The Manitou Read online

  “What does that mean?” said Jack Hughes anxiously. “Does that mean you can’t fight him?”

  Singing Rock was sweating under his surgical face mask. “Oh, I can fight him, all right. But I don’t give much for my chances of winning. Misquamacus was said to be able to control even the most ancient and wicked of Indian spirits. There were some manitous that were so old and evil that by the time the first white men arrived in America, they were only known in legend and stories by most tribes. But Misquamacus regularly called them for his own use. If he calls on them now, today, I just can’t imagine what will happen.”

  “But what can a spirit do?” I asked him. “Can they actually hurt people who don’t believe in them?”

  “Of course,” explained Singing Rock. “Just because you don’t believe a tiger is going to maul you, that doesn’t prevent it from doing so, does it? Once these manitous have been summoned into the physical world, they have physical powers and physical existence.”

  “Holy Christ,” said Dr. Hughes.

  Singing Rock sniffed. “He won’t help you. These demons have nothing to do with Christianity at all. You can fight Christian demons with crucifixes and holy water, but these demons will just laugh at you.”

  “This circle,” I said, pointing to the ring of powder and bones. “Do you think this will hold him?”

  Singing Rock shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not for more than a few minutes, anyway. It might just give me the time to work a couple of spells on him, something to hold him down for longer. But Misquamacus was one of the greatest of circle-markers himself He could draw circles that would hold back the most terrible spirits. This circle is the strongest one I’m capable of drawing, but he’ll know how to break through that without any difficulty at all.”

  “What I’m worried about is Karen,” said Jack Hughes. “If we’re going to have a full-scale battle of wizards right here in her room, do you think she can possibly survive it?”

  “Dr. Hughes,” said Singing Rock. “This is all-or-nothing. If I win this battle, then she will survive. If I don’t, then I can’t give you any guarantees about who will survive. With a medicine man as strong as Misquamacus, we might all of us die. You don’t seem to understand what these manitous are. When I say they’re powerful, I don’t just mean they can knock a man over. If they’re released from limbo without any control on them at all, they could wipe out this hospital, this whole block, this city.”

  “Oh, come on, now,” said Dr. Hughes. Singing Rock made a last check of his medicine circle, and then led us out of Karen Tandy’s room. In the corridor, we peeled off our face masks and untied out robes.

  “All I can say is—wait and see,” said Singing Rock. “Now, I could use a meal and a beer. Is there anywhere to eat in this hospital?”

  “Follow me,” said Jack Hughes. “It’s going to be along night, so we might as well fuel up now.”

  I checked the time. Five-oh-five. By this time tomorrow, we would know whether we had won. If we hadn’t, I couldn’t even imagine what five-oh-five on Tuesday evening would bring.

  Lieutenant Marino of the NYPD was waiting for me in Dr. Hughes’ office when we got back from eating. He was sitting patiently with his hands in his lap his black brush-cut hair sticking up like Mickey Spillane before his weekly visit to the barber.

  “Mr. Erskine?” he said, rising to shake my hand.

  I looked at him cautiously. “Did you want something, lieutenant?”

  “Oh, this and that. You must be Dr. Hughes, sir,” he said to Jack. “I’m Lieutenant Marino.” He flashed his badge.

  “This is Singing Rock,” I said, introducing Singing Rock.

  “Pleased to know you,” replied Lieutenant Marino. There was hand-shaking all round.

  “Is there any problem?” I said.

  “You could say that,” said Lieutenant Marino. “Do you know two people called Amelia Crusoe and Stewart MacArthur?”

  “Of course, they’re old friends of mine. What’s the trouble?”

  “They’re dead,” said Lieutenant Marino. “There was a fire in their apartment in the Village this morning, and they were both killed.”

  I felt weird and trembly all over. I found a seat and sat down, and Dr. Hughes fetched out his bottle of bourbon and poured me a glass. I swallowed a long mouthful. Lieutenant Marino passed me a cigarette, and lit it for me. When I spoke, my voice was dry and croaky.

  “God, that’s terrible,” I said. “How did it happen?”

  “We don’t know,” shrugged Marino. “I was hoping that maybe you had some ideas about that.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of ideas could I have about it? I’ve only just found out.”

  Lieutenant Marino leaned forward confidentially. “Mr. Erskine, on Saturday morning, an old lady called Mrs. Herz fell down a flight of steps and died. This is Monday. Two people are caught in a strange kind of flash fire in their apartment, and they die. All of these people have something in common. They’re all friends of yours. Now, do you think I’m right to make a routine inquiry, or don’t you?”

  I sat back. My hands were shaking like two old men with the palsy.

  “I guess you’re right But I have a witness who can tell you where I was this morning. I was up at La Guardia collecting Singing Rock here from his flight from South Dakota.”

  “Is that true?” Lieutenant Marino asked Singing Rock.

  Singing Rock nodded. He seemed to be thoughtful and preoccupied, and I wondered just what was turning over in his mind.

  “Okay,” said Lieutenant Marino, standing up. “That’s all I wanted. I’m sorry I had to bring you such bad news.”

  He got ready to leave, but Singing Rock held his arm.

  “Lieutenant,” he said. “Do you know what actually happened—with these two people?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” replied Marino. “It seems as though the fire was instantaneous—more of a bomb than a fire. Both of the bodies were cindered up. We’re checking for explosives now, but there wasn’t any blast damage, so I don’t know whether we’ll find any. It may have been some kind of freak electrical fault. We won’t know for two or three days.”

  “Okay, lieutenant,” said Singing Rock quietly. “Thank you.”

  Lieutenant Marino went to the door.

  “Mr. Erskine, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t leave town for a day or so. I’d like to know where to reach you in case there are any further inquiries.”

  “Sure,” I told him softly. “I’ll be around.”

  As soon as he’d gone, Singing Rock came over to me and laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “Harry,” he said, “I’m sorry. But now we know exactly what we’re fighting against.”

  “You don’t think that...”

  “No, I don’t think it,” he said, “I know it. Your friends annoyed Misquamacus by calling him up at that seance of yours. He probably only appeared to find out who it was that was daring to call him out of limbo. Misquamacus is quite capable of invoking fire like that. In plains medicine, they used to call it the ‘lightning-that-sees,’ because it was completely selective. It only hit those people that the medicine man wanted to kill.”

  Dr. Hughes frowned. “But Harry here was at that seance as well. Why hasn’t Misquamacus done the same to him?”

  “Because of me,” said Singing Rock. “I may not be the greatest medicine man there ever was, but I am protected from simple sorcery like that by my amulets, and those who are friendly to me and who are around me will be protected as well. I imagine that because Misquamacus isn’t properly reborn yet, he isn’t able to work his full magic. I’m only guessing, of course.”

  “I can hardly believe it,” said Jack Hughes. “Here we are in a technological age, and a creature from four hundred years ago can destroy someone miles away in the Village with a flash of fire. What the hell is it all about?”

  “It’s about magic,” said Singing Rock. “Real magic is created by the way that man uses his environment—the
rocks, the trees, the water, the earth, the fire and the sky. And the spirits, too, the manitous. Today, we’ve forgotten how to call on all these things to help us. We’ve forgotten how to work real magic. But it can still be done. The spirits are still there, ready to be invoked. A century to a spirit is like a millisecond to us. They’re immortal and patient, but they’re also powerful and hungry. It takes a very strong man and a brave man to call them out of limbo. It takes an even stronger one to send them back there, and seal the gateway they came through.”

  “Do you know something, Singing Rock?” said Dr. Hughes. “The way you talk, you really give me the creeps.”

  Singing Rock looked at him pragmatically. “You have every reason to have the creeps. This is probably the creepiest thing that’s ever happened.”

  Chapter Six

  Beyond the Mists

  Throughout Monday night, Singing Rock and I were to take it in turns to watch over Karen Tandy. We both agreed that Dr. Hughes ought to go home and get a full night’s sleep, because if we did manage to restore Karen’s manitou to her body, then he would need to be as fit and fresh as possible to deal with any resuscitation that might be urgently needed.

  We commandeered the hospital room next to Karen’s, and while Singing Rock slept, I sat in the corridor on a hard chair, watching the window of our patient’s firmly closed door. There was a male nurse inside with her, in case she needed medical attention, but he had been warned that if he saw anything at all unusual, he was to bang on the door and call me.

  I managed to find a copy of Dr. Snow’s book about the Hidatsa Indians in the library, and I read it by the bald fluorescent hospital light. Most of it was pretty dry, but he was obviously well up on the sorcery of medicine men.

  By two in the morning, my eyelids began to droop, and I began to feel as though there was nothing I wanted more than a hot shower, a stiff drink and ten hours of sack time. I twisted myself around in my chair to wake myself up a bit, but it wasn’t long before a relaxed and cloudy feeling started to seep over me again.

  Without realizing it, I began to doze, and as I dozed, I began to dream. I dreamed I was surrounded by a warm and slippery darkness, but it wasn’t claustrophobic or suffocating. It felt womb-like and comfortable, and it was giving me strength and nourishment. I felt as if I was waiting for something to happen—waiting for the right moment. When that moment came, I would have to slide out of this warm darkness into some chilly and unknown place. Somewhere frightening and alien.

  The feeling of fear woke me up. I immediately looked at my watch to see how long I’d been asleep. Not more than five or ten minutes, I guessed. I stood up and went over to the window of Karen Tandy’s room. She was still lying there, covered by a loose sheet, which hid most of the hideous bulge on her back. She was still unconscious, and her face was yellow and almost skull-like. Her eyes were circles with purple shadows, and there were deep drawn lines on her cheeks. She looked as though she were on the verge of death. Only the flickering needles of the electric diagnosis machines beside her bed showed that something was still alive inside her body.

  The male nurse, Michael, sat cross-legged reading a science fiction paperback called Girl from Green Planet. I would gladly have traded it for my academic tome of the lifestyle of the Hidatsas.

  I went back to my bony chair and sat down. Singing Rock was due to relieve me at three a.m., and I couldn’t wait. I smoked and twiddled my thumbs. That time of night, you feel that the whole world is empty, and you’re on your own in some strange secret time—a time when pulse rates slur and fade, and deep breathing takes you diving down into a bottomless well of monstrous dreams and nightmares.

  I finished my cigarette, ground it out, and checked my watch again. It was two-thirty. Evening was long past, and morning was still a long way ahead. Somehow, the idea of facing Misquamacus by night was much more frightening than the thought of facing him by day. At night, you feel that evil spirits are much more ready to call, and that even shadows, or the odd shape of your clothes across the back of a chair, can take on a sinister life of their own.

  When I was a child, I used to be terrified to go out to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because it meant passing by the open living-room door. I was frightened that one night, when the moonlight was slanting in through the venetian blinds, I would see people sitting silent and still in the chairs. Not blinking, not moving, not speaking. Previous occupants, long dead, relaxing stiffly in the chairs that were once theirs.

  I had that same feeling now. I kept glancing down the long and empty corridor, to see if some blurry shape were moving in the distance. I looked at all the doors, to see if any of them were easing slowly open. Night is the province of magic and magicians, and my Tarot cards had warned me about night and death and men who worked evil wonders. Now I was facing the threat of all three of them.

  At two-forty-five I lit another cigarette and puffed the smoke softly into the total silence of the empty corridor. By now, even the elevators had stopped running and the feet of the night staff were muffled by the thick plush carpets. For all I knew, I could be totally alone in the whole world. Every time I shifted my feet, I frightened myself.

  Tired as I was, I began to wonder whether the whole situation was truly real, or whether I was dreaming it, or imagining it. Yet if Misquamacus didn’t exist, how did I know his name, and what was I doing here, keeping up this lonely vigil in a hospital corridor? I smoked, and tried to read Dr. Snow’s book a little more, but my eyes were too blurry with exhaustion, and I gave up.

  It must have been the soft squeaking of skin on glass that made me look up at the window of Karen Tandy’s room right then. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible sound, like someone cleaning, silver spoons in another part of the house. Squeak, squikkkkk...

  I jumped with shock. There was a face pressed against the window, with horribly contorted features. It’s eyes bulged and its teeth were bared in a stretched, silent howl.

  It was only there for a second, and then there was a slushy, spraying sound, and the whole window was obliterated with blood. A spout of thick red liquid even pumped from the keyhole, and ran down the outside of the door.

  “Singing ROCCCKKKK!” I yelled, and burst into the next-door room where he was sleeping. I banged on the light, and he was sitting up, his face crumpled with sleep, his eyes wide with expectancy and fear.

  “What happened?” he snapped, rolling out of bed and pushing quickly out of the room into the corridor.

  “There was a face there—at the window—just for a second. Then there was nothing but all this blood.”

  “He’s out,” said Singing Rock. “Or nearly. That must have been the male nurse you saw at the window.”

  “The nurse? But what the hell has Misquamacus done to him?”

  “Old Indian magic. He’s probably invoked the spirits of the body, and turned him inside-out.”

  "Inside-out?"

  Singing Rock ignored me. He went swiftly back to his room, and opened up his suitcase. He took out beads and amulets, and a leather bottle full of some liquid. One of the amulets, a fierce green copper face on a rawhide thong, he hung around my neck. He sprinkled some reddish powder over my hair and shoulders, and touched me above the heart with the tip of a long white bone.

  “Now you’re reasonably protected,” he said. “At least you won’t end up like Michael.”

  “Listen, Singing Rock,” I said. “I think we ought to have a gun. I know that it would kill Karen Tandy if we shot Misquamacus, but as a last resort, we might have to.”

  Singing Rock shook his head firmly. “No. If we shot Misquamacus, we would have his manitou pursuing us in vengeance for the rest of our lives. The only way we can defeat him forever is through magic. That way, he can never return. And anyway, in any kind of sorcery, a gun is more dangerous to the person who uses it than it is to the person who’s being fired at. Now come on, we don’t have much time to lose.”

  He led me back to the door of Karen Tandy’s room.
The blood had thinned on the window now, but all we could see inside was the dim glow of the bedside light, scarlet through the gore.

  “Gitche Manitou, protect us. Gitche Manitou, protect us,” muttered Singing Rock, and turned the door handle.

  There was something wet and messy behind the door, and Singing Rock had to push hard to slide it all out of the way. There was a nauseating smell of vomit and feces, and my feet skidded on the floor as I stepped in. Michael’s remains were lying in a raw red bubbly heap, strung with pipes and veins and intestines, and I could only glance at it. I felt as if I was going to puke.

  There was blood spattered everywhere—all over the walls and the bedsheets and the floor. In the middle of this gory chaos lay Karen Tandy, and she was wriggling under her coverings—wriggling like a huge white bug trying to work its way out of a chrysalis.

  “It’s very soon,” whispered Singing Rock. “She must have been struggling and Michael went to help her. That’s why Misquamacus killed him.”

  Forcing my stomach to stop heaving, I watched in horrified fascination as the enormous bulge on Karen Tandy’s back began to heave and twist. It was so large now that her own body seemed like nothing more than a papery carnival ghost, and her thin arms and legs were flopped about by the fierce squirming of the beast that was being born on her back.

  “Gitche Manitou, give me power. Bring me the spirits of darkness and power. Gitche Manitou, hear my call to you,” muttered Singing Rock. He traced complicated patterns in the air with his long magic bones, and threw powders all around. The scent of dried herbs and flowers mingled with the vivid stench of blood.

  I suddenly had a singing, metallic sensation in my head, like breathing nitrous oxide at the dentist. The whole scene seemed peculiarly unreal, and I felt detached and strange, as though I were looking through my eyes from the darkness of some other place. Singing Rock grasped my arm, and only then did the feeling begin to fade.

  “He’s casting spells already,” whispered the medicine man. “He knows we’re here and he knows we’re going to try and fight him. He will do many strange things to your mind. He will try and make you feel as though you do not really exist, like he did just then. He will also try and make you feel afraid, and suicidal, and desperately alone. He has the power to do all that. But these are only tricks. What we must really look out for are the manitous that he summons, because they are almost unstoppable.”