Primal Fear (3 page)

“Atae!  Hta-aji . . . kahpoqh ake . . . ake . . .”

Outside, the wind howled past the room’s single window, rattling the panes.

“Reminds me of a case history I read once,” Morris said softly.  “Never thought I’d see it for myself.  It happened in New Jersey, in the early sixties.  An elderly woman who had been committed to an asylum used to perform the same movements with her hands and arms, all day long.  Got so bad that they had to restrain her.  The original assumption was that the motions were due to some sort of random motor malfunction, just a repetitive, involuntary movement that didn’t really mean anything at all.” 

Did they ever figure it out?”

“Yes.  Turned out that she was recreating the motions of her position on a manufacturing assembly line from over thirty years before.  Amazing, really, when you think about it.”

“This isn’t random,” John said from beside the bed, “not at all.”  His voice was suddenly wary, his tone severe.  “And he’s not reliving anything from his past.”

Morris approached the bed.  “What do you mean?  You know what he’s doing?”

John nodded, his eyes narrowed in concentration.  “The motions are part of an old Aleut ritual, one that hasn’t been performed for hundreds of years.”

“I don’t get it.”

“This isn’t just some old man,” John said.  “Wherever he came from, he was the village shaman.  And what he’s doing now, it’s part of a ritual of summoning.”

“Summoning?  You can’t be serious.”

“I’m completely serious.  I know what I’m seeing.  Only a village shaman would know these motions, and he would pass them onto his successor when his time to die is drawing near.  But this ceremony, the one we’re seeing now, is never performed to its conclusion.  It’s only taught in pieces, and even then, only in the most guarded circumstances.”

“Then how do you know what it is?”

John thought he could detect a note of challenge in the doctor’s voice, but he didn’t rise to it.  His voice, when he replied, was no louder than it had been only a moment before.  “It’s like I told you, I’ve devoted my life to the study of my people.  I’ve learned quite a bit over the years.”

Morris glanced at the old man and then back to John again.  “Any idea what he’s saying?  Can you make anything out?”

John bent beside the old man, turning his head until his right ear was only inches from the patient’s moving lips.  He made sure to avoid the hands, reluctant to break their rhythm, listening carefully for what he already suspected he would hear.

“Juk-hta Atae . . . Atae . . . aji-juk . . . hta . . .”

“He’s calling upon his spirit guide for help.  He’s very frightened, very upset.  And he wants Atae to protect him.”

At the sound of the name, the old man’s head swiveled suddenly on his shoulders, turning to stare directly at John with his blinded eye.  It moved confidently in its socket, coming to rest precisely on John’s face, as if it were capable of seeing him, even while he was still deeply asleep.

John jerked back involuntarily, a cold knot of fear tightening in his belly.

The old man’s lips curled back, revealing a row of crooked, stained teeth. “Atae,” he whispered, his words seemingly directed straight at John.  “. . . juk-hta ctusa . . . ara aji . . .”  His voice rose in volume, becoming more urgent, until he was almost shouting, his head rising off the pillow in the effort to deliver them.  “Wyh-heah . . . Wyh-heah Qui-Waq . . .”

John stared back at him, the color slowly fading from his face.

“What’s he saying that’s so—”  Morris broke off as he saw John’s expression. 

John could only imagine how he must look.  He’d never felt such an inexplicable sense of dread, never been touched by such undiluted fear before.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I just got spooked.”  He raised his hand, pushed a stray lock of hair away from his face.

The old man’s hands dropped back onto the bed, curling into useless arthritic fists.   But even in sleep, his dead eye continued to rest upon John.  It moved smoothly in pursuit of him, filled with an impossible awareness that chilled John to the bone as he moved away from the bed.

“I think he’s coming around,” Morris said.  “Maybe he’ll want to talk to you.”

John hesitated.  The old man’s words had unnerved him, words he’d never suspected he’d hear in his lifetime.  And something about that stare, that single dead eye watching him wherever he went . . . 

All of his confidence in the strength of his modern knowledge had almost gone out the window in that instant.  Now, he took a moment to regain his composure as the old man’s good eye slowly opened and centered upon him.

There seemed to be a moment of recognition, an almost mystical instant of connection between them.  John could feel Dr. Morris watching him closely from across the room, and he wondered briefly if his friend could feel the electricity that seemed to fill the air around them.

John approached the bed once more.  “Chak-ta.  Taja ich iji?”

The old man stared, something in his expression betraying the fact that he’d understood John’s query completely.  And yet he still didn’t make a sound, instead choosing to nod slowly as a crooked, tired smile spread across his face.  A tear slipped from the corner of his good eye, sliding down his cheek to fall onto his hospital gown.

“He understands me,” John murmured.   He leaned forward, reaching out to steady himself on the cold steel rail of the hospital bed.  He suddenly felt very weak in the knees, his senses dazed.  But he managed to speak softly, cautiously.

This time the old man responded, his voice weak and hoarse.  He uttered only a handful of syllables, speaking slowly and painfully, but John nodded as he went on.

“His name is Mahuk,” John reported.  “He’s from one of the northern villages, one of the old nomadic tribes.”

The old man murmured something else and when John tried to translate, he felt as if he’d lost a good deal of his breath.  “He’s saying . . . he says he’s a descendant of Maku Jha Laman . . .”

John swallowed, his voice finally starting to waver.  Something was wrong here.  Terribly wrong.  The old legends

were only stories, just tales made up as warnings to children, to frighten them in the cold, dark winter nights . . .

“Who?” Morris asked.  “Who’s this Maku—”

“He was one of the most powerful shaman in my people’s history,” John said quietly.  “He lived more than two hundred years ago.”

John watched numbly as Dr. Morris graced him with a dubious glance as he went back to speaking in his native tongue.  But however strange it must sound, there was no denying the fact that he’d managed to finally break through to the old man.

“He says . . .”

John hesitated, unsure that he’d heard it correctly himself.  “He says there is great danger, that he has left his village to fight it.”

“What kind of danger?”

“Wyh-heah Qui Waq,” John said, and the old man’s gaze darkened as the words filled the room.  “He says it’s coming.”

Morris frowned, obviously confused.

The old man was only trying to warn them, John knew.  Trying to help them.  But he was scared, and very weak.  And the fear in his own expression—a fear he was doing his best to conceal even now—had only served to make matters worse.

“I don’t understand,” Morris said.

“I know.  This is just—”

“I’m sorry, John, but none of this makes very much sense to me.”

“I’ll explain in a moment.  Right now I need to see his possessions.  Whatever he was carrying when you found him.  I need to look through them.”

“And then you’ll explain?”

“I’ll try my best.  But he’s very adamant.  He says it’s very important for me to find his possessions.” 

“Is that all he said?”

John paused, lowering his voice.  “No.  He told me my life depends on it.”

Chapter One

John carried the old man’s satchel into Morris’ office, laying it out carefully on the doctor’s desk.  He hesitated at first, toying with the clasp, feeling oddly reluctant about peering into the case, into the shaman’s personal belongings.  But the urge to know what lay inside was too powerful, and he soon relented to it.  Besides, he’d given Mahuk his solemn oath that he would do as he’d been asked.

“It will help you to believe,” the shaman had told him, and John couldn’t be sure if he truly wanted to.  To believe or to disbelieve completely . . . each extreme bothered him for different reasons.  To forever
wonder
, though—that was somehow the worst possibility of all.  To hold the answers to so many questions in his hands and then simply turn away from them? 

No, such an act was simply not in his nature.

Dr. Morris seemed to sense his discomfort, already moving towards the door.  “I’ll let you take care of this, John.  I’ve got a couple of patients I’d like to look in on.”

John looked up, grateful for the gesture.  “Thanks.  I won’t be long.”

“Take your time.”  Morris left him to it, but another three minutes passed in silence before John finally gave in and opened the case.

At first he only saw the usual possessions of any elderly man: a small collection of clothing, none of it fit for the kind of exposure to the bitter Canadian winter the shaman had endured; an extra pair of glasses, probably for reading; a wrinkled map, faded and out of date. 

He opened the map before going on, spreading it out in the middle of the desk.  It was a map of the state of New Hampshire, tattered and frayed from many years of use.  Beyond its age, he couldn’t make out anything unusual about it, and he turned his attention back to the satchel.

And beneath the common items in Mahuk’s possession, lying securely in the bottom of the small case, he found the true tools of the shaman.

He reached into the tangle of items arranged at the bottom of the suitcase and produced a short length of ivory, carved intricately along its inside edge with etchings of the sun and the moon and the signs of what the old man would undoubtedly think of as the Earth Mother.  A number of feathers were attached to the shaft, arranged into a loose circle, a mingling of the animals of the air and of the sea, and John realized that this would have been the shaman’s key element of ritual, his means of summoning his tornaq—his spirit familiar—to guide him into the spirit world.  Setting it aside, he reached back into the satchel and pulled out another of the items that lay within.

It was another carving, this one of wood.  It was the figure of a woman, her arms open, as if in some generous offering, her face delicately fashioned into an expression of sadness.  John recognized the figure from his childhood studies: Mauna, the Earth-Maker.  Her sadness stemmed from the destruction man had wrought upon her beloved earth; her generosity was the spirit of giving that would preserve the earth for those who continued to live as one with the land she had provided for them.

He stared at the figurine, remembering the old stories.  Mauna, the Earth-Maker and B’hun, the Sky-Maker, characters in the tales his grandfather had told him on the cold winter nights in his village.  As a child he’d believed in them completely; what reason would he have had to doubt the words of his grandfather?  But then, growing up . . .

John sighed, a part of him longing for that naiveté, for the blind faith of youth.  These days, to have doubted something for so many years, and then to meet someone still so enshrouded in the old beliefs . . . it felt like an act of betrayal to him.  Betrayal to his people, to his ways.  And to his father.

He shook his head, avoiding that line of thought.  There were enough problems, without resurrecting one that struck so close to home.

He placed the Earth-Maker on the desk blotter and peered once more into the bag.

The next item in the old man’s possession was a small parcel wrapped in a brittle swath of sealskin and tied with a short length of twine.  John opened it carefully, trying not to damage the wrappings, folding them slowly back as the twine fell away.

He recoiled at the sight of what lay in the center of the parcel, coming to his feet behind Morris’ desk.

It was a twisted shard of bone, clearly not human, tipped with a talon as sharp as a razor’s edge.  Protruding from the bone, at the point where the talon rose outward from the tip of this terrible finger, a smooth length of dark wood comprised the inner surface of the artifact.

John stared at the relic, examining the area where the wood met the bone, looking for a flaw in its construction, even a hairline crack between the two materials.  But there was nothing.  The piece of bone had not been grafted to the wood.  There were no fasteners, no signs of adhesive, no other indication that the artifact had ever been produced from two separate carved specimens.  Each material appeared to have been a natural part of the finger’s composition.

John leaned over the desk, peering closely at the strange fossil, still unwilling to reach out and pick it up.  He still couldn’t see any sign that the combination of wood and bone had been artificially created, nor could he imagine any craftsman in the world with the skill to pull off such a perfect meld of materials.  As much as he didn’t want to admit it to himself, John realized there was nothing else it could be but genuine.

He spent another five minutes staring at it, a part of him wishing he’d never set eyes on it.

The familiar sounds of the hospital rose around him but he barely heard them.  The frequent announcements over the intercom and the occasional bustle of activity in the hall outside the office still reached him on some inner level, but they didn’t register.  Staring at the relic was like staring back into the past, into the history of his people.

And wasn’t that what he’d wanted all along?  A tangible glimpse into the old legends?  A concrete link to his own heritage?

He shook his head, completely unaware that he’d moved at all.  The old artifacts had always fascinated him, had always been his favorite part of his studies.  But this . . . this was more than he’d thought possible.

Finally, both repulsed and excited, but unable to look upon the deformed finger for another second, he slowly returned it to its wrappings, pleased to have it out of his sight.

But even through the sealskin, he felt an odd vibration of energy.  It sent shivers through his entire body, like a low-voltage charge, powerful enough to register on his nerve endings, but too weak to do any damage.  He tried to put the artifact down, but some inner voice prevented him from performing even that simple act.  And in that short interval, while his hand was poised over the old man’s bag, the wrapped shard of bone gripped slackly between numb fingers, a single image flickered dimly in his mind’s eye.

It came swiftly, buried among his thoughts.  A hint of emotion accompanied the vision, feelings of fear and dread, feelings beyond expression, as if to name them would mean suffering in their influence forever.

And the image came again.

For just an instant, it was as sharp and clear as his own perception of reality.  But when he tried to identify it, it lost focus, leaving him with nothing to grasp.  He only knew that the sight of it was vital, important to him in some way he couldn’t understand.

He forced himself to close his eyes, wishing to either see the vision more clearly, or to push it away completely.

And then he saw it one last time, a looming shadow, huge and menacing, a shape that was neither well-defined nor clearly identifiable.  Yet this time the feelings that arose within him were more powerful than he could tolerate, feelings dredged up from the coldest reaches of his soul, summoned—or so it seemed—by the sight of this towering shadow.

A moment later the artifact fell from his fingertips, breaking whatever power it had held over him.  A sudden dampness on his upper lip made him reach up in confusion, his fingers coming away wet with a tiny trickle of blood from his nose.  Peering downward, he saw that only a single drop had fallen onto the desk top.  It had fallen on Mahuk’s map, still spread open on the blotter where he’d studied it only moments before.

He bent over it, studying the terrain where the blood had fallen.

It had come to rest in the northern half of the state of New Hampshire, partially obscuring a blue smudge marked Cooris Pond.  Just beside the pond, in tiny black letters, he could make out the name of a town.

Glen Forest.

And barely an eighth of an inch from those letters, there was a small circle scrawled in faded ink, one that he hadn’t spotted when he’d first examined the map.  It appeared to be the only such marking on the entire document.  Could that have been Mahuk’s destination?

“John?  You okay?”

He looked up and saw Dr. Morris coming into the office, a copy of Mahuk’s file in his hand.

John dropped into a chair, his equilibrium thrown off by what he’d seen, what he’d felt.  He wondered briefly how he could possibly describe those feelings to Dr. Morris, whether he could ever put them into words that would do them justice.

“I’m okay,” he said at last.  “Just a nosebleed.  I’ll be fine.”

Morris stepped toward him.  “Here.  Let me take a look at it.”

“No, no.  I’m fine.  I just need to sit down for a minute or two.”

He looked across the desk at the artifact, perfectly harmless in its faded wrappings, just an old relic of his people.  At least that’s what he’d thought a moment before, when he’d first pulled it from Mahuk’s bag. 

Now, sitting across from Dr. Morris in the dimly lit office, he let the minutes slip past without notice, trying desperately to understand what he’d seen. 

Only one thing seemed certain: the shard of bone possessed a power that was both very strong and very unnatural.  Its influence over his thoughts had been beyond his resistance, beyond his estimation.

Beyond his sense of possibility.

“You sure you’re okay?” Morris was still watching him closely.  He managed a thin smile.  “You’re in a hospital, John.  If something’s not right . . .”

John shook his head, rising to his feet.  “I’m just a little confused, that’s all.  When you asked me down here, I never expected to run into a full-blooded tribal shaman.  It’s just . . . I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“I can understand that.  But still, if there’s anything you need, let me know.”

John thought about that for a moment.  “What I need,” he said, “is a chance to sit down and think this through.  And maybe a good stiff drink.”

Dr. Morris consulted his watch.  “Well, tell you what.  I’ll be off duty in another half hour or so.  I can meet you at Lawton’s, if you’d like.  It’s not the fanciest place in the world, but it’s pretty quiet this time of night.  You can fill me in on all this over a cold beer.  I’ll buy.  Two blocks . . .”  He paused, closing his eyes to get his bearings and then pointing to the right.  “. . . that way.  Corner of West Street and . . . what is it?  Alton?  Acton Street?” 

John nodded.  “Alden Street.  I know the place.  That sounds good.  That’ll give me time to look into a few things first.  Meet you there in about an hour.”

They left the office together, John still holding the old man’s bag in his right hand.  “I’m going to lock this up, if you don’t mind.  What I’d really like to do is go through it again in the morning, take a closer look at what he’s got in there.”

“We don’t usually hand over someone’s personal belongings, but if you think it might help us get through to him, then I’m good with it.”

They arrived at the elevator and Dr. Morris hesitated.  “I want to talk to the ICU nurse once more before I leave, too.  If I hurry I can catch her before her consultations meeting.”  He nodded at John.  “See you in an hour.”

John stared at the elevator door for a moment, feeling slightly foolish.  When he looked to the side and saw that Dr. Morris had already vanished around the corner, he carried the satchel further down the hall until he found the door that led to the hospital’s stairway.

Dr. Morris was already at Lawton’s when John arrived.  He was seated at the far end of the room, nursing a beer, a local newspaper spread open on the bar.

“Sorry I’m late.”  John straddled the stool beside him, signaling the bartender for a beer.  “How’s Mahuk?  Any changes?”

“Nothing significant.  Still not communicating, no response when we try to talk to him.  He seems like he’ll only talk to you.”

John said nothing, accepting his beer from the bartender and staring into it silently.  A minute passed this way before Dr. Morris spoke up again.

“You don’t like the things Mahuk has to say to you, am I right?”

John blinked, finally looking up.  Before he could say anything in his own defense, Dr. Morris pressed on.

“I sensed it earlier, while you were talking to him.  You know how you hear people say they looked like they’ve seen a ghost?”

“Sure.”

“Well, that’s how you looked to me.  And then the more I thought about it . . . well, let me put it this way: you had the same look on your face that a patient has when I have to tell them they have a terminal illness.  They hear the truth, but a part of them simply can’t accept it.  It’s not a reaction you can control, it’s more reflexive than you’d think.”