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.
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.'