The Witching Hour (167 page)

She sat in the middle of the sofa, her legs crossed, her arms folded, staring down the length of the room at the long mirror, barely able to see the pale glow of the chandelier.

The hands of the grandfather clock moved slowly towards midnight.

And this was the night that meant so much to you, Michael. The night when you wanted us to be together. You couldn’t be farther from me now if you were on the other side of the world. All such simple and graceful things are far from me, and it is like that Christmas Eve when Lemle took me through door after door into his darkened and secret laboratory. What have such horrors to do with you, my darling?

All her life, if her life was long or short, or almost over—all her life—she’d remember Michael’s face when she slapped him; she’d remember the sound of his voice when he pleaded with
her; she’d remember the look of shock when she’d jabbed the needle into his arm.

So why was there no emotion? Why only this emptiness and this shriveling stillness inside her? Her feet were bare, and the soft flannel nightgown hung loose around her, and the silky Chinese rug beneath her feet was warm. Yet she felt naked and isolated, as if nothing of warmth or comfort could ever touch her.

Something moved in the center of the room. All the limbs of the tree shivered, and the tiny silver bells gave off a faint barely perceptible music in the stillness. The tiny angels with their gilded wings danced on their long threads of gold.

A darkness was gathering and thickening.

“We are close to the hour, my beloved. To the time of my choosing.”

“Ah, but you have a poet’s soul,” she said, listening to the faint echo of her own voice in this big room.

“My poetry I have learned from humans, beloved. From those who, for thousands of years, have loved this night of all nights.”

“And now you mean to teach me science, for I don’t know how to bring you across.”

“Don’t you? Haven’t you always understood?”

She didn’t answer. It seemed the film of her dreams thickened about her, images catching hold and then letting go, so that her coldness and her aloneness grew harder and more nearly unbearable.

The darkness grew denser. It collected itself into a shape, and in the swirling density, she thought she saw the outline of human bones. The bones appeared to be dancing, gathering themselves together, and then came the flesh over them, like the light from the tree pouring down over the skeleton, and the brilliant green eyes were suddenly peering at her from his face.

“The time is almost at hand, Rowan,” he said.

In amazement she watched the lips moving. She saw the glimmer of his teeth. She realized she’d risen to her feet and she was standing very close to him, and the sheer beauty of his face stunned her. He looked down at her, his eyes darkening slightly, and the blond eyelashes golden in the light.

“It’s nearly perfect,” she whispered.

She touched his face, slowly, running her finger down the skin and stopping on the firmness of the jawbone. She placed her left hand very gently against his chest. She closed her eyes, listening to the heart beat. She could see the organ inside, or was it the replica of an organ? Shutting her eyes tighter she envisioned it,
its arteries and valves, and the blood rushing through it, and coursing through the limbs.

“All you need to do is surrender!” She stood, staring at him, seeing his lips spread in a smile. “Let go,” she said. “Don’t you see, you’ve done it!”

“Have I?” he asked, the face working perfectly, the fine muscles flexing and releasing, the eyes growing narrow as the eyes of any human in their concentration. “You think this is a body? This is a replica! It’s a sculpture, a statue. It’s nothing, and you know it. You think you can lure me into this shell of minuscule lifeless particles so you can have me at your command? A robot? So that you can destroy me?”

“What are you saying?” She stepped backwards. “I can’t help you. I don’t know what you want of me.”

“Where are you going, my darling?” he asked, eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. “You think you can flee from me? Look at the face of the clock, my beautiful Rowan. You know what I want. It is Christmas Eve, my darling. The witching hour is at hand, Rowan, when Christ was born into this world, when the Word was finally made flesh, and I would be born, too, my beautiful witch, I am done with waiting.”

He lunged forward, his right hand locking on her shoulder, the other on her belly, a searing shimmer of warmth penetrating her, sickening her, even as he held her.

“Get away from me!” she whispered. “I can’t do it.” She called upon her anger and her will, eyes boring into those of the thing in front of her. “You can’t make me do what I won’t do!” she said. “And you can’t do it without me.”

“You know what I want and what I have always wanted. No more shells, Rowan, no more coarse illusions. The living flesh inside you. What other flesh in all the world is ready for me, plastic, and adaptable and swarming with millions upon millions of tiny cells which it will not use in its perfection, what other organism has grown to a thousand times its size in the first few weeks of its beginning, and is ready now to unfurl and lengthen and swell as my cells merge with it!”

“Get away from me. Get away from my child! You’re a stupid, crazed thing. You won’t touch my child! You won’t touch me!” She was trembling as if her anger was too great to be contained; she could feel it boiling in her veins. Her feet were wet and slippery on the boards as she backed away, drawing on her anger, struggling to direct it against him.

“Did you think you could trick me, Rowan?” he said in that slow, patient, beautiful voice, his handsome image holding. “With your little performance before Aaron and Michael? Did
you think. I couldn’t see into the depths of your soul? I made your soul. I chose the genes that went into you. I chose your parents, I chose your ancestors, I bred you, Rowan. I know where flesh and mind meet in you. I know your strength as no one else knows it. And you have always known what I wanted of you. You knew when you read the history. You saw Lemle’s fetus slumbering in that little bed of tubes and chemicals. You knew! You knew when you ran from the laboratory what your brilliance and courage could have done even then without me, without the knowledge that I waited for you, that I loved you, that I had the greatest gift to bestow on you. Myself, Rowan. You will help me, or that tiny simmering child will die when I go into it! And that you will never allow.”

“God. God help me!” she whispered, her hands moving down over her belly, in a crisscross as if to ward off a blow, eyes fixed on him.
Die, you son of a bitch, die!

The hands of the clock made their tiny click as they shifted, the little hand straight up in line with the big hand. And the first chime of the hour sounded.

“Christ is born, Rowan,” he cried out, his voice huge as the image of the man dissolved in a great boiling cloud of darkness, obscuring the clock, rising to the ceiling, turning in on itself like a funnel. She screamed, struggling backwards against the wall. A shock ran through the rafters, through the plaster. She could hear it like the roar of an earthquake.

“No, God, no!” In sheer panic, she screamed. She turned and ran through the parlor door into the hallway. She reached out for the knob of the front door. “God help me. Michael, Aaron!”

Somebody had to hear her screams. They were deafening in her own ears. They were ripping her apart.

But the rumbling grew louder. She felt his invisible hands on her shoulders. She was thrown forward, hard against the door, her hand slipping off the knob as she fell to her knees, pain shooting up her thighs. The darkness was rising all around her, the heat was rising.

“No, not my child, I’ll destroy you, with my last breath, I’ll destroy you.” She turned in one last desperate fury, facing the darkness, spitting at it in hate, willing it to die, as the arms wound around her and dragged her down on the floor.

The back of her head scraped the wood of the door, and then banged against the floorboards, as her legs were wrenched forward. She was staring upwards, struggling to rise, her arms flailing, the darkness bubbling over her.

“Damn you, damn you in hell, Lasher, die. Die like that old woman! Die!” she screamed.

“Yes, Rowan, your child, and Michael’s child!”

The voice surrounded her like the darkness and the heat. Her head was forced back again, slammed down again, and her arms pinned, wide and helpless.

“You my mother and Michael my father! It is the witching hour, Rowan. The clock is striking. I will be flesh. I will be born.”

The darkness furled again, it coiled in upon itself and it shot downward. It shot into her, raping her, splitting her apart. Like a giant fist it shot upwards inside her womb, and her body convulsed as the pain caught her in a great lashing circle that she could see, shining bright, against her closed eyes.

The heat was unbearable. The pain came again, shock after shock of it, and she could feel the blood gushing out of her, and the water from her womb, gushing onto the floor.

“You’ve killed it, you damnable evil thing, you’ve killed my baby, damn you! God help me! God, take it back to hell!” Her hands knocked against the wall, struggled against the slimy wet floor. And the heat sickened her, caught her lungs now as she gasped for breath.

The house was burning. It had to be burning. She was burning. The heat was throbbing inside of her, and she thought she saw the flames rising, but it was only a great lurid blast of red light. And somehow she had managed to climb up on her hands and knees, again, and she knew her body was empty, her child was gone, and she was struggling now only to escape, reaching out once more, desperately and in her fierce relentless pain, for the knob of the door.

“Michael, Michael help me! Oh God, I tried to trick it, I tried to kill it. Michael, it’s in the child.” Another shock of pain caught her, and a fresh gush of blood poured out of her.

Sobbing, she sank down, dizzy, unable to command her arms or legs, the heat blasting her, and a great raw crying filled her ears. It was a baby’s crying. It was that same awful sound she’d heard over and over in her dream. A baby’s mewling cry. She struggled to cover her ears, unable to bear it, wailing for it to stop, the heat suffocating her.

“Let me die,” she whispered. “Let the fire burn me. Take me to hell. Let me die.”

Rowan, help me. I am in the flesh. Help me or I will die. Rowan, you cannot turn your back on me.

She tightened the grip on her ears, but she couldn’t shut out the little telepathic voice that rose and fell with the baby’s sobs.
Her hand slipped in the blood and her face fell down in it, sticky and wet under her, and she rolled over on her back, seeing again the shimmer of the heat, the baby’s screams louder and louder as though it was starving or in agony.

Rowan, help me! I am your child! Michael’s child. Rowan, I need you.

She knew what she would see even before she looked. Through her tears and through the waves of heat, she saw the manikin, the monster.
Not out of my body, not born from me. I didn’t .… 

On its back it lay, its man-sized head turning from side to side with its cries, its thin arms elongating even as she watched it, tiny fingers splayed and groping and growing, tiny feet kicking, as a baby’s feet kick, working the air, the calves stretching, the blood and mucus sliding off it, sliding down its chubby cheeks, and off its slick dark hair. All those tiny organs like buds inside. All those millions of cells dividing, merging with his cells, like a nuclear explosion going on inside this flesh and blood thing, this mutant thing, this child that had come out of her.

Rowan, I am alive, do not let me die. Do not let me die, Rowan. Yours is the power of saving life, and I live. Help me.

She struggled towards it, her body still throbbing with sharp bursts of pain, her hand out for that tiny slippery leg, that little foot pumping the air, and then as her hand closed on that soft, slick baby flesh, the darkness came down on her, and against her closed eyelids she saw the anatomy, saw the path of the cells, saw the evolving organs, and the age-old miracle of the cells coming together, forming corpuscles and subcutaneous tissue, and bone tissue, and the fibers of the lungs and the liver and the stomach, and fused with his cells, his power, the DNA merging, and the tiny chains of chromosomes whipping and swimming as the nuclei merged, and all guided by her, all the knowledge inside her like the knowledge of the symphony inside the composer, note after note and bar after bar, and crescendo following upon crescendo.

Its flesh throbbed under her fingers, living, breathing through its pores. Its cries grew hoarser, deeper, echoing as she dropped down out of consciousness and rose up again, her other hand groping in the dark and finding his forehead, finding the thick mass of manly curls, finding his eyes fluttering under her palm, finding his mouth now half closed with the sobs coming out of it, finding his chest, and the heart beneath it and the long muscular arms flopping against the boards, yes, this thing so big now that she could lay her head on its pumping chest, and the cock between his legs, yes, and the thighs, yes, and struggling
upwards, she lay on top of him, both hands on him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her, the lungs enlarging, filling, the heart pumping, and dark silky hair sprouting around his cock, and then it was a web again, a web shining in the darkness, full of chemistry and mystery and certainty, and she sank down into the blackness, into the quiet.

A voice was talking to her, intimate and soft.

“Stop the blood.”

She couldn’t answer.

“You’re bleeding. Stop the blood.”

“I don’t want to live,” she said. Surely the house was burning. Come, old woman, with your lamp. Light the drapes.

Lemle said, “I never said it wasn’t possible, you know. The thing is that once an advance has been envisioned, it is inevitable. Millions of cells. The embryo is the key to immortality.”

“You can still kill him,” said Petyr. He was standing over her, looking down at her.

“They’re figments of your imagination, of your conscience.”