The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,222

it was believed that their fallen gods became daimons and hovered about the ruins of their cities and temples. And she must remember that Suzanne had called up the daimon Lasher at the ancient stones in Scotland, though what people had assembled those stones no one knows.

—the early Christians believed that the pagan gods were daimons, and that they could be called up for curses and spells.

And that in summary, all of these beliefs have to them a consistency, for we know that daimons are strengthened by our belief in them. So naturally, they might become as gods to those who invoke them, and when their worshipers are conquered and scattered, the daimons would once more lapse back into chaos, or be but minor entities answering the occasional magician’s call.

I wrote further about the power of daimons. That they can create illusions for us; that they can enter bodies as in possession; that they can move objects; that they can appear to us, though whence they gather their bodies we do not know.

As for Lasher, it was my belief that his body was made of matter and held together by his power, but this could only be done by him for a short spell.

I did further describe how the daimon had appeared to me, and the strange words he said to me, and how I had puzzled over them, and how she must be aware that this thing might be the ghost of some long dead person—earthbound and vengeful, for all the ancients believed that the spirits of those who died in youth, or by violence, might become vengeful daimons, whereas the spirits of the good go out of this world.

Whatever else I wrote—and there was much—I no longer now remember, for I was utterly given over to drunkenness, and perhaps what I placed into her tender hands the next day was no more than a sorry scrawl. But many things I did attempt to explain to her, over her protests, though she claimed I had said them all before.

As for Lasher’s words to me that morning, his strange prediction, she only smiled at this, and told me whenever I did mention it, that Lasher took his speech from us in fragments and much that he said did not make sense.

“That is only partly true,” I warned her. “He is unaccustomed to language, but not to thinking. That is your mistake.”

More and more as the days passed, I gave myself over to the rum and to sleeping. I would open my eyes only to see if she was there.

And just when I was maddened by her absence, nay, ready to beat her in a rage, she would appear without fail. Beautiful, yielding, soft in my arms, the embodiment of all poetry, the very face I would endlessly paint were I Rembrandt, the very body the Succubus would take to win me to the Devil complete and entire.

I was satiated in all ways, yet always craving for more. I did crawl from bed now and then to watch the sea. And I woke often to see and study the falling of the rain.

For the rain in this place was most warm and gentle, and I loved the song of it on the rooftop, and the sheet of it, catching the light as the breeze carried it at an angle past the doors.

Many thoughts came to me, Stefan, thoughts nourished by loneliness and warmth and the singing of the birds in the distance and the sweet fresh air from the waves roaring gently on the beach below.

In my little prison, I knew what I had wasted in life, but it is so simple and sad to put it into words. At times I fancied myself mad Lear on the moors, putting the flowers in his hair, having become king of nothing but the wilderness.

For I, in this savage place, had become so simplified, the grateful scholar of the rain and of the sea.

At last one afternoon late when the light was just dying, I was wakened by the savory aroma of a hot supper, and I knew that I had been drunk for a full day round the clock, and that she had not come.

I devoured the supper, as liquor never stops my hunger, and then I dressed in fresh clothes, and sat to thinking of what had become of me, and trying to calculate how long I had been in this place.

I thought it was twelve days.

I resolved then that no