The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,226

without further hesitation, I turned back to the right direction, and began to run. I ran, with my eyes down, until I was out of breath. And slowing to a walk, went on doggedly in the same manner, looking only at the dust beneath my feet.

It was only a little while before I saw feet next to mine, naked, bleeding, but I paid no mind to them for I knew they could not be real. I smelled flesh burning but I took no note of it, for I knew it could not be real.

“I know your game,” I said. “You have pledged not to hurt me, and so you go by the letter of the pledge. You would drive me mad, would you?” And then remembering the rules of the ancients, that I was but strengthening it by talking to it, I stopped talking and fell to saying the old prayers.

“May all the forces of goodness protect me, may the higher spirits protect me, may no harm come to me; may the white light shine upon me, and keep me from this thing.”

The feet that had walked along with me were gone now, and so was the stench of burning flesh. But far ahead I heard an eerie noise. It was the sound of wood splintering, aye, of many pieces of wood splintering, and perhaps of things being ripped up from the earth.

This is no illusion, I thought. The thing has uprooted the very trees and will now hurl them down in my path.

On I walked, confident that I should dodge such dangers, and remembering that it was playing games with me, and I must not fall into its trap. But then I saw the bridge ahead of me, and I realized that I had come to the little river, and the sounds I heard were coming from the graveyard! The thing was breaking open the graves!

A terror seized me which was far worse than any I had felt before. We all have our private fears, Stefan. A man can fight tigers, yet shrink from the sight of a beetle; another can cut his way through an enemy regiment, yet not remain with a dead body in a closed-up room.

For me, the places of the dead have always held terror; and now to know what the spirit meant to do, and that I must cross the bridge and pass through the graveyard held me petrified and dripping with sweat. And to hear ever more loudly the ripping and the tearing; to see the trees above the graves swaying, I did not know how I should ever move again.

But to remain here was folly. I forced myself to move, drawing closer, step by step to the bridge. Then I beheld the ravaged graveyard, I saw the coffins torn up from the soft wet earth. I saw the things climbing out of them, or rather pulled from them, for they were lifeless, surely they were lifeless, and he moved them as he would move puppets!

“Petyr, run!” I cried, and tried to obey my own command.

I crossed the bridge in an instant, but I could see them coming up the banks on both sides. I heard them! I heard the rotted coffins breaking under their feet. Illusion, trickery, I told myself once more, but as the first of these horrid cadavers came into my path, I screamed like a frightened woman, “Get away from me!” and then found myself unable to touch the putrid arms that flailed at me, merely stumbling away from this assault, only to fall against another such rotted corpse, and at last to collapse upon my knees.

I prayed, Stefan. I cried out loud to the spirit of my father and to Roemer Franz, please help me! These things had now surrounded me and were pushing against me, and the stench was unbearable, for some of them were newly buried, and others but half decomposed, and others reeked purely of the earth itself.

My arms and hair were drenched from their disgusting wetness, and shivering I covered my head with both arms.

Then I heard a voice speaking to me, clearly, and I knew it was the voice of Roemer, and he said: “Petyr, they are lifeless! They are as fruit fallen on the floor of the orchard. Rise and push them aside; you cannot offend them!”

And emboldened, I did.

On I ran once more, crashing into them, tripping over them and then dancing back and forth to catch my balance and go