The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,392

I know Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan. I was with her and Marie Louise on the riverboat the night she got drunk with her boyfriend, Terry O’Neill. For that she was sent to St. Ro’s, where she met Deirdre Mayfair. I remember Rita Mae going to St. Ro’s.

“Does this mean nothing?

“And something else too. What if my ancestors worked in the Garden District? I don’t know that they did or didn’t. I know my father’s mother was an orphan, reared at St. Margaret’s. I don’t think she had a legal father. What if her mother had been a maid in the First Street house … but my mind is just going crazy.

“After all, look what these people have done in terms of breeding. When you do this with horses and dogs, it’s called inbreeding or line breeding.

“Over and over again, the finest male specimens have inbred with the witches, so that the genetic mix is strengthened in terms of certain traits, undoubtedly including psychic traits, but what about others? If I read this damn thing properly, Cortland wasn’t just the father of Stella and Rowan. He could have been the father of Antha too, though everybody thought it was Lionel.

“Now if Julien was Mary Beth’s father, ah, but they ought to do some kind of computer thing just on that aspect of it, the inbreeding. Make a chart. And if they have the photographs, they can get into more genetic science. But I have to tell all this to Rowan. Rowan will understand all this. When we were talking Rowan said something about genetic research being so unpopular. People don’t want to admit what they can determine about human beings genetically. Which brings me to free will, and my belief in free will is part of why I’m going crazy.

“Anyway, Rowan is the genetic beneficiary of all this—tall, slim, sexy, extremely healthy, brilliant, strong, and successful. A medical genius with a telekinetic power to take life who chooses instead to save life. And there it is, free will, again. Free will.

“But how the hell do I fit in with my free will intact, that is? I mean what is ‘all planned’ to use Townsend’s words in the dream. Christ!

“Am I perhaps related somehow to these people through the Irish servants that worked for them? Or is it simply that they outcross when they need stamina? But any of Rowan’s police/fire fighter heroes would have done the job. Why me? Why did I have to drown, if indeed, they accomplished the drowning, which I still don’t believe they did—but then Lasher was revealing himself alone to me all the way back to my earliest years.

“God, there is no one way to interpret any of this. Maybe I was destined for Rowan all along, and my drowning wasn’t meant, and that’s why the rescue happened. If the drowning was meant, I can’t accept it! Because if that was meant, then too much else could be meant. It’s too awful.

“I cannot read this history and conclude that the terrible tragedies here were inevitable—Deirdre to die like that.

“I could write on like this for the next three days, rambling, discussing this point or that. But I’m going crazy. I still haven’t a clue to the meaning of the doorway. Not a single thing in what I’ve read illuminates this single image. Don’t see any specific number involved in this either. Unless the number thirteen is on a doorway, and that has some meaning.

“Now the doorway may simply be the doorway to First Street; or the house itself could be some sort of portal. But I’m reaching. There is no feeling of rightness to what I say.

“As for the psychometric power in my hands, I still don’t know how that is to be used, unless I am to touch Lasher when he materializes, and thereby know what this spirit really is, whence he comes and what he wants of the witches. But how can I touch Lasher unless Lasher chooses to be touched?

“Of course I will remove the gloves and lay my hands on objects related to this history, to First Street, if Rowan, who is now the mistress of First Street, will allow. But somehow the prospect fills me with terror. I can’t see it as the consummation of my purpose. I see it as intimacy with countless objects, surfaces, and images … and also … for the first time I’m afraid of touching objects which belonged to the dead. But I must attempt it.