“He tapped into the lost devotions of your childhood,” said Gremt. “That is what he does. And now and then other souls go to his realm, wiser souls, and they seek out those who are trapped there and they bring them out and into freedom.”

“How?” I asked.

“By alerting those trapped souls that they are prisoners of their own guilt and wretched disillusionment.” Gremt looked at Magnus. “There are souls most skilled at such things, traveling the astral as they sometimes call it, and seeking to free the unwary human ghosts who are lingering in labyrinths from which there is no exit.”

“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.”