Graham Masterton - Death Trance

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.

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 guessed right: from inside the building, we could see those blue-and-white electric flickers which betrayed the presence of that malevolent energy with which Mictantecutli had been haunting Granitehead. Quamus pulled the truck to a stop across the street, and we all climbed out.

'There can be no delay,' said Quamus. 'We must go straight in, and spray the creature with liquid nitrogen straight away. Any hesitation and it will destroy us; and you have seen what it is capable of doing to a human body, without even touching it.'

I nodded. I was so terrified that I could scarcely speak. I opened the back of the truck, and helped Quamus to unload one of the cylinders of nitrogen, and mount it on a trolley. Quamus then dressed himself in the silvery insulated suit, while Enid strapped the firelighter's hose on to his back.

It took us five minutes at least to get ready; but fortunately there were none of the walking dead around, and it didn't seem as if any of Mictantecutli 's minions had seen us. We quickly crossed the street, and went into the warehouse yard by a side entrance.

As we approached, the feeling of dread increased; and the stench of that evil demonic presence grew so strong that I felt like retching. I forced open a small back door in the warehouse, and we pushed our way inside, Quamus first, then me with the trolley of liquid gas, then Enid. We hurried silently through the corridors of the Lynnfield offices, left, then right, then left again, until we reached the swing doors which led directly into the warehouse itself.

Quamus, his insulated helmet held under his arm, beckoned me wordlessly towards the doors. Through the small windows in them, we could see right across to the far side of the warehouse; and what we saw there made me go eight times colder. It was like a scene from some barbaric representation of all that was sickening, and all that was foul.

The skeleton Mictantecutli was sitting cross-legged on a makeshift throne of crates and packing-cases, his huge skull bent forward. All around him, in their charnel-house robes, swarmed the dead of our local cemeteries, from Granitehead and Salem and Maple Hill. Each of the corpses was bearing in his hands a torn-out human heart, sometimes two or three, and waiting his turn to lay his gruesome offering at Mictantecutli 's bony feet.

The whole grisly scene was lit by that flickering electrical light which turned the colour of blood to black; and the eye-sockets of the prince of the region of the dead to dark, knowing, infinitely malevolent pits.

Quamus said, 'This is it. Are you ready?'

'No, but let's do it.'

Quamus fitted his helmet over his head, undipped the nozzle of his fire-hose, and then said, 'When I shout "go," turn on the gas. Not before. When I shout "off," turn it off.'

'I think I can understand that.'

'Okay, this is it,' said Quamus, and before I knew what was happening we had pushed open the swing doors and started jogging as fast as we could across the concrete warehouse floor, thrusting aside corpse after shambling corpse, dodging away from flailing arms, both of us intent on one thing only: freezing the Fleshless One before it realized what we were doing, and blew us both apart.

We slid over blood and hearts and human tissue, and then we were there, right in front of Mictantecutli , right beneath his immense luminous skull; the skull which was made up of scores of other skulls. The demon had been gorging itself on hearts, and its bare teeth were bloody and tangled with sinew and arteries. It nodded and turned towards us, its head overhanging us like the moon, and then Quamus screamed a muffled, 'Go!' and I yanked the spanner that turned on the liquid nitrogen.

Freezing gas spewed out of the nozzle, and Quamus directed it straight upwards, straight into the creature's skeletal face.

I heard a deep, vibrant, floor-shaking roar. It was more like two subway trains colliding head-first in a tunnel than a sound that could have been made by an earthly creature. I was thrown right over on to my side, jarring my left shoulder on the floor; and pieces of Mictantecutli 's corpses flew all around me in a grisly blizzard.

Quamus somehow managed to stay on his feet, spraying the demon's skull in slow, steamy, systematic sweeps. I felt the intense cold of the liquid nitrogen even from ten feet away, and I could see the whiteness of frozen gas forming around Mictantecutli 's mouth and eye-sockets.

But the creature was far from defeated. It reached out with one skeletal arm, and before Quamus could duck away, it had seized him around the waist. I heard Quamus yell, and I saw him directing the hissing stream of gas on to the fingers which clutched him; but Mictantecutli squeezed tighter and tighter, and then I heard a terrible crunching noise inside of Quamus' insulated suit. Quamus jerked, sagged, jerked again; and then collapsed to the floor. The gas nozzle fell with him, spraying all around us like a fulminating python.

I scrambled to my feet, and snatched the fire-hose myself. The nozzle was so cold that the skin of my hands stuck to it, and I couldn't peel them free. But I directed the gas at Mictantecutli , streaming it up and down its ribs, from side to side across its face, and shouting at the top of my voice, words that were utter gibberish, words of fear and hatred and hysterical revenge.

Mictantecutli reached out for me, slowly but with terrifying inevitability. I sprayed its fingers, and saw them draw back a little, but then it began to reach out for me with its other arm.

I stepped away; but lost my footing on the rotting body of an old man. Mictantecutli 's huge hand seized my hip, and then my waist, and I felt as if I had been snatched by a Great White shark.

'Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!' I screamed at Mictantecutli ; and I knew I was dead. I felt one of my ribs break, and the crushing pain on my pelvis was unbearable. I sprayed the demon's face again and again, but then I began to lose consciousness. Everything went black-and-white, like a photographic negative, and I felt a creaking sound inside of my body that must have been my hip-bone being strained to the utmost.

But quite suddenly, the pressure was relieved, and then released altogether. I dropped to my knees, my eyes tight-closed, trying to keep the stream of liquid gas directed towards Mictantecutli , although I hardly knew where the demon was. It was only after I had recovered enough to lift my head and look around me that I realized what had happened.

Standing amidst all of the walking corpses, giving out an unearthly and radiating light of her own, white-faced, white, but somehow strong and celestial and beautiful, stood Jane. Her hair flowed up around her head as it had before, when I had seen her at Quaker Lane Cottage; but now it gave off steady star-like streams of silver radiance.