Blind Panic Page 11

  “It’s a war, isn’t it?” said Amelia. “What choice do we have?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We closed and locked the balcony windows and drew the drapes, so that the room was bathed in gloomy greenish light, like the inside of a tropical aquarium. I took off the bracelet that Singing Rock had given me. It was made up of twenty-one polished black stones from the bed of the Okabojo River in South Dakota, and he had told me that when he died, his spirit would be divided up between each of the twenty-one stones, and that I would be carrying him around my wrist for the rest of my life.

  I don’t really know why a Native American medicine man should have chosen a white fortune-teller of dubious repute to safeguard his spirit, but I guess in our battles against Misquamacus we had formed one of those inexplicable brotherhoods that don’t have anything to do with race or heritage or even affection. I never thought that Singing Rock liked me very much, particularly when I was BSing elderly ladies with titillating predictions about their up-and-coming love lives. Singing Rock believed in absolute truth. He used to say that absolute truth was the most powerful weapon he possessed against the demons of the spirit world. “One lie always leads to another lie, and spins a web, and up this web runs Inktomi, the spider demon, who brings darkness and confusion and paralyzes the soul of anyone he bites.”

  He also bitterly resented us palefaces for every gratuitous act of slaughter that we had committed—especially the massacre at Whitestone Hill, in South Dakota, in the summer of 1863, in which his great-great-grandmother had been killed, along with two hundred other men, women, and children. Not our noblest moment, among a whole lot of other not-so-noble moments, like Conestoga and Gnadenhutten and Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. You should Google those places, check out what we did there, and weep.

  Apart from being scrupulously truthful, however, Singing Rock had been a realist. He knew that the days of magic and buffalo were gone forever, and that it was futile to try to bring them back. He didn’t believe in revenge, either. He was confident that Gitche Manitou, the Great Spirit, would punish those who had killed out of greed, prejudice, or cruelty, and their punishment would be far more terrible than anything that a vengeful human could ever think of—like seeing their children strangled in front of their eyes…not just for two or three horrifying minutes, but forever.

  Amelia placed a thick red candle in the center of the dining table and arranged my bracelet around it. Then she pointed to the ceiling and said, “The smoke alarm.”

  “What?”

  “You should take out the battery. It’s going to get very smoky in here, and we don’t want the management calling the fire department, do we?”

  “Got you,” I said. I pulled out a chair and climbed up onto the table. While I unscrewed the cover of the smoke alarm and pried out the battery, Amelia lit the candle. By the time I climbed down, the room was already filling up with the overwhelming aroma of cinnamon and cloves and assorted wild berries.

  I knew what the candle was for; I used to have a line in magic herbs and spices myself, which I sold to my elderly ladies at spectacularly inflated prices, although most of mine had come from the out-of-date grocery bin at Gristede’s. The cinnamon and cloves were supposed to exorcize any disturbing memories that might still be lingering in the room from previous guests—any wife-beating or sadistic sex acts or suicide attempts—and the wild berries were meant to purify the air and protect us from any malevolent and mischievous spirits that might try to sneak through the portal without our noticing them.

  “Smells like Christmas,” I remarked as she and I sat down facing each other.

  “This doesn’t have much to do with Christianity,” said Amelia. The candle flame made her eyes glitter. “This is a portal ritual I learned from a witch who lived in the Dakota building.”

  “They really have witches living in the Dakota building? Like in Rosemary’s Baby?”

  “You wouldn’t think this one was a witch if you met her. Her husband is a theatre producer on Broadway and she lunches at Le Cirque most days.”

  “Sounds like just my type. Wealthy, elderly, and a sucker for the supernatural. You’ll have to give me her number.”

  “Oh, she’s not elderly, even though her husband is. She’s thirty-two, and used to wait tables. But she’s a very good witch. How do you think she persuaded a seventy-seven-year-old multimillionaire to marry her and make her the sole beneficiary of his will?”

  The candle started to burn brighter and to pour out smoke, and the smoke twisted upward and around, in a spiral. Amelia laid her hands flat on the table and began to call out for Singing Rock.

  Whenever she recited incantations to the spirits, her voice always rose higher and higher, and she started to warble, until it sounded as if she were singing an aria from Norma. God knows what the people in the next-door suite thought we were doing. Operatic asphyxiation, probably.

  “I am calling for the spirit of the medicine worker Singing Rock,” she sang. “I am calling any spirit who can take his hand, and touch his heart, and lead him here. I have only affection and good wishes for him, but I need to speak to him about matters of the world beyond.”

  She waited a moment, with her eyes closed, and then she trilled, “I am calling for the spirit of the medicine worker Singing Rock. Whoever can guide him to me will be rewarded. Singing Rock? Can you hear me, Singing Rock?”

  Smoke poured out of the candle thicker and thicker, until the room was filled with it. I thought I could hear a noise, too—apart from the trolley cars sliding along Northrup Avenue outside, and the faint caterwauling of Nina Simone on somebody’s TV, and a woman laughing as if she had drunk too many sex on the beaches, or sexes on the beach, or whatever.

  What I could hear was a repetitive rasping noise like one of those fish-shaped guiros they play with a scraper in Mexican bands, only much softer and much more complicated. It sounded as if it was very close, but at the same time it sounded very far away.

  “I hear some kind of percussion instrument,” I told Amelia.

  She nodded without opening her eyes. “That means that they have found Singing Rock. He’s holding a prayer meeting.”

  “He’s holding a what? A prayer meeting? What’s he doing that for? He’s dead. He’s a spirit.”

  “Harry, the dead pray for the living just as much as the living pray for the dead. They might have passed over, but they still care about us.”

  She pressed the palms of her hands together, and then she sang, “All spirits, listen to one who can speak the language of the dead! Bring Singing Rock to me, clothe him with light! Bring Singing Rock to me, dress him in dust! Bring Singing Rock to me, so that he can talk with me, and help all those that he has left behind!”

  With that, she gave a sharp clap, then paused and called out, “Abbona!”

  She clapped again, and this time she called, “Yoaw!” Then, “Nis!”—clap—and “Nees!”—clap—and “Aquit!”—clap.

  She held up both hands, with the palms facing me, and then she opened her eyes. “So, what was that all about?” I asked her.

  “I was counting backward in Wampanaug. It was my way of telling Singing Rock that Misquamacus is approaching.”

  I couldn’t help shaking my head. “I’ll tell you something, Amelia. You never cease to amaze me. I can’t even count forward in Wampanaug.”

  “Sshh!” she admonished me. “Don’t say anything. Just wait.”

  The smoke was so dense now that Amelia looked as if she were sitting behind a thick net curtain, like a fake medium in one of those old-time séances, although I knew that Amelia was the real deal, and didn’t have seven yards of butter muslin rolled up inside her muff.

  “What are we waiting for, exactly?” I asked her.

  “Ssh,” she repeated. “It’s starting. He’s very close.”

  Very softly at first, Singing Rock’s shiny black bracelet began to rattle, and it wasn’t long before it started to shake even more violently, and then it jumped two or three inch
es into the air and clattered back down again. It did this five or six times, and each time it jumped up higher.

  Simultaneously I heard that guiro sound even louder. Shikka-trikka, shikka-trikka, with all kinds of tricksy little chikkety noises in between.

  Amelia closed her eyes again. “The way is open!” she sang. “I need all of you to guide Singing Rock back to the world of touching flesh! Two-legged spirits, I call on you! Four-legged spirits, I call on you! Spirits of the trees and the mineral kingdom, guide Singing Rock through to me! Spirits of the wind, blow against his back! Show him the path! Show him the portal!”

  Now—still shivering and rattling—the bracelet rose up around the shaft of the candle, until it was floating about six inches above the flame. Neither Amelia nor I were anywhere near it, and I can swear that on any telephone directory you care to bring me, even the Yellow Pages from Wasilla, Alaska. As we watched it, the bracelet slowly twisted itself into a tight, complicated knot, and rotated in the heat of the flame. Its black polished stones sparkled as brightly as Amelia’s eyes, and each stone reflected a brilliant point of white light into the smoke, like fireflies. At first the fireflies seemed to be whirling aimlessly around the room, darting over the ceiling and across the walls. I almost felt like swatting them. But gradually they swarmed closer and closer together, in the densest part of the candle smoke, and they began to weave themselves into a recognizable pattern. It was the outline of a man, drawn in endlessly circling pinpricks of light, like a whirling model of the solar system.

  “Singing Rock!” sang Amelia. “Singing Rock, come through!”

  Inside the sparkling outline, the smoke began to thicken, and even more smoke was drawn into it from the rest of the room—only slowly, to begin with, in shuddering eddies, but then faster and faster, as if somebody had switched on an extractor to full suck. The outline was filled by a dark, blurry figure that rapidly became denser and darker. Right in front of my eyes, it developed shadows, depth, shoulders, a head, and a face. A man made out of solidifying smoke.

  At the same time, the whole room was shaking and vibrating, as if we were undergoing the longest continuous earth temblor ever known. A vase of artificial poppies crept across a side table and dropped onto the floor. A silk screen print of scarlet tomatoes and yellow summer squash fell off the wall, and its glass cracked. In the kitchen drawers I could hear the cutlery jingling together and mugs rattling in the cupboards, and behind the living room drapes, I could hear the windows buzzing in their metal frames.

  After three or four minutes, however, the vibration died away, and the room was miraculously clear of smoke. Standing beside the table, less than five feet away from me, was Singing Rock, looking as he had always looked—more like a small-town Realtor than a powerful Native American shaman—but formed this time out of constantly swirling smoke. It made him appear as if he were standing in front of a home-movie projector, with a black-and-white film of long-dead children playing across his face.

  His eyes were open, but they were focused on the wall by the window, off to the left. He didn’t move.

  “Amelia?” I said. Amelia remained utterly motionless, her head tilted back, her arms hanging by her sides, her eyes still closed. Her cheeks were drained of all their color and I couldn’t even tell whether she was breathing. “Amelia, he’s here. You did it. You brought him through.”

  There was a long silence, punctuated only by the sound of trolley cars, and the barely audible shikka-tikka-tikka of the guiro, or whatever it was, but then that faded, too.

  I stood up and circled around the table and laid my hands on Amelia’s shoulders. The flickering figure of Singing Rock seemed to be staring directly at me, but he gave me no indication that he recognized me.

  “Amelia,” I said gently, close to her ear. “Amelia, sweetheart, you’ve done it! He’s here.”

  She opened her eyes. She looked up at me first, and I nodded toward Singing Rock.

  “Singing Rock!” she said. “You came back to us. Thank you.”

  Still, Singing Rock said nothing, nor showed any sign that he knew who we were. He was dead, and he was formed out of nothing more than coagulated smoke, but he was still Singing Rock, and I surprised myself by feeling so emotional about seeing him again. I just hoped that dying hadn’t given him some kind of astral Alzheimer’s, and he had forgotten who we were.

  I stepped right up to him. The candle smoke had formed a rough outline for his reappearance, like a charcoal sketch, but I could see that he was gradually producing his own ectoplasm, and with every passing second he was becoming more and more solid, and more detailed. His black greased-back hair had now restored itself, and even the fine wrinkles around his eyes were beginning to crinkle back into existence.

  He looked at me as if he were nearsighted. Maybe ectoplasm wasn’t capable of re-creating eyeglasses, or maybe they had gotten broken when he was killed. But he was wearing the same dark suit in which he had died, with its wide, flappy lapels and its Elks badge.

  “Singing Rock?” I said. I reached out my hand and cautiously took hold of his shoulder, and I could actually feel it underneath his coat. It was kind of bony, and the coat itself was thick with dust, as if he had found it in a closet in some long-demolished building, but he was solid enough. “Singing Rock? It’s me. Don’t you recognize me?”

  Singing Rock closed, then reopened his eyes as slowly as a lizard on a hot rock.

  “I know who you are, Harry Erskine,” he replied hoarsely. “Why have you called me back here? I thought that I was done with you forever. I gave you my bracelet, didn’t I? I gave you custody of my spirit in the world of touching flesh. Was that not enough?”

  “Didn’t you hear Amelia counting backward in Wampanaug?”

  “Yes, I heard her.”

  “She was trying to tell you that Misquamacus has found a way of coming back to life.”

  “I knew that. That was one of the reasons I was praying for you. But you called me, and I am a spirit, and no spirit can resist a summons from the world of touching flesh, no matter how reluctant he may be to answer it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry if we interrupted your devotions, but if you knew that Misquamacus had found a way to come back, why the hell didn’t you warn us? Amelia’s sister and her family, they’ve all been struck blind. And it looks like he’s been doing the same thing all across the country. Airliners have been falling out of the sky like flies. Cars have been crashing. People have been falling off balconies.”

  “I am aware of that. The spirits keep a vigilant watch on the world of touching flesh. But it is not the responsibility of the dead to interfere in the destiny of the living, no matter how catastrophic it may be.”

  “Christ on rubber crutches, Singing Rock! You could at least have given us a heads-up! Do you know how many innocent people have been killed? Thousands, and more every day!”

  Singing Rock remained impassive. Native Americans are good at impassive. In fact it’s the only expression they do. Have you ever seen a photograph of a Native American grinning and giving you the finger?

  “Like I told you, Harry, it is not the duty of the dead to save the living from their manifest destiny.”

  Manifest destiny. I liked the sarcasm of that. Manifest Destiny was the excuse the whites had given in the nineteenth century for killing the Indians and grabbing all of their land for themselves. It wasn’t our fault, guys. God said we should do it.

  I turned to Amelia. Calling Singing Rock had obviously taken a whole lot out of her, and she was trembling. I bent over her and felt her forehead to make sure that she wasn’t running a temperature. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I’m okay. But don’t take too long. It won’t take Misquamacus more than a few minutes to realize that Singing Rock has come through. You need to ask him how Misquamacus has managed to come back, and how he’s making so many people go blind. And why.”

  Singing Rock circled slowly around the table. Although he appeared almost solid now, I
could see one of the table lamps dimly shining right through him, and his voice came and went like somebody trying to call out to me from a boat in the harbor on a windy day.

  “You need to understand something about Misquamacus, Harry. His magical powers were not conferred on him by Gitche Manitou or by the spirits of the wind and the lakes and the land around him. They came from the Great Old Ones, and because of that, nobody from this world can ever take them away.”

  He came up close to me, and said, “The Great Old Ones were banished to the very rim of existence, but they are eternal, and deathless. Even Gitche Manitou cannot diminish their influence on those like Misquamacus who know the secret of contacting them and speaking to them in Yyhar-uti—the tongue that was spoken before men learned to speak.”

  “Okay, I get that,” I acknowledged. “You can’t totally erase anybody’s spirit. But I thought we made it impossible for him to come back physically. Like, he can’t produce ectoplasm anymore. And if he can’t produce ectoplasm, he can’t take on any kind of solid shape, like you just did. Am I right? And he can’t pull that blazing oil stunt, either, and get himself reborn in some other poor unsuspecting woman, the way he did with Karen.”

  Singing Rock went across to the window. He lifted his left hand, and the drapes shuddered apart, although I wasn’t entirely sure that he was actually touching them. The living room filled up with sunlight, which made Singing Rock look even dustier than he had before, and even though he threw a shadow across the polished wood floor, it was fainter than the shadow of a living man would have been. More like the memory of a shadow, when you think about it years later.

  Outside, Northrup Avenue was bustling. Bright red trolley cars rolled past the window, and the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers. The sky was a clear ceramic blue with ragged white clouds.

  “Misquamacus swore that he would destroy all those who had killed his people and plundered his country,” said Singing Rock. “He swore that to the Great Old Ones, so that they could return out of exile; and the Great Old Ones will hold him to that pledge for all eternity. He will never be able to escape his commitment, even if he wants to.”