The Pariah (39 page)
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.
She was quite naked, but somehow her nakedness was sexless and spiritual. Beside her walked a young boy of four or five years old, as beautiful as she was, also naked, giving off the same calm light.
Mictantecutli unsteadily lifted its ghastly head. Its cheekbones were thickly rimed with frost, and icicles hung from its collar-bone. It regarded Jane in apparent disbelief, and shook itself like a wounded animal.
I didn’t know what was happening or why; but I took my chance. Holding up my liquid nitrogen spray, I climbed on to Mictantecutli’s shin, and then on to his massive pelvis.
Gritting my teeth against the grating pain of my own broken rib, I scaled the side of his ribcage, and stood there, pouring out freezing gas until the demon’s vertebrae were thick with sparkling white frost.
Jane gradually faded; and the boy with her. But at that moment there was a snapping noise, and one of Mictantecutli’s frozen fingers dropped from its hand and clattered on to the floor. Then one of its ribs gave way; then another; and I found myself standing on what felt like a collapsing staircase, as the Fleshless One’s entire skeleton began to fall to pieces under me.
Its skull bent forward, and its spine cracked, and then that huge and hideous head rolled to the concrete floor and shattered into dozens and dozens of smaller skulls.
All around me, as I climbed down from the demon’s skeleton, the dead of Salem and Granitehead were rustling to the floor in ragged heaps; the false life taken out of them; the false breath drawn from their lungs.
Enid came slowly forward, and helped me to turn off the liquid nitrogen. All the skin was frozen from the palms of my hands, and I was severely bruised and lacerated. But I was alive, at least, and that was one blessing that I couldn’t question.
‘Did you see Jane?’ I asked Enid, in a shaky voice. ‘Did you see her then?’
Enid nodded. ‘I saw her. I called her myself.’
‘You called her
yourself?
How?’
Enid rested her hand on my shoulder, and smiled. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we still have work to do. All of these bones must be taken away from here, and buried according to the rituals.’
‘But how did you call Jane? And why did she help us? I thought she was one of Mictantecutli’s servants.’
‘She was,’ said Enid. ‘That is, until you killed her a second time, and freed her from Mictantecutli’s power. She is at rest now, because of you; and so is your unborn son.’
‘I still don’t understand how she came.’
Enid looked around at the carnage in the warehouse, and sadly down at Quamus. ‘Your wife was a member of the sisterhood, Mr Trenton. She would never have told you because she was forbidden to tell you; and in any case you would never have believed her.’
The sisterhood?’
Enid nodded. ‘Your wife was a Salem witch. Not from her mother’s side of the family, but from her father’s, so her power was not particularly strong. But she was enough of a witch to have been in touch with others of the sisterhood; and enough of a witch, of course, to have been very susceptible to the powers of Mictantecutli.’
‘What now?’ I said, nodding towards the broken skeleton. ‘Now this monster’s dead, are your powers all gone?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Enid. ‘The power of kindness will always endure. When Mictantecutli saw your dear dead wife, Mr Trenton, it was a reminder to it that its power is limited; and that there is a greater power which reigns over it, even today.’
I looked up. I felt extremely tired. Through the upper windows of the warehouse, falling in cathedral-like rays, came the pale light of the afternoon, and I realized then that the darkness of Mictantecutli had at last been destroyed. I tried very hard not to cry.
THIRTY-SIX
I left Granitehead in early May, and went to live for a while with my parents in St Louis.
My mother overfed me, and my father took me for long walks in the Missouri Botanical Gardens and talked about life the way he saw it, cut and dried, because he thought it would be good for my head. He made me a beautiful pair of Oxford shoes, hand-stitched, and gave them to me for no particular reason at all, except to show that he did love me, after all.
I went back to Massachusetts in June to sell Quaker Lane Cottage. I drove up to Tewksbury to see old man Evelith, and to share a sherry with him in his library, and he told me that he believed he had come close to finding the magical bonds which would hold Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, and that he would be able to use one of the bones from Mictantecutli’s dismembered skeleton in a ritual which would put his ancestor to rest for good. I left after an hour: I didn’t want to hear any more of that demon talk.
I didn’t go to see Edward Wardwell. I had heard from Gilly that Edward had never forgiven me for blowing up the
David Dark,
and I guess he had every right to feel sore about it. As for Gilly, well … she and I were never particularly suited. I could have loved her once, I suppose, but somehow our personalities never quite meshed.
With Walter, I went to Waterside Cemetery and together we laid flowers on the graves of the ones we had once loved; and then we shook hands and said goodbye. I don’t know whether Walter forgave me, or not, or even if there was anything to forgive.
Mictantecutli had hit Salem like a hurricane, and he was still busy sorting out legal claims for damages, and helping to identify and re-bury the dead.
I said goodbye to Laura; I said goodbye to Keith Reed, and to George Markham’s wife.
George had never been found, and was listed as ‘missing, feared dead’.
Then, at last, I drove back up to Quaker Lane Cottage, and stood in the overgrown orchard looking out over Granitehead Neck, my hands in my pockets; watching the distant white sails of the boats, and the glitter of summer sunshine on the waters of Salem Harbour.
I pushed the garden-swing, until it began to utter that distinctive
creakkk-squik, creakkk-squik.
Then I left it, and it gradually lost momentum and swung to a standstill.
The wind was warm. I felt as if the world had recently been reborn. I left the cottage, and closed the garden-gate behind me.
