The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,533

aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical.”

“I think not.”

She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.

“Were you ever a living human being?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder.”

“It came from matter.”

“It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.”

“You and the others who were already there.”

“In timelessness already there.”

“Did it draw your attention?”

“Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.”

“How?”

“The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers; they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.”

“So you learned self-consciousness from us.”

“All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent.”

“Then there are others of you with ambition.”

“Julien said, ‘Matter created man and man created the gods.’ That is partially correct.”

“Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.”

“I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?”

“Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“Of course. How can Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron’s coming before there was Aaron. Arthur Langtry’s warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron.”

“But how does Aaron lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?”

“Aaron has a mission. So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand.”

“What is this secret knowledge? This mission?”

“To protect man from us. To make sure there are no more doorways.”

“You mean there have been doorways before now?”

“There have. There have been mutations. But you are the greatest of all doorways. What you can achieve with me shall be unparalleled.”

“Wait a minute. You mean other discarnate entities have come into the realm of the material?”

“Yes.”

“But who? What are they?”

“Laughter. They conceal themselves very well.”

“Laughter. Why did you say that?”

“Because I am laughing at your question, but I don’t know how to make the sound of laughter. So I say it. I laugh at you that you don’t think this would have happened before. You, a mortal, with all the stories of ghosts and monsters of the night, and other such horrors. Did you think there was not even a kernel of truth to these old tales? But it is not important. Our fusion shall be more nearly perfect than any in the past.”

“Aaron knows this, that’s what you’re saying, that others have come through.”

“Yes.”

“And why does he want to stop me from being the doorway?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because he believes you’re evil.”

“Unnatural, that is what he would say, which is foolish, for I am as natural as electricity, as natural as the stars, as natural as fire.”

“Unnatural. He fears your power.”

“Yes. But he is a fool.”

“Why?”

“Rowan, as I have told you before, if this fusion can be achieved once, it can be achieved again. Do you not understand me?”

“Yes, I understand you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door.”

“Aye, Rowan. Now you are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your imagination enormous; you were what men fear—the