The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,305

of it from several sources, and without the family’s cooperation, wrote a long article on it which appeared in the Sunday edition of a Dallas paper in 1915. Other papers picked up this story. It was eventually forwarded to us in London about two months after it appeared.

Meantime curiosity seekers descended upon Stuart. A local author wanted to write a novel about him. Representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell. The family was up in arms. Stuart was once again driven indoors, and sat brooding in the attic room, staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person Antoinette, and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him, and he was now a hopeless misfit, driven to antagonizing everyone he knew.

No doubt the family received a great deal of unwelcome mail. On the other hand, communication in that day and age was not what it is now. Whatever the case, a package from the Talamasca reached Stuart in late 1916, containing two well-known books about such cases of “possession,” along with a letter from us informing him that we had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk to him about it, and about others who had experienced the same thing.

Stuart at once fired off a reply. He met with our representative Louis Daly in Dallas in the summer of 1917, and gratefully agreed to go with us to London. Dr. Townsend, at first deeply concerned, was finally won over by Louis, who assured him that our approach to such things was entirely scholarly, and at last Stuart came to us on September 1, 1917.

He was received into the order as a novice the following year, and he remained with us from then on.

His first project of course was a thorough study of his own case, and a study of every other known case of possession on record. His conclusion finally, and that of the other Talamasca scholars assigned to this area of research, was that he indeed had been possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.

He believed then and ever after that the spirit of Antoinette Fielding could have been driven out of him, if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted, even a Catholic priest. For though the Catholic Church holds that such cases are purely demonic—which we do not—there is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work.

For the next five years Stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over. He interviewed victims by the dozens, taking voluminous notes.

He came to the conclusion long held by the Talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who engage in possession. Some may be ghosts; some may be entities who were never human; some may be “other personalities” within the host. But he remained convinced that Antoinette Fielding had been a real human being, and that like many such ghosts, she had not known or understood that she was dead.

In 1920 he went to Paris to find evidence of Antoinette Fielding. He was unable to discover anything at all. But the few bits of information about the dead Louisa Fielding did fit with what Antoinette had written about her mother. Time, however, had long ago erased any real trace of these persons. And Stuart remained forever dissatisfied on this account.

In late 1920 he resigned himself to the fact that he might never know who Antoinette was, and then he turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the Talamasca. He went out with Louis Daly to intervene in cases of possession, carrying out with Daly a form of exorcism which Daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of the victim-host.

Daly was very impressed with Stuart Townsend. He became Stuart’s mentor, and Stuart was throughout these years noted for his compassion, patience, and effectiveness in this field. Not even Daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way Stuart could do it. After all, Stuart had been there. Stuart knew.

Stuart worked in this field tirelessly until 1929, reading the File on the Mayfair Witches only when a busy schedule allowed. Then he made his plea to the council and won.

At that point in time, Stuart was thirty-five. He stood six feet tall, had ash-blond hair and dark gray eyes. He was lean of build and had a light complexion. He tended to dress elegantly, and was one of those Americans who deeply admires English manners and ways of