The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,456

of the little fragments that had come back before he had taken off the gloves. And it was not surprising that he could remember almost nothing at all. And then the beginning of the catastrophe when he’d held Deirdre’s nightgown in his hand:

“Same drums as the Comus Parade. Or any such parade. The point is, an awful frightening sound, a sound to do with some sort of dark and potentially destructive energy.”

He stopped. Then went on. “I remember something else too, now. At Rowan’s house in Tiburon. After we made love. I woke up thinking the place was on fire and there were all kinds of people downstairs. I remember now. It was the same ambience, the same lurid sort of light, the same sinister quality.

“And the fact of the matter was, that Rowan was just down there by the fire she’d lighted in the fireplace.

“But it was the same feeling. Fire and people there, many many people, crowded together, a commotion in the flickering light.

“And I had no sense of recognition when I saw Julien upstairs, or when I saw Charlotte, or Mary Beth, or Antha, poor, tragic Antha scrambling over that roof. To see something like that is to feel it; it swallows you. There’s nothing left of you inside while you’re seeing it. But they weren’t in my visions. None of them. And Deborah was just a body crumpled on the pyre. She wasn’t standing there with them. Now surely that means something in itself.”

He reread what he had written. He wanted to add more but he was leery of embellishment. He was leery of logic. Deborah’s not one of them? That’s why she wasn’t there?

He went on to describe the rest. “Antha was wearing a cotton dress. I saw the patent leather belt she wore. When she crawled across the roof, she tore her stockings. Her knees were bleeding. But her face, that was the unforgettable part, her eye torn out of the socket. And the sound of her voice. I’ll carry that sound to the grave with me. And Julien. Julien looked as solid as she did while he was watching. Julien wore black. And Julien was young. Not a boy, by any means. But a vigorous man, not an old man. Even in the bed he wasn’t old.”

Again he paused. “And what else did Lasher say that was new. Something about patience, about waiting … and then that mention of the thirteen.

“But the thirteen what? If it’s a number on a doorway, I haven’t seen it. The jars, there weren’t thirteen jars. There were more like twenty, but I’ll verify this with Rowan.”

Again, he stopped, thought about embellishments, but didn’t add them.

“The cheerful fiend didn’t say a damn thing about a doorway,” he wrote. “No, just his threat that I’d be dead while he’d be flesh and blood.”

Dead. Tombs. Something Rowan had said before the day was shattered, like a piece of glass. Or like a glass jar. Something about a keyhole doorway carved on the Mayfair tomb.

“I’ll go there tomorrow, and see for myself. If the number thirteen is carved somewhere on that doorway, I hope to God it brings me more enlightenment than what happened today.

“Whatever happens, no matter what I see, or what I think it means, I begin some serious work tomorrow. And so does Rowan. She goes downtown early with Ryan and Pierce to talk about the legacy. I start to talk to the other contractors in town. I start real, true, honest work on the house.

“And that feels better than any other course of action. It feels like a form of salvation.

“Let’s see how Lasher likes it. Let’s see what he chooses to do.”

He left the notebook on the table and went back to bed.

In sleep, Rowan was so smooth and expressionless that she was like a perfect wax mannequin beneath the sheets. The warmth of her skin surprised him when he kissed her. Stirring slowly, she turned and wound her arms around him, and nuzzled against his neck. “Michael … ” she whispered in a dreamy voice. “St. Michael, the archangel … ” Her fingers touched his lips, as if groping in the dark to know that he was really there. “Love you … ”

“I love you, too, darlin’,” he whispered. “You’re mine, Rowan.” And he felt the heat of her breasts against his arm, as he drew her close to him. She turned over and her soft fleecy sex was a little flame against his thigh,