The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,173

room was full of ticking once more.

The face of Deborah was transformed from cold suspicion to sudden contempt, as she looked from me to Roemer. She sprang from the chair. Backwards against the books she crept, fixing me and then Roemer with her malevolent gaze.

“Ah, witches!” she cried. “Why did you not tell me? You are all witches! You are an order of Satan.” And then as the tears poured down her face, she sobbed. “It is true, true, true!”

She wrapped her arms around her to cover her breasts and she spit at us in her rage. Nothing we could say would quiet her.

“We are all damned! And you hide here in this city of witches where they can’t burn you!” she cried. “Oh, clever, clever witches in the devil’s house!”

“No, child,” cried Roemer. “We know nothing of the devil! We seek to understand what others condemn.”

“Deborah,” I cried out, “forget the lies they taught you. There is no one in the city of Amsterdam who would burn you! Think of your mother. What did she say of what she did, before they tortured her and made her sing their songs?”

Ah, but these were the wrong words! I could not know it, Stefan. I could not know it. Only as her face was stricken, as she put her hands over her ears, did I realize my error. Her mother had believed she was evil!

And then from Deborah’s trembling mouth came more denunciations. “Wicked, are you? Witches, are you? Stoppers of clocks! Well, I shall show you what the devil can do in the hands of this witch!”

She moved into the very center of the room and looking up and out the window, it seemed, to the blue sky, she cried:

“Come now, my Lasher, show these poor witches the power of a great witch and her devil. Break the clocks one and all!”

And at once a great dark shadow appeared in the window, as if the spirit upon whom she had called had condensed himself to become small and strong within the room.

The thin glass aver the faces of the clocks was shattered, the fine glued seams of their wooden cases sprung open, the very springs breaking out of them, and the clocks tumbled off the mantelshelf and the desk, and the tall case clock crashed to the floor.

Roemer was alarmed for seldom had he seen a spirit of such power, and we could all but feel the thing in our midst, brushing our garments, as it swept past us and shot out its invisible tentacles, as it were, to obey the witch’s commands.

“Damn you into hell, witches. I shall not be your witch!” Deborah cried, and as the books began to fall around us, she fled once more from us, and the door slammed shut after her and we could not pry it open, try as we might.

But the spirit was gone. We had nothing more to fear from the thing. And after a long silence, the door was made to open again, and we wandered out, bewildered to discover that Deborah had long since left the house.

Now, you know, Stefan, by that time, Amsterdam was one of the very great cities of all Europe, and she held perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand persons, or more. And into this great city Deborah had vanished. And no inquiry we made of her in the brothels or the taverns bore fruit. Even to the Duchess Anna, the richest whore in Amsterdam, we went, for that is where with certainty a beautiful girl like Deborah might find refuge, and though the Duchess was as always glad to see us and talk with us, and serve us good wine, she knew nothing of the mysterious child.

I was now in such abject misery that I did nothing but lie in my bed, with my face on my arms, and weep, though all told me this was foolish, and Geertruid swore that she would find “the girl.”

Roemer told me that I must write down what had happened with this young woman as part of my scholarly work, but I can tell you, Stefan, that what I wrote was most pitiful and brief and that is why I have not asked that you consult these old records. When I return to Amsterdam, God willing, I shall replace my old entries with this more vivid chronicle.

But to continue with what little more there is to say, it was a fortnight later that a young student of Rembrandt