the creature were wild and without intelligent expression.
“Sit up!” declared Marguerite. “Be strong! Take possession!” And she urged me to say these words with her, and we repeated them again, our eyes fixed on the thing.
The man rose up, arms outstretched, and then these were let to flop at his sides, and he almost toppled over. He struggled to his feet, and then he did fall, but we rushed to catch him. His fingers wriggled in the air, and then he managed to close one hand on my neck, which I didn’t particularly like, but I knew he was too weak to do me any harm, and it said again in that awful voice:
“My beloved Julien.”
“Take possession of the being forever,” cried Marguerite. “Take this body as if it were your right.”
And then the whole body began to tremble; and before my eyes once more, as had happened with the infant, the hair of the creature began somewhat to darken. And it seemed the face was wildly contorted.
And then the poor old body fell dead, in our arms, and if the old man was there again even for an instant, we never knew it.
But as we laid him down upon the bed, Marguerite made a careful study. She showed me patches of his skin which had been rendered white, and the parts of the hair which were distinctly dark as if some energy had erupted from within and changed these things. I noted it was only the new and short hair which had changed, and the skin was already fading back to its yellowish hue.
“What do we do with all this, Mother? We must keep it secret from the family.”
“Well, of course,” she said. “But first we take off the head here to save it.”
I collapsed in exhaustion, sitting against the wall, crossing my ankles and watching in silence as she slowly severed the man’s head, using a hatchet for the purpose. And then I saw this thing immersed in the chemicals she had so lately bought for the purpose and the jar sealed, and the man’s eyes staring out at me.
By then Lasher had gathered his wits, if that’s what they were. And he was there, a human-looking male, strong, beside her. And I remember that moment as perfectly as any other-the fiend standing there in the form of an innocent man, wide-eyed and almost sweet, and Marguerite, clamping the top on that jar and holding it up to the light and talking baby talk to the head inside. “You’ve done well, little head, you’ve done well.”
Then back she went to scribbling about future experiments.
Michael, when you came to this house and saw the jars, you saw all that ever resulted from this magic. There was nothing more. But how were we to know that?
With each new victim we grew more cunning and bold; and more hopeful; we learnt that the body must be strong, not old, and that a youngster with no family or home was our best prospect.
I lived in dread Katherine would find out. Katherine was my joy. I sat sometimes looking at Katherine and thinking, If only you knew, yet I could not draw myself away from my mother or from the thing, from any of it. Katherine was my innocent self, perhaps, the child I had never been, the good one I had never cared to be. I loved her.
As for my machinations with the fiend, I enjoyed them. I took a secret pleasure even in catching the victims and bringing them home, leading them up the steps, and inducing them to make themselves proper vessels. Each experiment brought me to a powerful level of excitement. The flickering candles, the victim on the bed, the possession itself-it was all hypnotic.
Lasher too began to express his preferences. Bring those of light complexion and hair so that he could change them more easily to what he wanted; and for longer periods of time, he walked and talked in their bodies.
Some superficial mutation was always accomplished. But that’s all it ever was! It was skin and it was hair and no more.
And the victim inevitably died as the result.
But the spirit loved it; the spirit soon lived for it.
“I would see the moon tonight with human eyes,” Lasher said, “bring a child to me. I would dance to the music tonight with human feet. Have the fiddlers outside the door and bring me legs that know dancing.”
And to reward us, the thing brought us gold and jewels beyond imagining. I was always finding money in my pockets. And ever more prosperous we grew, the thing warning us when to take our investments out of this or that place, and never failing in this.
Something else happened as well. The thing began to imitate me. I saw it.
This stemmed from a few careless remarks of mine. “Why must you look like that when you appear? So prim, so dusty?”
“Suzanne thought this was a handsome man. What would you have me look like?”
And in a few carefully chosen words I designed its clothes for it. Thereafter it appeared exactly like me to frighten me and amuse me. And we soon discovered that it could fool others on this score completely. I could leave it at my desk pretending to be me and run away, and people thought I had never left the house at all.
It was marvelous. Of course it could be nothing solid for very long. But it was getting stronger and stronger.
And something else had come clear to me. The thing, though it gave me pleasure whenever I desired it, had no jealousy of others where I was concerned. Indeed the thing liked to watch such goings-on-with lovers, whores, mistresses. The thing often hovered about my armoires, causing my coats to stir in the wind as he touched them. The thing was taking me as some sort of interesting model.
Whereas Marguerite now kept to her mad laboratory night and day, I went forth into the city. And with me the fiend went, observing everything. And I felt great power to have it at my side, my secret confidant, my supernatural eye, my guardian.
And now when Marguerite and I did hide from it beneath music, it appeared and danced, as it had once appeared to Marie Claudette. That is, our shutting it out made it show its strength, and in dandified clothes, it put on a show, distracting us as we distracted it, flinging itself into the melody.
If there was anyone at Riverbend who had not seen this fiend in material form for at least thirty seconds, that person was either blind or crazy.
Michael, I could tell you so much! But it is not the story of my life that matters. Suffice it to say I lived as few men ever have, learning what I wanted, and doing what I wanted, and enjoying all manner of pleasure. And the fiend was my best lover, of course, always. No man or woman kept me from it for long.
“Laughter, Julien. Am I not better?”
“You are, I must confess,” I said, flinging myself back on the bed, and letting it go to work pulling at my clothes and caressing me.
“Why do you love so to do it?” I asked.
“You become warm; you become close; I am close; we are nearly together. You are beautiful, Julien. We are men, you and I.”
Makes sense, I thought, and, drunk on erotic pleasure, I gave myself to it for days on end, emerging finally to go to the city again and amuse myself in some other way, lest I go as mad as my mother.
Of course I now knew the experiments would never get us anywhere. Lasher’s addiction to possession was all that kept us going.
Marguerite meantime was now officially mad. But no one cared. Why should they? We were a family of hundreds! My brother, Remy, had married and had numerous children, both by his wife, and by his quadroon mistress. There were Mayfairs to the left and Mayfairs to the right, and many of our ilk went into town and built fine houses throughout the city.
If the head witch kept to her rooms during the lavish picnics we gave, or the balls we held, who cared? No one missed her. I was there, dancing with Katherine of course, who broke the hearts of all the young men who chased after her-Katherine now past twenty-five years of age, an old maid in the South of those times, but so beautiful no one dared even think such a thing, and so wealthy, of course, that she need never marry.
In fact, it soon came clear to me that she was afraid to marry. Of course my mother and I had told her what we could. And she had been horrified. She didn’t want to have a child, for fear the evil seed would be carried on. “I shall die a virgin,” she said, “and that will be the end. There will be no more witches.”
“Any comments?” I asked Lasher.
“Laughter” was his solitary reply. “She is human. Humans crave each other’s company; humans crave little ones. There are many cousins to choose from. Look at those who have the marks. Look at those who
