Charnel House (14 page)

Jane, who was standing by the open window, said, “Tell us about the Bear Maiden. Please.”

George Thousand Names tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb.

“The Bear Maiden was a beautiful girl whom Coyote lusted after. He tried dozens of times to seduce her, but every time she resisted him. It was she who sent him off to the underworld the first few times, to make him prove that he would gladly die for her. In the end, however, she succumbed to his sexual advances, and he gave her a night of love that won her over completely.

“From that moment on, Coyote filled her mind with evil thoughts, and gradually she changed from a woman into a bear. Her teeth grew long, her nails grew sharp, and dark hair grew down her back. Her greatest pleasure from then on was snapping men's necks with her powerful jaws.”

“Not your fun Saturday-night escort, in other words,” I remarked.

George Thousand Names gave me a down-home look that meant he was a long way away from flippant jokes. “It's quite possible that this man Wallis's statuette, the one he found at Fremont, was enough to provoke Coyote into life. It could have been invested with magic, like a small totem. Did he mention any problems or difficulties at Fremont? Any sickness or argument or inexplicable events?”

“Yes. They were building a pedestrian bridge in a park and apparently the whole damned thing was confusion from beginning to end.”

“Then that's it,” he said. “The statuette of Bear Maiden was more than just an antique curiosity. It was the original magical totem that could give Coyote the strength and the will to wake from his sleep in the underworld. And Seymour Wallis brought it into the house.”

“Do you think that was accidental?” asked Jane. “I mean, it seems like a tremendous coincidence, him buying that one particular house.”

George Thousand Names shook his head. “From the moment Seymour Wallis dug up that statuette, Coyote was working his influence on him. He told you he felt dogged by bad luck, right? It wasn't bad luck at all. It was the demands of Coyote, drawing him nearer and nearer to Pilarcitos Street. I'll bet you something else, too.”

“What's that?”

“Pilarcitos Street is the first turning after Fifth Street off Mission.”

I nodded. “That's right.”

He held up the fingers of both hands. “Five plus one is six. Then you have the number 1551. One plus five is six, and five plus one is six. Three sixes—666. The number of the greatest of demons, no matter what culture you're talking about. The mark of the beast.”

Out there on the balcony, I suddenly felt cold. Jane, in the doorway, shivered. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

George Thousand Names scratched the back of his neck. “Two practical steps to begin with. First, call up your friend at Elmwood Hospital and have him separate all three of Coyote's victims into different clinics or hospitals. That's vital. Second, get hold of those pictures of Mount Taylor and Cabezon Peak and see if you can work out where that shorn-off hair is located. If you can keep
that
away from Coyote, you might have half a chance. Third, and this is more difficult, keep any nurses or female doctors or any women at all away from Coyote's different parts. Coyote has a hunger for women's flesh, and that's what he's probably after right now.”

I toot a deep breath. However strange and farfetched all this legendary stuff seemed to be, I knew that for my own peace of mind I was going to have to call Dr. Jarvis and tell him. He was intelligent, Jim Jarvis, and he was open to suggestion, but I wondered just what he was going to say when I passed on George Thousand Names's instructions.

“Mr. Thousand Names, do you mind if I use your phone?” I asked.

“Be my guest. Would you care for some firewater?”

“I sure would. How about Russian firewater and tonic?”

I walked across the polished wooden floor and picked up the phone. Meanwhile, George Thousand Names came back inside and told his maid to bring us some drinks. Then he sat down cross-legged on his Indian-patterned settee and opened up his jar of tobacco. There was a pipe rack on the coffee table next to him, and none of them looked much like a pipe of peace. There were a couple of expensive meerschaums and three English briars.

The Round Valley Reservation operator put me through to San Francisco, and San Francisco put me through to Elmwood Foundation Hospital. Dr. Jarvis, for once, was free.

“Jim?” I said. “This is John Hyatt. I'm calling from Round Valley.”

“Thank God, I've been trying to get you. It's all hell down here.”

“What's wrong?”

“The whole place is going berserk. Your friend Dan Machin woke out of his coma and he's locked himself in with Bryan Corder. We've tried breaking the door down, but no luck so far. Dr. Crane has just called the police for cutting equipment.”

Again, the surge of fear.

“He's locked himself in? You mean, they're
together
?”

“That's right. I don't know what the—”

The connection suddenly broke off. I rattled the phone, but the line was completely dead. George Thousand Names said, “Sorry, that sometimes happens. Is anything wrong?”

I laid down the useless receiver. “I think there is. Dan Machin has shut himself up with Bryan Corder. The hospital staff can't get in there.”

George Thousand Names steadily packed his pipe with tobacco and reached for his matches. “It sounds as though it's started,” he said. “Perhaps we'd better get down there.”

“We?”

The Indian girl brought the drinks, and George Thousand Names lifted his glass of bourbon.

“You don't think I'm going to let white men have the greatest Indian demon all to themselves, do you? This is something that red men are going to talk about for generations to come. Now, let's drink to the confusion of our enemies.”

I raised my vodka. “I don't know about the confusion of our enemies,” I said dryly, “but I know damn well that
I'm
confused as hell.”

We drove back down to San Francisco that night at over ninety miles an hour, with bugs pelting our windshield, and our faces strained in the green glow from the Jaguar's instrument panel. Tires squealing, we took the curves down the mountains, and then we hit 101 and snaked southward through Willits, Ukiah, Cloverdale, and back down into Sonoma County. It was just after midnight when we crossed into Marin County, and it was only when I saw the glitter of San Francisco sprinkled across the darkness of the bay that I eased my foot off the gas and cruised across the Golden Gate at forty.

George Thousand Names had been snoring fitfully in the back seat but he woke up with a start as we turned off Presidio Drive and made our way up toward the hospital. He stretched and said, “The trouble with English cars, they expect you to sit upright all the damned time. What do they think I am, a country squire?”

“You didn't have to come,” I reminded him, as we took the Elmwood turn-off and bounced down the drive into the hospital forecourt.

“That's like trying to tell Custer not to go to the Little Big Horn,” he retorted.

“Are you that pessimistic?” asked Jane.

George Thousand Names blew his nose very loudly. “Pessimism isn't a particularly Indian characteristic. I consulted the day's omens before I left, and they seem okay, although I have to admit that there's a cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man's fist.”

“There are the birds,” I said, pointing. “It looks like the sanitation department gave up trying to get rid of them.”

Our headlights, as we swung down the driveway, flashed across the ruffled gray ranks of birds. Then I pulled the Jaguar up, and we climbed out, and George Thousand Names stood in the breezy darkness, staring up at the silent feathery witnesses to Coyote's rebirth.

“Well?” I asked.

He nodded. “There is no doubt at all. These are the rare birds we call Gray Sadness. They were seen gathering at Wounded Knee, and at the funeral of Sitting Bull, and when Rain-in-the-Face died. They are the birds of mourning and bad luck.”

Jane reached over and held my hand. Her own hand was very cold. “Do they really mean that Coyote is here?”

George Thousand Names lifted his head as if he were sniffing the wind. “Can you smell something?” he asked us.

I sniffed. “Not much. I have a sinus condition.”

Jane said, “It's like … I don't quite know
what
it's like. It's like dogs. Dogs, when they get wet.”

He nodded and didn't say anything more. I took Jane's arm and led her into the hospital doors, and he followed, glancing up now and again at the birds, the Gray Sadness, with his eyes as wary and fearful as those of a man who is brought into a mortuary to view his father's body.

There were two uniformed policemen from the SFPD standing guard by the elevators. One of them came across the tiled lobby as we walked in, and raised his hand.

“I'm sorry, sir. Nobody allowed inside right now.”

“I've come to see Dr. Jarvis. He's expecting us.”

The policeman examined us suspiciously. “That's too bad. I got strict orders that no one goes up.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Dr. Jarvis telephoned me three or four hours ago, and we've come all the way from Round Valley.”

“Mister,” said the policeman patiently, “I don't care if you've come from the planet Mars. My orders are, nobody goes up.”

The second policeman came across and said, “That's right. Those are the orders.”

“Now hold on a goddamned minute—” I said, but George Thousand Names interrupted me.

“We have authority,” he told the cop quietly. “Do you wish to examine it?”

The policemen looked across at him with mistrust. But George Thousand Names reached into his red windbreaker and raised one of the golden amulets that hung around his neck.

“What's that?” asked one of the cops.

“Look at it,” insisted George Thousand Names. “Examine it.”

Somehow he caught the light in the lobby with his amulet and flashed it into the policemen's eyes. The policemen appeared to blink, and stare, and take a step back as if someone had elbowed them out of the way. I looked at George Thousand Names, and then I looked at Jane, but all Jane could do was shrug.

“We have authority to pass,” said George Thousand Names loudly. “Do you understand?”

The policemen nodded. One of them, like a sleepwalker, turned around and opened the elevator doors for us, and we stepped inside. George Thousand Names told me, “It's all yours, Mr. Hyatt,” and I pressed the button for 5.

“Is that a kind of hypnosis?” I asked him as we rose smoothly upward. “The way you used that amulet?”

The medicine man tucked it back into his windbreaker. “We call it The Way of Kindly Conquest. It is a kind of hypnosis, yes, but it has the advantage of inducing an obedient trance for just a few moments at a time, a few moments that the victim never recalls. You can't make it work on people who are openly aggressive, or on people who are determined to resist hypnosis. But it does work quite well on ordinary people whose minds are fairly relaxed.”

“But won't those policemen come after us?” asked Jane.

George Thousand Names shook his head. “It's very doubtful. Right this minute they're probably standing downstairs shaking their heads, absolutely sure that something's gone wrong, but totally unsure what it could have been.”

We reached the fifth floor, and the elevator doors slid open. George Thousand Names courteously ushered Jane out into the corridor, and I stepped after them, looking for signs of the terrible panic that Jim had called me about.

The corridor was silent. I listened for a while, but I couldn't even hear the normal sounds of a busy private hospital, like trolleys, and conversation, and intercoms calling for doctors. There was nothing but the
click-hum
of the elevator as its doors closed behind us and it rose to higher floors.

“I guess we'd better try Dr. Jarvis's office first,” I suggested. “If he's not there, he'll be down at intensive care.”

“Lead on,” said George Thousand Names. “The sooner we get to grips with this monster, the better.”

Jane laughed nervously. “You're making this sound like a Frankenstein movie.”

George Thousand Names stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and made a moue. “It's worse than that,” he said pragmatically.

We walked along the soft red carpet until we reached Jim's office. I held my breath and rapped on the door. We waited, but there was no reply. George Thousand Names, his eyes as patient as a lizard's in his leathery face, said, “I hope you told this doctor what he was, up against.”

I opened Dr. Jarvis's door and quickly checked his tiny room. It was neat and orderly, and there was even a polystyrene cup of coffee on the desk, left abandoned like the last lunch on the
Marie Celeste
. A cigarette butt smoldered in the crowded ashtray. The bottle of gin, almost empty, stood on the filing cabinet.

“Spooky,” said Jane.

“They must be down at intensive care,” I said. “It's just along here, on the left.”

We began to hurry as we turned the corner and made our way toward the intensive-care unit. I don't know why. The silence gave us a sense of urgency somehow, as if the longer it stayed silent, the more terrifying everything was going to get. All we could hear was our own breathing and the rustle of our clothes as we walked quickly along.

I didn't bother to knock on the double doors of the unit. I just pushed my way in, into the gloom and the shadows and the blue twilight world where Bryan Corder was living out his unnatural life.

Dr. Jarvis was there, and so were Dr. Crane and Dr. Weston and Lieutenant Stroud from the police department, and two baffled and burly cops. Jim turned as we came in. “You made it. I was afraid you wouldn't.”