Revenge of the Manitou tm-2 Page 13

  Susan shrieked. He saw crimson blood staining the linen entwined between her legs.

  She began to twitch and tremble as if she was suffering an epileptic fit, but the bedclothes kept up their febrile shaking. There was another blinding burst of lightning, and the shattered window frames flew into the room. Then, suddenly, there was darkness, complete and seamless darkness, and the wind died away with a shuddering whistle.

  Neil lifted himself from the floor. Gradually, through the broken window, the light of the moon began to shine again, soft and white at first, but then with the same strength and clarity as it had before. He stumbled over to the bed, where Susan lay with the crumpled sheets on top of her, moaning and whispering under her breath.

  He clutched her close, stroking her hair, kissing her cold forehead. He mumbled,

  “Susan, oh God, I’m sorry. Susan, I’m sorry.”

  She opened her eyes and saw it was him, and then she began to sob uncontrollably.

  He held her close, trying to soothe her, and he turned toward Toby, who was still standing by the end of the bed, his eyes shining with hateful amusement.

  “You bastard,” Neil said, between his teeth. Toby’s expression remained unmoved.

  “It is no worse than what the white pony soldiers did to our daughters in times gone by,” he said in his distant voice. “It is far more forgiving than what they did to Tall Bull at Summit Springs.”

  “Damn you, Susan wasn’t there at Summit Springs. She’s never met an Indian in her life, apart from the few that come down here to help in the summer. You can’t punish generation after generation for what was done in the past! It’s over, it’s too late!”

  Toby slowly shook his head. “For those Indians whose territories were stolen and whose people were killed, it will never be over. They live on the reservations now with the memory of what was done, and they will never forget.”

  Neil held Susan tightly against him. “Some of them have forgotten already,” he retorted. “Some of them can’t even remember what the day of the dark stars is supposed to be.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” replied Misquamacus. “Their life as outcasts in their own land is enough to remind them. And none of them has ever forgotten Misquamacus. The name of Misquamacus is an Indian secret that has been held close to their hearts for more than a hundred years. Now, it will be revealed to the white man, and the white man will never regret knowing an Indian secret so bitterly.”

  Toby’s face seemed to change, and the hostile glitter in his eyes began to dwindle, like the burned-out wicks of kerosene lamps. He raised his small hands for a moment, and then he collapsed onto the floor. Neil quickly but gently laid Susan back on the bed, and crunched across the broken glass to pick him up. Toby’s face was pallid, and he was breathing heavily, but Misquamacus didn’t appear to have hurt him.

  “Toby,” whispered Neil. “Oh my God, you poor kid.”

  He laid the boy back in his bed, and drew the covers up to his neck. Then he went back to Susan, who had stopped sobbing now, and was lying staring at him with a shocked, glassy look in her eyes.

  “What happened?” she asked, in a haunted voice. “I don’t understand what happened.”

  Neil looked down at the bloodstained sheets, and in a fit of rage and frustration he dragged them off the bed, and tried to rip them with his bare hands. He didn’t do very well. They were pure cotton, with double hems. Finally, panting, he tossed them across the room into a corner.

  Susan said shakily, “There was a man, Neil. A tall man with necklaces and feathers.

  He didn’t have any clothes on.”

  Neil sat down beside her and held her. “It was nothing. It was just a nightmare.”

  “But he seemed so real. I could even smell him. He was covered in some kind of oil.

  He got on top of me, Neil. I tried to stop him. He got on top of me.”

  “Susan,” he hushed her, “nothing happened. It was nothing more than a nightmare, that’s all.”

  Frowning, still stunned, she reached her hand down between her thighs, and then raised her fingers to her face. They were dark and sticky with blood. She looked at Neil in total horror and desperation, her eyes pleading with him to explain it, to make it safe, to say that whatever had happened was a freakish dream, and to prove it, too.

  “I’m hurt,” she breathed. “I’m hurt inside.”

  He pressed his hand to his eyes in exhaustion. ‘Til get Doctor Crowder,” he told her.

  “Just relax, honey. Stay where you are. It can’t be anything too bad.”

  He crossed the room, glancing only briefly at Toby.

  His son was fast asleep, breathing evenly and quietly, and the color was back in his cheeks. Neil closed the bedroom door behind him, and went downstairs as quietly as he could. He picked up the phone and dialed Doctor Crowder’s number.

  At the kitchen door Doctor Crowder belted up his overcoat and put on his hat. Neil handed him his worn leather bag, as old and faithful as a pet spaniel, and gave him a brief, tired smile.

  “I want to thank you for coming out,” Neil said. “I guess we’ve been keeping you awake lately.” Doctor Crowder pulled a weary, resigned face. “Is it very serious?”

  asked Neil. “I mean, it’s not going to spoil Susan’s chances of having any more children, is it?”

  Doctor Crowder shook his head. “The vaginal tissues are lacerated, that’s all. It’s an injury we usually associate with cases of violent rape.” “Did Susan tell you what happened?” Doctor Crowder looked away. “She didn’t seem too clear about it. She seemed to think you must have had some kind of argument.”

  Neil went cold. “Argument? What are you talking about? We didn’t have any argument! What does she mean, argument?”

  “Well, it’s not for me to put words in her mouth,” said Doctor Crowder, “but you must admit that the room was land of busted up.”

  Neil stared at him. “Do you want to know what did that? Lightning. That’s what did it.”

  The old doctor wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I see,” he said heavily.

  Neil seized his shoulder. “Doctor-you don’t believe me, do you?”

  Doctor Crowder wouldn’t answer.

  Neil said, “You think I’m crazy. You think I set fire to my house last night, and tonight you think I raped my own wife. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I’m a head case!”

  Doctor Crowder tried to pull away, but Neil to8k hold of both his arms and turned him around to face him.

  “You think I’m going out of my mind, don’t you? You see my bedroom all busted up and immediately assume I had a fight with Susan. You see blood on the sheets and you think I’ve assaulted her. You don’t stop to think that I might actually be telling the truth, do you?”

  “The truth?” asked Doctor Crowder, shakily. “What truth?”

  “The truth that Toby is possessed by the greatest Red Indian medicine man who ever lived. The truth that he called down lightning to smash up the room, and a wind that you couldn’t even stand up hi. The truth that he had Susan’s own sheets and bedclothes rape her in revenge for the way the white men used to rape Indian women.”

  Doctor Crowder could only stare at him. There was a long, awkward silence. The pine railroad clock on the kitchen wall ticked away the “hour of three and chimed.

  Eventually, the old doctor opened the kitchen door, and said, “Look out there, Neil.

  What do you see?”

  Neil wouldn’t look at first, but then he glanced sideways and saw the dark, quiet night.

  “I see my own backyard,” he said huskily.

  “That’s right,” nodded Doctor Crowder. “And is it raining out there?”

  Neil shook his head.

  “Is it snowing out there? Is there thunder? Is there lightning? Is there any wind at all?”

  Neil said, “It’s a warm night.”

  “That’s right,” Doctor Crowder told him. “It’s a warm, still night. No lightning, no wind.

  Not ev
en a breeze. And you’re trying to tell me that your bedroom was wrecked by an electric storm?”

  “It was magic!’ yelled Neil “It was done by magic’

  Doctor Crowder looked embarrassed. But he took Neil’s hand and shook it, and said,

  “I’ll come around in the morning to see how Susan’s getting along. She’s sleeping now. A mild sedative. I think it might be wise if you got yourself some sleep, too. I mean that, Neil. You could have been working too hard.”

  Neil was about to burst out again, but then he checked himself and nodded, and said, “Okay, doctor. I’ll try. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He closed the kitchen door after Doctor Crowder had left, and drew up one of the kitchen chairs. He sat at the table for almost ten minutes, with every nightmarish incident of the whole night whirling around in his mind. Again and again, with eerie vividness, he saw the jerking, sexual movements of Susan’s sheets, and the expression of malevolent triumph on Toby’s face.

  After a while, he got up to make himself a cup of coffee. He saw his face reflected in the dark window, and he thought how tired and washed-out he looked. He filled the electric hot pot, and went to the cupboard to find the instant coffee. The clock chimed the half-hour. He walked across to the sink to set his cup on the drainboard, and then, to his horror, he realized that somebody or something was staring at him. He turned, shocked, and saw a pallid face pressed against the glass of the kitchen window.

  “I hope I didn’t scare you too much,” Harry Erskine said.

  Neil, still fidgeting, gave him an uncertain grin. “I was just feeling edgy, that’s all. And I didn’t expect you till the morning.”

  Harry stirred his coffee, and set the spoon down in the saucer. “I was through for the day, and my date came down with the chicken pox, so I took the first plane going.

  There was me and fifty-five rabbis, so I figured the flight just had to arrive safe.”

  “You rented a car at the airport?”

  “It’s in back of your yard. A yellow Pinto with a slipping transmission. Still, what can you expect for four dollars a day?”

  Harry was a round-shouldered thirty-five-year-old with an obvious penchant for permanent-press suits and shirts that could drip dry over the tub. He could have looked quite distinguished, except that his facial features didn’t seem comfortable with each other. His nose was a little too large, his eyes a little too deepset, his chin reasonably determined but too fleshy. His- mouse-brown hair was thinning, and his cheeks had the permanent pallor of Tenth Avenue.

  Neil said, “Do you want something to eat? I could fix some eggs.”

  “Unh-hunh. Leave it till the morning. You’ve done enough tonight without short-order cooking.”

  Neil sat down at the table. “You say you’re a mystic?” he asked Harry. “I didn’t think anyone could make a living at being a mystic.”

  “I don’t,” Harry told him. “I do free-lance work for my old advertising agency to make ends meet. But I prefer to be my own boss, you know, and I’m good at mysticism. I read old ladies’ fortunes with the tarot cards, and I hold young ladies’ hands and tell them what their palms foretell. Usually, they foretell a cheap Italian dinner with me, followed by a nightcap at my apartment.”

  “You don’t seem to take it too seriously.”

  Harry looked at him. “I take Misquamacus seriously. What I do for a living, that’s just fooling about. But Misquamacus, and the spirits that Misquamacus can raise up, now that’s a whole different ball game.”

  Neil poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it. “What I don’t understand is, if you’ve already destroyed Misquamacus once, how he can possibly come back again.”

  “You’ll have to ask John Singing Rock about the finer details of that,” said Harry. “But the way I understand it, a manitou is indestructible, like a spirit. It lives forever, and not even the greatest of the gods can destroy it. All you can hope to do when you’re fighting a reincarnated manitou like Misquamacus is break the spells that bind it to its physical form. When we first faced Misquamacus, he was reborn in the body of a girl I knew. Actually reborn, like a fetus. But we were able to use the electrical power of a computer to destroy him. Least, that’s the easiest way I can explain it.”

  “What about now?” asked Neil. “What’s he going to do to Toby?”

  Harry shook his head. “I just don’t know. I talked to Singing Rock about it, and he was going to consult some of the elder medicine men of his tribe. You see, whatever Misquamacus is doing, he seems to have learned some lessons from the last time.

  Last time, he was reborn from the seventeenth century, and it must have been his first leap through time. He was alone, and he was caught off-balance, and once we worked out a way to get rid of him, then the struggle wasn’t too unequal. But this time-well, God only knows. He seems to have found himself a whole bunch of friends, and a way to reincarnate himself without having to grow like a fetus.”

  Neil said, “He’s growing inside Toby’s mind. I can see it. I can look at Toby, and Toby isn’t Toby at all.”

  “Misquamacus is a pretty powerful guy,” said Harry. “He’s also mean, and vengeful, and if I didn’t know he was going to come and find me anyway, I would have stayed as far away from what’s going on here as humanly possible. Nothing personal, of course.”

  Neil finished his coffee, and went to stack their cups in the sink. He said, “I want to thank you for taking the trouble to fly out here, anyway. I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have bothered. Half this damn town, to begin with.”

  “They’ve been giving you a hard time?”

  “They think I’m crazy. And tonight, after that sheet business, they even believe I assaulted Susan. If I don’t do something soon, they’re going to commit me, or run me out. Even Susan doesn’t believe me.”

  Harry took a pack of mint-flavored dental floss out of his coat pocket and broke off a piece.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I think it helps to stop me smoking,” said Harry, sawing away at his teeth. “It’s also supposed to do wonders for the dental bills.”

  “Do you want to see Toby?” asked Neil.

  “Sure. He’s upstairs now?”

  “He’s sleeping. I guess Misquamacus is conserving his strength right now.”

  “How about your wife?”

  “The doctor gave her a sedative. She won’t wake up.”

  Harry put away his floss and stood up. “Well,” he said, with a pale grin. “I feel a little like Saint George about to size up the dragon for a rematch.”

  Neil opened the door to the stairs and led the way up to the landing. It was dark and still up there, and the ticking of the grandfather clock was the only sound they could hear.

  Harry whispered, “Will you show me the wardrobe first? The one the wooden man came out of?”

  “Sure,” said Neil, crossing the landing. “It’s in here.”

  He opened the door to Toby’s room. He had nailed a sheet of hardboard over the window, so it was gloomy, and still smelled of ash and smoke. Harry took a cautious peek around, and then stepped across to the walnut wardrobe.

  “Is this it?”

  Neil nodded.

  Harry opened it and looked inside.

  “We had something like this before, only not nearly so dramatic. Misquamacus manifested his head out of a solid cherrywood table, right in front of us. It was real frightening.”

  He closed the wardrobe door. “He’s an Indian of the woods, you see, from Manhattan originally, and in other lives the Miskatonic River and some of the back forests of Massachusetts. He was an Algonquian, and a Wampanoag, and maybe a dozen other nationalities. Singing Rock knows more about him than I do. After we sent him back outside, Singing Rock made quite a study of Misquamacus.”

  Neil ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell I would have done if I hadn’t found you,” he said.

  “Don’t count chickens,�
� warned Harry. “From what I saw of Misquamacus the last time, hell could be a much more comfortable alternative.”

  They left Toby’s room, and walked quietly along the landing until they came to the main bedroom. Neil raised his finger to his lips and then slowly opened the door, beckoning Harry to follow him.

  Toby and Susan were both fast asleep. The moon had passed by now, and the room was thick with shadows. The luminous dial of the bedside clock, which chattered softly in the corner, said three-thirty.

  “This is your boy?” said Harry, quietly hunkering himself down beside Toby’s bed. He touched the flushed, sleeping cheek, and stroked the untidy hair. Toby stirred slightly, and his small hand opened a little, but his breathing remained calm and even.

  “The trouble is, this is a war,” Harry whispered. “It’s not just one evil character trying to get his own back.

  It’s the red nation fighting to get their revenge on the white nation. A real war.”

  He stood up, still looking down at Toby. “And the sad thing is that, in wars, it’s always the innocent people who get hurt the worst.”

  Neil watched Harry tiredly.

  “Do you want to get some sleep?” Neil asked. “There’s a big couch in the front room, and I can find you some blankets.”

  Harry said, “Yes, for sure. Have you ever tried sleeping on a plane with fifty-five rabbis? They spent the whole flight chattering about how they were going to go see Carole Doda. I’m sometimes glad my mother was a Catholic.”

  Stepping around the end of the bed, Neil went to make sure that Susan was warm and comfortable. He bent over her and listened to her steady breathing for a while, but he didn’t kiss her or touch her. He felt as if he had somehow failed her, as if he hadn’t protected her as a husband should. There didn’t seem to be any way to make up for what had happened except to destroy Misquamacus, and to free his house and his family from the terrible curse that seemed to have descended on them.

  Harry was waiting for him by the door, darkly silhouetted by the light from the landing. He said, “Are you okay? You look as if you could use some sleep yourself.”