There was a moment when I thought Singing Rock would make it. He was talking breathlessly fast, reciting and chanting and nodding, faster and faster as if building up to the great summoning of Unitrak's technological manitou. All this time, though, Misquamacus was chanting too, and sweeping his arm in our direction as if to encourage the Great Old One to consume us. I saw things move through the smoke that were frightening beyond belief — shapes more ghastly and dreadful than the worst nightmares I had ever had — and octopus-like coils of mist that began to unfold from the gloomy cloud of the Great Old One. I knew we only had seconds in which to survive. I was tensed up so tightly that my muscles were locked and I had bitten into my tongue.
Abruptly, Singing Rock slumped. He sagged, and then fell to his knees. I knelt down beside him, brushing my hurricane-blown hair from my eyes, and yelled at him to carry on.
He looked up at me, and there was nothing but fear on his face. "I can't!" he shouted. "I can't summon Unitrak! I can't do it! It's a white man's manitou! It won't come! It won't obey me!"
I couldn't believe it. I looked over my shoulder and saw Misquamacus pointing toward us with both hands, and the dark snakes of the Great Old One unrolling over his head, and I knew that this was the end of it. I snatched the crumpled fragment of paper from Singing Rock's hand, and held it up to the flickering astral light of the weird and horrifying gateway.
"Unitrak, save me!" I shouted. "Unitrak, save me!" And I screamed out the numbers, again and again and again. "UNITRAAAKKK! FOR GOD'S SAKE — UNIIITRAAKKKK!!"
Singing Rock, still clutched in my arms, moaned in fear. Misquamacus, his face stretched in a wolfish grin, was actually floating in the air above me, his arms outstretched, and his deformed legs curled up underneath him. All around, the shifting and terrifying shapes of the Great Old One grew and grew.
I was silent with fright for a moment. Then — because it was all I could think of to do — I raised my own arms, just like Misquamacus had raised his, and cast my own idea of a spell.
"Unitrak, send your manitou to destroy this wonder-worker. Unitrak, protect me from harm. Unitrak, seal off the gateway to the great beyond, and dismiss this hideous spirit."
Misquamacus, floating eerily close, began to invoke the Great Old One in retaliation. His words sounded heavy and foggy, blurring through the howl of the hurricane like a vengeful beast.
"Unitrak!" I bellowed. "Come to me Unitrak! Come!"
It was then that Misquamacus was almost upon me, and his devilish eyes glared luridly from his dark, sweat-glossed face. His mouth was drawn back in a snarl of pain and effort and revenge. He drew circles and invisible diagrams in the air around me, bringing down the evil tumult of the Great Old One, arranging through his sorcery the most hideous of deaths that he could devise.
"Unitrak," I whispered, unheard above the shriek of the gale. "Oh, God, Unitrak."
It was so violent and sudden when it happened that I couldn't understand it at first. I thought that Misquamacus had struck me down with the lightning-that-sees, or that the whole building had ripped apart around us. There was an ear-splitting sound that overwhelmed even the moan of the hurricane — an electrical crackling of millions upon millions of supercharged volts — a roar like a thousand short circuits. The room was blotted out by a dazzling array of incandescent grid shapes — tier after tier of brilliant circuitry — crawling with white and blue sparks and shimmering with its own blinding symmetry.
Misquamacus fell from the air, charred and blackened and bloody. He dropped to the floor like a carcass of beef, his hands clutched up underneath him, his eyes tight shut.
The grids, pulsing and glowing, formed a fence between me and the murky shape of the Great Old One. I could see the demonic being shrink and twist — as if confused and frustrated. The voltage from the grid was so enormous that I could only look at it with my eyes half-shut, and I could hardly see through it to the twitching, shadowy form of the Great Old One.
There was no question in my mind what this blinding apparition was. It was the manitou, the spirit, the internal essence of the Unitrak computer. My spell — my white man's invocation — had brought the blinding retaliation of a white man's demon.
The Great Old One boiled and rolled in powerful coils of darkness. It let out a tortured groan that became an enraged bellow, louder and louder until I felt I was being swallowed by its deafening vibrant depths — a tunnel of screaming fury that made the walls shake and the floor tremble.
The glowing grid of Unitrak's manitou dimmed and flickered for a moment, but then it burned brighter still — a searing blast of technological power that blotted out all vision and all sound. I felt as if I had been plunged into a cauldron of molten steel, drowned in light and swamped in noise.
I heard one thing more. It was a sound that I can never forget. It was like someone or something shrieking in intense agony, on and on for longer than I could bear it. It was the sound of nerves being stripped bare, sensitivities being slit apart, spirits being carved naked. It was the Great Old One. Its grip on the material world was being scorched away by Unitrak's limitless and sophisticated power. It was being driven back by the holy fire of today's technology to the dim and dismal haunts of the ancient astral planes.
There was a rippling, bubbling, babbling noise, and the sides of the gateway that Misquamacus had marked on the floor began to draw in toward their center, sucking the shadowy shape of the Great Old One like a ventilation pipe sucking in smoke. There was one final extravagant burst of power that left me dazzled and temporarily blinded, and then the room was silent.
I lay there, unable to move, unable to see, for five or ten minutes. When I was able to struggle up to my feet, there were still green grid shapes floating on my retina, and I had to shuffle around like an old man, bumping into walls and furniture.
At last, my vision cleared. Not far away, Singing Rock lay on the floor amidst the debris of beds and broken furniture, his eyes flickering open as he gradually returned to consciousness. The body of Misquamacus lay where it had fallen, hunched and burnt. The walls of the room looked as if they had been seared by flame, and the plastic venetian blinds were melted into long drooping strings.
It wasn't any of these things that transfixed me, however. It was the pale, slender figure who stood silently in the corner of the room — wan and white like a ghost of someone I once knew. I said nothing at all, but simply held out my hands to her — making her welcome back to an existence that she nearly lost forever.
"Harry," she whispered. "I'm alive, Harry."
And it was then that Lieutenant Marino, his gun drawn, came bursting through the door to find us.
I sat with Singing Rock at La Guardia, under the massive bronze bust of La Guardia himself, having a last cigarette before he caught his flight. He looked as neat and tidy as ever, with his shiny suit and his horn-rim glasses, and there was nothing to show what he had done, or what he had been through, except for a band-aid across his cheek.
We heard jets taxi down the runways outside, and the murmur of voices, and the late afternoon sun glowed orange in a wintry sky.
"I feel a little sad, in some ways," he said.
"Sad?" I asked him. "What about?"
"About Misquamacus. If only we'd had a chance to explain to him what had happened. If only we could have communicated with him."