The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,224

a word.

It had been an hour’s ride out and so I fancied that it not being yet midnight I should easily make the city by dawn. Oh, Stefan, thanks be to God, I did not know what that journey would be! Would I have ever had the courage to set out!

But let me break my story here, to say that for twelve hours I have been scribbling. And now it is midnight once more, and the thing is near.

For that reason I shall shut up in my iron box this and all the other pages I have written, so that at least this much of my tale will reach you, if what I write from here on is lost.

I love you, my dear friend, and I do not expect your forgiveness. Only keep my record. Keep it, for this story is not finished and may not be for many a generation. I have that from the spirit’s own voice.

Yours in the Talamasca,

Petyr van Abel

Port-au-Prince

Sixteen

THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

PART IV

Stefan,

After a bit of refreshment, I begin again. The thing is here. Only a moment ago, it made itself visible, in its manly guise, an inch from me, as is its wont, and then caused my candle to go out, though it had no breath of its own with which to do it.

I had to go downstairs to procure another light. Coming back I found my windows open and flapping in the breeze, and had to bolt them again. My ink was spilt. But I have more ink. The covers had been snatched from the bed, and my books had been scattered about.

Thank God the iron box is on its way to you. Enough said, for perhaps the thing can read.

It makes the sound of wings flapping in this close space, and then laughter.

I wonder if far away in her bedroom at Maye Faire Charlotte sleeps, and that is why I am the victim of these tricks.

Only the bawdy houses and taverns are open; all the rest of the little colonial city is quiet.

But let me relate the events of last night as fast as I can …

… I started out upon the road on foot. The moon was high; the path was clear before me with all its twists and turns, rising and falling gently here and there over what we would scarce call hills.

I walked fast, with great vigor, all but giddy with my freedom, and the realization that the spirit had not stopped me, and that I was smelling the sweet air around me, and thinking that I might make Port-au-Prince well before dawn.

I am alive, I thought; I am out of my prison; and perhaps I shall live to reach the Motherhouse again!

With each step I believed it all the more, and wondered at it, for during my captivity I had given up all hope of such a thing.

Again and again, however, my mind was overtaken by thoughts of Charlotte, as though a spell had fallen over me, and I remembered her in the bed where I had left her, and I weakened, thinking even that I was a fool to leave such beauty and such excitement, for indeed I loved her; I loved her madly! And what would it mean, I wondered, were I to remain and become her lover, and see the birth of one child after another, and live in luxury as she had suggested to me? That I should within a matter of hours be separated from her forever was more than I could endure.

So I would not think on it. I drove the thoughts from my mind whenever I became aware that they had once more stolen in.

On and on I walked. Now and then I spied a light over the darkened fields on either side of me. And once a rider passed, thundering along the road, as if driven on an important mission. He did not even see me. And I continued alone, with only the moon and the stars for witnesses, and plotted out my letter to you and how I would describe what had taken place.

I had been on my way perhaps three-quarters of an hour when I saw a man at some distance ahead of me, merely standing and watching me approach, so it seemed. And what was so remarkable was that he was a Dutchman, which I saw by his enormous black hat.

Now, my hat I had left behind me. I had worn it as always when