even killed themselves and others as a result (including Cathy Morse who recently took her own life). He later discovers that Jacobs has also been studying occult texts, such as De Vermis Mysteriis. Jamie tracks down Jacobs and goes to his house to confront him about his cures and tell him about the aftereffects the people he is healing have been experiencing but to his surprise, Jacobs knows about them all along and has been keeping track of them but claims that only a small number of people have significant after-effects and that he is no longer healing people. Jacobs offers to make Jamie his assistant and pay him a lot more than Yates is paying him but he refuses and leaves. Several years later, Jamie receives a letter from Jacobs including a letter his childhood sweetheart Astrid has written to Jacobs claiming she has terminal cancer. Jacobs agrees to heal her, but only if Jamie will become his personal assistant for one last experiment. Jamie reluctantly agrees, and Astrid is cured. Jamie helps Jacobs prepare for his final experiment: Jacobs has discovered something he terms "secret electricity", an all-powerful energy source that he has been using to achieve his miraculous cures over the years. He now intends to harness a massive surge of this energy from a lightning rod and channel it into a terminally ill woman named Mary Fay, whom he has relocated to his lab. Jacobs' plan is to revive Mary Fay after her death, not in the conventional manner, but in the sense that she will be clinically dead and yet able to communicate with Jacobs and tell him of the afterlife and what fate befell his wife and child after their death. The experiment works, but not in the way Jacobs intends. The revived Mary Fay does become a doorway to the afterlife, but to the horror of both Jacobs and Jamie, there is no Heaven and no reward for piety. Instead, the afterlife is revealed to be "The Null", a hellish dimension of chaos, where souls of the deceased are tormented by Ant creatures, who serve insane, Lovecraftian beings, the most powerful of which is known as "Mother". It is implied that humans are fed to Mother, as "she" has a claw made of human faces. Mother inhabits the body of Mary Fay, transforming her into a grotesque monster, and attempts to kill Jacobs.