Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  Not so Michael. The house was empty, and clean as far as he was concerned. And he knew every little repair that had been done; every shade of paint that had been used; every bit of restored plaster or woodwork. It was his greatest accomplishment, right up to the new copper gutters, and down to the heart pine floors he’d stripped and stained himself. He felt just fine here.

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re not wearing those awful gloves anymore,’ Beatrice said. It was Sunday, and the second time she had come, and they were sitting in the bedroom.

  ‘No, I don’t need them now,’ said Michael. ‘It’s the strangest thing, but after the accident in the pool, my hands went back to normal.’

  ‘You don’t see things anymore?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘Maybe I never used the power right. Maybe I didn’t use it in time. And so it was taken away from me.’

  ‘Sounds like a blessing,’ said Bea, trying to conceal her confusion.

  ‘Doesn’t matter now,’ said Michael.

  Aaron saw Beatrice to the door. Only by chance did Michael wander past the head of the steps, and happen to hear her saying to Aaron, ‘He looks ten years older.’ Bea was crying, actually. She was begging Aaron to tell her how this tragedy had come about. ‘I could believe it,’ she said, ‘that this house is cursed. It’s full of evil. They should never have planned to live in this house. We should have stopped them. You should make him get away from here.’

  Michael went back into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

  When he looked into the mirror of Deirdre’s old dresser, he decided that Bea was right. He did look older. He hadn’t noticed the gray hair at his temples. There was a little sparkle of gray mixed in with all the rest too. And he had perhaps a few more lines in his face than he’d had before. Maybe even a lot of them. Especially around his eyes.

  Suddenly he smiled. He hadn’t even noticed what he put on this afternoon. Now he saw that it was a dark satin smoking jacket, with velvet lapels, which Bea had sent to him at the hospital. Aunt Viv had laid it out for him. Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de Winter at Manderley. He gave a melancholy smile at his image, with one eyebrow raised. And the gray at his temples making him look, what? Distinguished.

  ‘Eh bien, Monsieur,’ he said, striving to sound to himself like the voice of Julien he’d heard on the street in San Francisco. Even his expression had changed somewhat. He felt he had a touch of Julien’s resignation.

  Of course this was his Julien, the Julien he had seen on the bus, and whom Richard Llewellyn had once seen in a dream. Not the playful smiling Julien of his portraits, or the menacing laughing Julien of the dark hellish place full of smoke and fire. That place hadn’t really existed.

  He went downstairs, slowly, the way the doctor recommended, and went into the library. There had never been anything in the desk since it was cleaned out after Carlotta’s.

  ‘On the contrary, Rowan not only knows I’m waiting, she wants me to wait, and that is why she’s given the house to me. In her own way she has asked me to remain here and continue to believe in her.

  ‘My worst fear, however, is now that that greedy thing is in the flesh, it will hurt Rowan. It will reach some point where it doesn’t need her anymore, and it will try to get rid of her. I can only hope and pray that she destroys it before that time comes, though the more I think things over, the more I come to realize how hard it will be for her to do that.

  ‘Rowan always tried to warn me that she had a propensity for evil that I didn’t have. Of course I’m not the innocent that she supposed. And she isn’t really evil. But what she is — is brilliant and purely scientific. She’s in love with the cells of that thing, I know she is, from a purely scientific point of view, and she’s studying them. She’s studying the whole organism and how it performs and how it moves through the world, and concentrating on whether or not it is indeed an improved version of a human being, and if so, what that improvement means, and how it can eventually be used for good.

  ‘Why Aaron can’t accept that, I don’t know either. He is so sympathetic but so persistently noncommittal. The Talamasca really are a bunch of monks, and though he keeps pleading with me to go to England, it’s just not possible. I could never live with them; they are too passive; and much too theoretical.

  ‘Besides, it is absolutely essential that I wait here for Rowan. After all, only two months have passed, and it may be years before Rowan can finally resolve this. Rowan is only thirty years old, and that is really young in this day and age.

  ‘And knowing her as I do, being the only one who knows her at all, I am convinced that Rowan will move eventually towards true wisdom.

  ‘So that is my take on what happened. The Mayfair Witches as an earthbound coven don’t exist and never did, and the pact was a lie; and my initial visions were of good beings who sent me here in the hopes of ending a reign of evil.

  ‘Are they angry with me now? Have they turned away from me in my failure? Or do they accept that I tried, using the only tools I had, and do they see perhaps, what I see, that Rowan will return and that the story isn’t finished?

  ‘I can’t know. But I do know that there is no evil lurking in this house, no souls hanging about in its rooms. On the contrary, it feels wonderfully clean and bright, just the way I intended it to be.

  ‘I’ve been slowly going through the attics, finding interesting things. I’ve found all of Antha’s short stories, and they are fascinating. I sit upstairs in that third-floor room and read them by the sunlight coming in the windows, and I feel Antha all around me - not a ghost, but the living presence of the woman who wrote those delicate sentences, trying to voice her agony and her struggle, and her joy at being free for such a short time in New York.

  ‘Who knows what else I’ll find up there. Maybe Julien’s autobiography is tucked behind a beam.

  ‘If only I had more energy, if only I didn’t have to take things so slowly, and a walk around the place wasn’t such a chore.

  ‘Of course it is the most exquisite place for walking imaginable. I always knew that.

  ‘The old rose garden is coming back, gorgeously, in these warm days, and just yesterday, Aunt Viv told me that she had always dreamed of having roses to tend in her old age, and that she would care for them from now on, that the gardener only needed to give her a little assistance. Seems he remembered "old Miss Belle" who had taken care of these roses in the past, and he’s been filling her head with the names of the various species.

  ‘I think it’s marvelous, that she is so happy here.

  ‘I myself prefer the wilder, less tended flowers. Last week, after they had put the screens back up on Deirdre’s old porch and I had gotten a new rocking chair for it, I noticed that the honeysuckle was crawling over the new wooden railing in full force, and on up the cast iron, just the way it was when we first came here.

  ‘And outside, in the flower beds, beneath the fancy camellias, the wild four o’clocks are coming back, and so is the little lantana that we called bacon and eggs with its orange and brown flowers. I told the gardeners not to touch those things. To let it have its old wild look again. After all, the patterns are too dominant at the moment.

  ‘I feel as if I’m moving from diamonds to rectangles to squares when 1 walk around, and I want it softened, obscured, drenched in green, the way the Garden District always was in my memory.

  ‘Also it isn’t private enough. Today of all days, when people were trooping through the streets, heading for the parade route on St Charles to see Rex pass, or just to wander in their carnival costumes, too many heads turned to peer through the fence. It ought to be more secretive.

  ‘In fact, regarding that very question, the strangest thing happened tonight.

  ‘But let me briefly review the day, being that it was Mardi Gras, and the day of days.

  ‘The Mayfair Five Hundred were here early, as the Rex parade passes on St Charles Avenue at about el
even o’clock. Ryan had seen to all the arrangements, with a big buffet breakfast set out at nine, followed by lunch at noon, and an open bar with coffee and tea all day.

  ‘Perfect, especially since I didn’t have to do a damned thing but now and then come down in the elevator, shake a few hands, kiss a few cheeks, and then plead fatigue, which was no lie, and go back upstairs to rest.

  ‘My idea of how to run this place exactly. Especially with Aaron there to help, and Aunt Vivian enjoying every minute of it.

  ‘From the upstairs porches, I watched the children running back and forth from here to the avenue, playing on the lawn outside, and even swimming, on account of its being just a perfectly lovely day. I wouldn’t go near that pool for love nor money, but it’s fun to see them splashing in it, it really is.

  ‘Wonderful to realize that the house makes all this possible, whether Rowan is here or not. Whether I am here or not.

  ‘But around five o’clock, when things were winding down, and some of the children were napping, and everyone was waiting for Comus, my lovely peace and quiet came to an end

  ‘I looked up from War and Peace to see Aaron and Aunt Viv standing there before me, and I knew before they spoke what they were going to say.

  ‘I ought to put on clothes, I ought to eat something, I ought to at least sample the salt-free dishes Henri had so carefully prepared for me. I ought to come downstairs.

  ‘And I ought to at least walk up to the avenue to see Comus, said Aunt Viv, the very last parade of Mardi Gras night.

  ‘As if I didn’t know.

  ‘Aaron stood quiet all this time saying nothing, and then he ventured that maybe it would be good for me to see the parade after all these years, and sort of dispel the mystique which had built up around it and of course he would be there with me the whole time.

  ‘I don’t know what got into me but I said yes.

  ‘I dressed in a dark suit, tie, the works, combed my hair, thrilling at the sight of the gray, and feeling uncomfortable and constrained after weeks of robes and pajamas, I went downstairs. Lots of hugs and kisses, and warm greetings from the dozens of Mayfairs lolling about everywhere. And didn’t I look good? And didn’t I look much better? And all those tiresome but well-intentioned remarks.

  ‘Michael, the cardiac cripple. I was out of breath from simply coming down the stairs!

  ‘Whatever the case, by six thirty I started walking slowly towards the avenue with Aaron, Aunt Viv having gone ahead with Bea and Ryan and a legion of others, and there came those drums all right, that fierce diabolical cadence as if accompanying a convicted witch in a tumbrel to be burned at the stake.

  ‘I hated it with all my heart, and I hated the sight of the lights up there, but I knew Aaron was right. I ought to see it. And besides, I wasn’t really afraid. Hate is one thing. Fear is another. How completely calm I felt in my hate.

  ‘The crowds were sparse since it was the very end of the day and the whole season, and there was no problem at all finding a comfortable place to stand on the neutral ground, in all the beaten-down grass and litter from the day-long mayhem, and I wound up leaning against a trolley line pole, hands behind my back, as the first floats came into view.

  ‘Ghastly, ghastly as it had been in childhood, these mammoth quivering papier-mache structures rolling slowly down the avenue beyond the heads of the jubilant crowds.

  ‘I remembered my dad bawling me out when I was seven. "Michael, you’re not scared of anything real, you know it? But you gotta get over your crazy fear of those parades." And he was right of course. By that time, I had had a terrible fear of them, and been a real crybaby about it, ruining Mardi Gras for him and my mother, that was true. I got over it soon enough. Or at least I learned to hide it as the years passed.

  ‘Well, what was I seeing now, as the flambeau carriers came marching and prancing along, with those beautiful stinking torches, and the sound of the drums grew louder with the approach of the first of the big proud high school bands?

  ‘Just a mad, pretty spectacle, wasn’t it? It was all much more brightly lighted for one thing, with the high-powered street lamps, and the old flambeaux were included for old times’ sake only, not for illumination, and the young boys and girls playing the drums were just handsome and bright-faced young boys and girls.

  ‘Then came the king’s float, amid cheering and screaming, a great paper throne, high and ornate and splendidly decorated, with the man himself quite fine in his jeweled crown, mask, and long curling wig. What extravagance, all that velvet. And of course he waved his scepter with such perfect composure, as if this wasn’t one of the most bizarre sights in the world,

  ‘Harmless, all of it harmless. Not dark and terrible and no one about to be executed. Little Mona Mayfair tugged at my hand suddenly. She wanted to know if I would hold her on my shoulders. Her daddy had said he was tired.

  ‘Of course, I told her. The hard part was getting her on and then standing back up, not so good for the old ticker — I almost died! — but I did it, and she had a great time screaming for throws and reaching for the junk beads and plastic cups raining upon us from the passing floats.

  ‘And what pretty old-fashioned floats they were. Like the floats in our childhood, Bea explained, with none of the new mechanical or electric gimmicks. Just lovely intricate confections of delicate trembling trees and flowers and birds, trimmed exquisitely in sparkling foil. The men of the krewe, masked and costumed in satin, worked hard pitching their trinkets and junk into the sea of upthrust hands.

  ‘At last it was finished. Mardi Gras was over. Ryan helped Mona down off my shoulders, scolding her for bothering me, and I protested that it had been fun.

  ‘We walked back slowly, Aaron and I falling behind the others, and then as the party went on inside with champagne and music, this strange thing happened, which was as follows:

  ‘I took my usual walk around the dark garden, enjoying the beautiful white azaleas that were blooming all over, and the pretty petunias and other annual flowers which the gardeners had put into the beds. When I reached the big crepe myrtle at the back of the lawn, I realized for the first time that it was finally coming back into leaf. Tiny little green leaves covered it all over, though in the light of the moon it still looked bony and bare.

  ‘I stood under the tree for a few minutes, looking towards First Street

  , and watching the last stragglers from the avenue pass the iron fence. I think I was wondering if I could chance a cigarette out here with no one to catch me and stop me, and then I realized that of course I didn’t have any, that Aaron and Aunt Viv, on the doctor’s orders, had thrown them all away.

  ‘Whatever the case, I was drifting in my thoughts and loving the spring warmth, when I realized that a mother and child were rushing by out there, and that the child, seeing me under the tree, had pointed and said something to the mother about "that man."

  ‘That man.

  ‘It hit me with a sudden jolt of hilarity. I was "that man." I had switched places with Lasher. I had become the man in the garden. I had now taken up his old station and his old role. I was without question the dark-haired man of First Street

  , and the pattern of it and the irony of it made me laugh and laugh.

  ‘No wonder the son of a bitch said he loved me. He should. He stole my child, my wife and my lover, and he left me here, planted in his place. He took my life from me, and gave me his haunting ground in exchange. Why wouldn’t he love me for all that?

  ‘I don’t know how long I stood there smiling to myself, and laughing quietly in the darkness, but gradually I got tired. Just being on my feet for any length of time tires me out.

  ‘And then a brokenhearted sort of sadness came over me, because the pattern seemed to have significance, and I thought maybe I’ve been wrong all along, and there are real witches. And we are all damned.

  ‘But I don’t believe that.

  ‘I went on with my nocturnal wanderings, and later said good-bye to all the lovely Mayfairs, promising
to visit, yes, when I felt better, and assuring them, we’d have another big party here on St Patrick’s Day in just a very few weeks.

  ‘The night grew quiet and empty like any other night in the Garden District finally, and the Comus parade, in retrospect, became ever more unreal in its prettiness and gaudiness, like something that couldn’t have taken place with all that pomp and seriousness in a grown-up world.

  ‘Yes, conquered that old beast I did by going. Silenced those drums forever, I hope and pray.

  ‘And I don’t believe that it was all patterned and planned and destined. I don’t.

  ‘Maybe Aaron in his passivity and his dogmatic open-mindedness can entertain the idea that it was planned — that even my father’s death was part of it, and that I was destined just to be a stud for Rowan, and a father for Lasher. But accept this I do not.

  ‘And it isn’t only that I don’t believe it. I can’t.

  ‘I can’t believe it because my reason tells me that such a system, in which anyone dictates our every move — be it a god, or a devil, or our subconscious mind, or our tyrannical genes - is simply impossible.

  ‘Life itself must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies.

  ‘Things could have gone differently. Rowan could have refused to help that thing. She could have killed it. And she may kill it yet. And behind her actions may lie the tragic possibility that once it had come into the flesh, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it.

  ‘I refuse to judge Rowan. The rage I felt against her is now gone.

  ‘And I choose of my own free will to stay here, waiting for her, and believing in her.

  ‘That belief in her is the first tenet of my credo. And no matter how enormous and intricate this web of events seems, no matter how much it is like all the patterns of flags and balustrades and repetitive cast iron that dominate this little plot of earth, I maintain my credo.