The Witching Hour by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

all, ready to do exactly what they had wanted of him. All that splendid knowledge!
    In those first few seconds, he tried desperately to tell of where he’d been and the things he’d seen, the great long adventure. Surely he had! But all he could remember now was the intensity of the pain in his chest, and in his hands and his feet, and the dim figure of a woman near him. A fragile being with a pale delicate face, all of her hair hidden by a dark cap, her gray eyes flickering for a second like lights in front of him. In a soft voice, she’d told him to be calm, that they would take care of him.
    Impossible to think that this little woman had gotten him out of the sea, and pumped the water out of his lungs. But he had not understood that she was his savior at that moment.
    Men were lifting him, putting him on a stretcher, and strapping him down, and he was filled with pain. The wind was whipping his face. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. The stretcher was rising in the air.
    Confusion after that. Had he blacked out again? Had that been the moment of true and total forgetting? No one could confirm or deny, it seemed, what had happened on the flight in. Only that they had rushed him to shore, where the ambulance and the reporters were waiting.
    Cameras flashing, that he did recall, people saying his name. The ambulance itself, yes, and someone trying to stick a needle into his vein. He thought he heard his Aunt Vivian’s voice. He begged them to stop. He had to sit up. They couldn’t strap him down again, no!
    “Hold on, Mr. Curry, just hold on. Hey, help me here with this guy!” They
were
strapping him down again. They were treating him as if he were a prisoner. He fought. But it was no use; they’d shot something into his arm, he knew it. He could see the darkness coming.
    Then
they
came back, those he had seen out there; they began to talk again. “I understand,” he said. “I won’t let it happen. I’ll go home. I know where it is. I remember … ”
    When he had awakened, it was to bright artificial light. A hospital room. He was hooked to machines. His best friend, Jimmy Barnes, was sitting next to the bed. He tried to speak to Jimmy, but then the nurses and the doctors surrounded him.
    They were touching him, his hands, his feet, asking him questions. But he couldn’t concentrate on the proper answers. He kept seeing things—fleeting images of nurses, orderlies, hospital hallways.
What is all this?
He knew the doctor’s name—Randy Morris—and that he’d kissed his wife, Deenie, before he left home. So what? Things were literally popping into his head. Hecouldn’t stand it. It was like being half awake and half asleep, feverish, worried.
    He shuddered, trying to clear his head. “Listen,” he said. “I’m trying.” After all, he knew what this was all about, the touching, that he’d been drowned and they wanted to see if there had been any brain damage. “But you needn’t bother. I’m fine. I’m all right. I’ve got to get out of here, and get packed. I have to go back home immediately … ”
    Plane reservations, closing the company … The doorway, the promise, and his purpose, which was absolutely crucial … 
    But what was it? Why did he have to get back home? There came another flash of images—nurses cleaning this room, somebody wiping the chrome bat of the bed a few hours ago while he’d been asleep.
Stop it!
Have to get back to the point, the whole purpose, the—
    Then he realized it. He couldn’t remember the purpose! He couldn’t remember what he’d seen while he was dead! The whole thing, all of it—the people, the places, all he’d been told—he couldn’t remember any of it. No, this couldn’t be. It had been wondrously clear. And they were depending on him. They’d said, Michael, you know you do not have to return, you can refuse, and he’d said that he would, that he … that he what? It was going to come back in a flash, like a dream you forget and then