The Witching Hour (157 page)

She had closed her eyes again. The fire was gone out. The room was full of the spirit of Lasher. She could feel him against her skin though he did not move, and the fabric of him lay as lightly as the air itself.

“When I am truly flesh,” he said, “the tears and the laughter will come from me by reflex, as they come in you, or in Michael. I shall be a complete organism.”

“But not human.”

“Better than human.”

“But not human.”

“Stronger, more enduring, for I shall be the organizing intelligence, and I have great power, greater than the power inside any existing human. I shall be a new thing, as I told you. I shall be a species which as of now does not exist.”

“Did you kill Arthur Langtry?”

“Not necessary. He was dying. What he saw hastened his death.”

“But why did you show yourself to him?”

“Because he was strong and he could see me, and I wanted to draw him in so that he might save Stella, for I knew Stella was in danger. Carlotta was the enemy of Stella. Carlotta was as strong as you are, Rowan.”

“Why didn’t Arthur help Stella?”

“You know the history. It was too late. I am as a child at such moments in time. I was defeated by simultaneity because I was acting in time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“While I appeared to Langtry, the shots were fired into the
brain of Stella, and brought about instant death. I see far, but I cannot see all the surprises.”

“You didn’t know.”

“And Carlotta tricked me. Carlotta misled me. I am not infallible. In fact, I am confused with amazing ease.”

“How so?”

“Why should I tell you? So you may all the better control me? You know how. You are as powerful a witch as Carlotta. It was through emotions. Carlotta conceived of the killing as an act of love. She schooled Lionel in what he was to think as he took the gun and fired at Stella. I was not alerted by hatred, or malice. I paid no attention to the love thoughts of Lionel. Then Stella lay dying, calling to me silently, with her eyes open, wounded beyond hope of repair. And Lionel fired the second shot which drove the spirit of Stella up and out of the body forever.”

“But you killed Lionel. You drove him to his death.”

“I did.”

“And Cortland? You killed Cortland.”

“No. I fought with Cortland. I struggled with him, and he sought to use his strength against me, and he failed, and fell in his struggle. I did not kill your father.”

“Why did you fight?”

“I warned him. He believed he could command me. He was not my witch. Deirdre was my witch. You are my witch. Not Cortland.”

“But Deirdre didn’t want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes.”

“For his own aims.”

“Which were what?”

“That is old now, unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you returned. You were freed from Carlotta.”

“But you saw to it, and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland.”

“For your sake, Rowan. I love you.”

“Ah, but you see, there’s a pattern here, isn’t there? And you don’t want me to understand it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That’s what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn’t it?”

“You misjudge me. When I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong.”

“You went against the wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the thirteen witches, and
that was for your own aims. You have always worked for your own aims, haven’t you?”

“You are the thirteenth and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical.”

“I think not.”

She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.

“Were you ever a living human being?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder.”

“It came from matter.”

“It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.”

“You and the others who were already there.”

“In timelessness already there.”

“Did it draw your attention?”

“Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.”

“How?”

“The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers; they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.”

“So you learned self-consciousness from us.”

“All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent.”

“Then there are others of you with ambition.”

“Julien said, ‘Matter created man and man created the gods.’ That is partially correct.”

“Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.”

“I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?”

“Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“Of course. How can Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron’s coming before there was Aaron. Arthur Langtry’s warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron.”

“But how does Aaron lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?”

“Aaron has a mission. So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand.”

“What is this secret knowledge? This mission?”

“To protect man from us. To make sure there are no more doorways.”

“You mean there have been doorways before now?”

“There have. There have been mutations. But you are the greatest of all doorways. What you can achieve with me shall be unparalleled.”

“Wait a minute. You mean other discarnate entities have come into the realm of the material?”

“Yes.”

“But who? What are they?”

“Laughter. They conceal themselves very well.”

“Laughter. Why did you say that?”

“Because I am laughing at your question, but I don’t know how to make the sound of laughter. So I say it. I laugh at you that you don’t think this would have happened before. You, a mortal, with all the stories of ghosts and monsters of the night, and other such horrors. Did you think there was not even a kernel of truth to these old tales? But it is not important. Our fusion shall be more nearly perfect than any in the past.”

“Aaron knows this, that’s what you’re saying, that others have come through.”

“Yes.”

“And why does he want to stop me from being the doorway?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because he believes you’re evil.”

“Unnatural, that is what he would say, which is foolish, for I am as natural as electricity, as natural as the stars, as natural as fire.”

“Unnatural. He fears your power.”

“Yes. But he is a fool.”

“Why?”

“Rowan, as I have told you before, if this fusion can be achieved once, it can be achieved again. Do you not understand me?”

“Yes, I understand you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door.”

“Aye, Rowan. Now you are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your imagination enormous; you were what men fear—the doctor with the vision of a poet. And you turned your back on your visions, Rowan. In the laboratory of Lemle, you could have created new beings from the parts of existent beings. You reached for brutal tools because you feared what you could do. You hid behind the surgical microscope and substituted for your power the crude micro tools of steel with which you severed tissues, rather man creating them. Even now you act from fear. You will build hospitals where people are to be cured, when you could create new beings, Rowan.”

She sat still and quiet. No one had ever spoken to her about her innermost thoughts with greater accuracy. She felt the heat and size of her own ambition. She felt the amoral child in her who had dreamed of brain grafts and synthetic beings, before the adult put out the light.

“Haven’t you a heart to understand why, Lasher?”

“I see far, Rowan. I see great suffering in the world. I see the way of accident and blundering, and what it has created. I am not blinded by illusions. I hear the cries everywhere of pain. And I know my own loneliness. I know my own desire.”

“But what will you give up when you become flesh and blood? What’s the price for you?”

“I do not shrink from the price. A fleshly pain could be no worse than what I have suffered these three centuries. Would you be what I am, Rowan? Drifting, timeless and alone, listening to the carnal voices of the world, apart, and thirsting for love and understanding?”

She couldn’t answer.

“I have waited for all eternity to be incarnate. I have waited beyond the scope of memory. I have waited until the fragile spirit of man has finally attained the knowledge so that the barrier can come down. And I shall be made flesh, and it shall be perfect.”

Silence.

“I see why Aaron is afraid of you,” she said.

“Aaron is small. The Talamasca is small. They are nothing!” The voice grew thin with anger. The air in the room was warm and moving like the water in a pot moves before it boils. The chandeliers moved yet they made no sound, as if the sound were carried away by the currents in the air.

“The Talamasca has knowledge,” he said, “they have power to open doorways, but they refuse to do so for us. They are the enemy of us. They would keep the world’s destiny in the hands of the suffering and the blind. And they lie. All of them lie. They have maintained the history of the Mayfair Witches because it is the history of Lasher, and they fight Lasher. That is their avowed purpose. And they trick you with their attention to the witches. It is Lasher whose name should be emblazoned on the covers of their precious leather-bound files. The file is in a code. It is the history of the growing power of Lasher. Can you not see through the code?”

“Don’t harm Aaron.”

“You love unwisely, Rowan.”

“You don’t like my goodness, do you? You like the evil.”

“What is evil, Rowan? Is your curiosity evil? That you would study me as you have studied the brains of human beings? That you would learn from my cells all that you could to advance the great cause of medicine? I am not the enemy of the world, Rowan. I merely wish to enter into it!”

“You’re angry now.”

“I am in pain. I love you, Rowan.”

“To want is not to love, Lasher. To use is not to love.”

“No, don’t speak these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me.”

“If you kill Aaron, I will never be your doorway.”

“Such a small thing to affect so much.”

“Lasher, kill him and I will not be the doorway.”

“Rowan, I am at your command. I would have killed him already were I not.”

“Same with Michael.”

“Very well, Rowan.”

“Why did you tell Michael that he couldn’t stop me?”

“Because I hoped that he could not and I wanted to frighten him. He is under the spell of Aaron.”

“Lasher, how am I to help you come through?”

“I will know when you know, Rowan. And you know. Aaron knows.”

“Lasher, we don’t know what life is. Not with all our science
and all our definitions do we know what life is, or how it began. The moment when it sprang into existence from inert materials is a complete mystery.”

“I am already alive, Rowan.”

“And how can I make you flesh? You’ve gone into the bodies of the living and the dead. You can’t anchor there.”

“It can be done, Rowan.” His voice had become as soft as a whisper. “With my power and your power, and with my faith, for I must yield to achieve the bond, and only in your hands is the full merging possible.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to see shapes, patterns in the airy dark.

“I love you, Rowan,” he said. “You are weary now. Let me soothe you, Rowan. Let me touch you.” The resonance of the voice deepened.

“I want—I want a happy life with Michael and our child.”

Turbulence in the air, something collecting, intensifying. She felt the air grow warmer.

“I have infinite patience. I see far. I can wait. But you will lose your taste for others now that you have seen and spoken to me.”

“Don’t be so certain, Lasher. I’m stronger than the others. I know much more.”

“Yes, Rowan.” The shadowy turbulence was growing denser, like a great wreath of smoke, only there was no smoke, circling the chandelier, moving out. Like cobwebs caught in a draft.

“Can I destroy you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Rowan, you torture me.”

“Why can’t I destroy you?”

“Rowan, your gift is to transmute matter. I have no matter in me for you to attack. You may destroy the matter I bring into organization to make my image, but then I do this myself when I disintegrate. You have seen it. You could hurt my transitory image at such a moment of materialization, and you have already done so. When I first appeared to you. When I came to you near the water. But you cannot destroy
me.
I have always been here. I am eternal, Rowan.”