order. So you’re driving around in limousines thanks to the Knights Templar. What else?’

  Lightner shook his head reprovingly, a trace of a smile on his lips. But again he colored, surprising and amusing Michael.

  ‘Just kidding you, Aaron,’ said Michael. ‘Come on, how did you come to know about the Mayfair family in the first place? And what the hell damn is a witch, in your book, do you mind telling me that?’

  ‘A witch is a person who can attract and manipulate unseen forces,’ said Aaron. ‘That’s our definition. It will suffice for sorcerer or seer, as well. We were created to observe such things as witches. It all started in what we now call the Dark Ages, long before the witchcraft persecutions, as I’m sure you know. And it started with a single magician, an alchemist as he called himself, who began his studies in a solitary spot, gathering together in a great book all the tales of the supernatural he had ever read or heard.

  ‘His name and his life story are not important for the moment. But what characterized his account was that it was curiously secular for the times. He was perhaps the only historian ever to write about the occult, or the unseen, or the mysterious without making assumptions and assertions as to the demonic origin of apparitions, spirits, and the like. And of his small band of followers he demanded the same open-mindedness. "Merely study the work of the so-called spell binder," he would say. "Do not assume you know whence his power comes."