Charnel House (21 page)

“Jim,” I said gently. “How do you feel?”

He whispered, “I think my neck's broken. Just get me to Elmwood and I guess I'll be okay.”

The Indian said, “There's a phone in that bedroom. Be quick, because Coyote's upstairs, and he's going to be aware of all this.”

While George Thousand Names waited impatiently and anxiously on the landing, I dialed Elmwood and spoke to Dr. Weston. I told her that Jim Jarvis had gotten involved in an accident, and asked her to send an ambulance across town straight away.

“It's nothing to do with what happened last night, is it?” she asked. I could see the medicine man beckoning me. “I'll explain later. I have to go. But, please, get that ambulance here fast.”

“Come
on!
” urged George Thousand Names. “We don't have any time to lose!”

“I have to go. It's going crazy down here,” and I slammed the receiver down. Then I followed George Thousand Names out on to the landing. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep close. And whatever you do, don't panic. If Coyote's still up there, you're going to get frightened out of your brain. But hold on. Provided you keep yourself together, you'll survive it.”

I took a last worried look at Jim lying sprawled and bloody on the carpet, and the dark furry bulk of the slumbering Bear Maiden, and then I followed the Indian along to the second flight of stairs. It was even darker and more forbidding than the first. Its treads were threadbare and scuffed, and from somewhere upstairs a stifling draft was blowing, a draft that even I could smell. A draft that reeked of dog.

George Thousand Names went slowly up ahead of me, pausing every now and then to listen. It was so gloomy up there on the third floor that we could hardly see where we were going, and all I had to guide me was the rotting banister rail on one side and the damp wallpaper on the other. The smell of dog grew thicker as we climbed higher, and when we reached the second landing, it was almost nauseatingly strong.

“Oh, Coyote's here all right,” he whispered. “He must have hidden up in the attic until nightfall. But he's here all right.'

We paced along the landing, staring up at the ceiling to see where the attic door could be. George Thousand Names said softly, “He knows we're here. You hear how silent it is? He's waiting to see what we're going to do next.”

I felt distinctly depressed and afraid. “If I had my way, I'd run like hell.”

“Ssh! Listen.”

I froze, and listened. At first, I couldn't hear anything, but then the distinct sound of
scratching
reached my ears. It seemed to be all around, but George Thousand Names lifted a finger and pointed toward the ceiling.

“What do we do now?” I asked hoarsely.

George Thousand Names beckoned. We walked a few paces further along the dark landing until we were standing under the attic's oak-stained trapdoor. There was a frayed cord dangling down the wall, and I guessed this was one of those traps you pull down, and a built-in ladder slides out.

“Well,” said the old Indian quietly, “we have the demon bearded in his den.”

I coughed, and looked up at the trapdoor apprehensively. The scratching continued, soft and repetitive and creepy, like the fingernail of someone buried alive scratching hopelessly at the lid of their coffin. “George, I don't really think I want to go up there.”

He frowned at me. “We have to. Don't you understand who this is? This is Coyote! This demon is like every medicine man's Moby Dick! I could have his scalp on my balcony rail, along with the pelts and the snowshoes! The scalp of Coyote, the First One to Use Words for Force!”

“George,” I said anxiously, “I'm not in this for the scalphunting. I'm in this because innocent people are going to die if we don't do something about it.”

“You're not a saint, and it's no good pretending you are,” he said, and there was more than a dash of caustic in his voice.

“Maybe I'm not,” I told him. “But I'm not a bounty hunter either.”

“We knew this was happening. At the last great council of the medicine men at Towaoc in the Ute Mountain Reservation, many of the wise men said they had seen and experienced warnings and omens. The gray birds were seen, and the old voices were heard on Superstition Mountain that haven't been heard since they laid Red Cloud to rest. And the coyotes and the dogs have been as restless as if a storm was brewing up.”

“You
knew
Coyote was coming? Why didn't you say so before?”

“We didn't know. We guessed. But there will be much honor for me in defeating Coyote. I will be seen for the greatest wonder worker of any age, past or present; and I will then do something I have dearly wanted for years. I will unite the medicine men into a strong and powerful council, and bring back Indian magic to the glory it used to have, in the days long ago when the grasses were free and the tribes had dignity and strength. The signs said that Coyote would come In the Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers, and he has.”

I stared at George Thousand Names's face in the dim light of the landing, and I could see what he meant. These days, there was no way for a medicine man to prove his powers, no test worthy of his magic. What good was an ancient skill for mesmerizing buffalo in a country where buffaloes only roamed in zoos? What use was the power to make a spear fly amazingly straight in a society of handguns and tear gas? That's why George Thousand Names relished this conflict with Coyote so much. No matter how hideous and terrifying Coyote was, he was a match for George's frustrated talents.

“All right,” I said. “We'd better get to it.”

He reached out and squeezed my shoulder with his old horny hand. “If the great spirit sees fit to take us, my friend, then let us remember the good words and not the sour.”

“Okay, you're on.”

I tugged the cord which hung down from the trapdoor. It seemed to be stuck, but then I pulled it harder, and, with a rusty groan, the door came shuddering open and the lower rungs of the ladder sank unwillingly toward us. From out of the dark space above us came a hot fetid breeze, and a restless scratching and rustling, as if something or someone was waiting for us impatiently.

“Let me go first,” he said. “I have the power to hold the worst at bay.”

“Don't get the idea I was volunteering,” I told him.

The medicine man took hold of the ladder, which swayed and creaked and finally came to rest on the landing floor. Then, rung by rung, he climbed slowly upward, pausing now and again to listen and to look. His head and then his shoulders disappeared into the gloom. “For Christ's sake, don't do a Bryan Corder on me,” I said.

“He's here. He's in this attic. Is there a light-switch down there? I can sense him. I can smell him. Give me some light!”

I looked around, and there was an old bakelite switch on the opposite wall. I flicked it down and a weak dusty bulb suspended from the rafters inside the attic lit up.

George Thousand Names screamed. He dropped from the ladder, and his old body thumped awkwardly on to the floor. I thought he was dead for a second, but then he yelled,
“Shut the door! Shut the door! Shut the door before it's too late!”

I seized the bottom of the ladder and tried to wrench it upward, but it was jammed on one side against the opening in the ceiling. I quickly clambered up four or five steps, and tugged at it as hard as I could to clear it.

It was then that I saw Coyote. I didn't see much. He was at the far end of the attic, where the light scarcely penetrated, and the whole loft was alive with thousands and thousands of diseased gray birds, crawling and flapping and scratching their claws on the floor. It was almost impossible to see any kind of shape, any kind of form, but through the fluttering crowds of birds, the Gray Sorrow, I could make out something dark and enormous, with demonic eyes that glowed in a bristling face, and a terrible beastlike presence that was more evil and more vicious than any thing I could ever have imagined possible. On the floor of the attic, not far away from me, stood the statuette of the Bear Maiden, except that it wasn't a statuette anymore, but a tiny living replica of the gigantic Bear Maiden that slept downstairs. The statuette turned and grinned at me with bared teeth, and then she scuttled back toward the shadowy protection of her master, the demon Coyote, like a kind of rat.

I knew why George Thousand Names had screamed. Coyote, his slanting eyes fiery with hate, was unfolding his body from his gloomy corner of the attic, and in the half second I stayed at the trapdoor, I saw something unrolling from his sides, something greasy and pale and writhing like millions of maggots.

I came back down that ladder about fifty times faster than I went up it. My system was so pumped up with adrenalin that I seized the bottom rung and slammed the attic trapdoor upward with one hefty bang. Then I picked George Thousand Names up from the floor and half dragged him back along the landing.

At the head of the stairs, the medicine man gasped, “Wait, wait, he won't follow us yet.”

“
Wait?
I'm getting out of this damned place as fast as I can! Did you see that thing! Did you see it?”

George Thousand Names resisted my tugging. “John,” he said, “John, you mustn't forget the hair. You mustn't forget Big Monster's hair.”

“So what?”

“John, it's the only way we can defeat him. If we find the hair first, we've at least got ourselves a chance!”

I let go of his jacket and rested my back against the wall. Upstairs in the attic, through the thin ceiling, I could hear noises that didn't bear thinking about. Slimy, soft, scratchy, shuffling noises.

“George, I'm asking. Let's get out. I can take bear-people but I can't take that thing.”

“Wait. Remember what the symbol said. Look north from the lodgepole of the tepee of the beast. That's where Big Monster's hair is hidden.”

I lifted my hands in temporary surrender. “Okay. So which way is north?”

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small round box.

“What's this?” I asked him. “Another magical trick?”

He opened the lid. “Kind of. It's a compass.”

It took us a few seconds to locate which way was north, because every time Coyote moved upstairs in the attic, the compass needle shivered and swung. But then we got our bearings, and George Thousand Names pointed along the landing to one of the dingy windows at the very far end. “That's it,” he said. “That's the north window.”

We hurried along to the end of the landing and looked out. There was a dull view of the backs of the houses on Mission Street, but beyond that there was one obvious prominent landmark. It stood tall and stately and shrouded in low-lying fog, its piers and wires glistening in the gray morning light. The Golden Gate Bridge.

George Thousand Names breathed, “That's it. That's where the hair is hidden.”

“The bridge? How can you hide hair on a bridge?”

He smiled at me triumphantly. “They said in the legends that Big Monster's hair was as gray as iron and as strong as a whip.”

I listened uncomfortably to the noises of Coyote moving across the ceiling above us. “What does that prove? That doesn't mean anything to me.”

He gripped my arm tight to keep my attention. He said fervently, “Where would you conceal anything that was as gray as iron and as strong as a whip?”

“Listen, George. I really don't know. I think we'd better—”

“John,
think!
”

I wrenched my arm away. “I can't damned well think! I just want to get the hell out of this house before that trapdoor comes bursting down and that demon comes down here and does whatever demons do. I'm not interested in scalps, George, and that's all. I want out!”

At that moment, a shower of plaster dust sifted down from the ceiling, and I heard rafters cracking beneath the weight of something unspeakable. The air was filled with the husky sound of fluttering wings, as the Gray Sorrow clamored around their abominable master.

“Think!” he snapped.
“Think!”

“Don't play games!” I screamed at him. “Just tell me!”

George Thousand Names pointed to the Golden Gate, and his eyes were cold and intense. “Wire!” he told me. “The Big Monster's hair must have looked like wire!”

“Wire? But the only wire on the bridge is the cables. You mean it's woven into the suspension cables? In the Golden Gate? George, you've got to be nuts!”

He tersely shook his head. “It's the kind of joke the ancient ones adored. Maybe they did it to humiliate Coyote and make it impossible for him to discover where the hair had gone to. They could make jokes in the future as well as the past, so my guess is that they intervened in the building of the bridge, and had Big Monster's hair wound into it. Maybe some Indian worked at the cable factory, and had the orders passed down from generation to generation to do what he did. Maybe it was done by potent magic. I don't know. But I know enough about the ancient gods and what they used to do, John. And, believe me, that's where Big Monster's hair is hidden.”

“Oh, come on, George,” I said nervously. “You're guessing.”

“No guesses,” he said. “Look.”

What I hadn't seen before was a tiny symbol engraved on the glass of the window. It was the same symbol that I had drawn when I plotted out the views of Mount Taylor and Cabezon Peak. George said, “Put your eye to that mark and tell me what you see.”

There was a rumble from the attic and a long strip of plaster molding, the kind of plaster molding that Seymour Wallis preferred to fiberglass, dropped to the landing floor with a heavy thud, filling the air with dust. I looked at him worriedly, but he said, “Go ahead, look.”

I peered through the mark, and he was right. It lined up directly with one of the suspension cables on the seaward side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Maybe the Indian's guess was inspired, or maybe his magic told him more than he would ever admit, but right then I was willing to put money on what he'd said. That hair was right there, twisted and woven into the suspension cables of the West Coast's most celebrated land mark. From what George Thousand Names and Jane had said about Big Monster, he was one of the most evil demons of all southwest America. And the city authorities wondered why so many people chose to jump from that particular bridge?