The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,564

ice had formed around the edges of the blue water. He saw it glistening and he thought how cold that water must be, so awfully hurtfully cold.

Cold like the Pacific on that summer Sunday when he’d been standing there, empty and slightly afraid. The path from that moment seemed infinitely long. And it was as if all energy or will had left him now, and the cold room held him prisoner, and he could not move a finger to make himself comfortable or safe or warm.

A long time passed. He sat down at the table, lighted a cigarette and watched the darkness come down. The snow had stopped, but the ground was covered in a fresh clean whiteness again.

Time to do something, time to begin the dinner. He knew it, yet he couldn’t move. He smoked another cigarette, comforted by the sight of the tiny burning red flame, and then as he crushed it out, he merely sat still, doing nothing, the way he had for hours in his room on Liberty Street, drifting in and out of a silent panic, unable to think or move.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. But at some time or other, the pool lights came on, shining brilliantly up through the blackness of the night, making a great piece of blue glass of the pool. The dark foliage came alive around it, spattered with the whiteness. And the ground took on a ghostly lunar glow.

He wasn’t alone. He knew it, and as the knowledge penetrated, he realized he had only to turn his head and see her standing there, in the far doorway to the pantry, with her arms folded, her head and shoulders outlined against the pale cabinets behind her, her breath making only the smallest, the most subtle sound.

This was the purest dread he’d ever known. He stood up, slipped the pack of cigarettes into his pocket, and when he looked up she was gone.

He went after her, moving swiftly through the darkened dining room and into the hallway again, and then he saw her all the way at the far end, in the light from the tree, standing against the high white front door.

He saw the keyhole shape perfect and distinct around her, and how small she looked in it, and as he came closer and closer, her stillness shocked him. He was terrified of what he’d see when he finally drew close enough to make out the features of her face in the airy dark.

But it wasn’t that awful marble face he’d seen last night. She was merely looking at him, and the soft colored illumination from the tree filled her eyes with dim reflected light.

“I was going to fix our supper. I bought everything. It’s back there.” How uncertain he sounded. How miserable. He tried to pull himself together. He took a deep breath and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Look, I can start it now. It’s just a small turkey. It will be done in a few hours, and I have everything. It’s all there. We’ll set the table with the pretty china. We’ve never used any of the china. We’ve never had a meal on the table. This is … this is Christmas Eve.”

“You have to go,” she said.

“I … I don’t understand you.”

“You have to get out of here now.”

“Rowan?”

“You have to leave, Michael. I have to be alone here now.”

“Honey, I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Get out, Michael.” Her voice dropped lower, becoming harder. “I want you to go.”

“It’s Christmas Eve, Rowan. I don’t want to go.”

“It’s my house, Michael, I’m telling you to leave it. I’m telling you to get out.”

He stared at her for a moment, stared at the way her face was changing, at the twist of her drawn lips, at the way her eyes had narrowed and she had lowered her head slightly and was looking up at him from under her brows.

“You … you’re not making any sense, Rowan. Do you realize what you’re saying?”

She took several steps towards him. He braced himself, refusing to be frightened. In fact his fear was alchemizing into anger.

“Get out, Michael,” she hissed at him. “Get out of this house and leave me here to do what I must do.”

Suddenly her hand swung up and forward, and before he realized what was happening, he felt the shocking slap across his face.

The pain stung him. The anger crested; but it was more bitter and painful than any anger