Lasher Read online

  I saw, then, two founts of enterprise at work now in this family--one was the witches' fount, to use the spirit to acquire wealth and advantage; and the other was the natural or normal fount, already bubbling with a great strong flow that might not be stopped were the spirit destroyed.

  Once again, it answered me.

  "War on me and I destroy all this! You are living now because Katherine needs you."

  I didn't answer. I went inside, took my diary, went down to the parlor, and urged the musicians to play loud and strong, and then I wrote my thoughts in my diary.

  Meantime, my gifts and those of my mother were growing stronger. We healed, as I have said, we cast spells, we sent Lasher to spy upon those about whom we would know the truth, and sometimes to gauge the financial changes of the future.

  This was no easy thing, and the older I became, the more I realized my mother was slowly becoming too mad to do much of anything practical. Indeed, our cousin Augustin, manager of the plantation, was pretty much doing what he wanted with its profits.

  By the time I was fifteen, I knew seven languages, and could write very well in any one, and was now the unofficial overseer and manager of the entire plantation. My cousin Augustin grew jealous of me, and so in a fit of rage I shot him.

  This was an awful moment.

  I had not meant to kill him. Indeed, he was the one who had produced the gun and threatened me; and I in my rage had snatched it from his hand and fired the ball into his forehead. My plan had been "short-range," that is, to knock him about, and voila! he was totally and finally dead forever! No one could have been more surprised than I was. Not even him, wherever he went, for I did see his soul rise, befuddled and staring through a vague human form as it disintegrated.

  The whole family went into chaos. The cousins fled to their cottages, the city cousins to their town houses in New Orleans; indeed the plantation shut down in mourning for Augustin, and the priest came, and the funeral preparations commenced.

  I sat in my room weeping. I imagined that I would be punished for my crime, but very soon, I realized that nothing of the sort was going to happen!

  No one was going to touch me. Everyone was frightened. Even Augustin's wife and children were frightened. They had come to tell me they knew it was "an accident" and did not want to risk my disfavor.

  My mother watched this with astonished eyes, barely interested at all, and said, "Now you can run things as you like."

  And the spirit came, nudging me playfully, delighted it could knock the quill pen out of my hand, and give me a start with a smile in the mirror.

  "Julien," it said, "I could have done this thing stealthily for you! Put away your gun. You do not need it."

  "Can you so easily kill?"

  "Laughter."

  I told it then of two enemies I had made, one a tutor who had insulted my beloved Katherine, and another a merchant who had crassly cheated us. "Kill them," I said.

  The fiend did. Within the week both had met a bad end--one beneath the wheels of a carriage, the other thrown from his horse.

  "It was simple," said the fiend.

  "So I see," said I. I think I was fairly drunk with my power. And remember I was only fifteen, and this was the time before the war when we were still isolated from all the world beyond us.

  As it turned out, Augustin's descendants left our land. They went deep into the Bayou country and built the beautiful plantation of Fontevrault. But that is another story. Someday you must journey up the river road and over the Sunshine Bridge and into that land, and see the ruins of Fontevrault, for many many things happened there.

  But let me only say now, that with Tobias, the eldest son of Augustin, I was never reconciled. He had been a toddler on the night of the killing, and in later years his hate for me remained great, though his line was prosperous and they kept to the name Mayfair and their progeny married with our progeny. This was one of many branches of the family tree. But it was one of the strongest. And as you know Mona comes from this line, and from my later entanglement with it.

  Now, to return to our day-to-day life, as Katherine became more and more beautiful, Marguerite began to fade, as if some vital energy were drawn from her by her daughter. But nothing of the sort really happened.

  Marguerite was only mad with her experiments, of trying to bring the dead infants back to life, of inviting Lasher to plunge into their flesh, and make the limbs move, but he could never restore the soul itself. The idea was preposterous.

  Nevertheless, she delved deep and drew me with her into magic. We sent for books from all over the world. The slaves came to us for medicines for every illness. And we grew stronger and stronger so that soon we could cure many common aches with the simple laying on of hands. And Lasher was always our ally in this, and if the daemon knew some secret that would cure the sick one--that he had been accidentally poisoned perhaps--it would make these secrets known to us.

  When I was not at my experiments, I was with Katherine, taking her into New Orleans to see the opera, the ballet, whatever dramas we could, showing her the fine restaurants, and taking her for walks so that she might see the world itself, which a woman could not really do without an escort. She was as always innocent and full of love, slight of build, dark, and perhaps a little feebleminded.

  It began to penetrate to me that in our inbreeding we had encouraged certain weaknesses. In fact, now amongst my cousins I began to study these things, and feeblemindedness of a certain charming sort was definitely part of it. There were also among us many with witches' gifts, and some even with witches' marks--a black mole or birth pattern of peculiar shape; a sixth finger. Indeed the sixth finger was a common thing, and could take various forms. It might be a tiny digit projecting from the outside edge of the hand, an adjunct to the little finger. Or it could be near the thumb, and sometimes a second thumb. But wherever it appeared, you can be sure someone was ashamed of it.

  Meantime I had read the history of Scotland, under the fiend's nose, most likely without his being aware of it. For if I had a fiddler standing by, playing a dreary melody as I read, the fiend hardly noticed anything. Indeed, he often tired of being invaded by the music as it were and went off to court my mother.

  Well and good. Donnelaith was not a town of importance. But there were some old stories that told it once had been, and that a great cathedral had stood there. Indeed there had been a school and a great saint in those parts, and Catholics had journeyed for miles and miles to worship at his shrine.

  I kept this information for future use. I would go there. I would find the history of these people of Donnelaith.

  Meanwhile my mother laughed at all this. And under the cover of music, said, "Ask him questions. You will soon discover he is no one or anything and comes from hell. It's that simple."

  I took up the theme with it.

  And sure enough, what she had said was true. I would say, "Who made the world?" and on it would go about mist and land and spirits always being there, and then I would say, "And Jesus Christ, did you witness His birth?" and it would say that there was no time where it lived and it saw only witches.

  I spoke of Scotland, and it wept for Suzanne, and told me that she had died in fear and pain, and Deborah had watched with solemn eyes before the evil wizards of Amsterdam came to fetch her.

  "And who were these wizards?" I asked, and the fiend said: "You will know soon enough. They watch you. Beware of them, for they know all and can bring harm to you."

  "Why don't you kill them?" I said.

  "Because I would know what they know," he said, "and there is no real reason. Beware of them. They are alchemists and liars."

  "How old are you?"

  "Ageless!"

  "Why were you in Donnelaith?"

  Silence.

  "How did you come to be there?"

  "Suzanne called me, I told you."

  "But you were there before Suzanne."

  "There is no there before Suzanne."

  And so on it went, intrig
uing but never really advancing the story very far or revealing a practical secret.

  "It is time for you to come and help your mother. Your strength is necessary."

  This meant, of course, help Marguerite with her experiments. All right, I thought, though if she keeps burning those stinking candles and mumbling Latin words of which she doesn't know the meaning, I am leaving!

  I followed Lasher into her rooms. She had just come in with an infant, feeble but alive, which had been left at the church door by its slave mother. The infant cried, a tiny brown creature with curling brown hair, and a little pink mouth that could break your heart. It seemed too small to survive very long. She was delighted with it. She put me in mind at once of a little boy playing with a bug in a jar, so savage was her interest, and so disconnected was she from the fact that this fragile wailing thing was human.

  She shut the doors, lighted the candles, and then knelt beside the child and invited Lasher to go inside it.

  With a great chant she egged the daemon on: "Into its limbs; see through its eyes; speak through its mouth; live in its breath and in its heartbeat."

  The room seemed to swell and to contract, though of course it did not, and all that could rattle was moved, and the noise became a subtle murmuring--bottles jiggling, bells tinkling, shutters fluttering in the wind--and then this tiny baby before my eyes began to change. It coordinated its tiny limbs and the expression of its little face became malevolent or merely adultlike.

  It was no longer an infant at all but a hideous mannequin of sorts, for though it had not changed physically, a grown man was inside it and manipulating it, and spoke now, in a gurgling voice. "I am Lasher. See me here."

  "Grow, grow strong!" declared Marguerite, holding up both her fists. "Julien, command it to grow. Stare at its arms and legs. Command them to grow."

  I did, and against all I believed I saw that its little legs and arms were lengthening. Indeed, the eyes of the infant, pale blue at birth, were now suddenly dark brown, and its hair slowly darkened as well as though absorbing a dark liquid.

  Its skin on the other hand began to pale; color pulsed in its cheeks. Its legs for one instant were stretched like tentacles. And then the little thing died. Just died. Let out a cry, and died.

  And Marguerite grabbed it off the bed, and threw it at the dresser mirror. The little one splashed with blood and gore on the glass but didn't break it and down it tumbled, one nameless dead child among her perfumes, potions and hair combs.

  The room was trembling again. He was near, and then gone, and the cold was all around us. It was as if Lasher had taken the balmy heat with him.

  She sat down and wept. "It's always so. We get that far, and the vessel is too weak to contain him. He destroys what he changes. How will he ever be flesh? And now he is so tired from what he has done that he cannot come to us. We must wait and let him drift and re-collect, there is nothing to be done for it."

  I was spellbound by what I'd seen. I wanted to go out and write it down. She stopped me.

  "What can we do to make him flesh?" she said.

  "Well, don't try with an infant, for one thing. Try with the body of a man. Find someone disabled in mind and body too, perhaps, who is already near to death, someone who cannot resist any more than an infant could. And see if Lasher can go into it."

  "Ah, but he said that from a little child he must grow. A little child like the infant in the manger."

  "Lasher said this? When?" I asked, and took note of this along with all its other little slips.

  "From a little child, he will be born, from the most powerful witch, but the baby shall start out small as the Christ Child, but ah, if only we could bring him into the flesh now, think what we would have done, and then, and then, we could bring back the dead in the very same fashion."

  "You think so?"

  "Come here," she said. She took me by the hand, and dropped to her knees and pulled a small trunk from beneath the bed, and in it lay dolls, dolls of bone and hair and carefully stitched clothes. And mark, Michael, they weren't rotted as they were when you saw them. They were swaddled in lace and surrounded in some cases with beautiful jewels, and strands of pearls, and they peered at us with their tiny specks for eyes.

  "These are the dead," she said. "See? This is Marie Claudette." She lifted a tiny doll with gray hair, clothed in red taffeta, and made from a stocking it seemed and filled with things that felt like pebbles. "Parings of her nails, one bone from her hand, taken by me from her grave, and her hair, lots of her hair, that is what makes up this doll, and within the hour of her death, I had taken the spittle from her mouth and soaked its face, and the blood she had vomited, and smeared that as well on the doll beneath its clothing. Now hold it and you will see that she is here."

  She put the doll in my hands, and in a flash I saw the living Marie Claudette! I was knocked backwards by the shock. I stared down at this thing of cloth. I squeezed it again and there she stood, motionless for an instant, staring at me. I called out to her. I did this over and over again, summoning her, seeing her, calling to her, and then losing her.

  "This is nothing," I said. "She is not there."

  "No, no, but she is and she speaks to me."

  "I don't believe it."

  I squeezed the doll once more and said, "Grandmere, tell me the truth," and then I heard a tiny voice in my head which said, "I love you, Julien." Of course I knew it was not Marie Claudette speaking to me. It was Lasher, but how was I to prove this?

  I did a daring thing. So that my mother could hear, I said, "Marie Claudette, Marie Claudette, beloved Grandmere, do you remember the day that as the band played, we buried my little wooden toy horse in the garden? Do you remember how I cried and the poem which you told to me?"

  "Yes, yes, my child," said the secret voice and the image, which both my mother and I could see, held fast for the longest time yet, a graceful vision of Marie Claudette as she had been the last time I ever glimpsed her.

  "The poem," I said, "help me to recall it."

  "Think back, my child, you will remember," said the ghost.

  And then I said, "Ah, yes, 'Toy horse, toy horse, ride on into the fields of heaven!' "

  Ah yes, she said, and repeated this line with me.

  I threw down the doll! "This is nonsense," I declared. "I never owned a toy wooden horse. I never had an interest in such things. I never buried it in the yard, and I never wrote any stupid poem to it."

  The fiend went into a frenzy. My mother threw her hands over me to protect me. Everything was flying about...furniture, bottles, jars, books. It was worse than all those feathers had been, and things were raining down upon us.

  "Stop!" my mother declared. "Who will protect Katherine?"

  The room grew quiet.

  "Do not become my enemy, Julien," said the thing.

  I was at this point scared to death. I'd proved my point. This thing was a liar. This thing was not the repository of any sanctified wisdom. And this thing could kill me all right, as surely as it had my enemies, and I had made it very angry.

  I was wily. "All right, you would be flesh?"

  "I would be flesh, I would be flesh, I would be flesh!"

  "Then we shall proceed with our experiments in earnest."

  Michael, you yourself have seen the fruits of those years. When you came to this house, you saw the human heads rotted in their jars of fluid. You saw the infants swimming there in darkness. You saw the sum total of our accomplishments.

  So let me be brief about these dark disasters and what we did, and I did, out of fear of the thing, and seeing myself sinking into deeper and deeper evil.

  It was the year 1847 by this time. Katherine was a lithe thing of seventeen, courted by cousins and strangers alike, but showed no desire to marry. The poor girl's most wicked pleasure in fact was to let me dress her as a boy and take her with me to the quadroon balls and to the riverfront drinking places where no true white woman could ever enter. All this was fun and sport for her, and I loved it t
oo, seeing this seamy rotten world through her pretty eyes...

  But! As all that went on, as the city grew rich and yearly full of more diversions, I carried out with Marguerite in the privacy of the study our worst sacrifices to the daemon.

  Our first victim of any note was a voodoo doctor, a mulatto with yellow hair, very old, but still strong, whom we stole from his front steps, and took to Riverbend, plying him with fancy words and wine and heaps of gold, and assuring him we would know what he knew of God and the Devil.

  He had been possessed by many a spirit, he averred. Fine, we have a nice one for you. We talked voodoo and we talked trash and lies. We had him ripe to welcome this powerful god, Lasher.

  In Marguerite's rooms with the doors bolted once more, we called Lasher down into this man, who of his own free will surrendered to the possession.

  At first, the creature lay still, a small-boned old man, skin very pale, hair very yellow, and then as he opened his eyes, we saw another life was inside him! The eyes fixed upon us, and the mouth moved, and a voice deeper than that of the man himself, yet from the same throat, said:

  "Ah, my beloveds, I see you." The voice was flat and horrid. Indeed it roared from the mouth, and the eyes of 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.