The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,407

what happened with my mother.”

She stepped after the woman into the small dusty chamber again, closing the door and the gate angrily. As they moved down, she turned and stared at the woman’s profile. Old, old, yes, she was. Her skin as yellow all over as parchment, and her neck so thin and frail, the veins standing out under her fragile skin. Yes, so fragile.

“Tell me what happened to her,” Rowan said, staring at the floor, not daring to look closely at the woman again. “Don’t tell me how he touched her in her sleep, but tell me what happened, really happened!”

The elevator stopped with a jerk. The woman opened the gate, and pushed back the door, and walked out into the hallway.

As Rowan closed the door, the light died out as if the elevator and its bare bulb had never existed. The darkness swept in close and faintly cool, and smelling of the rain from beyond the open front door. The night gleamed outside, noisy with comforting sounds.

“Tell me what happened,” Rowan said again, softly, bitterly.

Through the long front parlor they walked, the old woman leading the way, listing slightly to the left as she followed her cane, Rowan coming patiently behind her.

The pale light of the candle slowly crept throughout the whole room, lighting it thinly to the ceiling. Even in decay, it was a beautiful room, its marble fireplaces and high mantel mirrors shining in the dreary shadows. All its windows were floor-length windows. Mirrors at the far ends gazed across the length of the room into each other. Dimly Rowan saw the chandeliers reflected again and again and into infinity. Her own small figure was there, repeated over and over and vanishing finally in darkness.

“Yes,” said the old woman. “It is an interesting illusion. Darcy Monahan bought these mirrors for Katherine. Darcy Monahan tried to take Katherine away from all the evil around her. But he died in this house of yellow fever. Katherine wept for the rest of her life. But the mirrors stand today, there and there, and over the fireplaces, just as Darcy fixed them.”

She sighed, once more resting her two hands on the crook of her cane.

“We have all … from time to time … been reflected in these mirrors. And you see yourself in them now, caught in the same frame.”

Rowan didn’t respond. Sadly, distantly, she longed to see the room in the light, to see the carvings in the marble fireplaces, to see the long silk draperies for what they really were, to see the plaster medallions fixed to the high ceilings.

The old woman proceeded to the nearest of the two side floor-length windows. “Raise it for me,” she said. “It slides up. You are strong enough.” She took the candle from Rowan and set it on a small lamp table by the fireplace.

Rowan reached up to unsnap the simple lock, and then she raised the heavy nine-paned window, easily pushing it until it was almost above her head.

Here was the screened porch, and the night outside, and the air fresh as it was warm, and full of the breath of the rain again. She felt a rush of gratitude, and stood silently letting the air kiss her face and her hands. She moved to the side as the old woman passed her.

The candle, left behind, struggled in an errant draft. Then went out. Rowan stepped out into the darkness. Again that strong perfume came on the breeze, drenchingly sweet.

“The night jasmine,” said the old woman.

All around the railings of this porch vines grew, tendrils dancing in the breeze, fine tiny leaves moving like so many little insect wings beating against the screen. Flowers glimmered in the dark, white and delicate and beautiful.

“This is where your mother sat day after day,” said the old woman. “And there, out there on the flagstones is where her mother died. Where she died when she fell from that room above which had been Julien’s. I myself drove her out of that window. I think I would have pushed her with my own hands if she hadn’t jumped. With my own hands I’d scratched at her eyes, the way I’d scratched at Julien’s.”

She paused. She was looking out through the rusted screen into the night, perhaps at the high faint shapes of the trees against the paler sky. The cold light of the street lamp reached long and bright over the front of the garden. It fell upon the high unkempt grass. It even