Anne Rice: The witching hour

But the old psychiatrist was dismissing him. There was a thinly concealed suspicion in his eyes as they measured the younger doctor up and down, though the agreeable tone of his voice never changed.

“These old families.” The doctor was never to go to that house again.

The doctor said nothing more. The truth was, he felt foolish. He wasn’t a man who believed in ghosts! And he could not now bring himself to mount any intelligent argument about the woman herself, her condition, the obvious need for some periodic evaluation. No, his confidence had been dashed altogether.

Yet he knew he’d seen that figure. Seen it three times. And he could not forget the afternoon of the hazy, imagined conversation. The man had been there, too, yes, but insubstantial! And he had known the man’s name, and yes, it was … Lasher!

But even if he discounted the dreamlike conversation-blamed it on the quiet of the place and the infernal heat, and the suggestion of a word carved into a tree trunk-the other times could not be discounted. He had seen a solid, living being there. No one would ever get him to deny it.

As the weeks passed and he failed to distract himself sufficiently with his work at the sanitarium, he began to write about the experience, describe it in detail. The man’s brown hair had been slightly wavy. Eyes large. Fair skin like the poor sick woman. The man had been young, no more than twenty-five at best. The man had been without discernible expression. The doctor could even remember the man’s hands. Nothing special about them, just nice hands. It struck him that the man, though thin, had been well proportioned. Only the clothes seemed unusual, and not the style of them, which was ordinary enough. It was the texture of the clothing. Unaccountably smooth like the face of the man. As if the whole figure-clothes, flesh, face-were made from the same thing.

One morning, the doctor awoke with the curiously clear thought: the mysterious man hadn’t wanted her to have those sedatives! He’d known they were bad. And the woman was defenseless of course; she could not speak in her own behalf. The specter was protecting her!

But who in God’s name will ever believe all this? the doctor thought. And he wished he were home, in Maine, working in his father’s clinic and not in this damp and alien city. His father would understand. But then, no. His father would only be alarmed.

He tried to “keep busy.” But the truth was, the sanitarium was a boring place. He had little to do. The old psychiatrist gave him a few new cases, but they were not challenging. Yet it was essential that the doctor continue, that he erase all suspicion from the old psychiatrist’s mind.

As fall turned to winter, the doctor began to dream of Deirdre. And in his dreams, he saw her cured, revitalized, walking swiftly down a city street, her hair blowing in the wind. Now and then when he woke up from such a dream, he found himself wondering if the poor woman hadn’t died. That was the more likely thing.

When spring came around, and he had been in the city a full year, he found he had to see the house again. He took the St. Charles car to Jackson Avenue and walked from there as he had always done in the past.

It was all exactly the same, the thorny bougainvillea in full bloom over the porches, the overgrown garden swarming with tiny white winged butterflies, the lantana with its little orange blossoms pushing through the black iron fence.

And Deirdre sitting in the rocker on the side porch behind her veil of rusted screens.

The doctor felt a leaden anguish. He was as troubled, perhaps, as he’d ever been in his life. Somebody’s got to do something for that woman.

He walked aimlessly after that, emerging finally on a dirty and busy street. A shabby neighborhood tavern caught his eye. He went into it, grateful for the icy air-conditioning and the relative quiet in which only a few old men talked in low voices along the bar. He took his drink to the last wooden table in the back.

The condition of Deirdre Mayfair tortured him. And the mystery of the apparition only made it worse. He thought of that daughter in California. Did he dare to call her? Doctor to doctor … But then he did not know the young man’s name.

“Besides, you have no right to interfere,” he whispered aloud. He drank a little of his beer, savoring the coldness. “Lasher,” he whispered. Speaking of names, what sort of name is Lasher? The young California intern would think him a madman! He took another deep drink of the beer.

It seemed to him suddenly that the bar was getting warm. It was as if someone had opened the door on a desert wind. Even the old men talking over their beer bottles seemed to notice it. He saw one of them wipe his face suddenly with a dirty handkerchief, then go on arguing as before.

Then as the doctor lifted his glass, he saw straight in front of him the mysterious man seated at the table near the door to the street.

The same waxen face, brown eyes. The same nondescript clothes of that unusual texture, so smooth they shone faintly in the subdued light.

Even as the men nearby went on with their conversation, the doctor felt the keening terror he had known in Deirdre Mayfair’s darkened room.

The man sat perfectly still gazing at him. Not twenty feet separated him from the doctor. And the white daylight from the front windows of the bar fell quite distinctly over the man’s shoulder, illuminating the side of his face.

Really there. The doctor’s mouth was filling with water. He was going to be sick. Going to pass out. They’d think he was drunk in this place. God only knew what would happen-He struggled to steady his hand on the glass. He struggled not to panic completely as he had done in Deirdre’s room.

Then, without warning, the man appeared to flicker as if he were a projected image, then vanish before the doctor’s eyes. A cold breeze swept through the bar.

The bartender turned to keep a soiled napkin from blowing away. A door slammed somewhere. And it seemed the conversation grew louder. The doctor felt a low throbbing in his head.

“ … Going mad!” he whispered.

No power on earth could have persuaded him to pass Deirdre Mayfair’s house again.

But the following night, as he was driving home to the lakefront, he saw the man again, standing under a street lamp by the cemeteries on Canal Boulevard, the yellow light shining full upon him against the chalk white graveyard wall.

Just a glimpse but he knew he wasn’t mistaken. He began to tremble violently. It seemed for a moment he could not remember how to work the controls of his car, and then he drove it recklessly, stupidly, as if the man were pursuing him. He did not feel safe until he had shut his apartment door.

The following Friday, he saw the man in broad daylight, standing motionless on the grass in Jackson Square. A woman passing turned to glance at the brown-haired figure. Yes, there, as he had been before! The doctor ran through the French Quarter streets. Finding a cab at a hotel door, he ordered the driver to get him out of there, just to take him anywhere, he did not care.

As the days passed, the doctor had ceased to be frightened so much as horrified. He couldn’t eat or sleep. He could concentrate on nothing. He moved perpetually in utter gloom. He stared in silent rage at the old psychiatrist whenever their paths crossed.

How in God’s name could he communicate to this monstrous thing that he would not come near the miserable woman in the porch rocker? No more needles, no more drugs from him! I am no longer the enemy, don’t you see!

To ask the help or understanding of anyone he knew was to risk his reputation, even his entire future. A psychiatrist going mad, like his patients. He was desperate. He had to escape this thing. Who knew when it might next appear to him? What if it could come into these very rooms!