Lasher Read online

  When I wasn't reading I was adventuring about with the older boys, both white and black, jumping onto horses bareback, or trekking into the swamps to find snakes, or climbing the swamp cypress and the oaks to watch out for pirates invading from the south. At two and a half, I was lost in the swamps during a storm. I almost died, I suppose. But I shall never forget it. And after I was found, I never again suffered any fear of lightning. I think I had my little wits nearly blown out of my head by thunder and lightning that night. I screamed and screamed and nothing happened. The thunder and lightning went on; I didn't die; and in the morning I was sitting at the table with my tearful mother, having breakfast.

  Ah, the point is this: I learned from everything, and there was plenty to learn from.

  My principal tutor in those first three years of life was in fact my mother's coachman, Octavius, a free man of color and a Mayfair by five different lines of descent from the early ones through their various black mistresses. Octavius was then only eighteen or so, and more fun man anyone else on the plantation. My witch powers did not so much frighten him, and when he wasn't telling me to hide them from everybody else, he was telling me how to use them.

  I learnt from him for example how to reach people's thoughts even when they meant to keep them inside, and how to give them suggestions without words, which they invariably obeyed! And how even to force my will with subtle words and gestures on another. I learnt also from him how to cast spells, making the entire world around appear to change for myself and for others who were with me. I also learnt many erotic tricks, for as many children are, I was erotically mad at age three and then four, and would attempt things then which made me blush by the time I was twelve--at least for a year or two.

  But to return to the witches and how I came to be known to them.

  My grandmother Marie Claudette was always there amongst us. She sat out in the garden, with a small orchestra of black musicians to play for her. There were two fine fiddlers, both slaves, and several who played the pipes, as we called them, but which were wooden flutes known as recorders. There was one who played a big bass riddle of a homemade sort, and another who played two drums, caressing them with his soft fingers. Marie Claudette had taught these musicians their songs, and soon told me that many such songs came from Scotland.

  More and more I gravitated to her. The noise I did not like, but I found that if I could get her to take me in her arms she was sweet and loving and had things to say as interesting as the things I read in the library.

  She was stately, blue-eyed, white-haired, and picturesque as she lay on a couch of wicker and fancy pillows, beneath a canopy that blew just a little in the breeze, sometimes singing to herself in Gaelic. Or letting loose long strings of curses on Lasher.

  For what had happened you see was that Lasher had tired of her! He had gone on to serve Marguerite and to hover about Katherine, the new baby. And for Marie Claudette he had only an occasional kiss or word or two of poetry.

  Perhaps every few days or so, he came to beg Marie Claudette's forgiveness for giving all his attentions to Marguerite, and to say in a very pure and beautiful voice, which I could hear, that Marguerite would not have it otherwise. Sometimes when he came to kiss and court Marie Claudette, he was dressed as a man in frock coat and pants, which were then a novelty you understand, we are only a few decades past tricorne and breeches, and sometimes he had a more rustic look to him, in rawhide garments of a very rough cut; but always his hair was brown and his eyes brown, and he was most beautiful.

  And guess who came along, all ringlets and smiles, and hopped up into her lap, and said, "Grandmere, tell me why you are so sad? Tell me everything."

  "Can you see that man who comes to me?" she asked.

  "Of course," I said, "but everybody says I should lie to you about it, though why I don't know because he seems to like to be seen, and will even frighten the slaves by appearing to them, for no good reason, it seems to me, except vanity."

  She fell in love with me at that moment. She smiled approvingly at my observations. She also said she'd never encountered a two-year-old child who was so bright. I was two and a half but I didn't bother to point this out. Within a day or two of our first real conversation about "the man," she began to tell me everything.

  She told me all about her old home in Saint-Domingue and how she missed it, about voodoo charms and devil worship in the islands and how she'd mastered every slave trick for her own purposes.

  "I am a great witch," she said, "far greater than your mother will ever be, for your mother is slightly mad and laughs at everything. As for the baby Katherine, who knows. Something tells me you had best look out for her. I myself laugh at very little."

  Every day I jumped in her lap and started asking her questions. The hideous little orchestra played on and on--she would never tell them to stop--but very soon she began to expect me to come, and if I did not she sent Octavius to find me, wash me and deliver me. I was happy. Only the music sometimes sounded to me like cats howling. I asked her once if she wouldn't like to listen instead to the song of the birds, but she only shook her head and said that it helped her think to have this background.

  Meantime, over the din, her tales became more and more involved and filled with colorful pictures and violence.

  Until the end of her life, she talked to me. In the last days, she brought the orchestra into the bedroom, and while they played, she and I whispered together on the pillow.

  Basically, she told me how Suzanne, the cunning woman, had called up the spirit Lasher, "in error," in Donnelaith, and then been burnt; how her daughter, Deborah, was taken away by sorcerers from Amsterdam; how the beautiful Deborah was followed by Lasher, and courted by him, and made powerful and rich, only to suffer a horrible death in a French town on the day they tried to burn her as they had burnt her mother. Then came Charlotte into the picture, daughter of Deborah by one of the sorcerers from Amsterdam, and the strongest of the first three, who used the spirit Lasher as never before to acquire great wealth and influence and unlimited power.

  And Charlotte--by her own father, Petyr van Abel, one of these daring and mysterious Amsterdam wizards, who had for her own good followed her to the New World to warn her of the evil of intercourse with spirits--then conceived Jeanne Louise and her twin brother, Peter, and from Jeanne Louise and her brother was born Angelique, who had been Marie Claudette's mother.

  Gold, jewels, coin of every realm, and every luxury, this family had acquired. Not even the revolution on Saint-Domingue had destroyed its immense wealth, very little of which rode upon the success of the crops, but was piled up now in a string of safe places.

  "Your mother does not even know what she possesses," said Marie Claudette, "and the more I think of it, the more important it is that I tell you."

  I naturally agreed. All this power and wealth, said Grandmere, had come to us through the machinations of this spirit, Lasher, who could kill those whom the witch marked for death, torment those whom she marked for madness, reveal to her secrets which other mortals strove to keep, and even acquire jewels and gold by transporting these things magically, though for this the spirit required great energy.

  A loving thing was this spirit, she said, but it took some craft to manage. Look how it had abandoned her of late, and spent all its time hovering about Katherine's crib.

  "That's because Katherine can't see it," I said. "It's trying very hard. It won't give up, but it's useless."

  "Ah, is that so? I don't believe it, a granddaughter of mine can't see that thing?"

  "Go see for yourself. The child's eyes don't move. It cannot see the creature even when it comes in its strongest form, which anyone might touch and feel as solid."

  "Ah, so you know it does that."

  "I hear its footsteps on the stairs," I said. "I know its tricks. It can go from vapor to a solid being, and then in a gust of warm wind vanish."

  "Oh, you're very observant," she said. "I love you."

  I was very thrilled to th
e heart by this and I told her I loved her too, which I did. She was precious to me. Also, I had come to realize, while sitting on her knee, that I found old people more beautiful in the main than young ones.

  This was to prove true of me all my life. I love young people too, of course, especially when they are very careless and brave, as my Stella was, or my Mary Beth. But people in the very middle of life? I can hardly tolerate them.

  Allow me to say, Michael, you are an exception. No, don't speak. Don't break the trance. I won't tell you you are a child at heart, but you do have some childlike faith and goodness in you, and this has been both intriguing to me and somewhat maddening. You have challenged me. Like many a man with Irish blood, you know all sorts of supernatural things are possible. Yet you don't care. You go about talking to wooden joists and beams and plaster!

  Enough. Everything depends on you now. Let me return to Marie Claudette and the particular things she told me about our family ghost.

  "It has two kinds of voices," she declared, "a voice one can hear only in one's head, and the voice you heard, which can be heard by anyone with the right ears to hear it. And sometimes even a voice so loud and clear that it can be heard by everyone. But that isn't often, you see, for that wears it out, and where does it get its strength? From us--from me, from your mother, and possibly even from you, for I have seen it near me when you were here, and I have seen you look at it.

  "As for the inner voice, it can devil you with it anytime, as it has done many an enemy, unless of course you are defended against it."

  "And how do you defend yourself?" I asked.

  "Can't you guess?" she said. "Let me see how smart you are. You see it with me, which means it appears, no? It summons its strength, it comes together, it becomes as a man for a few cherished moments. Then it is gone and exhausted. Why do you think it gives so much of itself to me, instead of merely whispering inside my head, 'Poor old soul, I shall never forget you'?"

  "To be seen," I said with a shrug. "It's vain."

  She laughed with delight. "Ah, yes, and no. It has to take form to come to me for a simple reason. I surround myself night and day with music. It cannot get through unless it gathers all its strength, and concentrates most fiercely in the manifestation of a human form and a human voice. It must drown out the rhythm which at every moment enchants it and distracts it.

  "Understand it likes music of course, but music is a thing with a sway over it, as music sometimes is with wild beasts or mythical persons in stories. And as long as I command my band to play, it cannot plague my mind alone, but must come and tap me on the shoulder."

  I remember that it was my turn to laugh with delight. The spirit was no worse than me in a way. I had had to learn to concentrate on my grandmother's stories when the music seemed to make it all but impossible. But for Lasher, to concentrate was to exist. When spirits dream, they don't know themselves.

  I could digress on that. But I have too much to tell, and I'm too...tired now.

  Let me go on. Where was I? Ah, yes, she told me about the power of music over the thing, and how she kept the music near her so that it would be forced to come and pay court, for otherwise it wouldn't have bothered.

  "Does it know this?" I asked.

  "Yes, and no," she said. "It begs me to shut out the din, but I cry and say I cannot, and it then comes to me and kisses my hand, and I look at it. You are right that it is vain. It would be seen again and again, just to be reassured that I have not drifted out of its realm, but it no longer loves or needs me. It has a place in its heart for me. That's all, and that is nothing."

  "You mean it has a heart?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes, it loves us all, and we great witches above all things, for we have brought it into knowing itself, and have greatly aided it to increase its power."

  "I see," I said. "But what if you didn't want it around anymore? If you..."

  "Shhhh...never say such a thing!" she said, "not even with trumpets or bells pealing all about you."

  "All right," I said, feeling strongly already that I must never be given the same advice more than once, and I said no more about that. "But can you tell me what it is?" I asked.

  "A devil," she said, "a great devil."

  I told her, "I don't think so."

  She was amazed. "Why do you say that? Who else but the Devil would serve a witch?"

  I told her all I knew of the Devil, from prayers and hymns and Mass and the quick-witted slaves all around me. "The Devil is just plain bad," I said. "And he treats badly all who trust him. This thing is too damned good to us."

  She agreed, but it was like the Devil, she said, in that it would not submit to God's laws, but would come through as flesh and be a man.

  "Why?" I said. "Isn't it a hell of a lot stronger the way it is? Why would it want to catch yellow fever or lockjaw?"

  She laughed and laughed. "It would be flesh to feel all that flesh can feel, to see what men can see, and hear what they can hear, and not have forever to be collecting itself out of a dream and fear the losing of itself. It would be flesh to be real; to be in the world and of the world, and to defy God, who gave it no body."

  "Hmmm, sounds like it has overrated the whole experience," I said. Or in words that a three-year-old might choose for pretty much the same thing, for by that age, like many a country child of the times, I'd seen plenty of death and suffering.

  Once again, she laughed, and she said that it would have what it would have, and lavished everything upon us because we served its purpose.

  "It wants strength; every hour and every day in our presence, we give it strength; and it pushes for one thing: that is the birth of a witch so strong that she can make it once and for all material."

  "Well, that isn't going to be my baby sister, Katherine," I said.

  She smiled and nodded her head. "I fear you're right, but the strength comes and goes. You have it. Your brother has none."

  "Don't be so sure," I said. "He's more easily frightened. He's seen it and it has made an ugly face at him to keep him from Katherine's cradle. I don't require ugly faces, nor do I flee from them. And I have too much sense to overturn Katherine's cradle. But tell me, how is a witch going to make it flesh forever? Even with Mother, I see it solid for no more than two, three minutes at most. What does it mean to do?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Truly I don't know the secret. But let me tell you this while the music plays on, and listen to me carefully. I've never even expressed this in thought to myself but I confide it to you. When it has what it wants, it shall destroy the entire family."

  "Why?" I said.

  "I don't know," she said again very gravely. "It's just what I fear. For I think and I feel in my bones, that though it loves us and needs us--it also hates us."

  I thought about this in quiet.

  "Of course it doesn't know this, perhaps," she said, "or does not wish for me to know. The more I think on it the more I wonder if you weren't sent here to pass on what I have to say to that baby in the cradle. God knows Marguerite will not listen now. She thinks she rules the world. And I fear hell in my old age and crave the company of a cherubic three-year-old."

  "Flesh, the thing wants to be flesh," I pressed, for I remember I was almost carried off course by being called cherubic, which I liked very much, and wanted her to digress on my charms. But I went back to the evil thing. "How can it be flesh? Human flesh? What? Would it be born into the world again, or take a body that is dead, or one that is..."

  "No," she said. "It says it knows its destiny. It says it carries the sketch within itself of what it would be again, and that someday a witch and a man shall make the magical egg from which its form will be made, and into which it will come again, knowing its own form, and the infant soul shall not knock it loose, and all the world will come to understand it."

  "All the world, hmmm." I thought. "And you said, 'again.' By that you mean the thing has been flesh before?"

  "It was something before which it is not now, but what it was,
I can't rightly tell you. I think it was a creature fallen, damned to suffer intelligence and loneliness in a vaporish form! And it would end the sentence. Through us it wants a strong witch, who can be as the Virgin Mary was to Christ, the vessel of an Incarnation."

  I pondered all this. "It's no devil," I said.

  "And why do you say that?" she asked again, as if we hadn't discussed this before.

  "Because," I said, "the Devil has more important things to do if he exists at all, and on the point of his existence at all I am not certain."

  "Where did you get an idea there was no Devil?"

  "Rousseau," I said. "His philosophy argues that the worst evil is in man."

  "Well," she said, "read some more before you make up your mind."

  And that was the end of that part of it.

  But before she died, which was not so long after that at all, she told me many things about this spirit. It killed through fright mostly. In the form of a man, it startled coachmen and riders at night, causing them to veer off the road and into the swamps; and sometimes it even frighted the horses as well as the men, which was proof that it was indeed material.

  It could be sent to stalk a mortal man or woman, and tell in its own childish way what that person had done all the livelong day, but one had to interpret its peculiar expressions carefully.

  It could steal, of course, small things mostly, though sometimes whole banknotes for considerable amounts. And it could come into mortals for a bit of time, to see through their eyes and feel through their hands, but this was never long-lasting. Indeed the battle left it fatigued and often more tormented than it had been before, and it oftentimes killed whom it had possessed out of sheer rage and envy. This meant one had to be very careful in helping it with such tricks, for the innocent body used for such purposes might very well be destroyed after.

  Such had happened to one of Marie Claudette's nephews, she told me--one of my very own cousins--before she had learnt to control the thing and make it obey or starve it with silence and covering her eyes and pretending not to hear it. "It is not so hard to torture at times," she said. "It feels, and it forgets, and it weeps. I don't envy it."