Laurie glanced at her father. 'Dad,' she said, 'let's get this thing to shore, hunh?'
Walcott nodded. 'It doesn't carry anything catching, does it?' he wanted to know. 'It isn't diseased?'
'Not in the way you mean it,' I told him. 'But let's get a move on, shall we? The longer we stay out here, the more dangerous it's going to be.'
We passed the Waterside Cemetery and then turned in towards the boat ramp at Brown's Jetty. It had once been a fashionable place to launch your pleasure-boats, back in the 1930s. There had been a restaurant there, and a cocktail verandah, and lights strung out along the pier. But these days the buildings were sagging and deserted, and all that remained of the cocktail verandah was a rotting deck on which dozens of skeletal beach-chairs lay heaped as if they had been consigned to a mass grave.
Walcott brought the lugger in as close as he could, and then we untied the casket and let it drift up to the weed-slimy boat-ramp on the persistent flow of the tide. With a little prodding from our billhooks, it lodged itself listlessly against the lower reaches of the ramp, and then Quamus and I jumped off the lugger into the sea, and swam and waded ourselves ashore.
I climbed dripping wet to the top of the ramp, and tried out the winch. Fortunately someone had kept it greased and in good working order, and it didn't take long to unwind enough cable to reach down to the casket's rings. As soon as he was sure that we had the casket secure, Walcott gave us a toot on his whistle and began to steer his lugger out into the harbour again. I can't say I blamed him, even though he probably faced immediate arrest. Even a couple of months in jail is preferable to having your intestines blown out.
Quamus and I said nothing as we worked the handles of the winch, gradually edging the huge copper vessel up the concrete ramp. It made a shifting, grating sound as we inched it upwards, and there was a terrible hollowness about it, a slight rumbling, like very distant thunder. I sweated and gasped at the winch-handle, and tried not to think what the creature inside this ponderous vessel was actually like, and what it might conceivably do to me.
It took us almost half an hour, but at last the casket had been dragged right up to the top of the ramp, where we covered it with two tarpaulin sheets which were usually used for protecting boats during the winter. Quamus looked out across the harbour, but there was no sign of the police or the coastguard, or even of Edward and Forrest and the rest of the David Dark fellowship.
'Now,' said Quamus, 'I will go back to Salem and collect the refrigerated truck. You must stay here and guard Mictantecutli.'
'Wouldn't it be better if I collected the truck? You can't say that you're exactly unnoticeable. A six-foot Narragansett in a wet quilted jacket.'
'They will not notice me,' said Quamus, with quiet confidence. 'I have a technique which the Narragansett developed centuries ago to hunt wild animals. We call it "No Hunter." '
'"No Hunter"?'
'It is a way of making oneself invisible to other people, even though one is there. A strange technique, but it can be taught.'
'All right, then,' I said. I didn't really like the idea of waiting beside this monstrous burial-casket too much, but I guess I really didn't have any choice. 'Just don't be too long, that's all; and if you do get arrested, tell the police where I am. I don't intend spending all night out here, with nobody but Mictantecutli for company, not while you're eating steak-and-eggs in the Salem City jail.'
'Now you are afraid,' smiled Quamus.
He walked off between the derelict restaurant buildings towards West Shore Drive. I sat down on the jetty and looked cautiously at the corroded copper vessel in which David Dark’s Aztec demon had been incarcerated for over 290 years. I turned around to tell Quamus to bring me a half-bottle of whisky while he was away, but he was already gone. The 'No Hunter' had disappeared. I tried to make myself comfortable, and propped one leg up on the tarpaulins which covered the casket, as if it were simply a rather odd-looking boat that I happened to own.
It was only noon, but the sky was strangely gloomy, as if I were looking at it through dark glasses. A wind was getting up, too: a wind that hadn't been forecast. It ruffled the gray waves of Salem Harbour, and whipped the dead leaves and collected rubbish on the sagging cocktail verandah. A salt-faded sign above the restaurant still said Harbourside Restaurant, Lobster, Clams, Steaks, Cocktails. I could imagine summer nights out there, with Dixieland bands and men in straw hats and girls in shimmering shimmy dresses.
I tugged up the collar of my jacket. The wind was really cold now, and the sky was so dark that some of the cars on the opposite shoreline were driving with their headlights on. There was probably a storm brewing up, one of those heavy North Atlantic numbers that made you feel as if you were caught in a mackerel-boat at sea, even though you were sitting right there in your own living-room.
Then, I heard that singing. High, faint, and eerie. It came from somewhere inside the derelict restaurant, a thin controlled voice that made the hair crawl up the back of my neck as if it were electrified.
'O the men they sail'd from Granitehead To fish the foreign shores… But the fish they caught were naught but bones With hearts crush'd in their jaws.'
I stood up, and walked across the decayed cocktail-deck, looking up at the restaurant to see where the singing might be coming from. I had to jump once or twice across missing planks; and beneath the deck I could see dripping darkness, where crabs scuttled. I approached the restaurant and went right up to the front door. It was locked, and the glass was so thick with years of salt and grime that I could scarcely see inside.
The song was repeated, louder this time; in the same cold, clear voice. It was definitely coming from inside the restaurant. I looked around to make sure there was nobody watching me, and then I kicked in the door with three or four hefty kicks. The door was held only by a cheap rimlock, which splintered away from the frame; and then it juddered open and stayed open, almost as if it were inviting me inside. Come in, Mr Trenton, destiny is served.
I walked carefully inside. The floor was laid with bare splintered boards, dusty and littered with old newspapers and odd fragments of green linoleum. A revolving fan hung from the ceiling, in between two frosted glass lampshades. On the far wall was a wide mirror, spotted and blighted with dirt. I could see myself standing in the restaurant like a long-dead man in a stained old photograph. I took two or three steps forward.
'John?' she whispered. I turned slowly around, and she was standing behind me. Her face was almost completely skull-like now, and it was fixed in a grisly grimace. 'John, you must set me free.'
'How can I do that?' I asked. I watched her as she glided around the room, her funeral robes silently flowing. 'I've brought you up from the bottom of the sea. What else do I have to do?'
'Break the vessel open,' she whispered. 'The vessel is sealed with bonds that I cannot break alone; the bonds of the Holy Trinity. You must break the vessel open in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Just as it was sealed.'
'I still have no guarantee that I will get Jane back alive, and in one piece.'
'This is a world without guarantees, John. You must trust me.'
'I'm not sure whether I can.'
'Would you trust me to burst open your stomach, like that man who tried to stand in your way? Or to explode you, like David Dark? I may be imprisoned, John, but I still have substantial strength.'
I said, hesitantly, 'I just want to know, that's all… I mean, what you're asking me to do…'
Jane glided towards the mirror. Like a vampire out of a Dracula story, just as Gilly had jokingly warned me, she made no reflection. But she walked straight through the mirror until she was standing in the reflected room, watching me, and there was no image of her on my side of the mirror at all.