Charnel House (17 page)

Jim started the motor and we drove out of the hospital gates and into the streets of midnight San Francisco. It was a warm, clogged night, and the city lights sparkled and rippled through air that was almost unbreathably humid. Although it was late, it was Saturday night, and there were still plenty of cars cruising around and couples walking down the sloping streets.

As we sped along Seventeenth Street as far as Delores Street, I glimpsed a girl in a red blouse and white jeans on the sidewalk. “Jim, that's Jane! I'm sure that's Jane! Pull over!”

He swung the car to the curb and backed up. I looked frantically through the tinted back window, and Jane came into view. She was walking steadily and purposefully in the direction of Mission Street, and she hadn't even turned our way. Dr. Jarvis honked the horn, and it was only then that she stopped, frowning in a dazed kind of a way, and came over to the curb.

Jim climbed out of the car and I squeezed myself out after him. I went around the front of the car and took Jane by the arms, and held her. She was pale, and her eyes had a moist, myopic look about them, but otherwise she seemed okay. “Jane, Jane, what's wrong?”

She smiled, but somehow she didn't seem to be concentrating. “There's nothing wrong,” she whispered. “Nothing wrong at all.”

“But why didn't you take a taxi? What are you doing here?”

“Here?” she said, raising her head and looking at me vaguely.

“This is Seventeenth. You were supposed to be going to Pilarcitos in a taxi.”

Jane touched her forehead as if she was trying to remember. “Oh, yes. Pilarcitos Street.”

Dr. Jarvis pushed me gently away, and examined Jane with swift professionalism. He raised one of her eyelids with his thumb and checked her pulse. While he was doing this, she stood there silent and passive, her only expression a faint frown, her eyes staring off into some private distance that I couldn't even guess at.

“Is she all right?” I asked him. “She seems like she's suffering from shock.”

“It could be shock,” he said. “On the other hand, it could be a form of hypnosis, or trance.”

“Do you think Coyote—”

“John, I don't know
what
I'm supposed to think. But the main thing is that she's safe. Let's get her into the car and get up to Pilarcitos Street. Then your Indian friend here can do what he has to do to keep Coyote out of the house, and we can get Jane back to hospital.”

George Thousand Names stuck his head out of the car window. “Are we going to be long?” he asked me. “The quicker we get to that house the better. If Coyote has gotten there already, we won't stand a chance.”

Between us, Jim and I helped Jane to climb into the back seat of the car, then we swerved off from the curb and made our way toward Mission Street and Pilarcitos.

As we came up the sloping street, the house at 1551 looked as dark and as brooding as before. The windows were like sunken eyes and the scabrous paintwork seemed to have flaked even more. Dr. Jarvis slowed the car as we came nearer, and as we stopped outside he switched off the motor and we sat there for a minute in silence.

“Do you think Coyote's in there?” I said, in an unsettled voice.

“It's impossible to say,” answered George Thousand Names. “But if he is, we'll soon find out.”

“How?”

“He'll kill us.”

Jim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But he may not
be
there, right? He may still be looking for Seymour Wallis's blood?”

“Of course.”

I looked at Jim and Jim looked at me. “Well,” I said, wryly. “Here goes nothing.”

We got out of the car and went around to help George Thousand Names. Jane stayed where she was, silent and presumably in shock. The three of us crossed the sidewalk and stood by the front gate of 1551, looking up at the gloomy porch and the scaly lintels.

“Is the doorknocker still there?” asked George Thousand Names. “I find it hard to see without my eyeglasses.”

Jim and I peered into the shadows. At first I thought it had gone, but then I caught the dark gleam of bronze and I knew that Coyote was still off pursuing his blood. For the moment, we were safe.

We opened the creaking gate and went up the steps. George Thousand Names stood for a while looking at the evil grinning face on the doorknocker, then he slowly shook his head.

“If any Indian had ever walked past this house and seen this face, he would have known immediately what it was,” he said quietly. “This is just as provocative as having an effigy of Satan on your door. Well, let's make sure that Coyote can never use it.”

He reached into his windbreaker and lifted out an amulet. It was a small gold medallion with a strange pictograph scratched on it. He held it for a moment in the fingers of both hands, and touched it against his forehead. Then he stepped right up to the doorknocker and raised his hand.

“Evil Coyote, devilish one of the southwest,” he muttered. “This likeness is forever bound by my spell, forever locked away from you. This likeness will burn you, this likeness will freeze you, this likeness will blow like the winds of the north against you. You may never touch this likeness, never use this likeness, without the wrath of the great spirits falling upon you forever.”

There was silence. A truck banged and rumbled across a distant road junction.

Then, softly, I heard a hissing sound. It was like someone drawing breath. Someone about to speak.

A gentle, insidious voice said,
“Fools.”

I felt myself shaking. I knew it was stupid to tremble like that. But it was the doorknocker, the bronze doorknocker itself, that was speaking. Its wild eyes shone with a lurid light, and maybe it was imagination working overtime, but I
knew
this time that it was bristling with hairs and that its teeth were as savage and sharp as any real wolf or dog.

George Thousand Names stood upright. It was clear that he was making a fierce mental effort to stay in control of the situation. He crossed his arms in front of his face, then made a sweeping, dismissive gesture with both hands.

“Coyote is a dog that runs in the night,” he said. His voice was shaking with dignity and stern passion. “Coyote is a sneak and a liar. The gods hear this and the gods know this. They dismiss you, they dismiss you, they dismiss you.”

There was a chilling laugh from the doorknocker.

“Silence!”
shouted George Thousand Names. “
I command you to be silent!
”

Again, there was that hissing, and another hideous laugh.

“You have no power over me, you dotard,”
whispered the doorknocker.
“My master is coming soon, and then we will see.”
It laughed again.

The front door of the house suddenly jerked open by itself and banged shut again.

But George Thousand Names hadn't given up. He raised his arms again. “The frost of the north will enclose you, the frost of the north will crack you. Coyote of the deserts will feel your chill and retreat like the hound he is.”

I still can't really believe what I saw then, but I'd already seen so much that night that one more weirdness couldn't faze me all that much. George Thousand Names pointed directly at the doorknocker with a rigid index finger, and out of that finger came a visible spangling cloud of ice. The ice settled on the doorknocker, encrusting it with white crystals, and its hissing died away almost at once.

Still he kept his finger pointed at the knocker, and the ice grew thicker and thicker. I could feel the cold from where I was standing two or three feet away. Then, abruptly, the bronze head snapped and pieces of frozen metal clattered on to the floor of the porch.

George Thousand Names let his arm fall. He was sweating and breathing in agonized gasps. But he had enough spirit left to kick at the fragments of doorknocker with his foot, and say, “A dotard, huh? You chunk of scrap.”

Jim let out a long whistle. “That was amazing. I never saw anything like that. Mr. Thousand Names, you ought to get yourself a job in the frozen-food business.”

I took George Thousand Names's arm. “You won one,” I said. “You took Coyote on, and you won one.”

He shook his head. “We haven't finished yet, and my powers are not great. Dr. Jarvis, do you have space in your car for those pictures of Mount Taylor and Cabezon Peak?”

“Why, sure. But I thought you were just going to seal off the house with a couple of spells.”

George Thousand Names wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I wish I could, Dr. Jarvis. But fighting that likeness of Coyote has made me realize that I haven't the strength. I'm too old, too weak. We're going to have to do it some other way.”

I pushed open the heavy front door and we cautiously stepped inside. The pictures were still there. I said, “Right. Collect up as many as you can and stack them in the trunk. Then let's get going.”

Working swiftly and silently, we unhooked the prints and drawings from the walls and carried them down to the trunk of Jim's car. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, and by the time we had finished, the whole back of the car was weighed down with picture frames.

Jane, who was still sitting in the rear seat, looked up. “Is everything all right? I feel very peculiar.”

“Don't you worry,” Jim said. “We'll take you right back to the hospital for a check-up.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I'm fine, honestly. I think I'm just suffering from shock.”

“All the same,” said Jim, “a medical once-over might be a good idea.”

He climbed into the car and started the motor. George Thousand Names said, “We ought to find someplace safe for these pictures. Someplace small, that I can easily protect with spells.”

“How about my place?” I suggested. “I have a real small apartment, and if you stood behind the front door with a baseball club, you could keep the barbarian hordes at bay for a week.”

“That sounds good. Can you direct us there?”

We drove over to my apartment building, and Sam the janitor eyed us with undisguised suspicion as we hefted all the pictures of Mount Taylor and Cabezon Peak into his elevator and took them upstairs. I unlocked my apartment door and between us we stacked all the pictures in my small hallway under the poster of Dolly Parton. I stood back and brushed the dust off of my hands. “Right. Now what about the spells?”

George Thousand Names said, “I'd like a drink first.”

We went through to my diminutive sitting room and I opened up my black Formica cocktail cabinet with the gold spangles on it and poured out four Hiram Walkers. I didn't really approve of bourbon made in Illinois, but it was all I had. All four of us stood there, tired and shaken, and swallowed it down like patent medicine.

“I'm going to hang this on your door,” George Thousand Names told me. He took a small bone necklace out of his windbreaker pocket and held it up. It didn't look like anything special. The bones were old and chipped and discolored, and even though there had once been red and green paint on them, it had now mostly worn off.

“This is the necklace worn by our ancient hero Broken Shield when he climbed Leech Lake Mountain and defied the thunder gods. Historically, it's beyond price. It may be three thousand years old. But it was made to be used and that's why I want you to have it tonight. Keeping Coyote away from Big Monster's scalp is far more important than any relic, no matter how much it means to us. Coyote will not dare to touch this. If he does, he will invoke the anger of Gitche Manitou the great spirit himself.”

“I thought Coyote was the kind of demon who didn't mind defying anyone or anything,” said Dr. Jarvis.

“He is,” agreed George Thousand Names. “But like most vain and idle demons, he would rather live a quiet life, and the anger of Gitche Manitou would be quite enough to disturb his fun for the next five thousand years.”

“Fun?” queried Jim, and shook his head in disbelief.

“Dr. Jarvis,” said George Thousand Names. “Just remember that to some of the fiercer demons, devouring a human is nothing more diverting than eating a bag of roasted peanuts is for us.”

George Thousand Names hung the necklace on the handle of my front door, and muttered a few incantatory words over it. Then he said, “I expect we're all tired, and we want to be fresh for tomorrow. I suggest that we all get some rest. I had my maid make a reservation for me at the Mark Hopkins. Do you think you could give me a ride that way, Doctor?”

“Sure,” replied Jim. “How about you, Jane? Can I drop you off?”

Jane had been sitting by herself on my favorite wicker chair. She said in a flat voice, “No, that's all right. If John doesn't mind, I think I'll stay here.”

“Mind?” I asked her. “You have to be joshing. I haven't had female company here since my Aunt Edith came up from Oxnard and brought me a cake.”

Jim squeezed my arm. “I'll believe you, John. Millions wouldn't.”

George Thousand Names came over and shook my hand, too. He said, softly, “I want to thank you for having enough imagination to see what was really happening. At least we stand some kind of a chance.”

They were about to leave when my telephone rang. I beckoned them back inside and picked it up.

“John Hyatt.”

It was Lieutenant Stroud. “So you're back home, huh? I've been looking for you. Is that Indian with you?”

“George Thousand Names. Yes.”

The detective coughed. “We've had a little trouble on the Bayshore Freeway just past Millbrae. The ambulance with Dr. Crane and Seymour Wallis's body was kind of ambushed.”

“Ambushed? You mean by Coyote?”

Lieutenant Stroud let out a testy breath. “All right, if that's what you want to call it. The ambulance driver said he was driving along real normal and suddenly this immense kind of a monster reared up in the roadway ahead of him. He was the only man to escape alive. Dr. Crane, I'm sorry to say, is dead. Burned out like my patrolman.”