The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,447

it last night, she’d told him about it, but now he had to see it, didn’t he? And touch it. Touch Marguerite’s filthy jars. He’d smelled it last night when he’d come up to find Townsend’s body, only it wasn’t the body. His hand on the railing, caught a flash of Rowan with the lamp in her hand. Rowan angry and miserable and trying to escape the old woman, who was beating her with words, viciousness, and then the black woman with her dust mop, and a carpenter putting a pane of glass in this window that looked out over the roof. God, that is an awful smell up here, lady. Just do your job. Deirdre’s bedroom, shrill clang of other voices, rising to a peak, then washing away, and another wave coming. And the door, the door straight ahead, someone laughing, a man speaking French, what he’s saying, let me hear one distinct word, the stench is behind it.

But no, first Julien’s room, Julien’s bed. The laughing grew louder, but a baby’s crying was mixed up with it, someone rushing up the stairs just behind him. The door gave him Eugenia again, dusting, complaining about the stench, Carlotta’s voice droning on, the words indistinguishable, and then that awful stain there in the darkness where Townsend died, drawing his last breath through the hole in the carpet, and the mantel, wavering flash of Julien! The same man, yes, the same man he’d seen when he held Deirdre’s nightgown, yes, you, Julien, staring at him, I see you, and then footsteps running, no, I don’t want to see this, but he reached out for the windowsill, grabbed the little cord of the shade, and up it ran, rattling at the top, revealing the dirty windowpanes.

She flew past him, Antha, through the glass, scuttling out on the roof, terrified, tangle of hair over her wet face, her eye, look at her eye, it’s on her cheek, dear God. Sobbing, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me! Lasher, help me!”

“Rowan!”

And Julien, why didn’t he do something, why did he stand there crying silently, doing nothing. “You can call on the devil in hell and the saints in heaven, they won’t help you,” said Carlotta, her voice a snarl as she climbed through the window.

And Julien helpless. “Kill you, bitch, kill you, you will not … ”

She’s gone, she’s fallen, her scream unfurling like a great billowing red flag against the blue sky. Julien with his face in his hands. Helpless. Shimmering gone, a ghost witness. The chaos again, Carlotta fading. He clamped his hands on the iron bed, Julien sitting there, wavering yet distinct for an instant, I know you, dark eyes, smiling mouth, white hair, yes, you, don’t touch me! “Eh bien, Michel, at last!”

His hand struck the packing crates lying on the bed, but he couldn’t see them. He could see nothing but the light wavering and forming the image of the man sitting there under the covers, and then it was gone, and then it was there. Julien was trying to get out of the bed … No, get away from me.

“Michael!”

He had shoved the boxes off the bed. He was stumbling over the books. The dolls, where were the dolls? In the trunk. Julien said that, didn’t he? He said it in French. Laughter, a chorus of laughter. Rustle of skirts around him. Something broke. His knee struck something sharp, but he crawled on towards the trunk. Latches rusted, no problem, throw back the lid.

Wavering, vanishing, Julien stood there, nodding, pointing down into the trunk.

The rusted hinges broke completely as the lid slammed back into the old plaster and fell loose. What was that rustling, like taffeta all around him, feet scraping the floor around him, figures looming over him, like flashes of light through shutters, here and then gone, let me breathe, let me see. It was like the rustle of the nuns’ skirts when he was in school and they came thundering down the hallway to hit the boys, to make the boys get back in line, rustling of beads and cloth and petticoats …

But there are the dolls.

Look, the dolls! Don’t hurt them, they are so old and so fragile, with their dumb scribble scratch faces looking at you, and look, that one, with the button eyes, and the braids of gray, in her tiny little perfect man clothes of tweed to the very trousers. God, bones inside!

He held it. Mary Beth! The flapping gores of her