i had heard it before , like a thousand years before , and it came back to me then : the little bedroom in horace tuttle 's house , mike dragging me through the broken window , ashley rescuing me on the great white stallion , the pandora , the race across the desert to find mike before he could release the infernal hordes ... everything , up to the moment when i looked into the demon 's eyes-and that particular moment was a pit , a lightless hole with no bottom that i leaped across , bringing me here to this morgue deep in the bowels of oipep headquarters , where a demon spoke through a dead man 's lips .