The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,402

trunk was made of canvas and bound with leather and brass tacks. She lifted the lid easily and threw it back gently so as not to scar the plaster wall.

“Can you see what’s inside?”

“Dolls,” Rowan answered. “Dolls made of … of hair and bone.”

“Yes, bone, and human hair, and human skin, and the parings of nails. Dolls of your female ancestors so far back there are no names for the oldest dolls, and they’ll fall to dust when you lift them.”

Rowan studied them, row after row set out carefully on a bed of old cheesecloth, each doll with its carefully drawn face and long hank of hair, some with sticks for arms and legs, others soft-bodied, and almost shapeless. The newest and finest of all the dolls was made of silk with a bit of pearl stitched to its little dress, its face of shining bone with nose and eyes and mouth drawn in dark brown ink, perhaps, even in blood.

“Yes, blood,” said the old woman. “And that is your great-grandmother, Stella.”

The tiny doll appeared to grin at Rowan. Someone had stuck the black hair to the bone skull with glue. Bones protruded from the hem of the little tube of a silk dress.

“Where did the bones come from?”

“From Stella.”

Rowan reached down, then drew back, her fingers curling. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it. She lifted the edge of the cheesecloth tentatively, seeing beneath yet another layer, and here the dolls were fast becoming dust. They had sunk deep into the cloth, and probably could not be lifted intact from it.

“All the way back to Europe they go. Reach in. Take the oldest doll. Can you see which one it is?”

“It’s hopeless. It will fall to pieces if I touch it. Besides, I don’t know which one it is.” She laid the cloth back, smoothing the top layer gingerly. And when her fingers touched the bones, she felt a sudden jarring vibration. It was as if a bright light had flashed before her eye. Her mind registered the medical possibilities … temporal lobe disturbance, seizure. Yet the diagnosis seemed foolish, belonging to another realm.

She stared down at the tiny faces.

“What’s the purpose? Why?”

“To speak to them when you would, and invoke their help, so they can reach out of hell to do your bidding.” The woman pressed her withered lips into a faint sneer, the light rising and distorting her face unkindly. “As if they would come from the fires of hell to do anyone’s bidding.”

Rowan let out a long low derisive sigh, looking down again at the dolls, at the horrid and vivid face of Stella.

“Who made these things?”

“They all did, all along. Cortland crept down in the night and cut the foot off my mother, Mary Beth, as she lay in the coffin. It was Cortland who took the bones from Stella. Stella wanted to be buried at home. Stella knew what he would do, because your grandmother Antha was too little to do it.”

Rowan shuddered. She lowered the lid of the trunk, and lifting the lamp carefully, rose to her feet, brushing the dust from her knees. “This Cortland, this man who did this, who was he? Not the grandfather of Ryan at the funeral?”

“Yes, my dear, the very same,” said the old woman. “Cortland the beautiful, Cortland the vicious, Cortland the instrument of him who has guided this family for centuries. Cortland who raped your mother when she clung to him for help. I mean the man who coupled with Stella, to father Antha who then gave birth to Deirdre, who by him conceived you, his daughter and great-granddaughter.”

Rowan stood quiet, envisioning the scheme of births and entanglements.

“And who has made a doll of my mother?” she asked, as she stared into the old woman’s face which now appeared ghastly in the light of the lamp playing on it.

“No one. Unless you yourself care to go to the cemetery and unscrew the stone and take her hands out of the coffin. Do you think you could do that? He will help you do it, you know, the man you have already seen. He’ll come if you put on the necklace and call him.”

“You have no cause to want to hurt me,” Rowan said. “I am no part of this.”

“I tell you what I know. Black Magic was their game. Always. I tell you what you must know to make your choice. Would you bow to this filth? Would you continue it? Would you lift those