The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,451

be flesh when you are dead.

“He’s speaking to me, the devil’s speaking to me! You hear it?”

He was out of the door and down the stairs before he realized what he was doing, or that his heart was thundering in his ears, and that he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t endure it any longer, he had always known it would be like this, the plunging into the nightmare, and that was enough, wasn’t it, what did they want of him, what did she want? That bastard had spoken to him! That thing he had seen standing in the garden had spoken to him, and through that rotted head! He was no coward, he was a human man! But he couldn’t take any more of it.

He’d torn off his coat and thrown it away in the corner of the hallway. Ah, the muck on his fingers, he couldn’t wipe it off.

Belle’s room. Clean and quiet. I’m sorry about the filth, please let me lie down on the clean bed. She was helping him, thank God for that, not trying to stop him.

The bedspread was clean and white and full of dust but the dust was clean, and the sun coming through the opened windows was beautiful and full of dust, Belle. Belle is what he touched now, the soft sweet spirit of Belle.

He was lying on his back. She had the gloves for him. She was wiping his hands with the warm washcloth, so lovingly, and her face was full of concern. She pressed her fingers to his wrist.

“Lie quiet, Michael. I have the gloves here. Lie quiet.”

What was that cold hard thing near his cheek? He reached up. Belle’s rosary, and it was tangling painfully in his hair when he pulled it loose, but that was OK. He wanted it.

And there was Belle. Oh, how lovely.

He tried to tell Rowan Belle was standing there. Rowan was listening to his pulse. But Belle was gone. He had a rosary in his hands; he’d felt its cold beads next to his face, and Belle had been right there, talking to him.

There she was.

“Rest, Michael,” Belle said. Sweet tremulous voice like Aunt Viv. She was fading but he could still see her. “Don’t be afraid of me, Michael, I’m not one of them, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Make them talk to me, make them tell me what they want. Not them, but the ones who came to me. Was it Deborah?”

“Lie quiet, Michael, please.”

What did you say, Rowan? His mouth hadn’t moved.

“We aren’t meant to have these powers,” he said. “They destroy the human in us. You’re human when you’re at the hospital. I was human when I had the hammer and nails in my hands.”

Everything was sliding. How could he explain to her, it had been like scaling a mountain, it had been like all the physical work he’d ever put his hands to, and his back to, done in a single hour. But she wasn’t there. She’d kissed him and laid a quilt over him and gone out because he was asleep. Belle was sitting at the dresser, such a lovely picture. Sleep, Michael.

“Are you going to be here when I wake up?”

“No, darling, I’m not really here now. It’s their house, Michael. I’m not one of them.”

Sleep.

He clutched at the rosary beads. Millie Dear said, Time to go to church. The rooms are so clean and quiet. They love each other. Pearl gray gabardine. It has to become our house. That’s why I loved it so when I was small and I’d walk here. Loved it. Our house. Never any quarrel between Belle and Millie Dear. So nice … Something almost adorable about Belle with her face so pretty in old age, like a flower pressed in a book, tinted still and fragrant.

Deborah said to him, … incalculable power, power to transmute …

He shuddered.

… not easy, so difficult you can scarce imagine it, the hardest thing perhaps that you …

I can do this!

Sleep.

And through his sleep, he heard the comforting sound of breaking glass.

When he awoke, Aaron was there. Rowan had brought him a change of clothes from the hotel, and Aaron helped him into the bathroom, so that he could wash and change. It was spacious and actually comfortable.

Every muscle in him ached. His back ached. His hands burned. He had the antsy awful feeling that he’d had all those weeks on Liberty Street, until he pulled the gloves back on and took a swallow of the beer Aaron gave