The Witching Hour

by James Gunn

  A moment of silence was broken by a voice I recognized. “I second,” someone said. It was Ariel.

  A brief smile twisted Solomon’s lips. “All in favor.”

  Two voices were raised. I sat back, silent and afraid.

  “It seems,” Solomon said, smiling more broadly, “That the motion has failed.”

  Alexander Hamilton’s corbie turned out to be a cat, and Alexander Hamilton an English witch, in Lothian. The speaker used it as a takeoff point for a general summary of divining and augury. Undaunted, Uriel rose to protest against the unwarranted assumption that the future can be known and that these medieval ideas had any validity.

  “Proof,” he demanded. “Proof.”

  Solomon thanked him for his contribution. The audience chuckled. It was obvious that whatever prestige Uriel had was vanishing under Solomon’s treatment.

  “Now,” said Solomon, “perhaps we can give Uriel some of the proof he has been demanding.”

  I realized, with a shock, that the next speaker’s subject was “LYCANTHROPY — A DEMONSTRATION.”

  He brought props with him: some unusually shaped lights that were plugged in but not turned on and a dark, frightened young man whom he installed in a chair at the back of the stage.

  After going through a historical discussion of lycanthropy and the geographical distribution of the supposed myth, he described his research into the possible truth of the phenomena. He had found a subject in one of his own classes who confessed to strange appetites and stranger dreams. One evening, by the light of the full moon, the speaker saw the subject change.

  In order to make this demonstration, the speaker had duplicated with these lights the constituent part of the moonlight that stimulated the cell changes. He motioned the young man to the front of the stage. The man came with the gait of a sleepwalker.

  “Watch carefully!” the speaker said. And he flicked on the lights.

  As the young man was bathed in silver, Uriel was on his feet protesting. The growing murmur of the audience drowned him out. Because the young man was changing.

  His dark face grew darker and sharper. His jaw thrust forward horribly. As his arms and legs shriveled and shortened, he dropped to all fours. He was hairy. He shook himself free from the encumbering clothes, and the wide mouth in the pointed muzzle opened to let a long tongue loll out between sharp, white teeth. His eyes gleamed redly in the light. A growl started deep in his throat. He crouched.

  A woman screamed.

  And he sprang. He sprang straight for Uriel.

  There was shouting and scurrying and the crashing sounds of upset chairs as people sprang aside. Uriel stood straight and unafraid, a small, white-haired figure, oddly courageous and alone. He pointed a finger at the leaping wolf and muttered something I couldn’t hear.

  The animal crashed into an unseen wall. It dropped among the chairs, tried to get up, but failed and lay among the splintered wood snarling at its left hind leg. The leg was obviously broken. The wolf whimpered as it touched the leg with its muzzle. It was a strange, pitiful sound.

  Uriel bent over the animal and marked a few symbols on the floor with a piece of chalk. There was no longer a wolf on the floor. In its stead was the young man, naked, his face twisted with pain.

  Crouching beside him, Uriel drew a broken line on the floor, marked out a mathematical formula, and joined the broken line with another chalk mark. A look of dazed relief spread over the young man’s face. He felt his leg incredulously. It was no longer crooked.

  Uriel helped the young man to his feet, whispered a few words in his ear, patted him on the arm and motioned toward the door. The man left, glancing back fearfully. Uriel’s face, as he turned it toward the stage, was sternand hard. No one had moved.

  “This has summed up the present leadership of the society,” he said grimly. His high-pitched voice had deepened. “A morbid delving into mysteries better left untouched. A wanton disregard for the sacred rights of the individual. A degradation of precious talents and knowledge.

  “Lycanthropy! A psychological state associated with hysteria; a pathological condition of depraved appetite. In this case, abetted by hypnosis and sorcery. It is a matter of record that the Malays often induced lycanthropy in such persons of extreme suggestibility, who are known as latah. They will torture that boy no more.”

  He turned to the audience. “Will you approve this, too?”

  They moved uneasily, but no one spoke. A few glanced toward the stage, where Solomon leaned against the lectern, staring down calmly, undisturbed.

  Uriel swung back, his lip curling. He pointed a finger at Solomon. The Magus straightened quickly. Uriel laughed.

  “You needn’t worry. I won’t use my power against my fellowman except in self-defense.” But Uriel gave the last words peculiar emphasis. “You think you are wise. You are foolish. You think you know everything. You know nothing. As the surviving co-founder of this society, I disavow the leadership. I disavow the society. And I leave you this thought to consider: I will not permit the Art to be used for evil.”

  He turned and stalked out of the room, small and defiant. As I watched, uncertain, Ariel followed, calling, “Uriel, Uriel!” At the door she turned. “You cowards!” she said. Before she hurried after the little mathematician, her eyes met mine appealingly.

  Appealingly. What did she want of me? That I find out the name of the mysterious Solomon? Or something more?

  While I thought about it, the meeting broke up. Some of the audience walked toward the door in little groups, talking excitedly. A few of them gathered around the stage, around Solomon. The redheaded La Voisin was among them. Her figure was magnificent; her hair was striking; her face was exquisite. But they no longer appealed to me. I compared them unfavorably with the figure and face of a girl who was only pretty, but who was real.

  I noticed, too late, that I was sitting all alone in the room, except for the group at the stage. It was too late because Solomon’s intense black eyes were fixed on me curiously even as he was talking to the others. He broke off.

  “Sir,” he said, not raising his voice but projecting it at me so that it seemed to come from a few feet away, “we would be honored if you would join us.”

  Join them. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, in either sense, but it would be the most dangerous kind of cowardice to break for the door.

  “The honor,” I said, “is mine.”

  I walked toward the stage, feeling myself dissected by the gaze of the four men and the one woman. And the woman’s eyes held a kind of personal inquisitiveness that made me colder than the rest.

  “Gabriel, eh?” Solomon mused when I was close enough for my badge to be read.

  La Voisin looked surprised. “But I thought — ” She stopped abruptly.

  I was glancing at her name card. It was difficult to read. Her magnificent bosom tilted the card almost horizontal, but I made out the first name. “Catherine.” Catherine La Voisin. It still meant nothing to me.

  “You thought what, my dear?” Solomon asked, beating me to it.

  “I thought Gabriel would be much different,” she completed smoothly. Her eyes narrowed excitingly as she looked at me with erotic interest.

  But it wasn’t what she had been about to say. We all knew that.

  “Well, Gabriel,” Solomon said, “what is your opinion of this afternoon’s activities?”

  “Very interesting,” I said.

  He smiled with real amusement. Perhaps he enjoyed this verbal swordplay. Or perhaps he was contemplating the fate he had planned for me.

  “But not as noncommittal as your answer. The sides have been chosen. The body of the society against an old man and a young girl. The question is: Where do you stand?”

  “Where I have always stood.”

  “Whom are you for?” Catherine broke in.

  I looked at her and smiled. “For myself, of course.”

  “Of course,” Solomon said, leaning lazily against the lectern, looking
down at me. He gave Catherine a quick, reproving glance. “But in this case, self-interest should ally you with the side that will win. There can’t be any doubt about that. And at the risk of being melodramatic, we must insist that all those who are not for us are against us.”

  I shrugged. “Understandable. But in a case of this kind, superior numbers do not always indicate superior forces. It seems to me that the issue is still in doubt.”

  Solomon’s eyes glittered. “Your name seems to place you on the side of the angels. But names have ceased to mean anything. My admiration for your independence would torment me if we were forced to strike blindly. But perhaps you could give us some reason to trust you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, say,” he appeared to reflect, “like your real name.”

  “Certainly,” I agreed. “Providing you give me the same reason to trust you. Starting with” — I let my eyes roam around the group — ”starting with you, Magus.”

  Solomon laughed. “You are a clever man, Gabriel — and a bold one. I hope you choose the right side. It would be a shame to — lose you.”

  “When the time comes,” I said slowly, “you’ll find me on the winning side.”

  I nodded to them all, turned and left. I walked quickly to the door and through it.

  “Gabriel,” someone said huskily behind me.

  I stopped and turned, shivers running up and down my spine. It was Catherine La Voisin, gliding toward me like the figurehead on a sailing ship.

  “Gabriel,” she repeated. She stopped only when she was close to me. Very close. “You interest me, Gabriel. There is something very real and male about you.”

  I wanted to say that there was something very unreal and female about her, but they left me speechless.

  “Are you — perhaps — undisguised?” she asked. She pressed closer.

  “Perhaps,” I said. It came out in a kind of gasp. Two firm cones were trying to bore their way into my chest.

  “I like you, Gabriel,” she breathed. Her lips came up toward mine.

  I looked at them as they approached me like rippling red snakes, held in a sort of frozen fascination. They blurred. My gaze shifted upward to her eyes. They were bottomless, like dark-blue lakes.

  Her lips met mine with an electric tingling. They moved. My arms went around her automatically. I felt her hand work up the back of my neck into my hair. I struggled to breathe.

  After an eon, she moved slowly back, her eyes heavy-lidded and sleepy. I drew in a deep, harsh breath.

  “What was that?” I gasped.

  She was walking away from me down the corridor. Her head turned to look back over her shoulder. “That,” she said, smiling slowly, “was a preview.”

  An elevator door opened in front of her, and she stepped in. As the doors closed, she was still looking at me, and her smile was strangely triumphant.

  I breathed deeply again, feeling unclean. I reached for my handkerchief and scrubbed my lips with it, and the three men who had been with Solomon passed me, smirking. When I took the handkerchief away, it was stained with orange smears, and the three men were gone.

  I waited a few minutes more, but Solomon didn’t come out. I glanced quickly into the Crystal Room. It was empty. Very empty. It felt hollow. The chandeliers had stopped tinkling.

  I walked uneasily to the only other door in the room, the one back of the stage, hesitated in front of it and finally pulled it open, stiffening myself for a shock. But the little room beyond was empty, too. Opposite me another door opened into a large central kitchen and serving area: naked stairs went up and down.

  I stepped into the little room and closed the door slowly behind me. I couldn’t see the elegant Solomon trotting up or down the serving stairs. But then he hadn’t come out by the main door. He had either gone through here or — speculation like this was futile. It was time I stopped playing someone else’s game and started playing my own, such as it was.

  I looked around the room. Solomon had been here. Some of the others, too, but Solomon I knew about. Except for an empty coat and hat rack, the room was bare. I moved the rack a few inches and noticed something on the floor. I picked it up. It was a rectangular piece of paper. I turned it over. A return-trip airline ticket to Washington, D.C., dated day before yesterday.

  I shrugged. Maybe, maybe not. I slipped it into my coat pocket. I searched the rest of the room carefully, but it was obviously wasted energy. I went back into the Crystal Room and looked on the platform and around it and finally noticed a small yellow corner of something sticking out from under the black drapes at the back. I pulled it out. It was a blank manila binder enclosing a thick manuscript of about seventy-five pages, handwritten in a precise, readable script. It was littered with formulas. The first one was:

  I vaguely recognized the formula. It had something to do with what was called the “derivative,” an abstract limit. But it had been a long time since I’d had calculus, and I had never been a star pupil in mathematics. But I knew whose manuscript it was. It belonged to Uriel.

  There was nothing else under the platform or in the room, and I went out into the corridor with the manuscript under my arm and waited ten minutes for an elevator. It would be months before I could trust stairs again. I stepped out into the lobby and registered for a room. Solomon had me spotted, and I had a strong suspicion that it wouldn’t do me any good to run now, even if I wanted to. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But it was time I learned the rules of the game.

  Charlie was off duty, and the clerk at the desk was an obliging young man.

  “Say,” I said, turning back to the desk as if on impulse, “have you got a girl registered here? A girl named Ariel?”

  “Ariel who?”

  I shrugged and put on a sly, man-to-man smile. “Hell, I didn’t catch her last name.”

  He shuffled through the recent cards. “Not today,” he said.

  “Well,” I ventured, “what about an old boy named Uriel.”

  He stopped being so obliging. “Ariel? Uriel? What’s the gag?”

  “Well,” I said desperately, “what about a little old lady named Mrs. Peabody?”

  But he turned away with a withering look of disgust.

  I trudged to the elevator, feeling like a man who sits down to a game of poker and finds that everything is wild except the cards he happens to hold, and I went up to the seventh floor and I walked down the hall to my room. I unlocked the door and opened it and stepped into a bottomless black pit through which I went falling, falling, falling …

  I was spinning, my arms and legs reaching desperately for hand-holds and footholds in the formless night, cart-wheeling madly through the lightless void.

  This isn’t real, I told myself, but the thought was twisted away from me by a cold, rushing wind. Illusion! I screamed, and I clung desperately to the thought.

  Panic tried to force sounds past the tightening muscles of my throat. Tension was growing into rigidity. Through the gathering block I pushed one sane thought: If this is illusion, if I am not really falling, I am standing just inside the door and the light switch is to my right against the wall.

  It’s a lie, said my reeling senses. But I hugged the thought to me, and my flailing hand reached out and grabbed frantically and —

  The lights came on. I was standing just inside the door looking into an ordinary room, and I wondered if I was going mad.

  I stepped forward and looked back. On the floor was a piece of shiny black glass, about two feet square. I leaned over and dug a finger between the glass and the carpet and picked it up. I looked into it.

  It wasn’t black glass. It was a mirror, but it wasn’t silvered. Instead, the back was painted a shiny black. My face, square and craggy, looked back at me darkly. It almost seemed like another person. I shuddered and turned it over. Scratched in the paint around the edge was an endless string of cabalistic letters, similar to the ones I had noticed on the seal. I pulled the program out of my pocket and compared the two. The same lett
ers, but not in the same order.

  I walked to the far wall and leaned the glass carefully against it with the mirror face turned away from me. After a few minutes I stopped shaking.

  I slumped into a chair, suddenly aware that I was tireder than I ever remembered being. Shaking my head incredulously, I let the day’s happenings pass in review. Every time disbelief grew too great, I glanced at the black square leaning against the wall.

  I was enmeshed in a crazy, fantastic cobwebbery of magic and witchcraft. Faceless, nameless things crouched like spiders in hidden corners and waited for unwary flies to twitch the web. Gaily I had buzzed in. I was caught. The only way to pull loose was to find out who the spiders were and where they hid. Maybe then they would find a wasp in their web, with a stinger in his tail, who would tear their flimsy strands into worthless pieces.

  Who was Mrs. Peabody, the little old lady who had drawn me into this with a crisp, green lure? Was she working against Solomon? Did Ariel and Uriel have an unknown ally? Was she one of Solomon’s own confederates seeking protection or trying to take his place? Or had it only been a trick by Solomon, safe in his anonymity, to use me against an undetermined third party?

  Who was the red witch, Catherine La Voisin?

  Who was Ariel? Who was Uriel? Could I trust them to be as frank and honest as they seemed? A witch and a sorcerer?

  And, above all, who was Solomon?

  I was fighting against shadows. I was the blind man in a game of blindman’s buff. If I could only tear aside the blinders for a moment and see a face —

  What had been the purpose of the black mirror? Another warning? Had it said: Be careful or something really deadly may happen to you? Or had it been an attempt that failed? That was hard to believe. I didn’t know enough to get out of traps.

  I’d had enough of stumbling around in the dark. I needed light. I needed knowledge.

  I pulled the bound manuscript out of my pocket, took off my coat and tossed it on the bed, unstrapped my shoulder holster and hung it over the back of the chair, where the butt was within easy reach of my hand, stripped off my tie, and settled back in the chair.