The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,558

one wants the family more than Rowan. No one wants that child inside her more than she.”

“She doesn’t even talk about the baby, Aaron. She hasn’t even mentioned its existence since I came home. I wanted to tell the family tonight at the party, but she doesn’t want me to do it. She says she’s not ready. And this party, I know it’s an agony for her. She’s just going through the motions. Beatrice put her up to it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I talk about the baby all the time. I kiss her and call it Little Chris, the name I gave it, and she smiles, and it’s like she’s not Rowan. Aaron, I’m going to lose her and the baby if she loses her battle with him. I can’t think past that. I don’t know anything about mutations and monsters and … and ghosts that want to be alive.”

“Go home, and stay there with her. Stay near her. That’s what they told you to do.”

“And don’t confront her? That’s what you’re saying?”

“You’ll only force her to lie, if you do that. Or worse.”

“What if you and I were to go back there together and try to reason with her, try to get her to turn her back on it?”

Aaron shook his head. “She and I have had our little showdown, Michael. That’s why I made my excuses for this evening to Bea. I’d be challenging her and her sinister companion if I came there. But if I thought it would do any good, I’d come. I’d risk anything if I thought I could help. But I can’t.”

“But Aaron, what makes you so certain?”

“I’m not one of the players now, Michael. I didn’t see the visions. You saw them. Julien and Deborah spoke to you. Rowan loves you.”

“I don’t know if I can stand this.”

“I think you can. Do what you have to do to stand it. And remain close to her. Tell her in some way—silent or otherwise—that you are there for her.”

Michael nodded. “All right,” he said. “You know it’s like she’s being unfaithful.”

“You mustn’t see it like that. You mustn’t become angry.”

“I keep telling myself the same thing.”

“There’s something else I have to say to you. It probably won’t matter in the final analysis. But I want to pass it along. If anything happens to me, well, it’s something that I’d like you to know for what it’s worth.”

“You don’t think anything is going to happen?”

“I don’t honestly know. But listen to what I have to say. For centuries, we’ve puzzled over the nature of these seeming discarnate entities. There isn’t a culture on earth which doesn’t recognize their existence. But nobody knows what they really are. The Catholic Church sees them as demons. They have elaborate theological explanations for their existence. And they see them all as evil and out to destroy. Now all that would be easy to dismiss, except the Catholic Church is very wise about the behavior and the weaknesses of these beings. But I’m straying from the point.

“The point is, that we in the Talamasca have always assumed that these beings were very similar to the spirits of the earth-bound dead. We believed or took for granted that both were essentially bodiless, possessed of intelligence, and locked in some sort of realm around the living.”

“And Lasher could be a ghost, that’s what you’re saying.”

“Yes. But more significantly, Rowan seems to have made some sort of breakthrough in discovering what these beings are. She claims that Lasher possesses a cellular structure, and that the basic components of all organic life are present in him.”

“Then he’s just some sort of bizarre creature, that’s what you’re saying.”

“I don’t know. But what has occurred to me is that maybe the so-called spirits of the dead are made of the same components. Maybe the intelligent part of us, when it leaves the body, takes some living portion with it. Maybe we undergo a metamorphosis, rather than a physical death. And all the age-old words—etheric body, astral body, spirit—are just terms for this fine cellular structure that persists when the flesh is gone.”

“It’s over my head, Aaron.”

“Yes, I am being rather theoretical, aren’t I? I suppose the point I’m trying to make is … that whatever this being can do, maybe the dead can also do. Or perhaps, even more important—even if Lasher possesses this structure, he could still be a malevolent spirit of someone who once lived.”

“That’s for your library in London, Aaron. Some day, maybe, we can sit