The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,457

as she settled back into sleep.

Thirty-two

THE LEGACY.

It had come into her mind sometime during the night: a half dream of hospitals and clinics, and magnificent laboratories, peopled by brilliant researchers …

And all of this you can do.

They wouldn’t understand. Aaron would and Michael would. But the rest of them wouldn’t because they didn’t know the secrets of the file. They didn’t know what had been in the jars.

They knew things but they didn’t know all the way back over the centuries to Suzanne of the Mayfair, midwife and healer in her filthy Scottish village, or Jan van Abel at his desk in Leiden, drawing his clean ink illustration of a flayed torso to reveal the layers of muscle and vein. They didn’t know about Marguerite and the dead body flopping on the bed, and roaring with the voice of a spirit, or Julien watching, Julien who had put the jars in the attic instead of destroying them almost a century ago.

Aaron knew and Michael knew. They would understand the dream of hospitals and clinics and laboratories, of healing hands laid upon sore and aching bodies by the thousands.

What a joke on you, Lasher!

Money was no mystery to her; she was not frightened by the legacy. She could already imagine to the limits that it might allow. She’d never been charmed by money as she had been by anatomy and microsurgery, by biophysics or neurochemistry. But it was no mystery. She’d studied it before, and she’d study it now. And the legacy was something that could be mastered like any other subject … and converted into hospitals, clinics, laboratories … lives saved.

If only she could get the memory of the dead woman out of the house. For that was the real ghost to her, not the ghosts whom Michael had seen, and when she thought of his suffering she could scarcely bear it. It was like seeing everything she loved in him dying inside. She would have driven all the demons in the world back away from him if only she’d known how to do it.

But the old woman. The old woman lay in the rocker still as if she would never leave it. And her stench was worse than the stench of the jars, because it was Rowan’s murder. And the perfect crime.

The stench corrupted the house; it corrupted the history. It corrupted the dream of the hospitals. And Rowan waited at the door.

We want in, old woman. I want my house and my family. The jars have been smashed and the contents are gone now. I have the history in my hand, brilliant as a jewel. I shall atone for it all. Let me in so that I can fight the battle.

Why were they not friends, she and the old woman? Rowan had only contempt for the evil, spiteful voice which had taunted Michael from the contents of the broken jars.

And the spirit knew she loathed it. That when she remembered its secretive touch, she loathed it.

Alone yesterday, hours before Michael had come, she had sat there, waiting for Lasher, listening to every creak and whisper in the old walls.

If you think you can frighten me, you are tragically mistaken. I have no fear of you, and no love either. You are mysterious. Yes. And I am curious. But that is a very cold thing for a scientific mind such as mine. Very cold. You stand between me and the things I could love warmly.

She should have destroyed the jars then. She should have never urged Michael to take off the gloves, and she never would again, of that she was certain. Michael couldn’t endure this power in his hands. He couldn’t really endure his memory of the visions. It made him suffer, and it filled her with dread to see him afraid.

It was the fact of the drowning that had brought them together, not these mysterious dark forces that lurked in the house. Voices speaking from rotted heads in jars. Ghosts in taffeta. His strength and her strength, that had been the origin of their love, and the future was the house, the family, the legacy which could bring the miracles of medicine to thousands, even millions.

What were all the dark ghosts and legends on earth compared to those hard and glittering realities? In her sleep, she saw the buildings rise. She saw the immensity. And the words of the history ran through her dreams. No, never meant to kill the old woman, the one awful flaw. To