Revenge of the Manitou tm-2 Page 15

  Just then Toby came into the kitchen with his catcher’s mitt and his baseball. Harry changed the subject in mid-sentence, and said glibly, “-bring me a new rental car up in the morning, as soon as their office opens.”

  Toby ignored him and said to his father, “Can I go out to play in the yard, sir?”

  “Sure, as long as you don’t go any further than that.”

  “Is mommy coming back today?”

  Neil shrugged. “Maybe. When we’ve sorted out all our problems.”

  “Daddy-” began Toby.

  Neil raised his eyes. For one fleeting moment, he had heard Toby as he used to be.

  Toby the child. Even Harry turned around, and then glanced back at Neil and lifted one questioning eyebrow.

  “What is it, Toby?” asked Neil, softly.

  Toby blinked, as if he’d started to think of something, and then forgotten it. His eyes clouded again.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  He went out into the yard to play with his ball, and Harry sat with Neil at the table for a while, finishing his cigarette.

  The day slowly began to darken.

  The next morning, Harry invited himself along on Neil’s regular drive up to the school to drop off Toby. They sat side by side in the front of the pickup truck in silence. The weather was heavy and threatening again, with a sky the color of bruised fruit. Harry smoked too much, while Neil looked pale and tired, and drove badly.

  Only Toby was composed, sitting with his hands held together in his lap, unsmiling and quiet.

  The pickup truck circled the school yard in a cloud of lingering dust and stopped.

  Harry climbed down and helped Toby jump after him.

  The yellow school bus was already parked by the fence, waiting to take the children up to Lake Berryessa for the day. Neil had awakened early to make Toby some peanut-butter sandwiches, and they had stopped at the store on the way to school to buy him a Milky Way and a package of Fritos.

  “Have a nice day,” said Harry. “Don’t fall in the lake.”

  Toby looked at him gravely. Then he turned and walked across tf the corner of the yard, where the rest of his classmates were beginning to assemble. Harry recognized the carroty hair of Andy Beaver, and a couple of the other children that Toby had pointed out on their trip around Bodega the previous day. Harry gave Andy a cute little wave, but the boy simply turned and ignored him.

  Mrs. Novato came out of the schoolhouse and started to count heads. Harry was about to climb back up into the pickup, but then he changed his mind and said to Neil, “Wait here a minute, will you?” and he walked across the yard to where Mrs.

  Novato was standing.

  “Good morning,” he said, in a friendly way.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs. Novato distractedly.

  Harry coughed. “I was wondering,” he said.

  “Oh, yes?” said Mrs. Novato. “Daniel-keep still, will you? I’ve already counted you five times.”

  “My name’s Harry Erskine and I’m a friend of Neil Fenner.”

  “I see.”

  Harry cleared his throat again. “What I was wondering was, ma’am, if you could do me a favor if anything weird starts happening in your classroom.”

  Mrs. Novato stopped counting, her finger poised in midair. She turned to Harry and said in an offended tone, “Something weircfl What on earth are you trying to suggest?”

  Harry gave her a defensive smile. “I’m really not trying to suggest anything. But Mr.

  Fenner has been kind of worried about some of the nightmares your kids have been having, as well as some of the peculiar events that have been happening in his home, and, well …”

  Mrs. Novato took a patient, schoolmarmly breath. “Mr. Erskine,” she said, “I have already given Mr. Fenner far more leeway to investigate his suspicions than I should.

  Several of the children’s parents complained to the principal about that business of setting their nightmares down on paper, and as a result I came very close to losing my position. Apart from that, it does seem from what I hear that Mr. Fenner is suffering from-well, overwork.”

  Mr. Saperstein walked past, and Mrs. Novato said, “Good morning, Mr. Saperstein.”

  “Okay,” said Harry, “1 can guess how you feel. But you can still do me that favor.”

  “Mr. Erskine, let me assure you that nothing weird has ever happened in this class or is ever likely to. Now, please. I have enough on my hands conducting the correct number of children off to Lake Berryessa and back again, without troubling myself with weirdness.”

  “Sure, I’ve got you,” said Harry. “But I’m staying with Mr. Fenner if you do want to call me.”

  “I don’t want to call you.”

  “But you might.”

  Mrs. Novato closed her eyes and sought strength and fortitude under her lids. Then she said, “Very well, Mr. Erskine. Should I ever wish to call you, which will be never, I will know where not to do so.”

  “That’s fine,” smiled Harry. “Now have a good trip, okay?”

  Harry walked back to the pickup truck and climbed in, slamming the door behind him.

  “Well?” said Neil.

  “I just asked her to let us know if there was any trouble,” Harry told him. “Not that she’s likely to. She’s hidebound by educational bureaucracy, and apart from that she’s married.” “What’s that got to do with it?” “Nothing much,” admitted Harry. “It’s just that I find it hard to work my charms on married women of Mrs. Novato’s age.

  They’re too old to be oversexed and too young to have husbands who can’t raise it.”

  Neil started the motor. Before he released the brake, though, he took a last look at Toby through the dust-filmed windshield. His son was standing clutching his lunchbox, his blond hair as untidy as ever, in a blue windbreaker and denim shorts.

  The other children were gathered around him, and he was obviously talking to them about something lengthy and serious. “I’ve got a feeling about today,” said Neil. “You think today is the day?” asked Harry. “I don’t know. But there’s a tenseness around.

  Don’t you feel it? Like there’s a storm brewing.” Harry shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. But in any case, there isn’t much we can do until Singing Rock arrives. He said he’d be here by lunchtime.”

  “It’s just those kids going off alone, with all those spirits inside them, all of those manitous. That really scares me. What do you think I felt like this morning, giving Toby his lunch and wondering if he wasn’t even my son at all, but some kind of ghost out of the past? I’m just standing there doing something really normal, like making sandwiches, and for all I know he might go off on that trip and never come back.”

  Harry laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stop feeling so guilty, will you? It’s not your fault this has happened, even if it was your ancestor who led Misquamacus here. I mean-what control could you have possibly had over that? There’s nothing we can do until the medicine men show themselves. We can’t kill the children; we can’t even take them away from here. Apart from the fact that Misquamacus would prevent us, the police would probably arrest us for kidnapping, and we wouldn’t do anybody any good sitting in the Sonoma County pokey.”

  Neil released the brake, and drove the pickup out of the Bodega school yard without saying another word. He didn’t even look back in his rearview mirror to see Toby and his classmates being ushered by Mrs. Novato onto the bus. Harry turned around in his seat, and saw how solemn and unsmiling the children were, and a sensation of sick tension began to rise in his stomach. He knew just what Neil meant about a storm brewing. It could have been the unusual humidity, or the soft but uncomfortable wind. But it could have been the beginning of the day of the dark stars, too.

  They met John Singing Rock at the bus station. He was fifty years old, his face creased with the soft crisscross wrinkles of a South Dakota Indian, but his eyes were sharp and bright, and he walked across the concrete parking lot to greet them with the tensile step of a man twenty
years younger. The last time Harry had seen him, his hair had been short and swept back with brilliantine, and he had worn a creaseless mohair suit. But modern trends had obviously blown with the winds across the plains of mid-America, because his hair was longer now and kept in place with Gillette Dry Look, and he wore a camel-colored sport coat and bright red slacks.

  He set down his suitcase on the concrete and held out his arms. Harry embraced him, saying nothing, and for a moment they stood there close, while the other bus passengers looked at them with curiosity.

  Harry stood back, still holding Singing Rock’s hand. “You look like you’ve been shopping at Gucci,” he grinned. “And what’s this with the hair?”

  Singing Rock touched his graying sidepieces. “I had to give up that greasy kid’s stuff,” he said. “It kept leaving marks on my tepee.”

  Harry laughed, and gripped Singing Rock’s arm affectionately. “It’s good to see you,”

  he said. “If I ever went past South Dakota, I’d drop by more damned often.”

  Singing Rock said, “Is this Mr. Fenner?”

  Harry nodded and introduced them. Neil shook hands a little hesitantly, but Singing Rock reached out and placed his hand on top of Neil’s, and said warmly, “You’re wondering why I don’t have bones through my nose and feathers in my cap?”

  Neil was embarrassed. “I guess I never met a medicine man before. I didn’t really know what to expect.”

  Harry picked up Singing Rock’s suitcase and the three of them walked across to Nell’s pickup.

  Singing Rock said, “I’d prefer to wear traditional costume. What’s the point of being a medicine man if you don’t look like one? But the costumes are pretty rare these days. They take years to complete, and when they’re finished they’re works of art.

  These days, you can’t really walk around in a work of art. You might spill catsup on it.”

  Harry helped Singing Rock into the pickup, and then they drove off toward Neil’s house. The sky was still oddly dark, and there was a feeling that rain clouds were building up.

  Harry said, “Neil has a hunch that the day of the dark stars might be today. Or soon, anyway.”

  “Any particular reason?” asked Singing Rock.

  “I don’t know,” Neil told him. “It’s a feeling like someone’s trying to warn me.”

  “Like when Dunbar warned you of Misquamacus?”

  “Harry told you about that?”

  “Harry told me about everything. The slightest detail could be vital.”

  Neil brought the pickup to a stop at a road junction, waited for a carload of women to pass, and then turned left.

  He said, “It’s not exactly the same feeling. When Dunbar first showed up, I could hear his voice, appealing for help. Toby heard it, too. Both of us saw him, or his ghost. A tall man with a light-colored beard and a long white duster coat. But today, the feeling’s just a feeling. I haven’t heard Dunbar’s voice since last night. This is much more general.”

  Singing Rock said, “You’re very unusual for a white man, Mr. Fenner, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Neil.

  “You were prepared to believe in the supernatural before you started trying to think of rational explanations for what you saw. Most white men think of the rational explanations first, and only believe the supernatural when they have no other choice.

  Even then, they frequently don’t believe it.”

  “How could I ignore it?” said Neil. “I spoke to Dun-bar. I was only ten or twelve feet away from his ghost, and there isn’t anybody alive who can tell me I was dreaming.”

  “And you saw Misquamacus, too, as a wooden man?”

  “That’s right.”

  Singing Rock glanced at Harry, and from his expression, Harry could see that he was deeply disturbed about what he was hearing.

  Singing Rock continued, “I don’t want to alarm you too much, Mr. Fenner, but there’s something I believe you ought to know.”

  “Call me Neil, please.”

  “All right, Neil. What you have to know is that every manitou, according to Indian belief, is reincarnated seven times, and that each time it lives and dies and lives again, it gains strength and wisdom. After its seventh life on earth, it’s wise enough to join the gods outside, in what the Micmac used to call Wajok, the abode of the great ones.”

  “I see,” said Neil, turning right and driving up the dusty roadway that wound over the hills toward his house. “So what does that have to do with Misquamacus?”

  “Just about everything. The last time Harry and I encountered Misquamacus, he was into his fourth, or more likely his fifth, reincarnation. I could judge that because of the vast distance of time he had covered in one leap-from 1650 to the present day. It takes a powerful medicine man to do that. Now, from what you’ve told us about the things you found out in Calis-toga, Misquamacus lived again in the 1830s, and that would have been his sixth reincarnation.”

  Neil wiped dust from his mouth with the back of his hand. The house was in sight now, and he was driving more slowly.

  “You’re trying to tell me this is his last reincarnation?”

  “I believe so,” nodded Singing Rock. “He’s almost ready to take his place in Wajok, and that means he’s immensely powerful, immensely strong, and almost unbeatable by any other medicine man. He had to go through a physical rebirth the last tune we met him, like a human fetus, but now he’s growing himself inside of your son’s mind.

  Don’t ask me how he does it. It’s beyond my medicine. But he’s doing it and, even before he’s finished doing it, he’s demonstrated some magic that no present-day wonder-worker could even touch. Creating that wooden man, Neil, takes occult powers that could make earthquakes. And that’s before he’s emerged from your son’s mind, before he’s ready to zap us with everything he’s got. There isn’t any doubt at all that he’s going to call down Ossadagowah, and when he does that, we’re really up against it.”

  Neil stopped the pickup outside his backyard and took out the keys.

  “Are we going to die?” he asked Singing Rock quietly.

  Singing Rock sighed. “That is one prediction I don’t care to make,” he replied. “But remember this is Misquamacus’s seventh and last reincarnation. After this, he won’t have any further opportunities to take his revenge on the white people, except if this manitou is summoned to earth by other medicine men. And when you consider the general condition of Indian magic in America today, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.”

  They pulled up outside Neil’s weatherbeaten house and climbed out. Neil led the way across the yard and into the kitchen, and he showed Singing Rock to the bathroom to freshen up. Harry carried his suitcase into the parlor.

  “Does Singing Rock drink?” asked Neil, taking a six-pack of Coors out of the icebox.

  “I don’t think so. But he might appreciate a cup of coffee.”

  Singing Rock returned, hung his sport coat on the back of his chair, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His arms were muscular and sinewy, and decorated with elaborate patterns of tattoos and scars. As he sat down at the pine table, Neil had the feeling that he had some experienced, professional help at last.

  “I want to see everything,” said Singing Rock. “The children’s paintings, the wardrobe upstairs, the sheets that attacked your wife. I want you to tell me everything, too, all over again, in as much detail as you can remember it. If we’re going to win out against these medicine men at all, we have to know as much about them as possible.”

  Neil reached up to one of the top cupboards and brought down the sheaf of paintings from Toby’s classmates. Singing Rock went through them all meticulously, peering at every figure, and comparing one nightmare picture closely with another.

  As he examined the pictures, he asked Neil to tell him about the first appearance of the visitation they knew as “Dunbar,” and everything that Billy Ritchie had told him about Bloody Fenner and that grisly day up at Conn Creek
.

  Neil was nervous” at first, but as he drank and talked, he found he was able to confide in Singing Rock, and tell him everything about his days of fear and horror.

  Singing Rock glanced at him from time to time, and the Indian’s eyes were understanding and wise in a way that Neil had never seen before in anyone. Harry, who had heard it all before, sat at the end of the table smoking and drinking his beer out of the can.

  Eventually, when Neil had finished, Singing Rock laid out the paintings on the kitchen table, twenty-two garish illustrations of the same terrible incident

  “I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened,” he told them. “The medicine men needed to draw on the strength of an Indian victory to help them in their reincarnation. It’s difficult to explain it exactly, but they’ve used the massacre at Las Posadas as a focal point for their rebirth, like a politician trying to make a comeback by reminding people of his past achievements. The massacre was what Misquamacus meant when he was referring to the gateway. He didn’t want you to disturb the historic vibrations that he had been setting up with Alien Fenner’s guidance. You-because you’re a Fenner yourself-would have been more likely to upset things than anyone.”

  Neil asked, “But why did Dunbar appear? Misquamacus wouldn’t have wanted him around, surely?”

  Singing Rock slowly shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain. The most likely explanation is that all this spirit activity connected with the incident in which Dun-bar died was enough to disturb his manitou, and he began to make ghostly appearances. You have to remember that this is the single most powerful psychic incident that has ever occurred in modern America, and it involves more upheaval of the ethos than you can possibly imagine. Why do you think you can feel all this tension? The spiritual planes are in chaos and crisis. No wonder a few shades from the past are turning over in their graves.”

  Harry said, “What we really need are the ghosts of the entire Seventh Cavalry. Do you think you could manage to raise them up?”