The witching hour

Forty-eight

THE DAY WAS darkening and the wind was bitter as he got out of the car, but the plantation house looked cheerful and inviting, with all its windows filled with a warm yellow light.

Aaron was waiting at the door for him, layered with wool under his gray cardigan, neck wrapped in a cashmere scarf.

“Here, this is for you,” Michael said. “Merry Christmas, my friend.” He placed a small bottle, wrapped in green Christmas paper, in Aaron’s hands. “It’s not a very big surprise, I’m afraid. But it is the best brandy I could find.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” Aaron said with a little smile. “I’m going to enjoy it immensely. Every drop of it. Come in out of the cold. I have a little something for you, too. I’ll show you later. Come on, inside.”

The warm air was delicious. And there was quite a large and full tree set up in the living room, and very splendidly decorated with gold and silver ornaments, all of which surprised Michael because he hadn’t known how the Talamasca would celebrate such a feast, if they celebrated such things at all. Even the mantels were decorated with holly. And a good fire was blazing on the large living room hearth.

“It’s an old old feast, Michael,” said Aaron, anticipating his question with a little smile. He set the gift on the table. “Goes back long before Christ. The winter solstice-a time when all the forces of the earth are at their strongest. That’s probably why the Son of God chose it as a time to be born.”

“Yeah, well, I could use a little belief in the Son of God right now,” said Michael. “A little belief in the forces of the earth.”

It did feel good in here. It had the nice cozy feel of a country place after First Street-with its lower ceilings and simpler crown moldings, and the large deep fireplace, built not for coal but for a real raging log fire.

Michael took off his leather coat and his gloves, gave them over to Aaron gratefully, and stretched out his hands to warm them over the fire. There was no one else in the main rooms as far as he could tell, though he could hear faint sounds coming from the back kitchen. The wind beat against the French windows. Rimmed in frost, they were nevertheless filled with the pale green of landscape beyond.

The tray with the coffee was waiting and Aaron gestured for Michael to take the chair to the left of the hearth.

As soon as he sat down, he felt the knot inside him loosen. He felt he was going to bawl. He took a deep breath, eyes moving back and forth over everything and nothing, and then without preamble he began.

“It’s happening,” he said, his voice shaky. He could scarcely believe that it had come to this, that he was talking about her this way, yet he went on. “She’s lying to me. He’s there with her, and she’s lying. She’s been lying to me night and day since I came home.”

“Tell me what’s happened,” said Aaron, his face sober and full of immediate sympathy.

“She didn’t even ask why I came back so quickly from San Francisco, Never even brought it up. It was as if she knew. And I was frantic when I called her from the hotel out there. Goddamn it, I told you on the phone what happened. I thought that thing was trying to kill me. She never even asked me what went down.”

“Describe it to me again, all of it.”

“Christ, Aaron, I know now it was Julien and Deborah that I saw in my vision. I don’t have any doubt anymore. I don’t know what the pact means or the promise. But I know that Julien and Deborah are on my side. I saw Julien. I saw him looking at me through the bus window, and it was the strangest thing, Aaron, it was as if he wanted to speak and to move and he couldn’t. It was as if it was hard for him to come through.”

Aaron didn’t say anything. He was sitting with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his finger curled beneath his lower lip. He looked cautious, alert, and thoughtful.

“Go on,” he said.

“But the point is that this particular flash was enough to bring it all back. Not that I remembered everything that was said. But I recaptured the feeling. They want me to intervene. They said something to me about ‘the age-old human tools at my command.’ I heard those words again. I heard Deborah speaking to me. It was Deborah. Only she didn’t look like that picture, Aaron. Aaron, I’ll tell you the most convincing piece of evidence.”

“Yes … ”

“What Llewellyn said to you. Remember. He said he saw Julien in a dream, and Julien wasn’t the same as Julien in life. Remember? Well, you see, that’s the key. In the vision Deborah was a different being. And on that damn street corner in San Francisco, I felt both of them, and they were as I remembered them-wise and good, and knowing things, Aaron. Knowing that Rowan was in terrible danger and that I had to intervene. God, when I think of Julien’s expression through that window. It was so … urgent yet tranquil. I don’t have words to describe it. It was concerned and yet so untroubled … ”

“I think I know what you’re trying to say.”

“Go home, they said, go home. That’s where you’re needed. Aaron, why didn’t he look directly at me on the street?”

“There could be a lot of reasons. It revolves around what you said. If they exist somewhere, it’s difficult for them to come through. It isn’t difficult for Lasher. And that is crucial to our understanding of what’s going on. But I’ll come back to that. Go on … ”

“You can guess, can’t you? I come home, private plane, limo, whole number all arranged by Cousin Ryan, as if I’m a goddamned rock star, and she doesn’t even ask me what’s been happening. Because she’s not Rowan. She’s Rowan caught in something, Rowan smiling and pretending and staring at me with those great big sad gray eyes. Aaron, the worst part is … ”

“Tell me, Michael.”

“She loves me, Aaron. And it’s like she’s silently pleading with me not to confront her. She knows I can see through the deception. God, when I touch her I feel it! She knows I can feel it. And silently, she’s pleading with me not to force her into a corner, not to make her lie. It’s like she’s begging me, Aaron. She’s desperate. I could swear she’s even afraid.”

“Yes. She’s in the thick of it. She’s spoken to me about it. Some sort of communication apparently started when you left. Possibly even before you left.”

“You knew this? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Michael, we’re dealing with something that knows what we’re saying to each other even now.”

“Oh, God!”

“There isn’t any place we can hide from this being,” said Aaron. “Except perhaps in the sanctuary of our own minds. Rowan said many things to me. But the crux of it is that this entire battle is now in Rowan’s hands.”

“Aaron, there must be something we can do. We knew it would happen; we knew it would come to this. You knew before you ever laid eyes on me that it would come to this.”

“Michael, that’s just the point. She is the only one who can do anything. And in loving her, and staying close to her, you are using the age-old tools at your command.”

“That can’t be enough!” He could hardly stand this. He stood up, paced for a minute, and then wound up with his hands on the mantel, staring down into the fire. “You should have called me, Aaron. You should have told me.”

“Look, take your anger out on me if it makes you feel better, but the fact is, she forbade my contacting you with a threat. She was full of threats. Some of these threats were made in the guise of warnings-that her invisible companion wanted to kill me and would soon do it-but they were genuine threats.”

“Christ, when did this happen?”

“Doesn’t matter. She told me to go back to England while I still had time.”

“She told you this? What else did she tell you?”

“I chose not to do it. But what more I can do here, I don’t honestly know. I know that she wanted you to remain in California because she felt you were safe there. But you see, this situation has become too complicated for simple or literal interpretation of the things she said.”

“I don’t know what you mean. What is a literal interpretation? What other kind of interpretation is there? I don’t get it.”

“Michael, she talked in riddles. It wasn’t communication so much as a demonstration of a struggle. Again, I have to remind you, this being, if he chooses, can be here with us in this room. We have no safe place in which we can plot aloud against him. Imagine a boxing match if you can, in which the opponents can read each other’s minds. Imagine a war, where every conceivable strategy is known telepathically from the start.”

“It ups the stakes, ups the excitement, but it isn’t impossible.”

“I agree with you, but it serves no purpose for me to tell you everything that Rowan said to me. Suffice it to say, Rowan is the most able opponent this being has ever had.”

“Aaron, you warned her long ago not to let this thing take her away from us. You warned her that it would seek to divide her from those she loved.”

“I did. And I am sure she remembers it, Michael. Rowan is a human being upon whom almost nothing is lost. And believe me, I have argued with her since. I have told her in the plainest language why she must not allow this being to mutate. But the decision is in her hands.”

“You’re saying in effect that we have to just wait and let her fight this alone.”

“I’m saying in effect that you’re doing what you were meant to do. Love her. Stay near her. Remind her by your very presence of what is natural and inherently good. This is a struggle between the natural and the unnatural, Michael. No matter what that being is made of, no matter what he comes from-it’s a struggle between normal life and aberration. Between evolution on the one hand and disastrous intervention on the other. And both have their mysteries and their miracles, and nobody knows that better than Rowan herself.”

He stood up and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Sit down and listen to what I’m saying,” he said.

“I have been listening,” said Michael crossly. But he obeyed. He sat on the edge of the chair, and he couldn’t stop himself from making his right hand into a fist and grinding it into his left palm.

“All her life, Rowan has confronted this split between the natural and the aberrant,” said Aaron. “Rowan is essentially a conservative human being. And creatures like Lasher don’t change one’s basic nature. They can only work upon the traits which are already there. No one wanted that lovely white-dress wedding more than Rowan did. No 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 by the fire in London and talk about it together. Right now I’m going to go home, and I’m going to stay with her. I’m going to do what you’ve told me to do, and what they’ve told me to do. Because that’s the best thing I can do for her. And for you. I can’t believe she’s going to let that thing hurt you, or hurt me, or hurt anyone. But like you said, the best thing I can do is be near at hand.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Aaron said. “But I can’t stop thinking about what those old men said. About being saved. Such a strange legend.”

“They were wrong about that part. She’s the doorway. I knew it somehow or other when I saw that family tomb.”

Aaron only sighed and shook his head. Michael could see that he was dissatisfied, that there were more things he wanted to consider. But what did they matter now? Rowan was alone in that house with that being, and the being was stealing her away from Michael, and Rowan knew all the answers now, didn’t she? The being was telling her the meaning of everything, and Michael had to go home to her.

He watched anxiously as Aaron rose, a little stiffly, and went to the closet for Michael’s coat and gloves.

Michael stood in the entranceway staring at the Christmas tree, with its lights burning brightly even in the light of the day.

“Why did it have to begin so soon?” he whispered. “Why now, at this time of year?” But he knew the answer. Everything that was happening was connected, somehow. All these gifts were connected with some final dénouement, and even his powerlessness was connected.

“Please be very careful,” said Aaron.

“Yeah, I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow night. You know, to me Christmas Eve has always been like New Year’s Eve. I don’t know why. Must be the Irish blood.”

“The Catholic blood,” said Aaron. “But I understand.”

“If you break open that brandy tomorrow night, hoist one for me.”

“I will. You can count on it. And Michael … if for any reason under God you and Rowan want to come here, you know that the door is open. Night or day. Think of this as your refuge.”

“Thank you, Aaron.”

“And one more thing. If you need me, if you really want me to come and believe that I should, well, then, I shall.”

Michael was about to protest, to say that this was the best place for Aaron, but Aaron’s eyes had moved away; his expression had brightened, and suddenly Aaron pointed to the fanlight window over the front door.

“It’s snowing, Michael, look, it’s really snowing. I can’t believe it. It isn’t even snowing in London, and look, it’s snowing here.”

He opened the door and they walked out on the deep front veranda together. The snow was falling in large flakes, drifting with impossible slowness and grace, down through the windless air towards the earth. It was drifting down onto the black branches of the oaks, coating them with a thick shining layer of whiteness, and making a deep white path between the two rows of trees, all the way to the road.

It was falling on the fields which were already blanketed in the same whiteness, and the sky above was shining and colorless, and seemed to be dissolving into the falling snow.

“And the day before Christmas Eve, Aaron,” said Michael. He tried to see the entire spectacle-this venerable and famous avenue of old trees raising their dark knotted arms into the tumbling and gently whirling flakes of snow. “What a little miracle, that it should come now. Oh, God, it would all be so wonderful if … ”

“May all our miracles be little ones, Michael.”

“Yes, the little miracles are the best, aren’t they? Look at it, it’s not melting when it hits the ground. It’s really staying there. It’s going to be a white Christmas, no doubt about it.”

“But wait a minute,” said Aaron, “I almost forgot. Your Christmas present, and I have it right here.” He reached inside the pocket of his sweater and he took out a very small flat package. No bigger than a half dollar. “Open it. I know we’re both freezing, but I’d like it if you’d open it.”

Michael tore the thin gold paper, and saw immediately that it was an old silver medal on a chain. “It’s St. Michael, the archangel,” he said, smiling. “Aaron, that’s perfect. You’re speaking to my superstitious Irish soul.”

“Driving the devil into hell,” said Aaron. “I found it in a little shop on Magazine Street while you were gone. I thought of you. I thought you might like to have it.”

“Thank you, old buddy.” Michael studied the crude image. It was worn like an old coin. But he could see the winged Michael with his trident over the horned devil who lay on his back in the flames. He lifted the chain, which was long so that he didn’t have to unclasp it, and he put it over his head, and let the medal drop down under his sweater.

He stared at Aaron for a moment, and then he put his arms around him, and held him close.

“Be careful, Michael. Call me very soon.”