Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  ‘She never screams or throws a tantrum like the men do, she’s too good for that’

  ‘She’s as straight as a man.’

  ‘I’d rather be in there with her than some of these men doctors, I tell you.’

  ‘She’s beautiful to work with. She’s the best I love just to watch her work. She’s like an artist.’

  ‘She’s the only doctor who’s ever going to open my head, I can tell you that.’

  To put this more clearly into perspective, we are still living in a world in which Operating Room nurses sometimes refuse to hand instruments to women surgeons, and patients in Emergency Rooms refuse to be treated by women doctors and insist that young male interns treat them while older, wiser, and more competent women doctors are forced to stand back and watch.

  Rowan appears to have transcended this sort of prejudice entirely If there is any complaint against her among members of her profession it is that she is too quiet She doesn’t talk enough about what she’s doing to the young doctors who must learn from her". It’s hard for her But she does the best she can.

  As of 1984, she seemed to have escaped completely the curse of the Mayfairs, the ghastly experiences that plagued her mother and her grandmother, and to be on the way to a brilliant career.

  An exhaustive investigation of her life had turned up no evidence of Lasher’s presence, or indeed any connection between Rowan and ghosts or spirits or apparitions.

  And her strong telepathic powers and healing powers seemed to have been put to extraordinarily productive use in her career as a surgeon.

  Though everyone around her admired her for her exceptional accomplishments, no one thought of her as ’weird’ or ‘strange’ or in any way connected with the supernatural.

  As one doctor put it when asked to explain Rowan’s reputation, ‘She’s a genius. What else can I say?’

  LATER DISCOVERIES

  However, there is more to the story of Rowan which has surfaced only in the last few years One part of that story is entirely personal and no concern of the Talamasca The other part of it has us alarmed beyond our wildest expectations as to what may happen to Rowan in the years that lie ahead

  Allow us to deal with the insignificant part first

  In 1985, the complete lack of any social life on the part of Rowan aroused our curiosity We asked our investigators to engage in closer surveillance

  Within weeks, they discovered that Rowan, far from having no social life, has a very special kind of social life including very virile working-class men whom she picks up from time to time in any one of four different San Francisco bars

  These men are predominately fire fighters or uniformed policemen They are invariably single, they are always extremely good-looking and extremely well built Rowan sees them only on the Sweet Christine, in which they sometimes go out to sea and other times remain in the harbor, and she rarely sees any one of them more than three times

  Though Rowan is very discreet and unobtrusive, she has become the subject of some gossip in the bars she frequents At least two men have been embittered by their inevitable rejection by her and they talked freely to our investigators, but it became apparent that they knew almost nothing about Rowan They thought she was ’a rich girl from Tiburon’ who had snubbed them, or used them They had no idea she was a doctor One of them repeatedly described the Sweet Christine as ‘Daddy’s fancy boat’

  Other men who have known Rowan are more objective ‘She’s a loner, that’s all I liked it, actually She didn’t want any string attached and neither did I. I would have liked it once or twice more maybe, but it’s got to be mutual I understand her She’s an educated girl who likes old-fashioned men’

  A superficial investigation of twelve different men seen leaving Rowan’s house between 1986 and 1987 indicated that all were highly regarded fire fighters or policemen, some with sterling records and decorations, and all considered by their peers and later girlfriends to be ’nice guys’

  Further digging also confirmed that Rowan’s parents knew about her preference for this sort of man as early as her undergraduate years Graham told his secretary that Rowan wouldn’t even speak to a guy with a college degree That she only went out with ’hairy-chested galoots,’ and one of these days she was going to discover that these non-compos-mentis apes were dangerous

  Ellie also expressed her concern to her friends ‘She says they’re all cops and firemen and that those kind of men only save lives I don’t think she knows what she’s doing But as long as she doesn’t marry one of those men I suppose it’s all right You should see the one she brought home last night I got a glimpse of him on the side deck Beautiful red hair and freckles Just the cutest Irish cop you ever saw’

  As things stand now, I have put a halt to this investigation I feel we had no grounds to pursue this aspect of Rowan’s life further And indeed, the bars in which Rowan picks up her cops and firemen are so few that asking questions about Rowan truly violates her privacy by drawing attention to her, and in some instances our questions have encouraged rather degrading talk on the part of crude men, who actually knew nothing about "Rowan, but claimed to have heard this or that vulgar detail from someone else.

  I do not think that this aspect of Rowan’s life is any concern of ours, except to note that her taste seemed similar to that of Mary Beth Mayfair, and that such a pattern of random and limited contacts reinforces the idea that Rowan is a loner, and a mystery to everyone who knows her That she does not talk about herself to these bed partners is obvious Perhaps she cannot talk about herself to anyone, and this may be one key to understanding her compulsions and ambitions.

  ROWAN‘S TELEKINETIC POWER

  The other aspect of Rowan’s life, only lately discovered, is far more significant, and represents one of the most disturbing chapters in the entire history of the Mayfair family We have only begun to document this second secret aspect of Rowan, and we feel compelled to continue our investigations, and to consider the possibility of contact with Rowan in the very near future, though we are deeply troubled about disturbing her ignorance regarding her family background, and we cannot in conscience make contact without disturbing her ignorance. The responsibilities involved are immense.

  In 1988, when Graham Franklin died of a cerebral hemorrhage, our investigator in the area wrote us a brief description of the event, adding only a few details, namely that the man had died in Rowan’s arms.

  As we knew of the deep division between Graham Franklin and his dying wife, Ellie, we read this report with some care. Could Rowan have somehow caused Graham’s death? We were curious to know.

  As our investigators sought more information about Graham’s plan to divorce his wife, they came in contact with Graham’s mistress, Karen Garfield, and reported in due time that Karen had suffered several severe heart attacks. Then they reported her death, two months following that of Graham.

  Attaching no significance to it whatsoever, they had also reported a meeting between Rowan and Karen the day that Karen was rushed to the hospital with her first major attack. Karen had spoken to our investigator - ‘You’re a cute guy, I like you’ - only hours after seeing Rowan. She was, in fact, talking to the man when she broke off because she wasn’t feeling well.

  The investigations did not make the connections, but we did. Karen Garfield was only twenty-seven. Her autopsy records, which we obtained fairly easily, indicated that she had had an apparent congenital weakness of the heart muscle, and a congenital weakness of the artery wall. She sustained a hemorrhage in the artery and then major heart failure, and after the initial damage to the heart muscle, she simply could not recover. The subsequent bouts of heart failure weakened her progressively until she finally died.

  Only a heart transplant could have saved her, and as she had a very rare blood type, that was out of the question. And besides, there wasn’t time

  The case struck us as very unusual, especially since Karen’s condition had never given her any trouble before. When we studied Graham’
s autopsy we discovered that he too had died of an aneurysm, or weakness of the artery wall. A massive hemorrhage had killed him almost instantly.

  We ordered our investigators to go back through Rowan’s life as best they could, and look for any sudden deaths through heart failure, cerebrovascular accident, or any such internal traumatic cause. In sum, this meant making casual and unobtrusive inquiries of teachers who might remember Rowan and her classmates, and inquiries of students who might remember such things at U.C. Berkeley, or University Hospital. Not such an easy thing to accomplish, but easier than one unfamiliar with our methods might suppose.

  In truth, I expected the investigation to turn up nothing.

  People with this kind of telekinetic power — the power to inflict severe internal damage - are almost unheard of, even in the annals of the Talamasca. And certainly we had never seen anyone in the Mayfair family who could bring death with that kind of force.

  Many Mayfairs moved objects, slammed doors, caused windows to rattle. But in almost every incidence it could have been pure witchcraft — to wit, the manipulation of Lasher or other lowly spirits, rather than telekinesis. And if it was telekinesis it was the garden variety and nothing more.

  Indeed, the history of the Mayfairs was the history of witchcraft, with only mild touches of telepathy or healing power or other psychic abilities mixed in.

  In the meantime, I studied all the information we had on Rowan. I could not help but believe that Deirdre Mayfair would be happy if she could read such a history, if she could know that her daughter was so deeply admired and so uniformly successful, and I vowed to myself that I would never do anything to disturb the happiness or the peace of mind of Rowan Mayfair - that if the Mayfair history, as we knew it and understood it, was coming to an end in the liberated figure of Rowan, then we could only be glad for Rowan, and could do nothing to affect that history in any way.

  After all, only a tiny bit of information about the past might change the course of Rowan’s life. We could not risk such intervention. In fact, I felt we had to be prepared to close the file on Rowan, and on the Mayfair Witches, as soon as Deirdre was released in death. On the other hand we had to be prepared to do something if, when Ellie died, Rowan went back to New Orleans to find out about her past.

  Within two weeks of Ellie’s funeral, we knew that Rowan was not going back. She had just commenced her final year as senior resident in neurosurgery and could not possibly take the time. Also our investigators had discovered that Rowan had been asked by Ellie to sign a paper swearing officially that she would never go to New Orleans or seek to know who her real parents were. Rowan had signed this paper. There was no indication that she did not mean to honor it.

  Perhaps she would never set eyes on the First Street house. Perhaps somehow ‘the curse’ would be broken. And Carlotta Mayfair would be victorious in the end.

  On the other hand, it was too soon to know. And what was to stop Lasher from revealing himself to this highly psychic young woman who could read people’s minds more strongly perhaps than her mother or grandmother, and whose enormous ambition and strength echoed that of ancestors like Marie Claudette, or Julien, or Mary Beth, about whom she knew nothing, but about whom she might soon find out a lot.

  As I pondered all these things, I also found myself thinking often of Petyr van Abel - Petyr whose father had been a great surgeon and anatomist in Leiden, a name in the history books to this day. I longed to tell Rowan Mayfair: ‘See that name, that Dutch doctor who was famous for his study of anatomy. That is your ancestor. His blood and his skill perhaps have come down to you through all the generations and the years.’

  These were my thoughts when in the fall of 1988 our investigators began to report some amazing findings regarding traumatic deaths in Rowan’s past. It seems that a little girl fighting with Rowan on the playground in San Francisco had suffered a violent cerebral hemorrhage and died within a few feet of the hysterical Rowan before an ambulance could even be called.

  Then in 1974, when Rowan was a teenager, she was saved from assault at the hands of a convicted rapist when the man suffered a fatal heart attack as Rowan struggled to fight him off.

  In 1984, on the afternoon that he first complained of a severe headache, Dr Karl Lemle of the Keplinger Institute told his secretary, Berentce, that he had just seen Rowan unexpectedly and that he could not understand the animosity she felt for him. She had become so angry when he tried to speak to her that she had cut him in front of the other doctors at University. In fact, she’d given him a bad headache. He needed some aspirin. He was hospitalized for the first of his successive hemorrhages that night, and died within a matter of weeks.

  That made five deaths from cerebrovascular or cardiovascular accident among Rowan’s close associates. Three of these people had died while Rowan was present. Two had seen her within hours of taking ill.

  I told my investigators to run an exhaustive check on every single one of Rowan’s classmates or colleagues, and to check each and every name with the death records in San Francisco and in the city of the person’s birth. Of course this would take months.

  But within weeks, they had found yet another death. It was Owen Gander who called me, a man who has worked directly for the Talamasca for twenty years. He is not a member of the order, but he has visited the Motherhouse and he is one of our most trusted confidants, and one of the best investigators we have.

  This was his report. At U.C. Berkeley in 1978, Rowan had had a terrible argument with another student over some laboratory work. Rowan felt that the girl-had deliberately meddled with her equipment. Rowan had lost her temper - an extremely rare occurrence - and thrown a piece of equipment to the ground, breaking it, and then turned her back on the girl. The girl then ridiculed Rowan until other students came between them insisting that the girl stop.

  The girl went home that night to Palo Alto, California, as the spring break began the following day. By the end of spring break she had died of a cerebrovascular hemorrhage. There was no indication from the record that Rowan ever knew.

  When I read this, I called Gander immediately from London. ‘What makes you think Rowan didn’t know?’ I asked.

  ‘None of her friends knew. After I found the girl’s death in the Palo Alto records, I researched her with Rowan’s friends. They all remembered the fight, but they didn’t know what happened to the girl afterwards. Not a single one knew. I asked them pointedly. "Never saw her again."

  "Guess she dropped out of school."

  "Never knew her very well. Don’t know what happened to her. Maybe she went back to Stanford." That’s it. U.C. Berkeley is an enormous university. It could have happened like that.’

  I then advised the investigator to proceed with the utmost discretion to discover whether Rowan knew what had happened to Graham’s mistress, Karen Garfield. ‘Call her some time in the evening. Ask for Graham Franklin. When she tells you Graham is dead, explain that you are trying to find Karen Garfield. But try to upset her as little as possible, and don’t stay on the line very long.’

  The investigator called back the following evening.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘About what?’ I asked.

  ‘She doesn’t know she’s doing it! She doesn’t have any idea that Karen Garfield is dead. She told me Karen lived somewhere on Jackson Street in San Francisco. She suggested I try Graham’s old secretary. Aaron, she doesn’t know.’

  ‘How did she sound?"

  ‘Weary, faintly annoyed, but polite. She has a beautiful voice, really. Rather exceptional voice. I asked her if she’d seen Karen. I was really pushing it. She said that she didn’t actually know Karen, that Karen had been a friend of her father’s. I believe she was perfectly sincere!’

  ‘Well, she had to know about her stepfather, and about the little girl on the playground. And she had to know about the rapist.’

  ‘Yes, but Aaron, probably none of them was deliberate. Don’t you see? She was hysterical when that little girl died; sh
e was hysterical after the rape attempt. As for the stepfather, she was doing everything she could to resuscitate him when the ambulance arrived. She doesn’t know. Or if she does know, she can’t control it. It might be scaring her half to death.’

  I told Gander to reconsider the matter of the young lovers in greater detail. Look for any relevant deaths among policemen or fire fighters in San Francisco or Marin County. Go back to the bars Rowan frequented; start a conversation with one of her former lovers; say you’re looking for Rowan Mayfair. Has anybody seen her? Does anybody know her? Be as discreet and nondisruptive as possible. But dig.

  Gander called four days later. There had been no such suspicious deaths among any young men in the departments who could conceivably be connected to Rowan. But one thing had emerged from the investigator’s talks in the bar. One young fireman, who admitted to knowing Rowan and liking her, said she was no mystery to him, rather she was an open book. ‘She’s a doctor; she likes saving people’s lives and she hangs around with us because we do the same thing.’

  ‘Did Rowan actually say that to the young man?’

  ‘Yes, she told him that. He made a joke about it. "Imagine, I went to bed with a brain surgeon. She fell in love with my medals. It was great while it lasted. You think if I pull somebody out of a burning building, she’ll give me another chance?"’ Gander laughed. ‘She doesn’t know, Aaron. She’s hooked on saving people, and maybe she doesn’t even know why.’

  ‘She has to know. She’s too good a doctor not to know,’ I said. ‘Remember, this girl is a diagnostic genius. She must have known with the stepfather. Unless of course we’re wrong about the whole thing.’