Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  ‘We’re not wrong,’ said Gander. ‘What you’ve got here, Aaron, is a brilliant neurosurgeon descended from a family of witches, who can kill people just by looking at them; and on some level she knows it, she has to, and she spends every day of her life making up for it in the Operating Room, and when she goes out on the town it’s with some hero who’s just saved a kid from a burning attic, or a cop who’s stopped a drunk from stabbing his wife. She’s sort of mad, this lady. Maybe as mad as all the rest.’

  In December of 1988, I went to California. I had been to the States in January to attend the funeral of Nancy Mayfair, and I deeply regretted not having gone on to the coast at that time to try to get a glimpse of Rowan. But no one had an inkling, then, that both Ellie and Graham would be dead within six months.

  Rowan was now all alone in the house in Tiburon. I wanted to have a look at her, even if it was from a distance. I wanted to make some appraisal which depended upon my seeing her in the flesh.

  By that time, we had not — thank God — turned up any more deaths in Rowan’s past. As the senior resident in neurosurgery, she was working a hectic if not inhuman schedule at the hospital, and I found it far more difficult to get a glimpse of her than I ever imagined. She left the hospital from a covered parking lot and drove into a covered garage at home. The Sweet Christine, moored at her very doorstep, was concealed entirely by a high redwood fence.

  At last I entered University Hospital, sought out the doctors’ cafeteria, and hovered near it in a small visitors’ area for seven hours. To my knowledge Rowan never passed.

  I resolved to follow her from the hospital only to discover that there was no way to discover when she might be leaving. When she arrived was also a mystery There was no discreet way to press anyone for details. I could not risk hanging about in the area adjacent to the Operating Rooms. It wasn’t open to the public. The waiting room for the family members of those having surgery was strictly monitored And the rest of the hospital was like a labyrinth. I didn’t know finally what to do.

  I was thrown into consternation. I wanted to see Rowan, but I dreaded disturbing her I could not bear the thought of bringing darkness into her life, of clouding the isolation from the past which seemed, on the surface, to have served her so well. On the other hand, if she was actually responsible for the deaths of six human beings! Well, I had to see her before I could make a decision. I had to see her.

  Unable to come to any decision, I invited Gander for a drink at the hotel. Gander felt Rowan was deeply troubled. He had watched her off and on for over fifteen years. She had had the wind knocked out of her by the death of her parents, he said. And we could now pretty fairly well confirm that her random contact with the ’boys in blue,’ as he called her lovers, had dropped off in the last few months.

  I told Gander I would not leave California without a glimpse of her, if I had to hover in the underground parking lot near her car - the absolutely worst way possible to achieve a sighting — until she appeared

  ‘I wouldn’t try that, old man,’ said Gander. ‘Underground parking lots are the spookiest places. Her little psyche antennae will pick you up instantly. Then she’ll misinterpret the intensity of your interest in her, and you’ll get a sudden stabbing pain in the side of your head Next you’ll suddenly…’

  ‘I follow the drift, Owen,’ I said dismally. ‘But I must get a good look at her in some public place where she isn’t aware of me.’

  ‘Well, make it happen,’ said Gander. ‘Do a little witchcraft yourself. Synchromcity? Isn’t that what they call it?’

  The following day I decided to do some routine work. I went to the cemetery where Graham and Elhe were buried, to photograph the inscriptions on the stones. I had twice asked Gander to do this, but somehow he had never gotten around to it. I think he enjoyed the other aspects of the investigation much more.

  While I was there, the most remarkable thing happened. Rowan Mayfair appeared.

  I was down on my knees in the sun, making a few notes on the inscriptions, having already taken the photographs, when I became aware of this tall young woman in a sailor’s coat and faded dungarees coming up the hill. She seemed all legs and blowing hair for a moment, a very fresh-faced and lovely young creature. Quite impossible to believe she was thirty years old.

  On the contrary, her face had almost no lines in it at all. She looked exactly like the photographs taken of her years ago, yet she looked very much like someone else, and for one moment the resemblance so distracted me that I could not think who it was. Then it came to me. It was Petyr van Abel. She had the same blond, pale-eyed look. It was very nearly Scandinavian, and she appeared extremely independent and extremely strong.

  She approached the grave, and stopped only a few feet away from where I knelt, clearly taking notes from her stepmother’s headstone.

  At once I began to talk to her. I cannot remember precisely what I said. I was so flustered that I didn’t know what I should say to explain my appearance there, and very slowly I sensed danger just as surely as I had sensed it with Cortland years ago I sensed enormous danger. In fact, her smooth pale face with its large gray eyes seemed suddenly filled with pure malice. Then a wall went up behind her expression. She closed down, rather like a giant receiver which is suddenly and soundlessly turned off.

  I realized with horror that I had been talking about her family. I had told her that I knew the Mayfairs of New Orleans. It was my feeble excuse for what I was doing there. Did she want to have a drink, talk about old family matters. Dear God! What if she said yes!

  But she said nothing. Absolutely nothing, at least not in words. I could have sworn, however, that the closed receiver suddenly became a highly focused speaker and she communicated to me quite deliberately that she couldn’t avail herself of my offer, something dark and terrible and painful prevented her from doing it, and then she seemed lost in confusion; lost in misery. In fact, I have seldom if ever in my life felt such pure pain.

  It came to me in a silent flash that she knew she had killed people. She knew she was different in a horrible and mortal way. She knew it and the knowledge sealed her up as if she were buried alive inside herself.

  Perhaps it had not been malice which I felt only moments before. But whatever had taken place was now concluded. I was losing her. She was turning away. Why she had come, what she meant to do, I would never know.

  At once I offered her my card. I put it in her hand. She gave it back to me. She wasn’t rude when she did it. She simply did it. She put it right back in my hand. The malice leapt out of her like a flash of light from a keyhole. Then she went dim. Her body tensed and she turned and walked off.

  I was so badly shaken that for a long moment I could not move. I stood in the cemetery watching her walk down the hill. I saw her get into a green Jaguar sedan. Off she drove without glancing back.

  Was I ill? Had I suffered a severe pain somewhere? Was I about to die? Of course not. Nothing like that had happened. Yet I knew what she could do. I knew and she knew and she had told me! But why?

  By the time I reached the Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco, I was thoroughly confused. I decided I would do nothing further for the present.

  When I met with Gander, I said’ ‘Keep up the surveillance. Get as close as you dare. Watch for anything that indicates she is using the power. Report to me at once.’

  ‘Then you’re not going to make contact.’

  ‘Not now. I can’t justify it. Not until something else happens and that could be either of two things: she kills someone else, deliberately or accidentally. Or her mother dies in New Orleans and she decides to go home."

  ‘Aaron, that’s madness.’ You have to make contact. You can’t wait until she goes back to New Orleans. Look, old man, you have pretty much told me the whole story over the years. And I don’t claim to know what you people know about it. But from everything you’ve told me, this is the most powerful psychic the family has ever produced. Who’s to say she’s not a powerful witch as well
? When her mother finally goes, why would this spook Lasher miss an opportunity like this?’

  I couldn’t answer, except to say what Owen already knew. There were absolutely no sightings of Lasher in Rowan’s history.

  ‘So he’s biding his time. The other woman’s still alive. She has the necklace. But when she dies, they have to give it to Rowan. From what you’ve told me, it’s the law.’

  I called Scott Reynolds in London. Scott is no longer our director, but he is the most knowledgeable person in the order on the subject of the Mayfair Witches, next to me.

  ‘I agree with Owen. You have to make contact. You have to. What you said to her in the cemetery was exactly what you should have said, and on some level you know it. That’s why you told her you knew her family. That’s why you offered her the card. Talk to her. You have to.’

  ‘No, I disagree with you. It isn’t justified.’

  ‘Aaron, this woman is a conscientious physician, yet she’s killing people! Do you think she wants to do that sort of thing? On the other hand…’

  ’… what?’

  ‘If she does know, this contact could be dangerous. I have to confess, I don’t know how I would feel about all this if I were there, if I were you.’

  I thought it over. I decided that I would not do it. Everything that Owen and Scott had said was true. But it was all conjecture. We did not know whether Rowan had ever deliberately killed anyone. Possibly she was not responsible for the six deaths.

  We could not know whether she would ever lay her hands on the emerald necklace. We did not know if she would ever go to New Orleans. We did not know whether or not Rowan’s power included the ability to see a spirit, or to help Lasher to materialize… ah, but of course we could pretty well conjecture that Rowan could do all that… But that was just it, it was conjecture. Conjecture and nothing more.

  And here was this hard-working doctor saving lives daily in a big city Operating Room. A woman untouched by the darkness that shrouded the First Street house. True, she had a ghastly power, and she might again use it, either deliberately or inadvertently. And if that happened, then I would make contact.

  ‘Ah, I see, you want another body on the slab,’ said Owen.

  ‘I don’t believe there is going to be another,’ I said angrily. ‘Besides, if she doesn’t know she’s doing it, why should she believe us?’

  ‘Conjecture,’ said Owen. ‘Like everything else.’

  SUMMATION

  As of January 1989, Rowan has not been connected with any other suspicious deaths. On the contrary, she has worked tirelessly at University Hospital at ’working miracles,’ and will very likely be appointed Attending Physician in neurosurgery before the end of the year.

  In New Orleans, Deirdre Mayfair continues to sit in her rocking chair, staring out over the ruined garden. The last sighting of Lasher -’a nice young man standing beside her’ - was reported two weeks ago.

  Carlotta Mayfair is nearing ninety years of age. Her hair is entirely white, though the style of it has not changed in fifty years. Her skin is milky and her ankles are perpetually swollen over the tops of her plain black leather shoes. But her voice remains quite steady. And she still goes to the office every morning for four hours. Sometimes she has lunch with the younger lawyers before she takes her regular taxi home.

  On Sundays she walks to Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel to go to Mass. People in the parish have offered to drive her to Mass, and indeed, anyplace else that she would like to go. But she says that she likes walking. She needs the fresh air. It keeps her in good health.

  When Sister Bridget Marie died in the fall of 1987, Carlotta attended the funeral with her nephew (cousin, actually) Gerald Mayfair, a great-grandson of Clay Mayfair. She is said to like Gerald. She is said to be afraid she may not live long enough to see Deirdre at peace. Maybe Gerald will have to take care of Deirdre after Carlotta is gone.

  To the best of our knowledge Rowan Mayfair knows none of these people. She knows no more today of her family history than she did when she was a little girl.

  ‘Ellie was so afraid Rowan would try to find out about her real parents,’ said a friend recently to Gander. ‘I got the feeling it was an awful story. But Ellie would never talk about it, except to say that Rowan must be protected, at all costs, from the past.’

  I am content to watch and to wait.

  I feel, irrationally perhaps, that I owe this much to Deirdre. That she did not want to give up Rowan is quite obvious to me. That she would have wanted Rowan to have a normal life is beyond doubt. There are times when I am tempted to destroy our file on the Mayfair Witches. Has any other history involved us in so much violence and so much pain? Of course such a thing is unthinkable. The Talamasca would never allow it. And never forgive it, if I did it on my own.

  Last night after I completed my final draft of the above summary, I dreamed of Stuart Townsend, whom I had met only once when I was a small boy. In the dream, he was in my room and had been talking to me for hours. Yet when I awoke, I could recall only his last words. ‘You see what I am saying? It’s all planned!"

  He was dreadfully upset with me.

  ‘I don’t see!’ I said out loud when I woke up. In fact, it was my own voice which awakened me. I was amazed to discover that the room was empty, that I had been dreaming, that Stuart wasn’t really there.

  I don’t see. That is the truth. I don’t know why Cortland tried to kill me. I don’t know why such a man would go to such a ghastly extreme. I don’t know what really happened to Stuart. I don’t even really know why Stella was so desperate that Arthur Langtry take her away.-1 don’t know what Carlotta did to Antha, or whether or not Cortland fathered Stella, Antha, and Deirdre’s baby. I don’t see!

  But there is one thing of which I am certain. Some day, regardless of whatever she promised Ellie Mayfair, Rowan Mayfair may go back ’ to New Orleans and if she does, she will want answers. Dozens upon dozens of answers. And I fear I am the only one now — we in the Talamasca are the only ones — who can possibly hope to reconstruct for her this sad tale.

  Aaron Lightner,

  The Talamasca

  LONDON

  January 15,1989

  TWENTY-SIX

  ON AND ON it went, exotic and dreamlike still in its strangeness, a ritual from another country, quaint and darkly beautiful, as the whole party spilled out into the warm air and then into a fleet of limousines which drove them silently through narrow, crowded, treeless little streets.

  Before a high brick church — St Mary’s Assumption — the long lumbering shiny cars stopped, one after another, oblivious to the derelict school buildings with their broken windows, and the weeds rising triumphant from every fissure and crack.

  Carlotta stood on the church steps, tall, stiff, her thin spotted hand locked on the curve of her gleaming wooden cane. Beside her an attractive man, white-haired and blue-eyed, and not much older than Michael perhaps, whom the old woman dismissed with a brittle gesture beckoning for Rowan to follow her.

  The older man stepped back with young Pierce, after quickly clasping Rowan’s hand. There was something furtive in the way he whispered his name, ‘Ryan Mayfair,’ glancing anxiously at the old woman. Rowan understood he was young Pierce’s father.

  And into the immense nave they all moved, the entire assemblage following the coffin on its rolling bier. Footfalls echoed softly and loudly under the graceful Gothic arches, light striking brilliantly the magnificent stained-glass windows and the exquisitely painted statues of the saints.

  Seldom even in Europe had she seen such elegance and grandeur. Faintly Michael’s words came back to her about the old parish of his childhood, about the jam-packed churches which had been as big as cathedrals. Could this have been the very place?

  There must have been a thousand people gathered here now, children crying shrilly before their mothers shushed them, and the words of the priest ringing out in the vast emptiness as if they were a song.

  The straight-backed old woman b
eside her said nothing to her. In her wasted, fragile-looking hands, she held with marvelous capability a heavy book, full of bright and lurid pictures of the saints. Her white hair, drawn back into a bun, lay thick and heavy against her small head, beneath her brimless black felt hat. Aaron Lightner remained back in the shadows, by the front doors, though Rowan would have had him stay beside her. Beatrice Mayfair wept softly in the second pew. Pierce sat on the other side of Rowan, arms folded, staring dreamily at the statues of the altar, at the painted angels high above. His father seemed to have lapsed into the same trance, though once he turned and his sharp blue eyes fixed deliberately and unself-consciously on Rowan.

  By the hundreds they rose to take Holy Communion, the old, the young, the little children. Carlotta refused assistance as she made her way to the front and then back again, her rubber-tipped cane thumping dully, then sank down into the pew, with her head bowed, as she said her prayers. So thin was she that her dark gabardine suit seemed empty, like a garment on a hanger, with no contour of a body at all within it, her legs like sticks plunging to her thick string shoes.

  The smell of incense rose from the silver censer as the priest circled the coffin. At last the procession moved out to the waiting fleet in the treeless street. Dozens of small black children - some barefoot, some shirtless - watched from the cracked pavements before a shabby, neglected gymnasium. Black women stood with bare arms folded, scowling in the sun.

  Can this really be America?

  And then through the dense shade of the Garden District the caravan plunged, bumper to bumper, with scores of people walking on either side of it, children skipping ahead, all advancing through the deep green light.

  The walled cemetery was a veritable city of peaked-roof graves, some with their own tiny gardens, paths running hither and thither past this tumbling down crypt or this great monument to fire fighters of another era, or the orphans of this or that asylum, or to the rich who had had the time and money to etch these stones with poetry, words now filled with dust and wearing slowly away.