Revenge of the Manitou tm-2 Page 9

  Beside him, his air-conditioning unit rattled and burbled and whined. From time to time, as Neil talked to him, he took a paper clip out of the small plastic tray on his desk, unbent it, and dropped it into his wastebasket with an audible ping.

  Neil told him about Toby’s nightmares, about the paintings at the school, about the wooden demon, and about Billy Ritchie. Sergeant Murray listened, asking no questions, and when Neil was finished he wedged his fat fingers together and had a deep, silent think.

  Eventually, he lifted his head and said, “Neil-we’ve known each other a good few years.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  Sergeant Murray pulled a face. “Everything, when it comes down to it, Neil. A cop who didn’t know you too well might book you for wasting police time. As it is-”

  “Wasting police time!” said Neil, astounded. “You think I’ve spent a whole day over at Calistoga, and driven all the way back here, just to waste your time!”

  “Neil,” said Sergeant Murray, raising one porky hand to restrain him, “I don’t mean that you’ve done it with bad intent. I don’t mean that you’ve done it deliberately.”

  “Well, what the hell do you mean? I know this is weird stuff, George. I know it sounds crazy. But I’ve told you the facts as they are, and you can’t sit there and tell me that something pretty threatening isn’t going on here. You can’t ignore it.”

  Sergeant Murray glanced at the clock and sighed. “Neil,” he said, with immense patience, “I’d like to believe that what you’ve been telling me is true. I’d really like to believe it. But the fact of it is, you’ve only got the word of some cranky old-timer to go by, and a couple of bad dreams that Toby’s been having, and that’s all you know.”

  “What about the photograph? The picture of Misquamacus? George, there were three days between those pictures, and yet they were taken on opposite sides of the continent!”

  There was a pause, and then Sergeant Murray continued, “Neil, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen those pictures. But they don’t constitute no proof. Anyone could have written any kind of date on the back of those prints, and you don’t even know if they were taken where the old-timer said they were.”

  Neil sat back. “Then what are you trying to tell me?” he asked. “Are you trying to tell me you won’t help?”

  Sergeant Murray looked a little abashed, but he said, as reasonably as he could manage, ‘I’ll help when there’s good cause to, Neil. You know that as well as I do.

  But if I put a guard on those schoolchildren, that means that a whole lot of taxpayers’

  money is going to be tied up for a long time, and a whole lot of people are going to be asking me why. Now, what am I going to say? That I’ve put a patrolman on school guard because Neil Fenner believes the children are being taken over by Red Indian ghosts? That I’ve risked the security on a whole score of homes, and I’ve had to halve the beach patrols, just because we’re being threatened by medicine men from a hundred years ago? Come on, Neil, you have to see my point of view.”

  “You’re laughing at me,” said Neil.

  Sergeant Murray slowly shook his head. ‘I’m not laughing at you, Neil. Sometimes, circumstantial evidence appears to be pretty convincing. It’s easy to make yourself believe that something’s true, just because it appears to fit the facts as you know them. But what you have to ask yourself is, do you know all the facts? Or enough of them to make a sound judgment?

  “George, I’m only asking because of the children. They’re at risk, and I believe it’s up to us to protect them.”

  Sergeant Murray stood up and hitched up his gun belt. Outside in the police station yard, Officer Turnbull was arriving to relieve him. He gave Neil an awkward, embarrassed smile.

  “Listen, Neil,” he said, “I’ll give you this much. If you can prove to me that something funny is probably going to happen here-if you can give me one piece of real evidence-then I’ll do what I can to help. But as it is, the way things stand, I have to tell you that I’m powerless.”

  Neil looked unhappy. But he nodded and said, “Okay, George. I guess you’re right. It sounds crazy, and maybe it is crazy.”

  Sergeant Murray fitted his cap onto his sweaty pink head. “They said that Thomas Alva Edison was crazy, didn’t they? Just think about that.”

  Neil said quietly, “There’s a difference between being a genius inventor and a frightened father, George.”

  He went back home. Susan and Toby were sitting at the kitchen table. Susan was finishing her supper, corned beef hash and home fries, and Toby was drawing. As Neil came in the back door, Susan looked up and said, “Well?”

  He came over and kissed her, and ruffled Toby’s hair. “What do you think? He said he was sorry, but he couldn’t spare the manpower. The taxpayers wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “Even though the taxpayers’ children might get hurt?”

  “Susan, he didn’t believe me. Not one word.”

  “Did he try to believe you?”

  Neil shrugged. “I guess he made a token effort. But it’s pretty farfetched stuff. I sat there and I listened to myself trying to convince him, and the more I told him the stupider it all sounded.”

  She put down her fork and went to the stove. She dolloped hash onto a plate for him, and set out a dish of crackers and cheese. They didn’t eat too fancy these days, because of the way Neil’s business was going, but they managed. Weekends, they sometimes ate steak, especially if he had a new order to refit a yacht, but there wasn’t much demand for a one-man craftsman around Bodega Bay.

  Neil washed his hands at the kitchen faucet and sat down. He asked, “How are you doing, Toby?”

  “I’m okay,” said Toby, without looking up.

  “What are you drawing there? It looks like some kind of a spaceship.”

  Toby crooked his arm around his picture so that Neil couldn’t see. “It’s a secret,” he said.

  Neil started to eat. Susan sat next to him and watched him with concern and a little pain. She touched his hand as it rested on the table, and gently stroked his suntanned knuckles.

  She said, “Did you really believe that old man yourself? You don’t think he was pulling your leg?”

  “Why should he?”

  “For the sake of a drink, and a joke with his friends after you’d gone. I mean, you know what Doughty’s like with his stories. Why should Billy Ritchie be any better?”

  Neil set down his fork. “I don’t know. I just believe him, that’s all. I can’t think of any other reason for what’s been happening, except that I'm losing my marbles.”

  Susan rubbed her forehead tiredly and thoughtfully. “The trouble is,” she said, “the man in the white coat is one thing, and the nightmares are one thing, but all this business about twenty-two medicine men coming back to life to get their revenge on the white man …”

  “I know,” he said, in a soft, hollow voice. “But you were here when Toby talked about the day of the dark stars, and the gateway, and all that stuff. You heard him as clear as I did.”

  “Maybe Billy Ritchie simply pretended he knew what they were. Think about it. He’s alone in mat house all day, with nobody to talk to. He’s quite likely to say anything, just to keep you interested.”

  Neil didn’t answer. He finished his hash- in silence, and then he pushed his plate away from him and sat with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands.

  Susan said, “Honey, you mustn’t let it get you down. I know what you’re feeling, but something’s bound to happen soon, and you’ll forget all about it.”

  Neil looked across at her. “The only something that’s going to happen, as far as I can make out, is a damned great massacre.”

  She averted her eyes. “You shouldn’t speak that way,” she said quietly.

  “What way? Is it the ‘damned’ you don’t like, or the ^massacre’?”

  “I don’t like any of it,” she retorted. “I don’t like these nightmares and I don’t like all this madde
ning talk of ghosts and manitous and men in long white coats who vanish as soon as you look at them. If you want to know what I really feel, Til tell you. I don’t believe a single word of it. I think you’re probably tired and overworked, and maybe you’re worried about money, and you’re letting this whole ridiculous business run away with you.”

  She had tears in her eyes as she spoke, and she was twisting her apron in her hands. She looked up at him and said, “You’re not behaving like Neil anymore. You used to be so solid, so down-to-earth. It’s not like you to think about devils and demons. I don’t know what’s happened to you.”

  Neil bit his lip while she spoke. Then, with as much control as he could manage, he told her, “I can tell you what’s happened. For the first time in the whole of my life, I’ve seen a ghost for real. For the first time in my whole life, I’ve come across something spooky and supernatural that I’ve had to believe in because it’s there in front of my eyes. Worse than that, it’s threatening Toby and it’s threatening the rest of his class.

  I’ve seen it, Susan, and I can’t stand by and let things get worse just because nobody else happens to believe me.”

  He got up from the table and pushed in his chair. “Right now I’m going to go upstairs and smash that wardrobe, and then I’m going to burn it. I don’t care if Mrs. Novato thinks I’m crazy, and I don’t care if George Murray thinks I’m crazy, and I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t care if you think I’m crazy, either. I’m going to protect Toby the best way I know how, and that’s by making sure those spirits don’t get hold of him.”

  Toby had stopped drawing and was staring at him. Neil, pocketing a box of matches from the hutch, said, “How about a bonfire, Toby? We’ll break up that horrible old wardrobe, and then we’ll take it out in the yard, and-”

  Toby opened his mouth and roared.

  It wasn’t a child’s roar. It wasn’t even a human roar. It came out of his wide-open mouth like an avalanche of sound, like a terrifying locomotive blasting through a black tunnel. It was the kind of sound that drowned, everything, that opened up visions of endless spaces and impossible distances. Susan screamed, and Neil found himself clutching for the pine hutch for support. The cups and plates rattled with the rumbling vibration, and a vase dropped on to the quarry-tiled floor and shattered.

  Toby’s mouth closed. He sat at the table, the same small mop-headed boy, but somehow hideously changed. His eyes were bloodshot and congested, and they stared at Neil with a terrible, knowing strength. His hand clutched at his wax crayon and slowly crushed it, shedding fragments of red wax across his drawing.

  Neil took a step toward him. “It’s you again, isn’t it?” he whispered. “It’s you.”

  Toby watched him silently and emotionlessly, but as Neil moved around the room, his eyes followed him all the way.

  “I want to know who you are,” said Neil. “I want you to give me some kind of sign.”

  Toby smiled, without humor or human compassion. He said, in a hoarse, echoing voice, “There will be no signs. You will not interfere. You will leave the gateway intact.”

  Neil replied, “No signs, huh? Well, in that case, I’m afraid the gateway goes. You can’t just use my son that way and expect me to cooperate. I’m going to go upstairs right this minute and turn your so-called gateway into cheap firewood.”

  Toby growled, “I shall kill you.”

  Susan, across the other side of the kitchen, whimpered. She could see now how malevolent and red Toby’s eyes were, and how his hands clenched and unclenched with impatient strength. She said, “Toby, for pity’s sake.”

  Toby ignored her. He kept his eyes on Neil. At that moment, Neil was in no doubt at all that whatever was using Toby to speak this way, could and would destroy him. He could already feel the temperature dropping in the kitchen, and he could see the red line of the thermometer by the stove gradually sliding downward.

  “I’m going up there,” said Neil. “If you want to stop me, then you’re going to have to fight me.”

  He turned and opened the wooden door that led up to the stairs. In Toby’s room, across the landing, he could already hear shuffling and bumping sounds, as if a heavy piece of furniture were being shifted around. He turned and took a last look at Toby, but Toby didn’t move. The boy simply sat at the table, his face calm and smooth with intensely self-possessed hatred. Neil didn’t like to leave Susan, but he guessed that Toby probably wouldn’t harm her-Toby or whatever demonic thing was using Toby to speak to him.

  “You are very unwise,” said Toby dispassionately.

  Neil climbed the stairs as far as the landing. The bedroom door was closed, but now the bumping noises were louder and more frantic. It sounded like chairs and tables and beds being hurled from one side of the room to the other. He heard a lamp smash, and then a window break.

  “Alien,” begged the voice, a persistent whisper beneath the clattering and thumping.

  “Please, Alien … help …”

  His heart was beating in slow, painful pulses as he approached the room. From underneath the door, strange, cold lights were flickering, like a blue neon sign that was short-circuiting. There was an odor, too, a chilly smell of burned electricity, mingled with an indescribable sourness. His throat was dry, and he felt so frightened that his legs hardly responded when he tried to go nearer.

  “Fenner,” said a coarse voice, and he turned abruptly around. It was Toby, standing halfway up the stairs, his reddened eyes fixed on him in undisguised anger. I'm warning you, Fenner. Leave that wardrobe alone.”

  “You just keep away,” said Neil. ‘I'm going to do what I have to do, and nobody’s going to stop me.”

  “You’re a fool, Fenner,” grated Toby. From behind him, framed in the light from the kitchen, Susan pleaded uncomprehendingly, ‘Toby! Toby, what’s the matter? Toby!”

  “Alien …” said the haunted whisper. “Alien, for Cod’s sake …”

  There was a bursting, explosive sound from within Toby’s bedroom. Neil crossed the landing, took hold of the doorknob, and forced the door open. Immediately, there was another explosion, and he was sucked by a rush of freezing air into the darkness of the room itself. He fell against the opposite wall, jarring his back, and he lay with his hands protecting his head while the air screamed and howled all around him with a hideous cacophony of sound. Behind him the door slammed shut He opened his eyes. The room was quieter now, but still dark. The sounds died away to whispers. He strained to see what was happening, but it seemed as if the moon had died, as if the stars had gone out

  Then, gradually, he became aware of a faint white phosphorescence on the other side of the room. He couldn’t make out what it was at first, but as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he could make out the shape of a human head and human shoulders.

  He said, in a voice that was much more off-key than he had hoped, “Is there somebody there? Who is that?”

  There was silence for a long time. He listened, but he couldn’t hear anyone breathing. There wasn’t any doubt, though, that what he could see was a human figure. It was sitting on the chair beside Toby’s wardrobe, and he could even see the glimmer of its eyes. It only occurred to Neil after several tense, hushed minutes that the wardrobe had been returned to its usual resting-place.

  He said, “Is there someone there? I want to know who you are.”

  The figure appeared to move, and as it moved, it creaked. It was a sound that terrified Neil beyond anything. It was the sound of wood, under stress. It was the sound of a man whose limbs were made out of varnished timber. It was the sound of a demon come to life in the form of a human, but in the substance of the forests.

  “You are interfering in the schemes of the gods,” said the figure. “You are meddling with the past and with the future.”

  Neil swallowed, although there was nothing in his throat to swallow except the dryness of his fear.

  The faint phosphorescence wavered, and Neil saw the shine of a cheekbone of gleaming walnut The ni
cker of eyes that were wood, and yet saw. He glanced toward the door of the room, but he knew that even if he tried to make a run for it, the wooden man could get there first

  “Who are you?” he said.

  There was silence, and then that horrendous creaking sound as the figure rose to its feet It slowly stepped toward him, its wooden heels clattering on the floor, and then it stood over him, tall and dark and menacing.

  “You want to know who I am?” it replied. Its voice sounded peculiarly distant, as if it was speaking from centuries away. “I am the wooden form of the greatest of those outside. I am not here, in this wood. I am not in your son, although your son speaks to yon in my voice, I am beyond the barrier, in the hunting grounds to which all manitous are consigned after their lives in the physical world have ended.”

  “Why are you here?” asked Neil, in a shaky voice. “What do you want from us? Is Billy Ritchie right? Is it the day of the dark stars? Have you come to kill people?”

  The wooden figure turned stiffly away. “It is not for you to know.”

  Neil, scared, climbed slowly onto his feet. Even when he was standing up, the wooden figure loomed a good four or five inches over him. Neil stepped back across the room, reaching out behind him with his hands, trying to orient himself in the deep, cold darkness.

  “You are a Fenner,” said the wooden man. “You will be spared because your ancestor helped my brothers. But only if you accept what is happening, and do not try to resist us. If you resist, I shall feed you as scraps of meat to the demons of the north wind.”

  Neil answered breathlessly, “I have a right to know. I'm Toby’s father. You’re going to use Toby and I’m going to stop you.”

  The wooden figure didn’t move. But it said, in its eerie, distant voice, “Before you talk about your rights, white man, before you talk about stopping me, remember the thousands of Indian families you slew, and of all those red men who died without rights. Not just fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters. Think of the women you raped and mutilated, of the braves you scalped. Then tell me that you have a right to know anything.”