The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

What was this, more of Sister Bridget Marie's influence? But before he could speak, the child went on and he knew that it was Deirdre.

"I didn't tell the devil to go away, when he brought the flowers. I wanted to and I know that I should have done it, and Aunt Carl is really, really angry with me. But Father, he only wanted to make us happy. I swear to you, Father, he's never mean to me. And he cries if I don't look at him or listen to him. I didn't know he'd bring the flowers from the altar! Sometimes he does very foolish things like that, Father, things like a little child would do, with even less sense than that. But he doesn't mean to hurt anyone."

"Now, wait a minute, darling, what makes you think the devil himself would trouble a little girl? Don't you want to tell me what really happened?"

"Father, he's not like the Bible says. I swear it. He's not ugly. He's tall and beautiful. Just like a real man. And he doesn't tell lies. He does nice things, always. When I'm afraid he comes and sits by me on the bed and kisses me. He really does. And he frightens away people who try to hurt me!"

"Then why do you say he's the devil, child? Wouldn't it be better to say he's a made-up friend, someone to be with so you'll never be lonely?"

"No, Father, he's the devil." So definite she sounded. "He's not real, and he's not made up either." The little voice had become sad, tired. A little woman in a child's guise struggling with an immense burden, almost in despair. "I know he's there when no one else does, and then I look and look and then everyone can see him!" The voice broke. "Father, I try not to look. I say Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and I try not to look. I know it's a mortal sin. But he's so sad and he cries without making a sound and I can hear him."

"Now, child, have you talked to your Aunt Carl about this?" His voice was calm, but in fact the child's detailed account had begun to alarm him. This was beyond "excess of imagination" or any such excess he'd ever known.

"Father, she knows all about him. All my aunts do. They call him the man, but Aunt Carl says he's really the devil. She's the one who says it's a sin, like touching yourself between the legs, like having dirty thoughts. Like when he kisses me and makes me feel chills and things. She's says it's filth to look at the man and let him come under the covers. She says he can kill me. My mother saw him too all her life and that's why she died and went to heaven to get away from him."

Father Mattingly was aghast. So you can never shock a priest in the confessional, was that the old saying?

"And my mother's mother saw him too," the child went on, the voice rushing, straining. "And she was really, really bad, he made her bad, and she died on account of him. But she went to hell probably, instead of heaven, and I might too."

"Now, wait a minute, child. Who told you this!"

"My Aunt Carl, Father," the child insisted. "She doesn't want me to go to hell like Stella. She told me to pray and drive him away, that I could do it if I only tried, if I said the rosary and didn't look at him. But Father, she gets so angry with me for letting him come--" The child stopped. She was crying, though obviously trying to muffle her cries. "And Aunt Millie is so afraid. And Aunt Nancy won't look at me. Aunt Nancy says that in our family, once you've seen the man, you're as good as done for."

Father Mattingly was too shocked to speak. Quickly he cleared his throat. "You mean your aunts say this thing is real--"

"They've always known about him, Father. And anyone can see him when I let him get strong enough. It's true, Father. Anyone. But you see, I have to make him come. It's not a mortal sin for other people to see him because it's my fault. My fault. He couldn't be seen if I didn't let it happen. And Father, I just, I just don't understand how the devil could be so kind to me, and could cry so hard when he's sad and want so badly just to be near me--" The voice broke off into low sobs.

"Don't cry, Deirdre!" he'd said, firmly. But this was inconceivable! That sensible, "modern" woman in her tailored suit telling a child this superstition? And what about the others, for the love of God? Why, they made the likes of Sister Bridget Marie look like Sigmund Freud himself. He tried to see Deirdre through the dim grille. Was she wiping her eyes with her hands?

The crisp little voice went on suddenly in an anguished rush.

"Aunt Carl says it's a mortal sin even to think of him or think of his name. It makes him come immediately, if you say his name! But Father, he stands right beside me when she's talking and he says she's lying, and Father, I know it's terrible to say it, but she is lying sometimes, I know it, even when he's being quiet. But the worst part is when he comes through and scares her. And she threatens him! She says if he doesn't leave me alone she'll hurt me!" Her voice broke again, the cries barely audible. So small she seemed, so helpless! "But all the time, Father, even when I'm all alone, or even at Mass with everybody there, I know he's right beside me. I can feel him. I can hear him crying and it makes me cry, too."

"Child, now think carefully before you answer. Did your Aunt Carl actually say she saw this thing?"

"Oh, yes, Father." So weary! Didn't he believe her? That's what she was begging him to do.

"I'm trying to understand, darling. I want so to understand, but you must help me. Are you certain that your Aunt Carl said she saw him with her own eyes?"

"Father, she saw him when I was a baby and didn't even know I could make him come. She saw him the day my mother died. He was rocking my cradle. And when my grandmother Stella was a little girl, he'd come behind her to the supper table. Father, I'll tell you a terrible secret thing. There's a picture in our house of my mother, and he's in the picture, standing beside her. I know about the picture because he got it and gave it to me, though they had it hidden away. He opened the dresser drawer without even touching it, and then he put the picture in my hand. He does things like that when he's really strong, when I've been with him a long time and been thinking about him all day. That's when everybody knows he's in the house, and Aunt Nancy meets Aunt Carl at the door and whispers, 'The man is here. I just saw him.' And then Aunt Carl gets so mad. It's all my fault, Father! And I'm scared I can't stop him. And they're all so upset!"

Her sobs had gotten louder, echoing against the wooden walls of the little cell. Surely they could hear her outside in the church itself.

And what was he to say to her? His temper was boiling. What craziness went on with these women? Was there no one with a particle of sense in the whole family who could get a psychiatrist to help this girl?

"Darling, listen to me. I want your permission to speak of these things outside the confessional to your Aunt Carl. Will you give me that permission?"

"Oh, no Father, please, you mustn't!"

"Child, I won't, not without your permission. But I tell you, I need to speak to your Aunt Carl about these things. Deirdre, she and I can drive away this thing together."

"Father, she'll never forgive me for telling. Never. It's a mortal sin to ever tell. Aunt Nancy would never forgive me. Even Aunt Millie would be angry. Father, you can't tell her I told you about him!" She was becoming hysterical.

"I can wipe that mortal sin away, child," he'd explained, "I can give you absolution. From that moment on, your soul is as white as snow, Deirdre. Trust in me, Deirdre. Give me permission to talk to her."

For a tense moment the crying was his only answer. Then, even before he heard her turn the knob of the little wooden door, he knew he'd lost her. Within seconds, he heard her steps running fast down the aisle away from him.

He had said the wrong thing, made the wrong judgment! And now there was nothing he could do, bound as he was by the seal of the confessional. And this secret had come to him from a troubled child who was not even old enough to commit a mortal sin, or benefit from the sacrament she'd been seeking.

He never forgot that moment, sitting helpless, hearing those steps echoing in the vestibule of the church, the closeness and the heat of the confessional suffocating him. Dear God, what was he going to do?

But the torture had only begun for Father Mattingly.

For wee

ks after, he'd been truly obsessed--those women, that house ...

But he could not act upon what he had heard any more than he could repeat it. The confessional bound him to secrecy in deed and word.

He did not dare even question Sister Bridget Marie, though she volunteered enough information when he happened to see her on the playground. He felt guilty for listening, but he could not bring himself to move away.

"Sure, they've put Deirdre in the Sacred Heart, they have. But do you think she'll stay there? They expelled her mother, Antha, when she was but eight years old. And from the Ursulines too she was expelled. They found a private school for her finally, one of those crazy places where they let the children stand on their heads. And what an unhappy thing she was as a young girl, always writing poetry and stories and talking to herself and asking questions about how her mother had died. And you know it was murder, don't you, Father, that Stella Mayfair was shot dead by her brother Lionel? And at a fancy dress ball in that house, he did it. Caused a regular stampede. Mirrors, clocks, windows, everything broken by the time the panic was over, and Stella lying dead on the floor."

Father Mattingly only shook his head at the pity of it.

"No wonder Antha went wild after, and not ten years later took up with a painter, no less, who never bothered to marry her, leaving her in a four-story walk-up in Greenwich Village in the middle of winter with no money and little Deirdre to take care of, so that she had to come home in shame. And then to jump from that attic window, poor thing, but what a hellish life it was with her aunts picking on her and watching her every move and locking her up at night, and her running down to the French Quarter and drinking, mind you, at her age, with the poets and the writers and trying to get them to pay attention to her work. I'll tell you a strange secret, Father. For months after she died, letters came for her, and manuscripts of hers came back from the New York people to whom she'd sent them. And what an agony for Miss Carlotta, the postman bringing her a reminder of such pain and suffering when he rang the bell at the gate."

Father Mattingly said his silent prayer for Deirdre. Let the shadow of evil not touch her.

"There was one of Antha's stories in a magazine, they told me, published in Paris, they said, but it was all in English, and that come too to Miss Carlotta and she took one look at it and locked it away. 'Twas one of the Mayfair cousins told me that part of it, and how they offered to take the baby off her hands--little Deirdre--but she said no, she'd keep it, she owed that to Stella, and to Antha, and to her mother, and to the child itself."