The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,409

her fits of melancholy and madness and crying, and sickening confessions that she had lost the battle and let him come into her bed, I had won, until Cortland raped her! And then I did what I had to do to see that she gave you up and she never went after you.

“I did what I had to do to see that she never gained the strength to run away, to search for you, to claim you again and bring you back into her madness, and her guilt and her hysteria. When they wouldn’t give her electric shock at one hospital, I took her to another. And if they wanted to take her off the drugs at that hospital, I took her to another. And I told them what I had to tell them to make them tie her to her bed, and give her the drugs, and give her the shock. I told her what I had to tell her to make her scream so they would do it!”

“Don’t tell me any more.”

“Why? You wanted to know, didn’t you? And yes, when she writhed in her bedcovers like a cat in heat, I told them to give her the shots, give them to her—”

“Stop!”

“—twice a day or three times a day. I don’t care if you kill her, but give it to her, I won’t have her lie there, his plaything writhing in the dark, I won’t—”

“Stop it. Stop.”

“Why? Till the day she died, she was his. Her last and only word was his name. What good was it all, except that it was for you, for you, Rowan!”

“Stop it!” Rowan hissed at her, her own hands rising helplessly in the air, fingers splayed. “Stop it. I could kill you for what you are telling me! How dare you speak of God and life when you did that to a girl, a young girl that you had brought up in this filthy house, you did that to her, you did that to her when she was helpless and sick and you … God help you, you are the witch, you sick and cruel old woman, that you could do that to her, God help you, God help you, God damn you!”

A look of sullen shock swept the old woman’s face. For one second in the weak light, she seemed to go blank, with her round blank glass eyes shining like two buttons, and her mouth slack and empty.

Rowan groaned, her own hands moved to the sides of her head, slipping into her hair, her lips pressed shut to stop her words, to stop her rage, to stop the hurt and pain. “To hell with you for what you did!” she cried, half swallowing the words, her body bent with the rage she couldn’t swallow.

The old woman frowned. She reached out, and the cane fell from her hand. She took a single shuffling step forward. And then her right hand faltered, and plunged towards the left knob of the rocking chair in front of her. Her frail body twisted slowly and sank down into the chair. As her head fell back against the high slats, she ceased to move. Then her hand slipped off the arm of the chair and dangled beside it.

There was no single noise in the night. Only a dim continuous purring as if the insects sang and the frogs sang and the faraway engines and cars, wherever they were, sang with them. It seemed a train passed somewhere close, clicking rhythmically and fast beneath the song. And there came the dull faraway sound of a whistle, like a guttural sob in the darkness.

Rowan stood motionless, her hands dropped at her sides, limp and useless, as she stared dumbly through the rusted mesh of the screen, at the soft lacy movement of the trees against the sky. The deep singing of the frogs slowly broke itself away from the other night songs, and then faded. A car came down the empty street beyond the front fence, headlights piercing the thick wet foliage.

Rowan felt the light on her skin. She saw it flash over the wooden cane lying on the floor of the porch, over Carlotta’s black high-top shoe, bent painfully in as if the thin ankle had snapped.

Did anyone see through the thick shrubs the dead woman in the chair? And the tall blond woman figure behind her?

Rowan shuddered all over. She arched her back, her left hand rising and gripping a hank of her hair and