Revenge of the Manitou tm-2 Page 14

  Neil took a last look at the bedroom and nodded. “I feel bushed, to tell you the truth.”

  He was about to close the door when he heard Toby stirring in his bed. The boy whimpered and moaned, and seemed to struggle for a while with his sheets. Harry turned and raised a questioning eyebrow, but Neil said, “I think he’s all right. He’s been pretty restless ever since the dreams started.”

  Harry gave a small, nervous grunt, and made sure that he kept his eye on Toby’s sleeping body until Neil had closed the door. It was only when they were halfway down the landing that both of them felt a strange cold surge in the ah-, as if an ocean wave had suddenly rippled under the rug. The grandfather clock at the end of the landing abruptly stopped ticking, and there was a sharp odor in the air, like burnt electricity.

  Harry said, in a hollow voice, “He knows I’m here.”

  “How can he?” asked Neil.

  “He knows, that’s all. It’s what he’s been waiting for.”

  Neil looked at Harry with a face lined with exhaustion and anxiety. “I just hope we’ve got the strength to fight this thing,” he said, hoarsely. “I just hope to God we’ve got the strength.”

  On Sunday afternoon, a dry windy afternoon of dust-storms and tumbling newspapers, Harry and Neil and Toby drove around Bodega to visit Toby’s classmates at home. Toby had been quiet and pale all morning, but he hadn’t objected when Neil ushered him into the battered Pinto, and asked him to direct Harry to each of his friends’ houses. He was Toby today, with no sign of the malevolent personality of Misquamacus, although he was unusually listless and distracted. If Neil hadn’t known what was wrong with him, he might have guessed that he was coming down with flu.

  “Singing Rock said it was very important to take a look at the opposition,” remarked Harry, smoking a Camel Light down to halfway and tossing the butt out of the window. “He said we need to know names, or signs, or anything which might tell us who these twenty-two medicine men are. Some medicine men, even the most famous, had weak spots we could use to break them up.”

  “You think Toby’s classmates are really going to tell us that stuff?”

  Harry shook his head. “Of course not. But we have to do our best. If we could find out just one name, that’d be something.”

  Toby said flatly, “Here. This is Andy Beaver’s house, right here.”

  They pulled up outside a small weatherboard house with an overgrown veranda and a yard full of rye grass and strutting chickens. Henry Beaver, in denims and suspenders, was sitting on the veranda reading the San Francisco^ Sunday-Examiner. Andy was jumping through the grass with a toy pistol, playing explorer.

  Harry got out of the car and leaned against the roof.

  “How do you do,” he called to Mr. Beaver.

  Henry Beaver folded his paper, dropped it beside him, and then crossed his arms over his huge belly. “How do you do yourself,” he replied.

  Neil climbed out of the car, too, more cautiously. “Hi, Henry,” he said, with an awkward smile.

  Henry Beaver didn’t smile back. “Still chasing ghosts, Neil Fenner?” he asked.

  “Caught one yet?”

  Harry closed the door of the Pinto and walked across to Mr. Beaver’s veranda railing.

  He leaned his arms on it, and then rested his chin on his arms, and regarded Mr.

  Beaver very seriously. Mr. Beaver, uncertain and unsettled, glanced at Neil for some kind of explanation. Neil remained expressionless.

  “Mr. Beaver,” said Harry benignly, “I flew in from New York City last night because I heard of the trouble that Mr. Fenner had been having here in Bodega.”

  Henry Beaver looked him up and down. “You’re not FBI, are you?” he wanted to know.

  Harry shook his head. “I’m a special investigator of matters pertaining to specters and apparitions. I’m an occultist, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not exactly,” replied Henry Beaver suspiciously. “Is it something to do with eye tests, or what?”

  “You’re thinking of an oculist, Mr. Beaver,” said Harry, in a smooth, salesmanlike tone. “But you’re almost right. I investigate strange things that people have seen, and I try to determine the truth of them. You got me?”

  “You mean ghosts, things like that?” “Well, yes, if that’s the way you want to put it.”

  Henry Beaver slowly shook his head and picked up his newspaper again. “I’m sorry, mister, but nobody ain’t seen no ghosts around here, except for Neil Fenner there.”

  He nodded toward Neil with an emotionless face. “The truth is, we don’t believe that kind of garbage around these parts, and that’s the long and short of it.”

  Harry wasn’t at all put off. He climbed the veranda steps and sat down on the end of Mr. Beaver’s lawn chair.

  “Mr. Beaver,” he said, “I don’t want you to be too hasty. You see, the truth of the matter is that some very reliable apparitions have been appearing to school-age children all over California, particularly in these parts, and my people have been very interested in hearing some firsthand reports.”

  “Your people?” asked Henry Beaver. He still looked massively unconvinced.

  “The people I work for. The Occultist Investigation League of America.”

  Henry Beaver sniffed. “Well, so?”

  “Well, it’s possible that your son Andy might have seen something and not told you about it,” said Harry. “He could have easily glimpsed a ghost or some kind of a specter, and not thought to tell you. Maybe fie thought you’d laugh at him. Maybe he just forgot to mention it.”

  “Andy?” squinted Mr. Beaver. He was rapidly growing confused.

  “That’s right, Andy,” said Harry. “And the nice thing about the whole investigation is that we pay a hundred dollars for every authenticated spectral sighting.”

  He took out his worn leather wallet, and produced a ten-dollar bill, which he waved in front of Mr. Beaver’s face. It looked to Neil as if that was the only money he had left.

  “See this sawbuck?” smiled Harry. “You can have this and nine more like it if Andy comes up with a ghost sighting that we can substantiate.”

  Henry Beaver’s eyes followed the bill backward and forward. Then, without taking his eyes off it, he called out of the corner of his mouth, “Andy! Come on up here, boy!”

  Andy Beaver, gingery and disheveled from play, appeared round the corner with his toy pistol. He frowned at Harry, and then at his father, but Henry Beaver waved him forward and said, “This gentleman here wants to ask you some questions, boy. You just go ahead and answer the best way you can.”

  Andy peered over at the Pinto. “Hi, Mr. Fenner,” he called, and he gave a quick wave to Toby. Harry watched him keenly for any indication of a special wave or a hand signal, but it didn’t look like anything more than one schoolboy saying in to another.

  Harry put his arm around Andy’s shoulders and led him along the veranda to a quiet corner. He perched on the rail, and Andy stood looking at him, his hands in his jeans pockets, his eyes screwed up against the sun.

  “Toby tells me you’ve been having some nightmares,” said Harry. “Something about blood, and killing.”

  Andy looked away, without answering.

  “He says you’ve been having nightmares about Alien, and the day the Wappos caught Dunbar and the rest of the settlers up at Conn Creek.”

  Andy turned back toward him again, but still said nothing.

  Harry said, “Toby tells me that you’re one of the twenty-two.”

  Andy’s eyes fixed themselves on Harry with a strangely luminous stare. They were pale blue, but as he stared they seemed to widen and darken. It was hard to image that these were the eyes of an eight- or nine-year-old boy. They seemed to be infinitely wise, and knowing, and deeply self-contained in their malevolence.

  “You are Harry Erskine,” said Andy. “We have been waiting a long time for you.”

  “You and Misquamacus?” asked Harry, trying to appear unruffled. A chicken stalked up ont
o the veranda, lifted its head questioningly, and then stalked away again.

  “You will discover nothing,” Andy growled. “I know why you have come, but you will discover nothing. The day is fixed, and you cannot prevent it.”

  “The day of the dark stars?”

  “The day when the mouth comes from the sky.”

  Harry took out a cigarette, and lit it with the engraved Dunhill lighter that John Singing Rock had sent him at Thanksgiving. He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and watched Andy closely, trying to size up what kind of Red Indian personality was concealing itself inside this small boy’s brain. It certainly wasn’t as dazzling as the mind of Misquamacus, judging from his first encounters with the greatest of all the wonderworkers. But it was dignified and powerful and proud, and he was quite sure that it would be quite enough on its own to wipe out all of them-him and Neil Fenner and Singing Rock and half of Bodega.

  Harry said, “You’re going to call down Ossadagowah?”

  Andy didn’t reply, but continued to stare at him fixedly.

  “From what I’ve heard, that would be kind of dangerous to everyone around, including Indians,” Harry remarked. “Isn’t Ossadagowah the great demon that nobody can send back to the stars? The demon that only returns outside of its own free will?”

  Andy said huskily, “You believe you know much, white man, but your knowledge is like one grain of sand in the deserts. It will not help you, neither will your traitorous friend Singing Rock.”

  Harry shrugged. “Who knows? We licked Misquamacus before.”

  “You achieved nothing. What you did served only to give him more strength than ever. This time he will return whole and with his powers intact, and you shall understand before you die the true meaning of strong medicine.”

  Harry smoked for while in silence. Then he said, “Okay. I get your warning. The day of the dark stars is coming and you’re going to knock us all around the ball park. At least, you think you are.”

  Andy gave a small, unpleasant smile. Then he turned his head slightly, so that he was looking toward Harry’s rented Pinto, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He repeated three times, “An-hut-ko, an-hut-ko, an-hut-ko.”

  Harry turned around. Smoke was beginning to rise from under the Pinto’s hood, and from out of the rear-wheel arches. He yelled at the top of his voice, “Neill Get Toby out of that car!”

  Neil, shocked and surprised, immediately pushed forward the folding front seat and lifted Toby out of the back.

  “Now run!” shouted Harry.

  Henry Beaver had hefted himself off his lawn chair and was looking at Harry in blank amazement. But then there was a sharp crackling of fire, and flames started to lick out of the Pinto’s radiator and air vents.

  “Your goddamn car’s on fire!” said Mr. Beaver, in disbelief. “You can’t burn your goddamn car in front of my house!”

  There was a soft, billowing explosion. Chunks of car tumbled lazily into the air, trailing fire and smoke. Harry, standing on the veranda, was struck on the arm by a flying upholstery spring, and a long piece of fender sailed across the yard and landed on Mr. Beaver’s roof.

  The five of them stood there watching the remains of the car burn themselves out. A couple of neighbors came from across the street and watched, too, and after a while a man came with a garden hose and doused the last few flickers.

  Neil, tightly holding Toby’s hand, came along the veranda wide-eyed and shaken.

  Toby himself seemed almost indifferent, and even when he came close to Andy he showed no sign of boyish excitement or any urge to talk about the explosion. Neil said, “What happened? What the hell was all that about?”

  Harry rubbed his eyes and then looked sardonically at Andy.

  “Nothing,” he said, with a wry grin. “It was just one of those little bugs that Ford haven’t quite sorted out yet.”

  “But the whole damn car-”

  “Neil,” said Harry earnestly. “Let’s just forget it, shall we? I think we need to go talk about this someplace private.”

  Andy, looking slightly dazed, said, “Did that car just blow up? Boy-did that car just blow up?”

  Harry patted Andy’s gingery hair. “Yes, kid,” he said. “It just blew up. It was only a little trick I do to attract people’s attention.”

  Henry Beaver, scratching his undershirt, came up and said, “You ain’t going to leave that wreck there, I hope? And what about my hundred?”

  Harry sighed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Beaver. What your son saw was very far from being an authentic mystical vision. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he almost owes me money, it was so far from being authentic.”

  “He owes you money?” said Mr. Beaver, uncertainly.

  “Sure. But we can get around that without any argument. Supposing you just have that wreck cleared away for me, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  They stood, a tense, silent group, and nobody was laughing. Andy raised his eyes and looked at Harry, and behind his childish expression were depths upon depths of ancient and arcane mysteries. Toby lifted his eyes, too, and they were even fiercer.

  The eyes of Misquamacus, he who could call down the demons who were in no human shape.

  Harry said, “Neil, I think we’d better get out of here.”

  When they arrived back, by taxi, at Neil’s house on the Pacific hills, there was a note waiting on the kitchen table, propped between the salt and pepper shakers. Neil read it quickly, and then crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can.

  “She’s left you for mother?” asked Harry gently, taking a cookie out of the pottery jar on the sideboard, and biting into it.

  “Something like that. She’s staying with Doctor Crowder and his busybody wife.”

  “After she cooked us such a nice lunch, too,” remarked Harry.

  Neil snapped, “Aren’t you ever serious? My boy’s going crazy with some Red Indian spirit inside him, and my wife’s walked out on me, and all you can do is crack half-assed jokes.”

  Harry pulled an apologetic face. “Just tell me what else you can do when you’re faced with almost certain extinction.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Harry took out another cookie, and started to munch it. “It means that we don’t stand a chance. Did you see that car blow up? Do you know what did that?”

  “I don’t know. Was it Toby?”

  “Unh-hunh. It was Andy. He just folded his arms and said a few words and that whole damn car went up like a torch.”

  Neil said, “I don’t understand it. He might have hurt Toby, and if Toby has Misquamacus inside of him …”

  “I don’t suppose it would have mattered if you’d left Toby sitting right where he was.

  Misquamacus has as much control over fire as he does over wood and water. I didn’t want to take any risks, that was all.”

  Neil let out a long, dispirited sigh. “Maybe I should call Susan,” he suggested.

  Harry shook his head. “She’s probably safer where she is right now. It’s you and me and Singing Rock who are going to have to face up to the brunt of this thing. As I said, I don’t think we stand much of a chance. Misquamacus is determined to get us this tune, and a few hundred thousand more white folks, and he’s not going to fail.”

  There was a long, silent pause. Then Neil said quietly, “Harry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s something that occurred to me last night, when those sheets were attacking Susan.”

  Harry deliberately didn’t look at him, but finished his cookies and then took out his pack of Camel Lights.

  Neil continued, “I figured that one of the reasons why Misquamacus chose Toby and all the rest of those children was because he wanted to make his reappearance inside people that the community normally goes out of its way to protect. I mean, if he’d chosen twenty-two convicts at Folsom, it might have been an easier choice for us to get rid of them.”

  There was another pause, and then Neil said,
“Last night, I seriously considered going for my shotgun and blowing Toby’s head off.”

  Harry lit a cigarette and eyed Neil narrowly through the rising smoke.

  “Sure you considered it,” he said. “You’re not shocked?”

  “Why should I be? Plenty of fathers have sent their sons off to die to protect their countries. Why should you be any different?”

  “He’s my only son, Harry.”

  Harry stood up and went to the open kitchen door. The wind had dropped a little now, and the sun was shining from a high, hazy sky. Four or five birds were taking a dust bath just outside the cellar doors.

  “As it turns out,” said Harry, “the best thing you did was feel too sentimental to go get your gun. Any artifact, whether it’s a stone pot or a knife or a bow and arrow or a twelve-gauge shotgun, has some kind of spirit inside it, some kind of manitou. This table has a manitou, this door has a manitou, although they’re obviously very lowly spirits, nothing to get scared about. But the problems start when you try to turn a weapon onto a powerful wonder-worker like Misquamacus. He can actually control the manitou inside of your gun, maybe even the manitou inside of the bullet you fire, and turn your own gun against you.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Neil. “You mean we can’t use guns against these medicine men?”

  “No way. Not unless we want to massacre ourselves in ten seconds flat with no break for commercials.”

  “Jesus,” breathed Neil. “That never occurred to me.”

  Harry turned away from the door. “It’s this way,” he said. “We’re basically a European culture, with European ideas of religion and spirituality. That makes us outsiders in this country, without any real understanding of the spirits that live in the soil and the rocks and the water. The Indians spent thousands of years getting to know them, getting to understand them. They know the ways of conjuring them up, and the ways of controlling them. We’re just floundering about here, Neil, with no spiritual help to call on, and with about every odd you can think of stacked against us. They’re going to-”