The Witching Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 wasessential 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