The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,418

that these visions were good? That these people who appeared to you were higher beings?”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“This black-haired woman, this convicted witch, as you called her, with the jewel was good … the one who knocked you off the rock right into the Pacific Ocean where … ”

“Rowan, no one can prove a chain of controlled events like that! All I know … ”

“You saw this spirit man when you were six? Let me tell you something, Michael, this man is not good. And you saw him here two nights ago? And this black-haired woman is not good either.”

“Rowan, it’s too early for you to make these interpretations.”

“OK. All right. I don’t want to make you mad. I don’t want to make you angry even for one second. I’m so glad you’re here, you can’t know how glad I am that you’re here, that you’re here with me in this house, and you understand all this, that you’re … oh, it’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m glad I’m not in it alone. And I want you here, that’s the whole truth.”

“I know, I understand, and the important thing is, I am here, and you aren’t alone.”

“But don’t you make too many interpretations either. There is something terribly evil here, something I can feel like the evil in me. No, don’t say anything. Just listen to me. There’s something so bad that it could spill out and hurt lots of people. More than it’s ever hurt in the past. And you’re like some starry-eyed knight who just rode over the drawbridge out of the castle!”

“Rowan, that is not true.”

“All right. OK. They didn’t drown you out there. They didn’t do that. And your knowing all these people, Rita Mae and Jerry Lonigan, it’s all not connected.”

“It’s connected, but the question is, how is it connected? It’s crucial not to jump to conclusions.”

She turned back towards the table, resting her elbows on it and holding her head in her hands. She had no idea now what time it was. The night seemed quieter than before; now and then something in the house would snap or creak. But they were alone. Completely alone.

“You know,” she said, “I think about that old woman, and it’s like a cloud of evil descending on me. It was like walking with evil to be with her. And she thought she was the good one. She thought she was fighting the devil. It’s tangled, but it’s tangled even more obscurely than that.”

“She killed Townsend,” he said.

She turned and looked at him again. “You know that for sure?”

“I laid my hands on him. I felt the bone. She did it. She tied him up in that rug. He was maybe drugged at the time, I don’t know. But he died in the rug, I know that much. He chewed a hole in it.”

“Oh, God!” She closed her eyes, her imagination filling in the implications too vividly.

“And there were people in this house all the time and they couldn’t hear him. They didn’t know he was dying up there, or if they did they didn’t do anything about it.”

“Why would she do it!”

“ ’Cause she hated us. I mean she hated the Talamasca.”

“You said ‘us.’ ”

“That was a slip, but a very informative one. I feel like I’m part of them. They’ve come to me and they’ve asked me to be, more or less. They’ve taken me into their confidence. But maybe what I really meant, is that she hated anyone from outside who knew anything. There are dangers still to anybody from outside. There’s danger to Aaron. You asked me what the Talamasca stands to get out of this. It stands to lose another member.”

“Explain.”

“On the way home from the funeral, coming back out to the country to get me, he saw a man on the road and swerved, rolled over twice, and just got out of the damned car before it exploded. It was that spirit thing. I know it was. So does he. I guess whatever this big plan is, this entanglement, Aaron has served his purpose.”

“Is he hurt?”

Michael shook his head. “He knew what was going down, even as it was happening. But he couldn’t take a chance. Suppose it hadn’t been an apparition and he’d run down a real man. Just couldn’t chance it. He was belted in, too. I think he got slammed on the head pretty bad.”

“Did they take him to a hospital?”

“Yes, Doctor. He’s OK. That is why