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darker, until I had to switch on my lights. I tried to read, but I didn't feel
in the mood for geology, and I couldn't get past the word 'Preface.' I tried
to telephone Gilly, but the lines were down, and all I could get was a distant
crackling
372
noise. At last I lay on my bed with hands over my eyes, and thought of nothing
at all. Five minutes later, however, when I was just beginning to relax,
Quamus came into my room and said sombrely, 'We are ready to leave now. Please
be quick.'
I followed him downstairs without saying a word, half-skipping as I went to
push my sneaker on to my left foot. The refrigerated truck had been loaded
with twenty cylinders of liquid nitrogen, and a device like a fire-fighter's
spray, as well as an insulated suit and gloves to protect Quamus from the
sub-zero gas. Enid was to come with us, but Duglass Evelith was going to stay
behind. He explained that he was too old to fight demons any more, but all of
us knew that if Mictantecutli were to wipe out Quamus, Enid, and me, then
somebody who knew how to defeat it would have to remain safe.
Duglass Evelith took my hand between both of his, and squeezed it. Take care,'
he said, 'and remember that what you are fighting has no moral scruples, no
conscience, nothing that even remotely approximates a human conscience. It
will kill you if it can. It will expect you to do the same in return.'
We drove away into the darkness, the three of us sitting side by side in the
cab. We said very little to each other as we headed east towards Salem. We
were all afraid, we all knew it, and there wasn't much point in discussing it.
The cylinders of nitrogen clanked around in the back, but I wondered whether
there was really any future in trying to use them on a creature like
Mictantecutli.
All around us, the Massachusetts countryside was like hell by Hieronymous
Bosch. Fires leaped up from shopping malls and residential estates; overturned
vehicles burned in the roads in grotesque funeral pyres, their tires flaring
and dripping like incendiary wreaths.
Enid said, This is what Salem must have been like in the days when David Dark
first brought Mictantecutli back from Mexico. No wonder they tore all
references to it out of the history books, and never spoke about it. It
373
must have seemed like a nightmare until they finally got rid of it.'
At last we reached the outskirts of Salem, and made a careful detour down
Jefferson Avenue to cross the MBTA Commuter tracks quite a way south of the
Lynnfield Book Warehouse. As we drove slowly up towards the warehouse, our
tires crunched on broken glass, and the highway was splattered with red in
places, as if it had been raining blood. I saw a family who had been dragged
out of their car and pitifully torn to pieces as if they had been attacked by
wild animals. And the dreadful truth of it was that it was my fault, my
responsibility. If it hadn't been for my selfishness and my blindness,
Mictantecutli would never have gotten free; and this gory rampage of Salem's
dead would never have happened.
All I could possibly do to atone for my stupidity was to destroy the demon I
had set free.
The warehouse stood on the intersection of Canal and Roslyn, overlooking the
railroad tracks. It was here, 290 years ago, that David Dark had lived, and it
was here that David Dark had died. His cottage had stood among a clump of
trees that had long since vanished; but for Mictantecutli this was still
familiar ground. Demons permeate the ground on which they live with a rank
odour, like diseased dogs, or so Duglass Evelith had told me. That was how
they knew where to return after hundreds of years; and that was why
devil-possessed places like Amityville and Rohrerstown always had a sickening
odour.
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The warehouse was a gray, rectangular building, with a small brick
administration block on one side, and rows of windows high up by the roof. As
Quamus drew the truck in to the curb, we knew at once that Duglass Evelith had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]