Graham Masterton - Death Trance

Thank you,' I said. ‘I’ll… dip into it.'

Duglass Evelith looked at me fixedly. Then he said, 'I wasn't sure that you would come. Well, not entirely sure. I told Enid that it would depend on how violently your dead wife has been haunting you.'

'Why should it have depended on that?'

'Let me put it this way,' said Duglass Evelith. 'You're not involved in this search for the David Dark for archaeological motives; neither are you involved in it for profit. You have been haunted by your dead wife, as many people in Granitehead have been haunted before you; and you want to get to the cause of that haunting, and root it out.'

'That's right,' I nodded. 'My sole interest in the David Dark begins and ends with Mictantecutli .'

Duglass Evelith took off his half-glasses and folded them up, tucking them into the breast pocket of his tuxedo. 'Because of that, Mr Trenton, you and I have an interest in common. Oh, of course I'm fascinated by the archaeological possibilities of the David Dark . It's going to be one of the most important finds in American maritime history. But the copper vessel that lies within its hold is a hundred times more important to me than the rotten wood which surrounds it. It is Mictantecutli that I want.'

'Any special reason?' I asked him. I knew it could be an impertinent question, but if our interests in the raising of the David Dark were so closely aligned, then I believed that it was important for me to know why he wanted to lay his hands on Mictantecutli . It might also give me some idea of what Evelith intended to do with the demon once he'd gotten hold of it, and how I could possibly set it free.

'The reason is simple to explain but difficult to believe,' said old man Evelith. 'During the Salem witch-trials, it was my ancestor Joseph Evelith who was among the most fervent of all the jurors; and it was he who alone believed that the witches were truly possessed, even after the hysteria was over, and the David Dark had been sent away from Salem and sunk. After the trials, Joseph attempted in vain to have all the remaining suspects executed, pleading with everybody in Salem that the witch-trials had not been a mistake; that in fact they had helped to purge Salem of a terrible evil, and to save the souls who had been hung of a fate far worse than the gallows. The only person who really believed him, of course, was Esau Hasket, and Hasket tried to help him leave Massachusetts to escape the anger of those who had once been his friends and co-prosecutors. But a party of burghers caught him as he was leaving Salem on the Swampscott Road, dressed as a woman, and he was imprisoned. His fate was to be secret and terrible. He was to be taken to the forest and there given as a sacrifice to the Naumkeag Indians, who for some years had been suffering poor harvests and blighted crops. A Naumkeag wonder-worker gave Joseph Evelith to the Spirit of the Future, a servant of Mictantecutli who in Aztec society was called Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. My ancestor did not «die» at the hands of Tezcatlipoca, in the accepted sense of the word. He became its slave for all eternity, suffering agonies of humiliation and torture. Tezcatlipoca is thoroughly evil: it wears a snake's-head dangling from one nostril, so the Aztecs say, and its conjuring wand is the amputated arm of a woman who died in childbirth.'

I said nothing: I had seen enough hideous magic to believe that what Duglass Evelith was telling me was wholly or partly true. Hadn't the wreck of the David Dark been located, just where he had said it was?

He went on, 'Tezcatlipoca has run riot since Mictantecutli has been lying powerless on the bed of the ocean. It is the devil of disease and pestilence; and you can lay every major epidemic that has swept the United States squarely at its door. Legionnaire's disease, cancer, every type of influenza, and its latest little joke, herpes.'

Evelith was silent for a while. Then he said, 'With f Enid's help — Enid and Anne Putnam and the rest of the wonder-workers who are descended from the original I witches of Salem — with their help, I have been able to communicate with Joseph Evelith through séances and I signs. Until I can release him from Tezcatlipoca's service, I my family will remain outcast and doomed, forever I shadowed by disease and ruin. My own wife… and both my children… all of them were taken by hepatitis. I myself have been sick with angina for years.'

'So where does Mictantecutli come into this?' I asked him. 'Surely another demon is only going to make things worse.'

He shook his head. Tezcatlipoca is Mictantecutli 's servant, and must obey it. If I can bring Mictantecutli here, and keep it imprisoned with the same magical bonds that the Narragansett wonder-worker used in the days of David Dark , then I can command it to tell Tezcatlipoca to let my ancestor go. The blight will be lifted.'

'Why can't you use the magical bonds on Tezcatlipoca? If it's a servant of Mictantecutli , then surely it's far less powerful.'

'It is. But only the spells that bound Mictantecutli have survived through history. Nothing relating to Tezcatlipoca has been passed down at all. Quamus and I have tried many different chants and incantations, and scores of different rituals. Some of them have succeeded in raising the most terrifying spirits you can imagine. That is what caused all the noise and the lights that the local people have been complaining about. But none have succeeded in trapping or taming Tezcatlipoca.'

I stood up, and walked around the sofa. Somehow I felt uncomfortable, sitting so close to old man Evelith. There was something dry and unreal about him, as if his tuxedo and his evening trousers were nothing more than propped-up, empty clothes. I said, 'What guarantee do you have that Mictantecutli will do what you ask?'

'No guarantee at all, except that it will believe that releasing my ancestor will be the only way in which it will be given its freedom.'

'You'd release it?'

Duglass Evelith shook his head. 'I'd tempt it with the prospect of release. But can you imagine what would happen if a demon like that actually got loose? It has greater power than a ten-megaton bomb. It can influence the weather, the course of history, the very turning of the earth. It can raise corpses from their graves, and cut the most grisly swathe through the living population that you could ever imagine.'

'Are you sure of that?'

'How sure does anybody need to be? Mictantecutli has been lying under Salem Harbour for 300 years, and so there is no recent history to support what I say. But come down to my library, and I will show you indisputable evidence that Mictantecutli was responsible for the extinction of the entire Toltec people in Mexico; that his European manifestation was responsible for each of the Black Death pandemics, which killed twenty-five million people in Europe alone, up until the end of the 17th century, when Esau Hasket at last imprisoned it. I will show you evidence, some strong, some admittedly circumstantial, that Mictantecutli was involved in most of the bloodiest wars and the cruelest human deeds in history. Pliny said that Caligula, who was the bloodiest and most licentious of all Roman emperors, had been possessed after only eight months of his reign by a spirit which he called the Man of Bones.'

I said cautiously, 'You don't think that Mictantecutli would find it difficult to survive in a skeptical world like we have today? I mean, some of a demon's strength must come from how strongly people believe in it, surely?'

'Demons are not fairies from Peter Pan,' said old man Evelith, turning around to stare at me. 'They don't acquire more strength because a million people throughout the world say, "We do believe in demons!" '