“That is too horrible to think about,” I said. “That souls would be trapped in make-believe regions, when perhaps there is some other finer destiny awaiting them.”

“And sometimes,” said Magnus, “when those tormented souls are freed from such traps, they do ascend and vanish. And sometimes they do not ascend. They come back down, down to this earth, with their rescuers, and they linger earthbound, unfinished, restless. That is what you see in me, you see a ghost who has escaped Memnoch’s Hell, and knows him well to be a fraud. You see one who would destroy every astral vestige of his kingdom, were it in my power to do so.”

“You know all this, Lestat,” said Gremt. “Your instincts told you. You fled from his purgatory, condemning him, rejecting him.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said. “How could I have shattered the place? How could I have freed them all?”

“Holy Saturday,” whispered Magnus. “ ‘And He descended into Hell.’ ”

I knew full well what he meant. He was speaking of the old idea that Jesus after His death on the cross had gone down into Sheol or Hell to free all the souls waiting for His redemption, so that they could ascend to Heaven. I don’t know if even the most devout Christians believe such things anymore, in any literal sense, but I had been taught them, centuries ago, in a monastery school, and I remembered the priceless illuminated manuscripts with their tiny pictures of Jesus awakening the dead.

“Memnoch is a liar,” said Magnus. “I suffered in his Hell.”

“And now you’re free,” I said.

“Free to be dead forever?” he asked.

I realized what he was saying of course. He was earthbound. He was not one who’d gone into the Light, as they say. He was a haunt of the material world. He blazed bright and beautiful in my eyes. A serene expression smoothed his face.

“If I were ever in your presence, Prince,” he said, “I would be the strongest of ghosts, I think! By day, I’d lie atop your sarcophagus and dream, waiting for you to wake, and your rising at sunset would be sunrise for me in terms of power.”

“Forgive me, Master,” I said, “but you seem to be doing very well on your own, and to have your tomes to write, your poems, your songs. What do you need me for?”

“To look on me,” he said softly, his eyebrows rising. “To look on me and forgive.”

Silence once more. He turned to the fire. They all did. I put my head back against the hardwood carving, and gazed off thinking of all this, and remembering other ghosts I’d known, and a dark fear gripped me, a fear of being dead and earthbound, and then it seemed not unlikely that all intelligent beings of the whole world were locked in some sort of dance with the physical. Maybe those who rose into the Light simply died, and the universe beyond this world was silent. I could drive myself mad contemplating a great nothingness filled with a billion pinpoints of light and millions of drifting planets generating their myriad biological kingdoms of insect, animal, sentient witness.