The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,446

the old-fashioned dresser. He opened the top drawer. Nightgowns of soft white flannel, whiff of sachet, very sweet. And lighter summer garments of real silk.

He lifted one of these nightgowns—a thin sleeveless thing sewn with pale pastel flowers. He laid it down in a wrinkled heap on the dresser, and he took off his gloves. For a second he clasped his hands together tightly and then he picked up the garment in both hands. He closed his eyes. “Deirdre,” he said, “only Deirdre.”

An enormous place gaped before him. Through the lurid flickering glare he saw hundreds of faces, he heard voices wailing and screaming. An unbearable sound. A man came towards him stepping over the bodies of the others! “No. Stop!” He had dropped the nightgown. He stood there with his closed eyes trying to remember what he’d just glimpsed, though he couldn’t bear to be surrounded by it again. Hundreds of people shifting and turning, and someone speaking to him in a rapid ugly mocking voice. “Christ, what was it?” He stared down at his hands. He had heard a drum behind all of it, a marching cadence, a sound he knew.

Mardi Gras, years ago. Rushing through the winter street with his mother. “Going to see the Mystic Krewe of Comus.” Yes, that had been the very drum song. And the glare had been the glare of the flickering reeking flambeaux.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“What are you saying?”

“I didn’t see anything that made any sense.” He looked down angrily at the nightgown. Slowly he reached out for it. “Deirdre, in the last days,” he said. “Only Deirdre in the last days.” He touched the soft wrinkled cloth very gently. “I’m seeing the view from the porch, the garden,” he whispered. Yes, the Queen’s Wreath vine, and that is a butterfly climbing the screen, and his hand right there beside her. “Lasher’s there, she’s glad he’s there, and he’s right beside her.” And if he turned his head and looked up from the rocker he’d see Lasher. He set the nightgown down again. “And it was all sunlight and flowers, and she was … was all right.”

“Thank you, Michael.”

“I don’t want to do it again, Rowan, I’m sorry I can’t do it. I don’t want to.”

“I understand,” she said. She came towards him. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was low and sincere and soothing, but her eyes were full of bewilderment. What had he seen that first time around, she wanted to know.

So did he. But what chance had he of knowing?

Yet he was here, inside the house, and he had the power, which had been given to him, presumably by them! And he was being a coward with the power, he, Michael Curry, a coward, and he kept saying he meant to do what they wanted him to do.

Hadn’t they wanted him to come here? Didn’t they want him to touch things? And she wanted him to. How could she not?

He reached out and touched the foot of Deirdre’s bed. Flash of midday, nurses, a cleaning woman pushing a tired vacuum, someone complaining, ceaselessly, a whine. It came so fast finally it was blurred; he ran his fingers along the mattress: her white leg like a thing made out of dough, and Jerry Lonigan there, lifting her, saying under his breath to his assistant, Look at this place, will you look at it, and when he touched the walls, her face suddenly, Deirdre, idiot smile, drool on her chin. He touched the door to the bathroom, a white nurse bullying her, telling her to come now, and move her feet, she knew that she could, pain inside Deirdre, pain eating her insides, a man’s voice speaking, the cleaning woman coming, going, the flush of the toilet, the hum of the mosquitoes, the sight of a sore on her back, good God, look at it, where she has rubbed against the rocker over the years, a festering sore, caked with baby powder, are you people crazy, and the nurse just holds her on the toilet. I can’t …

He turned and pushed past Rowan, brushing her hand away as she tried to stop him. He touched the post of the stairs. Flash of a cotton dress passing him, beat of footsteps on the old carpet. Someone screaming, crying.

“Michael!”

He ran up the steps after them. The baby was roaring in the cradle. It echoed all the way up the three flights from the parlor.

Stench of chemicals, rotted filth in those jars. He’d glimpsed