The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,539

side against the pillow; the dress was ripping, and the invisible hands were moving down her belly. Something like teeth grazed her naked sex, fingernails scraping her calves.

“Yes,” she cried, her teeth clenched. “Make it cruel.”

Forty-three

HOW MANY DAYS and nights had passed? She honestly did not know. Unopened mail stacked on the hall table. The phone, now and then ringing—to no avail.

“Yes, but who are you? Underneath it all. Who is there?”

“I told you, such questions mean nothing to me. I can be what you want me to be.”

“Not good enough.”

“What was I? A phantom. Infinitely satisfied. I don’t know whence came the capacity to love Suzanne. She taught me what death was when she was burnt. She was sobbing when they dragged her to the stake; she couldn’t believe they could do it to her. This was a child, my Suzanne, a woman with no understanding of human evil. And my Deborah was forced to watch it. And had I made the storm, they would have burnt them both.

“Even in her agony. Suzanne stayed my hand, for Deborah’s sake. She went mad, her head banging against the stake. Even the villagers were terrified. Crude, stupid mortals come there to drink wine and laugh as she was burned. Even they could not bear the sound of her screaming. And then I saw the beautiful flesh and blood form which nature had given her ravaged by fire, like a corn husk in a burning field. I saw her blood pouring down on the roaring logs. My Suzanne. In the perfection of her youth, and in her strength, burnt like a wax candle for a stupid pack of villagers who gathered in the heat of the afternoon.

“Who am I? I am the one who wept for Suzanne when no one wept. I am the one who felt an agony without end, when even Deborah stood numb, staring at the body of her mother twisting in the fire.

“I am the one who saw the spirit of Suzanne leave the pain-racked body. I saw it rise upwards, freed, and without care. Do I have a soul that it could know such joy—that Suzanne would suffer no more? I reached out for her spirit, shaped still in the form of her body, for she did not know yet that such a form was not required of her, and I tried to penetrate and to gather, to take unto myself what was now like unto me.

“But the spirit of Suzanne went past me. It took no more notice of me than of the burning husk in the fire. Upwards it went away from me and beyond me, and there was no more Suzanne.

“Who am I? I am Lasher, who stretched himself out over the whole world, threaded through and through with the pain of the loss of Suzanne. I am Lasher, who drew himself together, made tentacles of his power, and lashed at the village till the terrified villagers ran for cover, once my beloved Deborah was taken away. I laid waste the village of Donnelaith. I chased the witch judge through the fields, pounding him with stones. There was no one left to tell the tale when I finished. And my Deborah gone with Petyr van Abel, to silks and satins, and emeralds, and men who would paint her picture.

“I am Lasher, who mourned for the simpleton, and carried her ashes to the four winds.

“This was my awakening to existence, to self-consciousness, to life and death, to paying attention.

“I learned more in that interval of twenty days than in all the gracious aeons of watching mortals grow upon the face of the earth, like a breed of insect, mind springing from matter but snared in it, meaningless as a moth with its wing nailed to a wall.

“Who am I? I am Lasher, who came down to sit at the feet of Deborah and learn how to have purpose, to obtain ends, to do the will of Deborah in perfection so that Deborah would never suffer; Lasher, who tried and failed.

“Turn your back on me. Do it. Time is nothing. I shall wait for another to come who is as strong as you are. Humans are changing. Their dreams are filled with the forecast of these changes. Listen to the words of Michael. Michael knows. Mortals dream ceaselessly of immortality, as their lives grow longer. They dream of unimpeded flight. There will come another who will break down the barriers between the carnate and discarnate. I