Death Trance

Twenty-Five

I approached the girl cautiously, circling around behind her so that I could see her pale face mirrored in the bookstore window. She must have known I was there, but she stayed where she was, quite still, one hand clasping her hood around her head, the other hanging with almost unnatural stillness by her side.

We both stood there in silence for quite a long time. A man in a woolly ski-hat came out of the store with a package under his arm, saw us, stopped for a moment in surprise, and then went hurrying off.

The girl said, 'Why did you follow me?'

'I think I should be asking you that question. Everywhere I've been in the past few days, I've seen you.'

She turned around and looked at me. There was something strangely familiar about her, although I couldn't think what it was. She was very pale, but quite pretty, with the darkest of eyes; yet her eyes were liquid and animated, not like the dead and lightless eyes of Jane, or Edgar Simons, or Neil Manzi.

'You're not one of them,' I said.

Them?'

'The manifestations; the ghosts.'

'No,' she smiled. 'I'm not one of them.'

'But you do know who I mean?'

'Yes.'

I took out my handkerchief and dabbed at my forehead. I felt hot and uncomfortable and I wasn't quite sure what to say. The girl watched me placidly, still smiling; although it was a quiet and friendly smile, not supercilious, or sly, or marked with that coaxing twist of the lip that had characterized Jane's smiles, whenever she had appeared.

'I was only watching you,' she said. 'Just to make sure that no harm befell you. Just to make sure that you were safe. Of course, you have always been fairly safe, because of your unborn son; but you might have unwittingly put yourself into a dangerous situation without knowing it.'

'You were watching me?' I asked her. 'Who are you? And what were you watching me for? You don't have any right to watch people.'

'These days,' said the girl, not at all upset by my aggressiveness, 'everybody has a right to watch everybody else. You never know, after all, who your very best friend might be.'

'I want to know who you are,' I insisted.

'You have already met some of us,' she said. 'Mercy Lewis you met on Salem Common; Enid Lynch you met at Mr Evelith's house. My name is Anne Putnam.'

'Mercy Lewis? Anne Putnam?' I asked. 'Aren't those the names of — '

The girl smiled even more broadly, and held out her hand. Hesitantly, I took it, I'm not sure why. It just seemed impolite to refuse. Her fingers were long and cool, and there was a silver ring on every one of them, including her thumb.

'You're right,' she said. 'They are the names of witches. Not our real names, of course; but names we have adopted. They have power, those names; and besides, they remind us of the days when Salem was in the grip of the Fleshless One.'

'You mean Mictantecutli? From what I've seen, Salem is still in his grip, and Granitehead, too. But you're not seriously telling me that you're a witch?’

'You can call us what you like,' said Anne. 'Listen — take me back with you to your cottage, and then I can explain everything to you. Now that you have found me out, I think it is better that you know.'

I looked down at our joined hands. 'All right,' I said, at last. 'I've always wanted to meet a witch. In actual fact, I always wanted to marry one. When I was twelve, I was in love with Elizabeth Montgomery.'

We walked out of Village Place and into Granitehead Square, hand-in-hand; and, just my luck, Laura was stepping out of the Crumblin' Cookie on the far side of the square, and she stopped and stared at us with her hands planted firmly on her hips to indicate to me that she had seen us, and that she thought I was more than a pig. In fact, she thought I was a don't know what.

As we descended the winding hill to Granitehead Harbour, Anne said, 'You are troubled today. I can feel it. Why are you so troubled?'

'You know about Mrs Edgar Simons? The way she died?'

'I saw you with her that night, when I was out on the road.'

'Well, I just witnessed another death; Charlie Manzi, the guy who owns the Granitehead Market.'

'Where did it happen?'

'Where? Down at the Waterside Cemetery. He was crushed, somehow — I can't even describe it. But it seemed like the tombstones came together and crushed the life out of him.'

Anne gave my hand a conciliatory squeeze. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But there is great power here. The Fleshless One is about to be free; and all the energy he has been storing for 300 years is about to strike us.'

We reached my car, and I opened the door for Anne and then climbed in myself. 'I'm amazed you know so much about this,' I told her, as I started the engine. I twisted around in my seat as I backed out into the roadway. 'Edward and I and the rest of us, we were all in the dark until we went to talk to Mr Evelith.'

'You forget that all of Salem's witches can trace their ancestry directly back to David Dark,' she said. 'It was David Dark who brought the power of the Fleshless One to Salem, in his attempts to impose some kind of hellfire morality on the people of Essex County; and the first witches were girls and women whom the Fleshless One had killed and then reincarnated as its handmaidens, to entice their own relatives and friends to one grisly death after another, in order that the Fleshless One could have their hearts.'

That's what old man Evelith told us,' I said, turning left on West Shore Drive.

'Not all of the witches were named and caught, though,' said Anne. 'And many of those who were caught were released from jail when Esau Hasket disposed of the Fleshless One. They were very much weakened, because the Fleshless One was trapped in its copper vessel underneath the sea; but they survived for long enough to be able to educate their daughters in the ways of witchcraft, and to pass on the knowledge of what had happened, if not the power.'

'And you're one of those to whom the knowledge was passed down?'

Anne nodded. 'Seven Salem families were witch families — the Putnams, the Lewises, the Lynches, the Billing-tons, the Eveliths, the Coreys, and the Proctors. During the 18th and 19th centuries, their descendants met at various times and performed the rituals of homage to Mictantecutli, the Fleshless One, and sacrificed pigs and sheep to him; and, once, they killed a girl who was found wandering at Swampscott suffering from loss of memory. The witch-groups were illegal, and so was the banner of David Dark under which they met; but there is no question that they kept the Fleshless One somnolent for 300 years, and protected Salem from terrors which you can only imagine.'

'So the witches — who started off as Mictantecutli's minions — have actually become our protectors against it?'

‘That's right. As much as we are able. We still meet from time to time, but there are only five of us left now; and many of the older rituals have been lost to us. That is why Enid lives and works with Duglass Evelith, not only to serve him and to look after him, but to research as much as she can into the ancient magic, in order that the Salem witches can be strong again.' I cleared my throat. 'I thought Enid was old man Evelith's grand-daughter.'

'Well, she is, after a fashion.'

'After a fashion? What does that mean?'

That means that they are related, in a curious way; but nobody quite knows how. You mustn't say that I mentioned it, but I believe there was rather a lot of incest in the Evelith family, back in the early part of the century, when the roads were bad.'

'I see,' I said, although I didn't quite.

We drove past Granitehead Market, and I saw that there were two police cars parked outside, with their lights flashing.

'That's Charlie Manzi's place,' I told Anne. 'Somebody must have found him.'

'Aren't you going to stop?'

'Are you kidding? Do you think they'd believe me about the tombstones? I'm already under suspicion for two other deaths. This time, they'd be sure to lock me up. I won't be any good to anybody if I'm shut up in a cell.'

Anne looked across at me carefully. She was very attractive, in a thin, poetic kind of way, with long dark hair that had been gathered on each side of her face into three or four narrow braids. Not actually my type: too ethereal and well-educated and inclined to speak as if she were reading from an encyclopedia, but nice to have around, all the same. It was hard to believe that she was actually a witch.

'What does a witch find to do these days?' I asked her. 'Can you work spells, stuff like that?'

'I hope you're not laughing at me.'

'I'm not, actually. I've seen too much that's unreal in the past few days to laugh at a witch. Do you call yourselves witches?'

'No. We call ourselves by the old name, wonderworkers.'

'And what wonders can you work?'

'Do you want me to show you?'

'I'd be delighted.'

I drove back up Quaker Lane, and parked outside the cottage. Anne got out of the car and stood staring at the cottage in silence. When I walked towards the front door she made no immediate move to follow me.

'Something wrong?' I asked her.

'There is a very strong and evil influence here.'

I stayed where I was, halfway down the garden path, jingling my keys in my hand. I looked up at the bedroom windows, shuttered and blind; at the dead fingers of creeper which tapped so persistently against the weatherboard; and at the dank, distressed garden. There was green scum all over the surface of the ornamental pool, unnaturally bright in the leaden afternoon light.

'My wife comes back to me almost every night,' I said. That's what you can feel.'

Anne approached the cottage with obvious trepidation. The loose upstairs shutter suddenly banged, and she reached for my hand in fright. I unlocked the front door, and we stepped inside, still holding hands; Anne raising her head slightly as if she were sniffing the darkness for evil and mischievous spirits.

I switched on the light. 'I wouldn't have thought that a witch would be afraid.'

'On the contrary,' she said. 'When you're a witch, you're far more sensitive to occult manifestations, and you can sense how malevolent they are, far more acutely than an ordinary person.'

'What do you feel in here? Is it bad?'

She shivered. 'It's like a cold draught from hell itself,' she told me. 'Because your wife used to live here, this cottage has become one of the portals through which the dead have been returning to the world of the living. Can you feel how cold it is? Especially here, where your library is. Do you mind if I go in?'

'Help yourself.'

Anne pushed the library door open a little wider, and stepped inside. As she did so, I felt a chilly wind run through the room, and the papers on my desk began to shift and stir, and one or two of them floated to the floor. Anne stood in the very centre of the room, and looked around, and I could see her breath fuming from her mouth, as if she were standing outside in five degrees of frost. There was a smell, too: a sour, cold smell, as if something had gone rotten in the icebox. I must have unconsciously noticed it yesterday, and that was why I had checked in the icebox to see if anything had gone bad. But it wasn't that at all: it was freezing and sickly, like chilled vomit, and I felt my stomach tighten into knots with nausea.

Anne whispered, 'It knows that I am here. Have you ever felt it as strongly as this before? It knows that I am here, and it's restless.'

'What are you going to do?' I asked her.

'For the moment, nothing. There's nothing I can do. There isn't any point in closing this portal, because the Fleshless One will only find another. There are probably several more around here in any case. Every time someone dies, their home becomes susceptible to visitations not just from them, but from any apparition whom the Fleshless One chooses to send. Have you heard whispering, talking, anything like that?'

I nodded. The way Anne was going on, I was beginning to feel more than a little terrified. I felt that I could cope with Jane's spirit; and even the spirit of my unborn son. But if the cottage was an entrance to the region of the dead, through which any number of apparitions might be rustling and shuffling, then it was time to move, as far as I was concerned. It was like living on the brink of a gaping mass grave, in the bottom of which all the corpses were sightlessly waving and calling.

'I think I need a drink,' I said, unsteadily. 'Hold on a minute, I left a bottle of Chivas Regal in the car.'

I went outside, leaving the front door open, and walked down the garden path to the car. Unlocking it, I took out the bottle of whisky, and then turned to go back to the house.

I stopped where I was, and almost dropped the bottle on the ground. Standing behind the laurel hedge, smiling at me, was Jane. Just as real, just as solid as she had been yesterday night. Except that she was standing exactly where she had been standing in that photograph which I had believed to have changed, on the surface of the ornamental pool. And in the library window, just behind her, I could see Anne's face looking out in horror, just the same as she had done in the photograph.

I took two stiff steps towards the garden path, then another. Jane rotated exactly where she was, without moving her feet. She was smiling at me, coaxing, encouraging. But my own face was set into anoxolyte mask, nerveless and expressionless. As soon as I had passed the laurel hedge I saw that Jane's bare feet were resting on the weedy surface of the water without even breaking the water's green meniscus.

'John,' she said. 'Remember that you can have me back. Don't forget, John, you can have me back. And Constance. And our son. You can have us back alive, John, if you set me free.'

Slowly, still smiling, Jane began to sink into the pool. She didn't even disturb the surface as first her legs disappeared beneath it, then her body, then her face. The green water passed over her wide-open eyes and she didn't close them, or even blink. Then she was gone. And the most disturbing thing was that the pool was only two feet deep.

I walked over to the edge of the water and stared down at it. Then I picked up a dead stick, and cautiously prodded beneath the scum. There was nothing there, only stinking weed, and the white fungussy body of a dead goldfish.

Anne was standing in the front porch when I turned around, paler than ever. 'I saw her,' she said, and gave a sudden and slightly hysterical giggle. 'I actually saw her.'

'She's becoming stronger,' I said. 'First of all, she only appeared as a flickering light, and only at night. But then she started to look more solid, more real if you like. Now she's appearing just as frequently in the daylight.'

The Fleshless One must be breaking free from his casket,' said Anne. 'Did Jane say anything to you? I thought I heard a voice, but I couldn't make out what the words were.'

'She said that if I — well, she said that I had to be careful.'

'Was that all?'

I felt guilty, not telling Anne that Mictantecutli had promised to return my wife and my child to me; but then it was something I wanted to think about. There was no question of my doing anything to prevent Edward and Forrest and Jimmy from taking charge of the living skeleton, and eventually delivering it to old man Evelith; but all the same, I had been made an extraordinary offer, and there was no harm in considering it, thinking it through. I thought of all those days and evenings when Jane and I had been driving the length and breadth of the North Shore, looking for likely antiques to put in the shop, and the remembered happiness of those times was almost too sweet to bear.

'Let's have that drink,' said Anne, and led the way back into the cottage.

I lit a fire, switched on the television, and poured us each a sizeable whisky. Then I took my shoes off and warmed my toes by the crackling logs. Anne knelt on the floor beside me, the firelight reflected in her eyes and in her long shiny hair.

'We first began to feel vibrations about you when your wife was killed,' she said. 'We were having a meeting at Mercy Lewis' house; she's our senior wonder-worker, if you like. It was Enid who sensed that something was in the air. She said that a Granitehead girl had died, she could feel it, and that her spirit had fled back to Granite-head and been ensnared by the Fleshless One. Not all spirits are caught; only those which the Fleshless One believes will bring him more hearts, and more blood, and more years of unlived life.

'Because your wife's spirit was caught, we immediately sought your name.'

'By magic?' I asked.

Anne smiled. 'I'm afraid not. We looked in the obituary columns of the Granitehead Messenger. And there she was, Jane Trenton. We started watching you straight away, or I did, mostly, since I don't live too far away. I even went to the funeral.'

That's where I've seen you before,' I told her. 'I thought your face was familiar.'

'Anyway,' she said, 'the more we watched you, the more limited we realized our abilities were going to be to help you. Our power, what we have of it, comes from the Fleshless One himself, the very one we are determined to keep in check. That is why it will be better for you and your friends from the Peabody to raise the David Dark, and extricate Mictantecutli, and then for we witches to pacify it with ritual sacrifices and prayer, before Duglass Evelith and Quamus finally destroy it. It is quite possible, and all of we witches are prepared for this, that when the Fleshless One is brought up from the ocean-bed, we shall be completely in his thrall. But Duglass Evelith and Quamus are satisfied that they can handle this eventuality, and that the only way in which they can bring the Fleshless One to total destruction is by using us to serve and exalt him.'

'Where does Quamus come into this?' I asked her. 'I thought he was the butler.'

'He helps Mr Evelith to run the house, yes. But he is also the last of the great Narragansett wonder-workers. He was trained from childhood in the higher arts of Indian magic; and I have seen him with my own eyes set fire to pieces of paper by simply looking at them, and making a whole row of chairs fall over backwards one by one.'

'Quite a trickster.'

'Not a trickster, John. Definitely not a trickster. Not Quamus. He's been helping Duglass Evelith for years to invoke some ancient Indian spirit that was supposed to have taken the soul of one of his ancestors, way back in 1624, when the Puritans first came to Salem, and it was still called Naumkeag. It's very secret. Neither of them will tell me what they've achieved. Even Enid isn't allowed to know. But she says that they lock themselves in that library for days on end sometimes, and you can hear these terrible shouting and groaning noises, so loud and deep that they make the doors and the windows rattle, and that quite a few Tewksbury people got up a petition because of the strange lights that were appearing in the sky.'

I sat back, cupping my whisky-glass in my hands. Tell me I'm going to wake up in a minute,' I told her. 'Tell me I fell asleep last week and I'm still dreaming.'

'You're not dreaming, John,' she insisted. 'The spirits and the demons and the apparitions are all real. Within their own sphere, they're all much more real than you and I appear to be. They have always been here, and they always will be. They are the ones who inherited the earth, not us. We're just usurpers, shadowy little beings who have been meddling and interfering in whole realms of power and grandeur that we don't even begin to understand. Mictantecutli is real. It's really down there; and what it can do to us is real.'

'I don't know,' I said, tiredly. 'I think I've seen enough death and enough pain and enough spiritual torture to last me a lifetime.'

'You're not thinking of quitting?'

'Wouldn't you?'

Anne looked away. 'I suppose I might,' she said. 'If I didn't care about the lives of other people; if I didn't care whether my own dead wife ever found any rest or not. Then I'd quit.'

Upstairs, a bedroom door banged shut. I looked up, and then at Anne. There was a creak right above our heads as something stepped on a floorboard. There was a lengthy silence, and then another creak, as if the same something were walking back across the room again. The living-room door suddenly opened by itself, and a cold draught blew in, stirring up the ashes of the fire.

'Close,' said Anne, and raised one hand, palm forwards, towards the door. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the door closed, apparently by itself.

'I'm impressed,' I said.

'It's a simple enough thing to do if you have the power,' she said, but she wasn't smiling. 'But the spirits are in the house now, and they feel unsettled.'

'Is there anything you can do?'

'I can dismiss them for now; just for one night. That's if the Fleshless One hasn't increased his influence very much more than usual.'

'In that case, please dismiss them. It'll be a change to get a night's sleep that isn't disturbed by walking apparitions.'

Anne stood up. 'Do you have any candles?' she asked me. 'I shall also want a bowl of water.'

'Surely,' I said, and went into the kitchen to fetch what she wanted. As I crossed the hallway, I was conscious of the coldness and the restlessness of unhallowed spirits, and even the clock seemed to be ticking differently, almost as if it were ticking backwards. There was a dim flickering light under the library door, but the last thing in the world I was going to do was open it.

I brought Anne back two heavy brass candlesticks, complete with bright blue candles, and a copper mixing-bowl half-filled with water. She set them down in front of the fire, one candle on each side and the bowl in between. She made a sign over each of them, not the sign of the cross, but some other, more complicated sign, like a pentacle. She bent her head and whispered a lengthy chant, of which I could hear almost nothing except the repeated chorus.

'Dream not, wake not, say not, hear not; Weep not, walk not, speak not, fear not.'

After the chant was finished, she remained with her head bent for three or four minutes, praying or chanting in silence. Then she turned to me abruptly and said, 'I shall have to be naked. You don't mind that, do you?'

'No, of course not. I mean, no, why not? Go ahead.'

She tugged off her black sweater, revealing thin arms, a narrow chest, and small dark-nippled breasts. Then she unbuckled her belt and stepped out of her black corduroy jeans. She was very slim, very boyish; her dark hair swung right down to the middle of her back, and when she turned around and faced me I saw that her sex was shaved completely bare. A beautiful but very strange girl. There were silver bands around her ankles and silver rings on every toe. She raised her arms, completely composed and unembarrassed, and said, 'Now we shall see who has the greater power. Those poor lost spirits, or me.'

She knelt down in front of the candles and the bowl of water, and lit the candles with a sputtering piece of kindling from the fire. 'I can't use matches: there mustn't be any sulphur in the flame.' I watched in fascination as she bent forward and stared at her own reflection in the bowl of water, holding her hair back with her hands.

'All you who seek to penetrate the mirror here, turn back,' she said, in a sing-song tone. 'All you who try to cross again the borders of the region of the dead, go back. Tonight you must rest. Tonight you must sleep. There will be other times, other places; but tonight you must think on what you are, and turn away from the mirror which leads to the life you knew.'

The cottage became quiet, as quiet as it had last night. All I could hear was that odd backward-sounding ticking of the long-case clock, and the fizzing sound of the candles as they burned into their bright blue wax.

Anne stayed where she was, bent over, her breasts pressed against her thighs, staring into the copper bowl. She wasn't saying anything, but she gave no indication that the working of this particular wonder was over yet; nor that it was going to be successful.

To my amazement, the water in the bowl began to bubble a little, and steam, and then to boil. Anne sat up straight, her arms crossed over her chest, and closed her eyes. 'Go back,' she whispered. 'Do not try to penetrate the mirror tonight. Go back, and rest.'

The water in the bowl boiled even more noisily, and I stared at it in disbelief. Anne knelt where she was, her eyes tight closed, and I could see tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead, and on her upper lip. Whatever she was doing, it obviously needed enormous effort and intense concentration.

'Go… back,' she whispered, as if it was a struggle to get the words out. 'Do not cross… do not cross…'

It was then that I began to get the feeling that she was involved in a struggle with something or someone, and that she was losing. I watched her anxiously as she began to quiver and shake, and the sweat ran down her cheeks and funneled between her breasts. Her thighs quaked as if she was being prodded with an electric goad, and she started to give little involuntary spasms and jumps.

The living-room door opened again, just a fraction; and again that coldness began to course through the room. The fire cowered down amongst its ashes, and the candles guttered and blew. In the bowl, the water went off the boil, and as suddenly as it had bubbled, began to form on its surface a thin skin of ice.

'Anne,' I said, urgently. 'Anne, what's happening? Anne!'

But Anne could not reply. She had lost control of whatever mental wrestling-match she was involved in; yet obviously she didn't dare to break her concentration or release her hold, in case she would suddenly free the beast with which she was struggling. She was still sweating and shivering, and every now and then she let out a little gasp of strain.

The living-room door opened wider. There, in her funeral robes, stood Jane. Her face was different now, ghastlier, as if decay had begun to set in. Her eyes were wide and staring, and her teeth were drawn back in a grisly grin.

'Jane!' I shouted. 'Jane, leave her alone, for God's sake! I'll do what you want! You know that I'll do what you want! But leave her alone!'

Jane didn't seem to hear me. She came gliding into the room, her white funeral robes swayed by the chilly wind, and stood only a few feet away from us, her eyes still staring, her grin just as skeletal and horrifying. I prayed to God that she wouldn't do to Anne Putnam what she had done to Constance, her own mother.

'Jane, listen,' I said, trying to sound reasonable. 'Please, Jane. Just leave her alone and I'll get her out of here. She was only trying to help me. You know that I'll do what you want. I promise you, Jane. But leave her alone, please.'

Jane lifted both her arms. As she did so, Anne was lifted up, so that she was standing, her knees slightly bent, her eyes still closed, shaking and trembling as she tried to break free of the influence that gripped her. She looked as if she were being held up by two invisible helpers.

'Leave her, Jane,' I begged. 'Jane, for God's sake, don't hurt her.'

Jane made a circling motion with her hand. Without a sound, Anne rotated in the air until she was upside-down, her feet nearly touching the ceiling, her dark hair spread out on the carpet beneath. I watched in frightened silence. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop whatever was going to happen now. Jane was proving to be a fatally jealous bride; a bride who would take her revenge on any woman who came near me.

The cold wind blew up more ashes from the fire. Jane stretched out her arms, and, in response, Anne's legs were opened wide, so wide that I heard the tendons crack, and her naked sex was exposed. She was suspended there in front of me, in inverted splits, her body slippery with sweat, her eyes tight closed, her teeth grimly clamped together. Jane stretched out her arms again, and Anne's arms stretched out, too. There were two inches of clear space between the top of Anne's head and the floor, although because of the length of the hair, it looked as if she were somehow balancing supernaturally on her braids.

'Jane, please,' I said, but Jane didn't even turn and look at me.

Slowly, Jane described a curve in the air with her hands; and equally slowly, Anne's body was bent back in midair. Anne grunted with effort and pain, struggling as hard as she could to resist the force that was attempting to snap her spine, but I could tell that it was no use. The power of the Fleshless One was comparatively weak, but it was strong enough to overwhelm one of its own witches.

I heard another crack, as a cartilage broke in Anne's left knee. She said, 'Aaah and grimaced, but she was reserving all her energy for fighting against her demonic master.

'Jane!' I shouted. I got to my feet, but instantly I was hurled back by a force as powerful as a truck. I hit my head against the side of the chair, and stumbled over the clashing fire-irons; but then I scrambled up to my feet again and yelled, 'Jane!'

Jane ignored me. In utter helplessness, I saw Anne's back being bent over as if she were being forced over a barrel, or the back of a chair. The veins stood out on her narrow hips, and her neck tendons were swollen with effort.

'God, you're going to kill her!' I screamed. 'Mictantecutli! Stop it! Mictantecutli!’

There was a strange shimmering sound, like the blade of a saw being wobbled. Jane raised her eyes and stared at me; and her face wasn't Jane's face at all, it was the skeletal face of an ancient demon, the fleshless creature which David Dark had stolen from the Aztec magicians. Mictantecutli, the lord of Mictlampa, the prince of the region of the dead.

'You called my name,' Jane said threateningly, in a voice which was blaring and harsh.

'Don't kill her,' I said. I could feel the sweat chilling under my armpits. 'She was only trying to protect me, that's all.'

'She is my servant. I shall do whatever I wish with her.'

'I'm asking you not to kill her.'

There was a long pause. Jane looked at Anne's naked suspended body, and then reached out with her palm facing downwards. Anne slowly sank to the floor, and lay on the carpet shaking and panting, and holding her hand to her back in an attempt to ease the pain.

I started to kneel down beside her, but Jane said, 'Stay where you are. I offer you no guarantees of my handmaiden's life. First, you must promise that you will serve me; and that you will accept the bargain which I proposed to you. Help your friends to raise me from the waters, and then set me free. Your wife and son will be returned to you, and your wife's mother, too; and you shall remain invulnerable from harm.'

'How can I be sure that I can trust you?'

'You can never be sure. It is a risk that you will have to accept.'

'Supposing I say no?'

'Then I will break this girl's back.'

I glanced down at Anne. She was lying flat on her back now, her hands held over her face as she tried to contain the agony she was feeling in her back and her thighs.

The point was, I had already been considering the possibility of letting Mictantecutli free; I had already been tempted by the offer of having Jane restored to me, so what difference would it make if I actually said yes? It would save Anne; it would bring back all the people I loved; and who knew, the consequences might not really be so bad. If Mictantecutli had reigned unchecked before the days of David Dark and Esau Hasket, what difference would it make if it reigned again now? As Mictantecutli itself had told me yesterday, it was part of the order of the universe, just as the sun was, and the planets, and God Himself.

Anne whispered, 'John… don't agree to anything. Please.'

Instantly, her arm was twisted right around behind her back, so violently that her wrist was snapped. She screamed out in pain, but the demonic force wouldn't release her, and deliberately pressed her body down so that her own shoulder-blade rubbed against her fractured bones. She screamed and screamed, writhing and thrashing, but Mictantecutli wouldn't let her go.

'Stop!' I yelled at Jane. 'Stop, I'll do it!'

Gradually, the pressure on Anne's body was relieved. I knelt down and helped her to ease her arm out from under her back, and rest it gently on her stomach. Her wrist was swollen and misshapen, and I could hear the broken bones grating against each other under the skin. Jane watched over us, smiling malevolently.

'You have made a binding promise,' she told me, in her own voice. 'You must keep your promise faithfully, or believe me, you will be cursed for ever; and all your heirs will be cursed for ever; and anyone who ever knew you will regret the day they first saw you. You will be blighted for all time; you will never know peace. I have my mark on you now; you have freely bargained with me; and whatever rewards and punishments are due, you will surely receive them in the fullest measure.'

I got to my feet. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. 'Mictantecutli, I want you to go now. Leave us in peace. I've agreed to do what you want, now just get out of here.'

Jane smiled, and began to fade. I looked down to make sure that Anne was all right, and when I looked back, Jane had disappeared altogether. The door, however, remained open; and the draught that blew through it was as cold and unrelenting as ever.

Anne said, 'You shouldn't have done that. It would have been better for me to die.'

'Are you kidding?' I said. 'Here, I'll help you up on to the sofa, then I'll call the doctor.'

'God, my wrist,' she winced.

'God?' I said, wearily. 'God doesn't seem to be helping us much.'