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was to be secret and terrible. He was to be taken to the forest and there
given as a sacrifice to the Naumkeag Indians, who for some years had been
suffering poor harvests and blighted crops. A Naumkeag wonder-worker gave
Joseph Evelith to the Spirit of the Future, a servant of Mictan-tecutli who in
Aztec society was called Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. My ancestor did not
"die" at the hands of Tezcatlipoca, in the accepted sense of the word. He
became its slave for all eternity, suffering agonies of humiliation and
torture. Tezcatlipoca is thoroughly evil: it wears a snake's-head dangling
from one nostril, so the Aztecs say, and its conjuring wand is the amputated
arm of a woman who died in childbirth.'
I said nothing: I had seen enough hideous magic to believe that what Duglass
Evelith was telling me was wholly or partly true. Hadn't the wreck of the
David Dark been located, just where he had said it was?
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He went on, 'Tezcatlipoca has run riot since Mictan-tecutli has been lying
powerless on the bed of the ocean. It is the devil of disease and pestilence;
and you can lay every major epidemic that has swept the United States
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squarely at its door. Legionnaire's disease, cancer, every type of influenza,
and its latest little joke, herpes.'
Evelith was silent for a while. Then he said, 'With f Enid's help - Enid and
Anne Putnam and the rest of the i wonder-workers who are descended from the
original I witches of Salem - with their help, I have been able to communicate
with Joseph Evelith through seances and I signs. Until I can release him from
Tezcatlipoca's service, I my family will remain outcast and doomed, forever I
shadowed by disease and ruin. My own wife . . . and both my children ... all
of them were taken by hepatitis. I myself have been sick with angina for
years.'
'So where does Mictantecutli come into this?' I asked him. 'Surely another
demon is only going to make things worse.'
He shook his head. Tezcatlipoca is Mictantecutli's servant, and must obey it.
If I can bring Mictantecutli here, and keep it imprisoned with the same
magical bonds that the Narragansett wonder-worker used in the days of David
Dark, then I can command it to tell Tezcatlipoca to let my ancestor go. The
blight will be lifted.'
'Why can't you use the magical bonds on Tezcatlipoca? If it's a servant of
Mictantecutli, then surely it's far less powerful.'
'It is. But only the spells that bound Mictantecutli have survived through
history. Nothing relating to Tezcatlipoca has been passed down at all. Quamus
and I have tried many different chants and incantations, and scores of
different rituals. Some of them have succeeded in raising the most terrifying
spirits you can imagine. That is what caused all the noise and the lights that
the local people have been complaining about. But none have succeeded in
trapping or taming Tezcatlipoca.'
I stood up, and walked around the sofa. Somehow I felt uncomfortable, sitting
so close to old man Evelith. There was something dry and unreal about him, as
if his tuxedo and his evening trousers were nothing more than propped-up,
empty clothes. I said, 'What guarantee do you have that Mictantecutli will do
what you ask?'
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'No guarantee at all, except that it will believe that releasing my ancestor
will be the only way in which it will be given its freedom.'
'You'd release it?'
Duglass Evelith shook his head. 'I'd tempt it with the prospect of release.
But can you imagine what would happen if a demon like that actually got loose?
It has greater power than a ten-megaton bomb. It can influence the weather,
the course of history, the very turning of the earth. It can raise corpses
from their graves, and cut the most grisly swathe through the living
population that you could ever imagine.'
'Are you sure of that?'
'How sure does anybody need to be? Mictantecutli has been lying under Salem
Harbour for 300 years, and so there is no recent history to support what I
say. But come down to my library, and I will show you indisputable evidence [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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