The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

If you hear nothing more from me--and allow me to remind you that Dutch ships leave here daily for our fair city--follow these instructions.

Write to the witch and tell her of my disappearance. But see to it that your letter does not originate from the Motherhouse; and that no address provided for her reply is given which should enable the fiend to penetrate our walls.

Do not, and I beg you, do not send anyone after me! For he will only meet with a worse fate than mine.

Learn what you can of the progress of this woman from other sources, and remember the child she bears within nine months will surely be mine.

What else can I tell you?

After my death, I shall try to reach you or to reach Alexander if such be possible. But my beloved friend, I fear there is no "after." That only darkness waits for me, and my time in the light is at an end.

I have no regrets in these final hours. The Talamasca has been my life, and I have spent many years in the defense of the innocent and in the pure seeking of knowledge. I love you, my brothers and sisters. Remember me not for my weakness, for my sins, or for my poor judgment. But that I loved you.

Ah, allow me to tell you what just happened for it was very interesting indeed.

I saw Roemer again, my beloved Roemer, the first director of our order I knew and loved. And Roemer looked so young and fine to me, and I was so glad to see him that I wept, and did not want the image to disappear.

Let me play with this, I thought, for it comes from my mind, does it not? And the fiend does not know what he does. And so I spoke to Roemer. I said, "My dearest Roemer, you do not know how I have missed you, and where have you been, and what have you learned?"

And the stout handsome figure of Roemer comes towards me, and I know now that no one else sees it for they are glancing at me, the muttering madman, but I do not care. Again I say, "Sit down, Roemer, drink with me." And this, my beloved teacher, sits and leans against the table, and speaks the most foul obscenities to me, ah, you have never heard such language, as he tells me that he would strip off my clothes in this very tavern, and what pleasure he would give me, and how he had always wanted to do it when I was a boy, and even that he did do it, in the night, coming into my room, and laughing afterwards about it, and letting others watch.

Like a statue, I must have appeared, staring into the face of this monster, who with Roemer's smile whispered like an old bawd to me, such filth, and then finally this creature's mouth ceases to move, but merely grows bigger and bigger, and the tongue inside it becomes a black thing, big and shining like the humpback of a whale.

Like a puppet, I reach for my pen and dip it and begin to write the above description, and now the thing is gone.

But you know what it has done, Stefan? It has turned my mind inside out. Let me tell you a secret. Of course, my beloved Roemer never took such liberties with me! But I used to pray that he would! And the fiend drew that out of me, that as a boy I lay in my bed in the Motherhouse dreaming that Roemer would come and pull down the covers and lie with me. I dreamed those things!

Had you asked me last year, did I ever have such a dream, I would have said never, but I had it, and the fiend remembered me of it. Should I thank him?

Maybe he can bring my mother back and she and I will sit by the kitchen fire once more and sing.

I go now. The sun is fully risen. The thing is not near. I will entrust this to our agent before I go on towards Maye Faire--that is, if I am not stopped by the local constables, and thrown into jail. I do look like a vagabond and a madman. Charlotte will help me. Charlotte will restrain this demon.

What else is there to say?

Petyr

NOTE TO THE ARCHIVES:

This was the last letter ever received from Petyr van Abel.

On the Death of Petyr van Abel

SUMMARY OF TWENTY-THREE LETTERS, AND NUMEROUS REPORTS

TO THE FILES

(SEE INVENTORY):

Two weeks after Petyr's last letter reached the Motherhouse, a communication was received from a Jan van Clausen, Dutch merchant in Port-au-Prince, that Petyr was dead. This letter was dated only twenty-four hours after Petyr's last letter. Petyr's body had been discovered some twelve hours after he was known to have rented a horse at the livery stables and to have ridden out of Port-au-Prince.

It was the assumption of the local authorities that Petyr had met with foul play on the road, perhaps coming upon a band of runaway slaves in the early morning, who might have been in the process of again desecrating a cemetery in which they had wreaked considerable havoc only a day or two before. The original desecration had caused a great disturbance among the local slaves, who, much to the dismay of their masters, were reluctant to participate in the restoration of the site, and it was still in a state of considerable disarray and deserted when the assault upon Petyr occurred.

Petyr was apparently beaten and driven into a large brick crypt where he was trapped by a fallen tree and much heavy debris. When he was found, the fingers of his right hand were entangled in the debris as if he had been trying to dig his way out. Two fingers from his left hand had been severed and were never found.

The perpetrators of the desecration and the murder were never discovered. That Petyr's money, his gold watch, and his papers were not stolen added to the mystery of his death.

Ongoing repairs to the site led to the early discovery of Petyr's remains. In spite of extensive head wounds, Petyr was easily and undeniably identified by van Clausen, as well as by Charlotte Fontenay, who rode into Port-au-Prince when she heard tell of it, and was violently disturbed by Petyr's death, and "took to her bed" in grief.

Van Clausen returned Petyr's possessions to the Motherhouse, and at the behest of the order undertook a further investigation of Petyr's death.

The files contain letters not only to and from van Clausen, but also to and from several priests in the colony, and other persons as well.

Essentially, nothing of any real importance was discovered, except that Petyr was thought to be mad during his last day and night in Port-au-Prince, what with his repeated requests for letters to be mailed to Amsterdam, and repeated instructions that the Motherhouse be notified in the event of his death.

Several mentions are made of his having been in the company of a strange dark-haired young man, with whom he conversed at length.

&n

bsp; It is difficult to know how to interpret these statements. But more analysis of Lasher and Lasher's powers is contained in the later chapters of these files. It is sufficient to say that others saw Lasher with Petyr, and believed Lasher to be a human being.

Via Jan van Clausen, Stefan Franck wrote to Charlotte Fontenay a letter which could not have been understood by anyone else, explaining what Petyr had written in his last hours, and imploring her to take heed of whatever Petyr had told her.

No response to this was ever received.

The desecration of the cemetery, along with Petyr's murder, led to its abandonment. No further burials were made there, and some bodies were moved elsewhere. Even one hundred years later it was still regarded as a "haunted place."

Before Petyr's last letters reached Amsterdam, Alexander announced to the other members in the Motherhouse that Petyr was dead. He asked that the portrait of Deborah Mayfair by Rembrandt be taken down from the wall.

Stefan Franck complied, and the painting was stored in the vaults.

Alexander laid hands upon the piece of paper on which Lasher had written the words "Petyr will die," and said only that the words were true, but the spirit was "a liar."

He could ascertain nothing more. He warned Stefan Franck to abide by Petyr's wishes that no one be sent to Port-au-Prince to speak further with Charlotte as such a person would be going to his most certain death.

Stefan Franck frequently attempted to make contact with the spirit of Petyr van Abel. With relief he reported again and again in notes to the file that his attempts had been a failure and he was confident that Petyr's spirit had "moved, on to a higher plane."

Ghost stories regarding the stretch of road where Petyr died were copied into the files as late as 1956. However none of them pertain to any recognizable figures in this tale.

This brings to a conclusion the story of Petyr's investigation of the Mayfair Witches, who can reliably be considered Petyr's descendants on the basis of his reports. The story continues ... Please go to Part V.

Seventeen

THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES