Sleep.
And through his sleep, he heard the comforting sound of breaking glass.
When he awoke, Aaron was there. Rowan had brought him a change of clothes from the hotel, and Aaron helped him into the bathroom, so that he could wash and change. It was spacious and actually comfortable.
Every muscle in him ached. His back ached. His hands burned. He had the antsy awful feeling that he’d had all those weeks on Liberty Street, until he pulled the gloves back on and took a swallow of the beer Aaron gave him at his request. The pain in his muscles was awful, and even his eyes were tired, as if he’d been reading for hours by a poor light.
“I’m not going to get drunk,” he told both of them.
Rowan explained that his heart had been racing, that whatever had happened it had been an extreme physical exertion, that a pulse reading like that was something you expected after a man had run a four-minute mile. It was important that he rest, and that he not remove the gloves again.
OK by him. He would have loved nothing better than to encase his hands in concrete!
They went back to the hotel together, ordered supper, and sat quietly in the living room of the suite. For two hours, he told them everything he had seen:
He told them about the little snatches of the visions that were coming back to him even before he’d taken off the gloves. He told them about the first vision when he held Deirdre’s nightgown, and how it was Julien he’d seen in the hellish place, and how he’d seen him upstairs.
He told and he told. He described and described. He wished Aaron would speak, but he understood why Aaron did not.
He told them about Lasher’s ugly prophecy, and the weird feeling of intimacy he had with the thing now though he had not really touched it but merely that rotted stinking head.
He told them finally about Belle, and then exhausted from the telling, he sat there, wanting another beer, but afraid they’d think he was a drunk if he drank another, then giving in and getting up and getting it out of the refrigerator no matter what they thought.
“I don’t know why I’m involved, any more than I did before,” he said. “But I know they’re there, in that house. You remember Cortland said he wasn’t one of them. And Belle said to me she wasn’t one of them … if I didn’t imagine it … well, the others who are part of it are there! And that thing altered matter, just a little but it did it, it possessed the dead bodies and worked on the cells.
“It wants Rowan, I know it does. It wants Rowan to use her power to alter matter! Rowan has more of that power than any of the others before her. Hell, she knows what the cells are, how they operate, how they’re structured!”
Rowan seemed struck by those words. Aaron explained that after Michael had gone to sleep, and Rowan was sure his pulse was normal, that she had called Aaron and asked him to come to the house. He’d brought crates of ice in which to pack the specimens in the attic, and together they had opened each jar, photographed the contents, and then packed it away.
The specimens were at Oak Haven now. They were frozen. They’d be shipped to Amsterdam in the morning, which was what Rowan wanted. Aaron had also removed Julien’s books, and the trunk of dolls, and they too would go to the Motherhouse. But Aaron wanted to photograph the dolls first and he wanted to examine the books, and of course Rowan had agreed to all this, or it wouldn’t have happened.
So far, the books appeared to be no more than ledgers, with various cryptic entries in French. If there was an autobiography such as Richard Llewellyn had indicated, it had not been in that attic room.
It gave Michael an irrational relief to know those things were no longer in the house. He was on his fourth beer now, as they sat together on the velvet couches. He didn’t care what they thought about it. Just one night’s peace, for Chrissakes, he thought. And he had to slow down his brain so he could think it through. Besides, he wasn’t getting drunk. He didn’t want to be drunk.
But what was one more beer now, and besides they were here where they were safe.
At last, they fell quiet. Rowan was staring at Michael, and suddenly for the whole disaster Michael felt mortally ashamed.
“And how are you, my dear?” asked Michael. “After all this madness. I’m not being very much help to you, am I? I must have scared you to death. Do you wish you’d followed your adoptive mother’s advice and stayed in California?”
“You didn’t scare me,” she said affectionately, “and I liked taking care of you. I told you that once before. But I’m thinking. All the wheels in my head are turning. It’s the strangest mixture of elements, this whole thing.”
“Explain.”
“I want my family,” she said. “I want my cousins, all nine hundred of them or however many there are. I want my house. I want my history-and I mean the one Aaron gave to us. But I don’t want this damned thing, this secret mysterious evil thing. I don’t want it, and yet it’s so … so seductive!”
Michael shook his head. “It’s like I told you last night. It’s irresistible.”
“No, not irresistible,” she said, “but seductive.”
“And dangerous?” Aaron suggested. “I think we are more certain of that now than ever. I think we
“I’m not so sure,” said Rowan. “I examined those stinking things as best I could. The changes were insignificant; they were changes in the surface tissue. But of course the samples were hopelessly old and corroded … ”
“But what about the one with the face like Lasher?” Michael asked. “The duplicate?”
She shook her head. “No evidence to indicate it wasn’t a look-alike person,” she said. “Julien looked like Lasher. Remarkably so. Again the changes may have been skin deep. Impossible to tell.”
“OK, skin deep, but what about that?” Michael pressed. “You ever heard of a thing that could do that? We aren’t talking about a blush, we’re talking about something permanent! Something there after a century.”
“You know what the mind can do,” said Rowan. “I don’t have to tell you that people can control their bodies to an amazing extent by thought. They can make themselves die if they want to. They’ve been known to make themselves levitate, if you believe the anecdotal evidence. Stilling heart rates, raising temperatures, that’s all well documented. The saints in their trances could make the wounds of the stigmata open in their hands. They can also make these same wounds close. Matter is subject to mind, and we are only beginning to understand the extent of it. And besides, we know that when this thing materializes it has a solid body. At least it seems solid. So the thing changed the subcutaneous tissue of a corpse. What of it? It wasn’t even a live body, from what you’ve told me. It’s all rather crude and imprecise.”
“You amaze me,” said Michael almost coldly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. But I have a horrible feeling it’s all planned that you’re who you are, that you’re a brilliant doctor! It’s all planned.”
“Calm down, Michael. There are too many flaws in this whole story for everything to be planned. Nothing’s planned in this family. Consider the history.”
“It wants to be human, Rowan,” said Michael, “that’s the meaning of what it said to Petyr van Abel and to me. It wants to be human, and it wants you to help it. What did the ghost of Stuart Townsend say to you, Aaron. It said, ‘It’s all planned.’ ”
“Yes,” said Aaron thoughtfully, “but it’s a mistake to over-interpret that dream. And I think Rowan is right. You cannot assume that you know what is planned. And by the way, for what it’s worth, I don’t think this thing can become human. It wants to have a body, perhaps, but I don’t think that it would ever be human.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” said Michael, “just beautiful. And I do think it planned everything. It planned for Rowan to be taken away from Deirdre. That’s why it killed Cortland. It planned for Rowan to be kept away until she’d become not only a witch, but a witch doctor. It planned the very moment of her return.”
“But again,” said Rowan, “why did it show itself to you? If you’re to intervene, why did it show itself to you?”
He sighed. With a sinking heart he thought about his pleas to Deborah, about touching the old doll of Deborah, and not seeing her or hearing her voice. The delirium came back to him, the stench of the room, and the ugliness of the rotted specimens. He thought of the mystery of the doorway. Of the spirit’s strange words,
