The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,492

before it’s too late!”

A British accent; it was Arthur Langtry. He broke into a rapid swim for the far end. But before he’d taken three strokes, he lost his wind. A sharp pain caught him in the ribs, and he veered for the side.

As he caught hold of the lip of the pool and pulled himself up again, the night around him was empty and quiet.

For a second he did nothing. He remained there, panting, trying to control the beating of his heart, and waiting for the pain in his lungs to go away. His eyes moved all the while over the empty patio, over the barren windows, over the emptiness of the lawn.

Then he tried to climb up and out of the pool. His body felt impossibly heavy, and even in the heat he was cold. He stood there shivering for a moment, then he went into the cabana and picked up one of the soiled towels he used in the day, when he came in here to wash his hands. He toweled dry with it, and went back out and looked again at the empty garden and the darkened house. The freshly painted violet walls were now exactly the color of the twilight sky.

His own noisy breathing was the only sound in the quiet. But the pain was gone from his chest, and slowly he forced himself to breathe deeply several times.

Was he frightened? Was he angry? He honestly didn’t know. He was in a state of shock maybe. He wasn’t sure on that score either. He felt he’d run the four-minute mile again, that was certain, and his head was beginning to hurt. He picked up his clothes and dressed, refusing to hurry, refusing to be driven away.

Then for a long moment he sat on the curved iron bench, smoking a cigarette and studying things around him, trying to remember exactly what he’d seen. Stella’s last party. Arthur Langtry.

Another one of Lasher’s tricks?

Far away, over the lawn, all the way at the front fence, among the camellias, he thought he saw someone moving. He heard steps echoing. But it was only an evening stroller, someone peeping perhaps through the leaves.

He listened until he could no longer hear the distant footsteps, and he realized he was hearing the click of the riverfront train passing, just the way he’d heard it on Annunciation Street when he was a boy. And that sound again, the sound of a baby crying, that was just a train whistle.

He rose to his feet, stubbed out the cigarette, and went back into the house.

“You don’t scare me,” he said, offhandedly. “And I don’t believe it was Arthur Langtry.”

Had someone sighed in the darkness? He turned around. Nothing but the empty dining room around him. Nothing but the high keyhole door to the hallway. He walked on, not bothering to soften his footfalls, letting them echo loudly and obtrusively.

There was a faint clicking. A door closing? And the sound a window makes when it is raised—a vibration of wood and panes of glass.

He turned and went up the stairway. He went to the front and then through every empty room. He didn’t bother with the lights. He knew his way around the old furniture, ghostly under its plastic drapery. The pale light from the street lamp floating through the doorways was plenty enough for him.

Finally he had covered every foot of it. He went back down to the first floor and out the door.

When he got back to the hotel, he called Aaron from the lobby and asked him to come down to the bar for a drink. It was a pleasant little place, right in the front, small, with a few cozy tables in a dim light, and seldom crowded.

They took a table in the corner. Swallowing half a beer in record time, he told Aaron what had happened. He described the gray-haired man.

“You know, I don’t even want to tell Rowan,” he said.

“Why not?” Aaron asked.

“Because she doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to see me upset again. It drives her nuts. She tries to be understanding, but things just don’t affect her the same way. I go crazy. She gets angry.”

“I think you must tell her.”

“She’ll tell me to ignore it, and to go on doing what makes me happy. And sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t get the hell out of here, Aaron, if somebody shouldn’t … ” He stopped.

“What, Michael?”

“Ah, it’s crazy. I’d kill anybody who tried to hurt