Death Trance

'Hear me out, Walter,' I said. 'Jane came to visit me a couple of nights ago, and this time she wasn't like a ghost at all. She could have been solid, she could have been real. She said that the influence that's down in this shipwreck, this demon, or whatever it is, is capable of bringing back to life people who have recently died, people who are still wandering in what she called the region of the dead. A kind of Purgatory, I guess.'

'What are you saying?' asked Walter.

'Simply this: that the demon offered me three lives in exchange for its own freedom. If I help to raise it up off the ocean floor, and then make sure that it isn't handed over to Mr Evelith, or anybody at the Peabody Museum, I get Jane restored to me; and our unborn son; and Constance, too.'

'Constance? Are you serious?'

'Do you think I'd joke about it? Come on, Walter, you know me better than that. The demon is offering me Jane, and the baby, and Constance; back to life just as they were before any of this ever happened. No blindness, no injuries, nothing. Perfect and whole.'

'I just can't believe it,' said Walter.

'Well, what the hell can you believe? You've seen Jane, flying through the air like a cartwheel. You've seen your own wife frozen blind right on my front path. You believed before, when I first told you about Jane. Why can't you believe now?'

Walter put down his piece of bread, and chewed his mouthful unhappily. 'Because it's too good to be true,' he said. 'Miracles like that, they just don't happen. Well, not to me, anyway.'

'Think about it,' I insisted. 'You don't have to come to any decisions tonight. There may be some risk in letting the demon go, judging from how it behaved in the 17th century; but on the other hand, people aren't so superstitious these days, the way they were then, and it's unlikely that the demon is going to be able to exert the same powerful influence that it did then, in 1690. According to Mr Evelith, it actually made the sky turn dark, so that for days on end it was permanently night. I can't see that happening today.'

Walter slowly finished his soup. Then he said, 'It actually offered to give Constance back to me? Not blinded? Not hurt in any way?'

'Yes,' I said.

'To have her back…'he said, slowly shaking his head. 'It would seem like none of this nightmare ever happened.'

That's right.'

'But how can it do that? How can the demon actually do that?'

I shrugged. 'As far as I can tell, Mictantecutli is the final arbiter of all human death, in the Americas at least. On other continents he probably appears in different forms.'

'So what's been happening to the dead while he's been lying beneath the sea?'

'How should I know? I presume they've been going to their ultimate destinations without having to worry about Mictantecutli using them to recruit more blood, more hearts, more restless spirits. According to old man Evelith, Mictantecutli is shunned by every other supernatural creature, good or evil. It is a complete outcast; diseased and utterly malevolent, disregarding any of the protocol of Heaven or of Hell. But its power is such that it can afford to; or at least it was, before it was sealed in that copper vessel and sunk to the bottom of Salem Harbour.'

'And it can really bring Constance back? And Jane?'

'So it says. From what it's done so far, I don't have any reason to doubt it. Can you imagine how much psychic power it must have taken just to bring Constance's image into your house? There's nothing on earth that can do anything like that, nothing human, anyway.'

Walter sat there for a long time, thinking. Then he said, 'What do your friends from the Peabody have to say about it? I don't suppose they're particularly happy.'

'They don't know. I haven't told them.'

'Do you think that's wise?'

'Not particularly. But we're not discussing wisdom here, Walter. We're discussing whether you and I want our dead wives back or not. I'm not saying there isn't a price. It's conceivable that other people may be put at risk, although I doubt if there'll be any less risk if the demon is kept in captivity than if we set it free. Both of us have to face up to what we have here: an ancient and incomprehensible influence that controls the very process of death itself. The lord of the region of the dead, that's what they call it. And one way or another, it's going to re-establish its reign, whether we like it or not. If we leave it under the ocean, the copper vessel will eventually corrode to the point where Mictantecutli will be able to escape of its own accord; if we bring it up and keep it at the Peabody, or send it off to old man Evelith, who knows how long they'll be able to keep it under control? Even David Dark couldn't, and he was the man who first brought it here. So, from every angle, it looks like a no-win situation — in which case I'm suggesting that at least we rescue Jane and Constance.'

I was glad I wasn't somebody else, listening to myself presenting this argument. It was flawed in logic, flawed in fact, and most of all it was flawed in fundamental morality. I didn't know anything about old man Evelith's ability to control Mictantecutli: according to Anne, he already had some kind of plan worked out, a plan involving Quamus and Enid and the rest of the Salem witch-coven. Neither did I know for sure if Mictantecutli's copper vessel was corroding or not. Worst of all, I didn't know what hideous influence Mictantecutli would be able to exert over both the living and the dead once Walter and I had set it free.

I thought of David Dark, literally exploding as he walked towards his house. I thought of Charlie Manzi, and the crushing, grinding noise of those tombstones. I thought of Mrs Edgar Simons, screaming for help. I thought, too, of Jane: smiling and seductive, a solid form without any reality, a dead wife who walked. All of these images tumbled over in my mind in a confusion of fear, disbelief, depression, nightmare, and unrealized terror. But there was one hope to which I was clinging with fierce and illogical tenacity; one hope which enabled me to disregard the naked fear of Mictantecutli's walking dead, the pariah's children; and the extreme danger of releasing an ancient demon into a modern world. That hope was the hope of seeing Jane alive again, of being able to hold her again, against all the dictates of fate and human destiny, against all accepted logic. It was the one hope which Mictantecutli knew that I could never deny, no matter what the threatened consequences might be; and that was what made Mictantecutli a demon.

Walter said, 'I'm not at all sure how I could present this as an investment portfolio.'

'It won't be all that difficult,' I told him. 'Show your clients pictures of the Wasa, and the Mary Rose. Tell them how much prestige is going to be involved. And then explain how the salvaged ship is going to be displayed to the public, possibly as the central attraction in a recreational theme park. Come on, Walter, five or six million dollars isn't asking for the earth. A cheap movie costs five or six million dollars.'

'My clients don't invest in cheap movies,' said Walter.

'Listen,' I said, earnestly, 'do you want Constance back again or don't you?'

The waitress brought him his steak-and-oyster pie. He prodded it with his fork like a man who has suddenly lost his appetite. 'You can go back to the salad bar if you want to,' the waitress told him. 'There's no extra charge.'

'Thank you,' he said, and then looked across the table with a haunted, tired expression. 'Supposing nothing comes of this?' he asked me. 'Supposing it's all a dream, all an illusion? I'll have lost my career, as well as Constance.'

'Supposing you never try?' I retorted. 'What will you think then, for the rest of your life? "I could have had Constance back, but I was too frightened to make the effort." '