The witching hour

Eight

AFTER MICHAEL LEFT, Rowan sat on the western deck for hours, letting the sun warm her, and thinking in a rather incoherent and sleepy way about all that had taken place. She was slightly shocked and bruised by what had happened, rather deliciously bruised.

Nothing could efface the shame and guilt she felt for having burdened Michael with her doubts and her grief. But this was of no real concern to her now.

One did not become a good neurosurgeon by dwelling for very long on one’s mistakes. The appropriate thing, and the instinctive thing for Rowan, was to assess the error for what it was, consider how to avoid it in the future, and then to go on from there.

And so she took stock of her aloneness, her sadness, the revelation of her own need, which had caused her to fall into Michael’s arms, and she took stock also of the fact that Michael had enjoyed comforting her, that it had drawn the two of them together, deeply coloring their new relationship in a wholly unforeseen way.

Then she moved on to thinking about him.

Rowan had never loved a man of Michael’s age; she had never imagined the degree of selflessness and simplicity which was evident in Michael’s most spontaneous words or gestures. She had been unprepared for and quite enthralled by Michael’s mellowness of soul. As for his lovemaking, well, it was damn near perfect. He liked it rough and tumble the way she did; rather like a rape from both sides, it seemed to her. She wished they could do it again right now.

And for Rowan, who had so long kept her spiritual hungers and her physical hungers completely separated, satisfying the first through medicine and the second through near anonymous bed partners, the sudden convergence of the two in one good-hearted, intelligent, irresistibly huggable and charmingly cheerful and handsome figure with a captivating combination of mysterious psychological and psychic problems was just about more than she could handle. She shook her head, laughing softly to herself, then sipping her coffee. “Dickens and Vivaldi,” she whispered aloud. “Oh, Michael, please come back to me. Come back soon.” This was a gift from the sea, this man.

But what the hell was going to happen to him, even if he did come back right away? This idée fixe about the visions and the house and the purpose was destroying him. And furthermore, she had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t going to come back.

There wasn’t any doubt in her mind, as she sat half dreaming in the clear afternoon sun, that Michael was drunk by now and that he would get drunker before he ever reached his mysterious house. It would have been a lot better for him if she had gone with him, to look after him and to try to steady him through the shocks of this trip.

In fact, it occurred to her now that she had abandoned Michael twice-once when she had given him up too soon and too easily to the Coast Guard; and this morning, when she had let him go on to New Orleans alone.

Of course no one would have expected her to go with him to New Orleans. But then nobody knew what she felt for Michael, or what Michael had felt for her.

As for the nature of Michael’s visions, and she thought about these at length, she had no conclusive opinion except that they could not be attributed to a physiological cause. And again, their particularity-their eccentricity-startled her and frightened her somewhat. And there persisted in her a sense of Michael’s dangerous innocence, his naivete, which seemed to her to be connected to his attitudes about evil. He understood good better than he did evil.

Yet why, when they’d been driving over from San Francisco, did he ask her that curious question: had she been trying to throw him some sort of warning?

He had seen Graham’s death when he touched her hand because she had been thinking of Graham’s death. And the thought of it tortured her. But how could Michael construe this to be a deliberate warning? Had he sensed something of which she was wholly unaware?

The longer she sat in the sun, the more she realized that she could not think clearly and that she could not endure this longing for Michael, which was reaching the point of anguish.

She went upstairs to her room. She was just stepping into the shower when she thought of something. She had forgotten completely to use a contraceptive with Michael. It wasn’t the first time in her life she had been so stupid, but it was the first time in many years.

But it was done now, wasn’t it? She turned on the tap and stood back against the tile, letting the water flood over her. Imagine having a child by him. But that was crazy. Rowan didn’t want babies. She had never wanted babies. She thought again of that fetus in the laboratory, with all the wires and the tubes connected to it. No, her destiny was to save lives, not to make them. So what did that mean? For two weeks or so she’d be anxious; then when she knew she wasn’t pregnant, she’d be all right.

She was so sleepy when she came out of the shower that she was scarcely aware of what she was doing. She found Michael’s discarded shirt by the bed, the one he’d taken off the night before. It was a blue work shirt, starched and pressed as well as a dress shirt, which she had liked. She folded it neatly, and then lay down with it in her arms as if it were a child’s favorite blanket or stuffed toy.

And there she slept for six hours.

When she awoke, she knew she could not stay alone in the house. It seemed Michael had left his warm imprint on everything. She could hear the timbre of his voice, his laughter, see his enormous blue eyes peering at her earnestly through the horn-rimmed glasses, feel his gloved fingers touching her nipples, her cheek.

It was too early still to expect to hear from him, and now the house seemed all the more empty in the aftermath of his warmth.

At once she called the hospital. Of course they needed her. It was Saturday night in San Francisco, wasn’t it? The Emergency Rooms at San Francisco General had already overflowed. Accident victims were pouring into the Trauma Center at University from a multicar crash on Highway 101, and there had been several shootings in the Mission.

As soon as she arrived, there was a patient waiting for her in surgery, already intubated and anesthetized, the victim of an attempted ax murder, who had lost a great deal of blood. The intern ran through the history as Rowan scrubbed. Dr. Simmons had already opened. She saw as soon as she entered the ice-box-cold Operating Room that Dr. Simmons was relieved that she had come.

She surveyed the scene carefully as she stretched out her arms to receive the sterile green gown and the plastic gloves. Two of the best nurses on duty; one intern getting sick, the other powerfully excited by the proceedings; the anesthetists not her favorites but adequate; Dr. Simmons having done a good and tidy job of things so far.

And there was the patient, the anonymous patient, mounted in a slump of a sitting position, head bowed, the skull opened, the face and limbs hidden completely beneath layers and layers of green cotton drapery, except for two naked, helpless feet.

She moved towards the head of the table, behind the slumped body, nodding to the few rapid words the anesthetist spoke to her, and with her right foot she pressed down on the pedal that adjusted the giant double surgical scope, bringing into focus the opened brain, its tissues held back by the shining metal retractors.

“What a god-awful mess,” she whispered.

Soft, delicate laughter all around.

“She knew you were coming in, Dr. Mayfair,” said the older of the two nurses, “so she just told her husband to go on and give her another whack with that ax.”

Rowan smiled behind her mask, her eyes crinkling. “What do you think, Dr. Simmons?” she asked. “Can we clean up all this blood in here without sucking out too much of this lady’s brain?”

For five hours, she did not think of Michael at all.

It was two o’clock when she reached home. The house was dark and cold as she expected it to be when she came in. But for the first time since Ellie’s death she did not find herself brooding over Ellie. She didn’t think uneasily and painfully of Graham.

No message on her machine from Michael. She was disappointed but not surprised. She had a vivid image of him staggering off the plane, drunk. It was four o’clock in New Orleans, she figured. She couldn’t ring the Pontchartrain Hotel now.

Best not to think too much about it, she reasoned as she went up to bed once more.

Best not to think about the paper in the safe that said she couldn’t go back to New Orleans. Best not to think about getting on a plane and going to him. Best not to think about Andrew Slattery, her colleague, who still hadn’t been hired at Stanford, and who might be all too happy to fill in for her at University for a couple of weeks. Why the hell had she asked Lark tonight about Slattery, calling him just after midnight, to ask specifically whether Slattery had found a job. Something was going on in her feverish little brain.

It was three o’clock when next she opened her eyes. Someone was in the house. She did not know what noise or vibration had caused her to waken, only that someone else was there. The numerals of the digital clock were the only illumination other than the distant lights of the city. A great gust of wind hit the windows suddenly and with it a shower of glittering spray.

She realized the house was moving violently on its pilings. There was the faint rattle of glass.

She rose as quietly as she could, removed a.38-caliber pistol from the dresser drawer, cocked it, and went to the head of the stairs. She held the gun with two hands as Chase, her cop friend, had taught her to do. She had practiced with this gun and she knew how to use it. She was not afraid so much as angry, deeply angry, and quietly alert.

She heard no footsteps. She heard only the wind, howling distantly in the chimney, and making the thick glass walls ever so faintly groan.

She could see the living room directly below, in the usual glaze of bluish lunar light. Another volley of droplets struck the windows. She heard the Sweet Christine slam dully against the rubber tires fixed along the northern pier.

Quietly she went down, step by step, her eyes sweeping the empty rooms with each curve of the staircase, until she reached the lower floor. There was not a crevice of the house she could not see from where she stood, except the bathroom behind her. And seeing only emptiness everywhere she looked, and the Sweet Christine rocking awkwardly, she moved cautiously towards the bathroom door.

The little room was empty. Nothing disturbed there. Michael’s coffee cup on the vanity counter. Scent of Michael’s cologne.

Looking out once more through the front rooms, she rested back against the frame of the door. The ferocity of the wind slamming the glass walls alarmed her. She had heard it in the past, many a time, however. And only once had it been strong enough to break the glass. Such a storm had never come during the month of August. It had always been a winter phenomenon, coupled with the heavy rains that poured down on the hills of Marin County, washing mud into the streets, and sometimes washing houses off their foundations as well.

Now she watched, vaguely fascinated as the water splashed and spattered onto the long decks, staining them darkly. She could see a frost of drops on the windshield of the Sweet Christine. Had this sudden storm deceived her? She sent out her invisible antennae. She listened.

Beyond the groaning of glass and wood, she heard no alien sound. But something was wrong here. She wasn’t alone. And the intruder was not on the second floor of the house, she was certain of that. He was near. He was watching her. But where? She could find no explanation for what she felt.

The digital clock in the kitchen made a tiny, near imperceptible clicking sound as it rolled over to reveal that the time was five minutes after three A.M.

Something moved in the corner of her eye. She did not turn to stare at it. She chose not to move at all. And gradually, shifting her gaze sharply to the left without moving her head, she took in the figure of a man standing on the western deck.

He appeared to be slight of build, white-faced, with dark hair. His posture was not furtive or threatening. He stood unaccountably straight, arms natural at his sides. Surely she wasn’t seeing this figure clearly, for the clothes seemed improbable to the point of impossibility-formal, and elegantly cut.

Her rage grew stronger, and a cold calm settled over her. Her reasoning was instantaneous. He could not gain entrance to the house through the deck doors. He could not batter his way through the thick glass either. And if she fired the gun at him, which she would have loved to do, shed put a hole in the glass. Of course he might fire a gun at her as soon as he saw her. But why would he do it? Intruders want to get in. Besides, she was almost certain that he had already seen her, that he’d been watching her, and was watching her now.

Very slowly she turned her head. However dark the living room might have appeared to him, there was no doubt that he could see her, that he was looking at her, in fact.

His boldness infuriated her. And her sense of the danger of the situation mounted. She watched coldly as he moved towards the glass.

“Come on, you bastard, I’ll cheerfully kill you,” she whispered, feeling the hairs rise on her neck. A delicious chill passed through her whole body. She wanted to kill him, whoever he was, trespasser, madman, thief. She wanted to blow him right off the deck with the.38-caliber bullet. Or to put it simply, with any power she had at her command.

Slowly, with both hands, she lifted the gun. She pointed it directly at him and stretched out her arms as Chase had taught her to do.

Undeterred, the intruder continued to look at her, and through her quiet, iron-cold fury, she marveled at the physical details that she could make out. The dark hair was wavy, the face wan and thin, and there seemed something sad and beseeching in the shadowy expression. The head turned gently on the neck as though the man were pleading with her, speaking to her.

Who in God’s name are you? she thought. The incongruity of it struck her slowly, along with a completely alien thought. This is not what it appears to be. This is some form of illusion I’m looking at! And with a sudden interior shift, her anger passed into suspicion and finally fear.

The dark eyes of the being implored her. He raised his pale hands now and placed his fingers on the glass.

She could neither move nor speak. Then, furious at her helplessness and at her terror, she cried:

“You go back to hell where you came from!” her voice sounding loud and terrible in the empty house.

As if to answer her, to unsettle her and vanquish her totally, the intruder slowly disappeared. The figure went transparent, then dissolved utterly, and nothing was left but the faintly horrible and completely unsettling sight of the empty deck.

The immense pane of glass rattled. There came another boom from it as though the wind had pushed against it head on. Then the sea seemed to settle. The rushing of water died away. And the house grew still. Even the Sweet Christine settled uneasily in the channel beside the pier.

Rowan continued to look at the empty deck. Then she realized her hands were wet with perspiration, and shaking. The gun felt enormously heavy and dangerously uncontrollable. In fact, she was shaking all over. Nevertheless, she went directly to the glass wall. Furious at her defenselessness against this thing, she touched the glass where the being had touched it. The glass was faintly but distinctly warm. Not warm as it might be from a human hand, for that would be too subtle a thing to warm such a cold surface, but warm as if heat had been directed at it.

Again she studied the bare boards. She stared out at the dark, faceted water and the distant cozy lights of Sausalito on the other side of the bay.

She moved swiftly to the kitchen counter, set down the gun, and picked up the phone.

“I have to reach the Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans. Please dial it,” she said, her voice quaking. And the only thing she could do to calm herself as she waited was to listen, to reassure herself of what she already knew, that she was completely alone.

Useless to check locks and latches. Useless to go poking in drawers and nooks and crannies. Useless, useless, useless.

She was frantic by the time the hotel answered. “I have to speak to Michael Curry,” she said. He was to have checked in that night, she explained. No, it didn’t matter that it was five-twenty in New Orleans. Please ring his room.

It seemed forever that she stood there alone, too shaken to question the selfishness of waking Michael at this hour. Then came the operator again: “I’m sorry, but Mr. Curry is not answering.”

“Try him again. Send someone up to the room, please. I have to talk to him.”

Finally, when they had failed to rouse him altogether, and refused of course to enter the suite without his permission-and for that she couldn’t blame them-she left an urgent message, hung up and sank down on the hearth, and tried to think.

She was certain of what she’d seen, absolutely certain of it. An apparition there on the deck, looking at her, drawing close to her, examining her! Some being that could appear and disappear entirely at will. Yet why had she seen the gleam of light on the edge of his collar; why the droplets of moisture in his hair? Why was the glass warm to the touch? She wondered if the thing had substance to it when it was visible, and if that substance dissolved when the creature “appeared to disappear.”

In sum, her mind ran to science as it always had, and she knew this was her tack, but it could not stop the panic in her, the great awful feeling of helplessness that had come over her and stayed with her now, making her afraid in her own safe place, where she’d never been afraid before.

Why had the wind and the rain been part of it, she wondered. Surely she hadn’t imagined that part. And why, above all else, had this creature appeared to her?

“Michael,” she whispered. It was like a prayer dropping from her lips. Then she gave a little whispered laugh. “I’m seeing them, too.”

She rose from the hearth and went about the house slowly, with steady steps, turning on every light.

“All right,” she said calmly, “if you come back, it will have to be in a blaze of illumination.” But this was absurd, wasn’t it? Something that could move the very waters of Richardson Bay could trip a circuit breaker easily enough.

But she wanted these lights on. She was scared. She went into the bedroom, locked the door behind her, locked the door of the closet, and closed the door of the bathroom, and then lay down, plumping the pillows under her head, and placing the gun within reach.

She lit a cigarette, knowing it was dreadful to smoke in bed, checked out the tiny winking red light on the smoke alarm, and then continued to smoke.

A ghost, she thought. Imagine it, I have seen one. I never believed in them, but I’ve seen one. It had to be a ghost. There’s nothing else it could have been. But why did this ghost appear to me? Again, she saw its imploring expression, and the vividness of the experience returned to her.

It made her miserable suddenly that she couldn’t reach Michael, that Michael was the only one in the whole world who might believe what had happened, that Michael was the only one she trusted enough to tell.

The fact was, she was excited; it was curiously like her feeling after the rescue that night. I have been through something awful and thrilling. She wanted to tell someone. She lay there, wide-eyed in the bright shadowless yellow light of the bedroom thinking, Why did it appear to me?

So curious the way it had walked across the deck and peered through the glass at her. “You would have thought I was the strange one.”

And the excitement continued. But she was very relieved when the sun finally rose. Sooner or later, Michael would wake up out of his drunken sleep. He’d see the message light on his phone; and surely, he would call.

“And here I am wanting something from him again, reaching out to him right in the midst of whatever is happening there, needing him … ”

But now she was drifting off, in the warm sweet safety of the sunlight pouring through the glass, snuggling into the warm pillows and pulling the patchwork quilt over her, thinking about him, about the dark fleecy hair on the backs of his arms and his hands, about his large eyes again peering at her through the glasses. And only on the cusp of dream did she think, Could this ghost possibly have something to do with him?

The visions. She wanted to say, “Michael, is it something to do with the visions?” Then the dream swung into absurdity, and she wakened, resisting the irrelevance and the grotesqueness as she always did, consciousness being so much better, thinking-of course, Slattery could fill in for her, and if Ellie existed somewhere she no longer cared whether Rowan went back to New Orleans, certainly, for we had to believe that, didn’t we? That what was beyond this plane was infinitely better; and then she fell back into exhausted sleep again.