The Witching Hour

by James Gunn

  “Oh.” I shrugged. “I imagine it was just another warning. The sensation stopped when I turned on the light.”

  “Don’t believe it,” she said earnestly. “You were either very strong or very lucky. In the black mirror, time is meaningless. A few seconds is like eternity. You could have gone mad. Or some say that if the mirror is broken while you’re trapped you’ll die.”

  I shivered. That wasn’t my kind of danger. I could have faced a dozen ordinary bullets and not felt half so cold.

  “But how did they work it?” she went on, frowning. “Do they know your name?” I shook my head. Ariel snapped her fingers. “That witch! When she kissed you, did she run her fingers through your hair?”

  “Why — yes,” I said. “I guess she did. So what?”

  “You poor unsuspecting males,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Did you think she was overcome with your masculinity?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact — ” I began, but she was up and coming toward me. I watched her warily.

  “This is what she did.” She put her face up and raised her arms and pulled my head down to hers. Our lips met. There was nothing electric about it, but it was something much sweeter and more satisfying. I felt my pulse begin to pound. Her hand moved tenderly up my neck into my hair. “M-m-m,” she said, her lips half-parted.

  Finally she pulled away, her eyes glazed and distant. They snapped back to the present. “Oh, dear,” she said. She held out her hand to me. “Look!”

  I looked. Several of my blonde hairs had come away in her hand. I winced. The redheaded witch had something that belonged to me. God knew what she was going to do with it, if she hadn’t already done it. “We came out even, then,” I said. “I have one of hers.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Let me have it,” she said eagerly.

  I got the envelope from my coat and handed it to her. She stepped back into the circle on the rug, bent and picked up the chalk, replaced the arc I had rubbed out, and before I could move or say anything, she waved at me and disappeared.

  “Hey, wait!” I yelled. “I still don’t know where to find you — ”

  That’s me. Always too late.

  The insistent ringing of the telephone dragged me up out of a bottomless pool of sleep. I fumbled for the instrument, my eyes still glued shut, knocked the handset out of the cradle, picked it up, got the mouthpiece to my ear, switched it around and mumbled, “Hello? Hello?”

  An almost soundless whisper came to my ear. “There is danger. A message is in your box. It would be wise to act on it.”

  “Hello? Hello?” I said.

  The line was silent, but I thought dazedly that I could hear someone breathing.

  “Who is this?” I said.

  There was no answer.

  I dropped the phone back into the cradle and rolled over and went back to sleep. This time I dreamed. I dreamed about magicians in immaculate white robes, surrounded by darkness, brandishing a thunder rod (cut from virgin hazel with one blow of a new knife). There were cackling witches riding through the night sky to wilder and darker Sabbaths than Goethe’s Walpurgis Night. Lewd covens met to worship a gigantic goat at midnight in secret places, and the goat turned into a black man who bore a striking resemblance to Solomon.

  But the worst dream was being choked to death by a person who stood behind me and pulled a garrote tighter and tighter around my neck. And the garrote had been woven from my own hair. All I could see was a hand out of the corner of my eye, a woman’s smooth, white hand, but as I watched, the hand changed into a spotted, wrinkled claw.

  I woke gasping for breath.

  Danger? I thought, massaging my neck. Danger?

  I looked at the telephone and wondered if that had been a dream, too. I picked up the handset.

  “What number please?”

  “Could you tell me who called me this morning?” I asked.

  “Room seven o seven? Just a moment, I’ll check.” And a few seconds later. “I’m sorry, sir. I haven’t put in a call to your room.”

  “What time did you come on duty?”

  “Two A.M., sir.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and eased the phone back.

  I looked at my watch. It was not quite eight, but I was wide awake. There was no use trying to go back to sleep. I rubbed my neck again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  I thought of Ariel and smiled. I felt warm inside when I thought about her. She was a nice kid — well, not a kid, exactly, I amended, as I remembered — caught in a worse mess than I was. She was right in the middle of it, and there was no way out. She was just a poor, frightened girl, but — by God! — I’d get her out and then — and then —

  I caught myself. Poor, frightened girl? Don’t kid yourself, Casey. She’s a witch, a real, honest-to-god-witch, and she makes it work.. Casey Kingman to the rescue! Watch your step, boy!

  But what a witch! I mused.

  Come off it, Casey! What’s the matter with you? Do you think you’re in love with the girl, a girl whose name you don’t even know? Old footloose, love-’em-and-leave-’em Casey.

  I nodded and sat up straight in bed. Good God! In love. Could that be true? I had to admit that it could.

  Well, I thought, worse things could happen to a man. Like being strangled with a rope made from his own hair.

  I looked at the telephone again. A note in my box? I picked up the handset and asked for the desk. Charlie answered.

  “How did you get registered here?” he asked indignantly.

  “Never mind that,” I snapped, and I thought of a story I could tell him that would make his few remaining hairs stand on end. Charlie and his precious hotel! “Is there a note for me — room seven o seven?”

  “Just a moment,” he snapped back.

  I waited.

  “As a matter of fact, there is. Want me to read it to you?”

  “Isn’t it sealed?”

  “Just a slip of paper. Not even folded.”

  “All right. What does it say?”

  “On one side it says ‘seven o seven.’”

  “Okay, okay. That’s me.”

  “On the other it says ‘eleven eleven.’ Are you playing games again?”

  “Not me,” I protested. “How do you know the message isn’t ‘seven o seven’ for ‘eleven eleven.’” “How should I know? I didn’t put it there.” “Who did?” “The night clerk, I guess.” “You’re a big help,” I told him, and hung up. So there was a message, but I hadn’t received any phone call, so

  how did I know it was there? Maybe this magic business had a recoil to it. Maybe my subconscious reached out to gather that information and then put in a call to my conscious mind.

  “Hello, Conscious. Are you there?”

  “Well, well, Subconscious. Imagine hearing from you. How the hell are things down there?”

  “Cluttered, boy. Mite messy. No time for chitchat, though. Just learned there’s a message for you downstairs. Get on your horse, boy!”

  And then, of course, the conscious mind rolls back over and goes to sleep. How does that sound? I thought it stank. Maybe it was coincidence. Or maybe somebody had called me. With the wild talents running loose around this hotel, it would be a simple matter to put in a call without going through the switchboard.

  I turned it over and over as I let a cold shower bring me fully awake, shaved hurriedly with a razor I had picked up last night in the hotel drugstore, and reluctantly put back on the clothes I had worn yesterday.

  Eleven eleven. Obviously a room number. Too obviously. Or was I being too subtle? A room number, then. Whose? Ariel’s? That was logical. It could also be a trap.

  I shrugged. There was danger in being overcautious, too. I strapped on the shoulder holster and inspected the clip. I felt a little safer as I slipped the gun back. Maybe I was being foolish, but I had a hunch Betsy might come in handy before the day was over. She wasn’t subtle and she didn’t know the first thing about magic, but when she spoke, people listened.

  I ta
ped Uriel’s manuscript under the drawer in the desk, hesitated at the door, and returned for a piece of chalk. I jotted an equation across the inside of the door. I stepped out into the hall, closed the door behind me and heard it latch. That should keep everybody out, including hotel employees.

  I waited a few minutes for an elevator. I punched “11” on the control panel. The doors opened in front of me, and I stepped out into a corridor just like my own. Eleven eleven was a corner room. I took a deep breath, grabbed the doorknob and turned it. Something snapped. The door swung open.

  I looked at the sun-bright room for a long moment before I understood what was going on.

  “My God!” I said, my voice quivering with horror. “Ariel!”

  She was still in her nightgown, and the face she turned up to me was twisted with guilt and something else. In her hands, as she sat cross-legged upon the floor, was a little waxen figure. Even if I had not seen the blonde hairs pressed into the head, I would have known whom the figure was supposed to represent. It was me.

  Her hands were still busy, winding darker hairs around the chest of the tiny figure. In the window, directly in the sunlight, were two other figures. One was made of a darker material. Around its chest was a red hair. Next to it was a wax image that the sun had half-melted into a puddle.

  And the strangest part of the scene was Ariel. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and my throat ached with loving her, and my arms twitched with the desire to gather her up in them.

  “Oh, no!” I said, and turned away, my hands raised to cover my face.

  “Wait, Gabriel!” she said urgently, her silence suddenly broken. “Wait! You don’t understand!”

  I moved away blindly. She muttered something behind me. I stopped. I couldn’t move. I was fixed to the spot, paralyzed. I took my hands away and I was inside the room, and the door was closed.

  Ariel was standing. Her look of guilt had changed to annoyance. “Oh, why did you have to break in here now?”

  “Ariel!” I blurted out. “Why? Why are you doing this? I thought we were working together, and now I find you making wax images of me. It’s fantastic. It’s terrible. Why are you doing this to me? My God, Ariel — ”

  Her annoyance had been replaced by blankness. “What in the name of — what do you think I’m doing?”

  “Look!” I said, trying to point to the images in the window, and failing. “You’ve been trying to kill me.”

  Slowly, irresistibly, a smile spread over her beautiful face. She started to laugh. It bubbled out of her uncontrollably. She threw herself across the bed and howled. I watched her with growing irritation as my anger and horror faded. I didn’t see anything funny about it.

  “Kill you, Gabriel?” she gasped. “Oh, no, Gabriel. Not you. Anybody but you.”

  “Well, then,” I snapped, “what’s the meaning of all this?”

  She sat up in the bed, suddenly sobered, studying my face. “It’s a love spell,” she said, avoiding my eyes now.

  “A love spell!” I repeated. And I recognized instantly that it was true. I loved her madly. She was the most precious thing in the world. It would be ecstasy to die for her. “But all these images — ”

  “They were part of it. The wax one there, the one melting in the sun, that made your heart soften toward me. The clay image that is hardening hardens your heart against La Voisin. You should have seen me earlier, when I was chanting.”

  “But why?” I asked. “You didn’t have to do that to get me to help you.”

  “Don’t you see?” she said quickly. “I was trying to protect you from La Voisin. When they found out that their mirror trick didn’t work, she would have tried a love spell, or an Amatory Mass, rather, since that is the way their minds work. I had to protect you.”

  I shuddered. In love with Catherine La Voisin. I would rather be in love with a black-widow spider. I wasn’t sure, either, that my feeling was all due to the clay image.

  Ariel muttered something. Suddenly I was free to move.

  “You can go now,” she said quietly.

  I turned toward the door, frowning. I didn’t like the way I was being pushed around, brought here, involved there, trapped, my feelings changed, and — Not so fast, boy! What are you complaining about? Admit it! Ever since you met this girl you’ve been falling in love with her, long before any spells were said over wax images. Remember last night?

  I remembered and smiled.

  Maybe the spell had nothing at all to do with the way you feel. Even if it did, it only intensified something that was already there. So things got hurried up a little. So you’re madly in love with a nice girl. Have you got a kick coming?

  Sure, I’ve got a kick, I thought, frowning. Suppose she isn’t in love with me. How about that?

  Come now, Casey. You may be in love, but you don’t have to be stupid. You didn’t swallow that explanation whole, did you? There must have been simpler ways to protect you against La Voisin. If she went around making men fall in love with her all the time, it would be damned inconvenient for her. See the way she looks at you, boy! Look —

  I turned back into the room. Ariel was still sitting on the bed, watching me with big, serious eyes. I took three steps toward her and bent down and gathered her in my arms and kissed her passionately.

  She stiffened and struggled helplessly, her hands beating a gentle tattoo against my chest. “Stop!” she gasped. “Stop it!”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t help myself.”

  Slowly she relaxed. Her arms curled around me. We sank down onto the bed. I gathered her in close to me, knowing that I would never be closer to paradise.

  Finally she drew back and sighed. She opened her eyes. “Then you don’t mind?” she whispered.

  “Mind?” I said. “‘Beauty is a witch against whose charms faith melteth into blood.’”

  We sank into another rapturous spell, and I discovered that she was proficient in an older and more powerful witchcraft. Finally she pulled herself away and sat up, straightening her hair. I reached for her again, but she pushed my hands away.

  “I can see that I’m going to have trouble with you,” she said severely. “The grimoires and the Keys and the Faust-books are so impractical. They never mention this kind of difficulty.”

  “You have no one to blame but yourself,” I pointed out. “You have bewitched me. I am a slave of passion.”

  “I suppose,” she said moodily, “but do I have to lose my honor to prove it?”

  “Is there any danger of that?” I asked quickly.

  She caught her breath. “Oh, you know,” she said softly. “You know.”

  I controlled myself and rolled over, away from her. “Did you work that spell just to save me from La Voisin and a fate worse than death?”

  Her eyes widened innocently. “Why, Gabriel! What other reason would I have?”

  I growled and lunged for her, but she jumped off the bed and skipped out of my way, laughing. I was after her instantly, but she was as skittish and elusive as a frightened doe.

  “You beautiful witch!” I said, panting as I tried to corner her. “You must have known what would happen when you put your room number in my box.”

  She stopped. I caught her. I almost ran over her. Only my arms around her kept us both from falling to the floor. Clasped together, swaying, we stood in the middle of the room, her face upturned to mine, wide-eyed and afraid.

  “I didn’t put anything in your box,” she said.

  We were pressed close, but the half-controlled urgency of passion no longer bound us together. Around us the almost-forgotten night was closing in.

  “They must have done it,” I said. “At least we have that to thank them for.”

  “Maybe,” she said. She was trembling a little in my arms. “If they did it to drive us apart. If they wanted you to find me working spells.”

  “Why else?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I’m afraid.”

  I bent down
and kissed her lips gently. Her lips were cold. “The frightened witch,” I chided. “Don’t be afraid. This was their second mistake. They can’t beat us now.”

  She raised her head and smiled. I had another reason to be proud of her.

  “Listen,” I said. “We need a council of war. Can you get hold of Uriel?” She nodded. “Bring him down to my room, then. Seven o seven. Half an hour. Okay?”

  She nodded again. I released her, stepped back and looked at her with fond and possessive eyes. “I love you, Ariel,” I said. “I don’t think the dolls did it, but I don’t care even if they did.”

  “I love you,” she whispered, “and there wasn’t any witchcraft about that. I’ll remove the spell.” I shrugged. “No. I want to. Not because of you. For me. I want to be sure it’s real. I want you to love me for myself.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I said. I shivered. “Do you think I want to take a chance on losing this — this way I feel. But” — I added wryly — ”I’d appreciate it if you’d put those dolls in a safe place. I wouldn’t want them to fall into just anybody’s hands.”

  I closed the door gently behind me. I felt too good to wait for the elevator, forgetting my distrust of stairs, and I ran down four flights three steps at a time. I ran out into the hall and slowed to a decorous walk as a well-dressed, elderly couple passed. I could feel them turning to stare at me.

  I hummed the tune to “It’s magic.”

  The woman sniffed audibly.

  I reached the door, inserted the key, and turned it. Nothing happened. I was startled and glanced at the room number to check before I remembered my precautions. I took the piece of chalk out of my coat pocket and scribbled another equation on the front of the door. Added together, the two equations canceled each other out. The sum was zero.

  The door swung open. I scrubbed the figures off both sides of the door with the heel of my hand, stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. I fastened the chain latch. I swung around. The room was just as I had left it, down to the smudged circle on the rug.

  I stood there for a moment, reliving the morning’s experiences. Things were breaking. We’d win now. I had no doubts about that. All that was left was a little detail work.