The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,442

File on Rowan and Michael,” he said with a faint smile. He paused at the top of the stairs. “Things up here on the second floor are simpler. The ceilings are about a foot lower, and you don’t have the ornate crown moldings. It’s all a smaller scale.”

She laughed and shook her head. “And how high are these smaller rooms, thirteen feet, perhaps?”

They turned and went down the hall to the first bedroom on the very front of the house. Its windows opened both to the front and the side porches. Belle’s prayer book lay on the chest of drawers, with her name engraved in the cover in gold letters. There were photographs in gilt frames behind dim glass hanging on dulled and rusted chains.

“Julien again. Has to be,” said Michael. “And Mary Beth, look, that woman looks like you, Rowan.”

“So they told me,” she said softly.

Belle’s rosary, with her named engraved on the back of the crucifix, lay still on the pillow of the four-poster bed. Dust rose from the feather comforter when Michael touched it. A wreath of roses peered down at him from the satin tester above.

Gloomy it all seemed with its fading flowered paper, and the heavy armoires tilting ever so slightly forward, and the carpet threadbare and the color of dust itself. The branches of the oaks looked like ghosts beyond the pongee curtains. The bathroom was clean and very plain—tile from Stella’s time, Michael figured. A great old tub such as one still finds now and then in old hotels, and a high pedestal lavatory, and stacks of towels, layered with dust, on a wicker stand.

“Oh, but Michael, this is the best room,” Rowan said behind him. “This is the one that opens to the south and the west. Help me with this window.”

They forced the stubborn sash. “It’s like being in a tree house,” she said as she stepped outside on the deep front gallery. She laid her hand on the fluted Corinthian column and looked into the twisted branches of the oaks. “Look, Michael, there are ferns growing in the branches, hundreds of little green ferns. And there, a squirrel. No, there are two of them. We’ve frightened them. This is so strange. It’s like we’re in the woods, and we can jump out there and start climbing. We could just wander heavenward through this tree.”

Michael tested the rafters underneath. “Solid, just like everything else. And the iron lace isn’t rusted, not really. All it needs is paint.” No leaks in the roof above either.

Just waiting, waiting all this time to be restored. He stopped, and slipped off his khaki jacket. The heat was getting to him finally, even here where the river breezes did flood by.

He slung the jacket over his shoulder and held it with one hooked finger.

Rowan stood, with arms folded, leaning on the cast-iron railing. She looked out over the quiet still corner.

He was looking down through the tangle of the little sweet olive trees, at the front gate. He was seeing himself as a boy standing there, just seeing himself so clearly. She clasped his hand suddenly and drew him after her back inside.

“Look, that door connects to the next bedroom. That could be a sitting room, Michael. And both lead on to that side porch.”

He was staring at one of the oval photographs. Stella? Had to be Stella.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” she was saying. “It has to be the sitting room.”

He glanced down again at the white leather cover of the prayer book with the words Belle Mayfair inscribed in gold. Just for a second, he thought, Touch it. And to think, Belle was so sweet, so good.

How could Belle hurt you? You’re in this house and not using the power.

“Michael?”

But he couldn’t do it. If he began, how could he stop? And it would kill him, those electrical shocks passing through him, and the blindness, the inevitable blindness when the images swam around him like murky water, and the cacophony of all the voices. No. You don’t have to. Nobody has told you that you have to.

The thought suddenly that someone might make him do it, might tear off the glove and force his hand on these objects, made him cringe. He felt cowardly. And Rowan was calling him. He looked down at the prayer book as he moved away.

“Michael, this must have been Millie’s room. It has a fireplace, too.” She stood before a high dresser, holding a small monogrammed handkerchief. “These rooms are