Revenge of the Manitou (13 page)

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
flicker 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 you 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.”

Carefully
stepping backward, sweating and trembling, Neil found the edge of Toby’s bed.
He reached behind him and fumbled under the comforter for the sheet He heard
the wooden man creak and those heels knock against the bedroom floor, and he
froze. But then the wooden man stayed where he was, and Neil softly tugged the
sheet out, and rolled it up into an untidy ball behind his back.

The wooden man
said: “I am the greatest of those outside, the unquestioned master of the
wonder-workers of ancient times. I am the chosen of
Sadogowah
,
the instrument of
Nashuna
. I have scores to settle
from times deeper than you can imagine, white man. I have a score with the
Dutchmen, for the diseases they brought to Manhattan. I have a score with the
pilgrims, for the ways they taught the
Wampanoags
and
the
Nansets
. I have a score with the settlers and the
farmers and the railroad men, for the
Cheyenne
who
died, and the Sioux who died, and the Apaches and Paiute. We were at one with
the lands, white man, and all the forces and the influences of the lands, and
all the gods and the spirits for whom trees grow and stones are thrust up from
the earth’. We were the greatest of the nations of the earth, and you slew us
with rifles and diseases and empty promises. We shall have our revenge, white
man, in the way that is prophesied on the great stone redwood, and you shall
all taste blood.” Neil slid his hand into his pocket and felt for the box of
matches. He could almost hear old Billy Ritchie now. “A man of rock or wood is
just as vulnerable as rock or wood.”

The figure
said, “The white man,
Fenner
, helped my
Wappo
brothers in years gone by. He helped them because he
understood their struggle, and because he had
Wappo
blood in his own veins. That is why your son is chosen, white man. That is why
we were led at last to bring down the spirits of the great
Nashuna
and Ossa-
dagowah
in this place, at this time.”

Neil managed to
fumble a match from the box. He scratched it against the side and he smelled
burnt phosphorus, but it didn’t catch. He was sweating, in spite of the bitter
cold, and his teeth were clenched in tension. As it spoke, the wooden figure
came closer and closer, until it was standing only two or three feet away, its
dark wooden head towering over him.

“I have a
personal score to settle, too,” the wooden man said, in that uncanny voice that
was far
away,
and yet so close that Neil seemed to be
hearing it inside his head.

“A personal
score?’ asked Neil. He scratched again at the side of the matchbox.

“I have visited
your time before, in the body of a young woman. I was reborn to wreak vengeance
on those who had laid waste to the islands you now call New York. I was born as
a human, in my own flesh, but I was destroyed in that form by a white charlatan
and a treacherous red man from the plains. That is the personal score I have to
settle. I will find the white man called Erskine, and the red man called
Singing Rock, and I will destroy them both.”

The figure’s
body creaked again and it raised one of its arms.

“I am the
Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape.
I am the Messenger of the Great Old One, the Chosen of
Sadogowah
.
I am the Keeper of the Elder Seal, and the worker of wonders unknown in future
times. My name is
Quamis
, known to the Wampanoag as
Misquamacus
. I have arrived for the day of the dark stars.”
The wooden man raised both arms and stretched out for Neil’s throat. Neil, with
a high-pitched whine of fear, ducked sideways, and simultaneously struck at his
match. It flared up, and caught at the crumpled sheet

In the sudden
leaping light of orange flames, Neil glimpsed a wooden face that was contorted
with anger. Fierce eyes glistened above a hooked Indian nose and a mouth drawn
back on wooden teeth. It was
Misquamacus
, the same
face he had seen in Billy Ritchie’s photographs, only this time it was vengeful
and twisted with rage.

The sheet
flared up even more violently, burning Neil’s hand. With a sweep of his arm, he
threw the fiery cloth over the wooden man’s head, so that the figure was
enveloped in flames. Then he pushed his way toward the door, and struggled to
open it

“Susan!” he
yelled. “Susan! Open this door. It’s jammed! Susan!”

He frantically
looked behind him. The wooden figure of
Misquamacus
was standing beside Toby’s bed, and already its head and shoulders were
starting to blaze. There was a rank odor of burned cotton and wood.

“Susan!” he
shouted, rattling the door knob.
“Susan, for God’s sake!”
He thought for a terrible moment that Toby might have done something to
Susan,
might even have killed her, but then he heard her
calling, “I’m here! I called the police!”

“Push the
door!” called Neil “I can’t get out of here! Push the door!”

He turned
around again, and to his terror, the fiery figure of
Misquamacus
was walking slowly toward him, arms outstretched to seize him. There were
flames rippling up from the wonder-worker’s chest, and his head was a mass of
fire, but he kept coming, and Neil could feel the heat from his burning body.

“You are as
weak as the grass against me,” said the blazing lips. “I shall devour you if
you try to cross me, and I shall offer you up to the most terrible of my gods.”

“Susan!” Neil
screamed. He shook and tugged at the door, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“The door is
fastened by my will alone,” said
Misquamacus
. “You
will never open it in a hundred moons.”

The room was
filling with blinding, choking smoke. Through its billows, impossibly tall and
shuddering with flame, the wooden figure stalked nearer, until Neil had to
abandon the door and scramble toward the window. He glanced quickly out through
the broken pane. It was a long drop onto hard ground, and even if he didn’t break
his neck, he’d probably wind up with a couple of fractured legs.

He turned back
toward the medicine men. The breeze from the window was feeding the flames, and
the wooden body burned with a soft, sinister, roaring sound.

“I have you
now, white man,” whispered the charring mouth. “I have you now.” Beside him,
the linen cover of Toby’s bedroom chair began to smolder and
burn,
and one of the drapes caught afire.

Neil raised his
arm to protect his face from the heat. The fiery fingers clawed closer, and one
of them seized his sleeve, viciously strong and
searingly
hot. He kicked out against the wooden figure, but it slammed him against the
window frame, and he heard his back crack. All he seemed to be able to see was
fire, and the grotesque outline of a face wrought in blazing charcoal.

Suddenly, the
flames burst out higher. The bedroom door was open, and even more oxygen was
nourishing the wooden figure’s fire. Neil wrenched his arm free and dropped to
his knees, scorched and agonized.

The next thing
he knew there was a strange series of sounds. They were slow and ghostly, and
they sounded like the surf on the ocean shelf, like something being played in
slow motion.

Above him, the
wooden figure faltered, turned, and then abruptly began to burst into thousands
of shattering, whirling fragments of blazing ashes.

The fire
exploded over Neil as he lay crouched on the floor, raining all around him. His
neck and his hands were prickled with cinders. But then there was nothing but
burned-out chunks of blackened walnut, and a fine dusting of gray ash. Neil
blinked, and slowly raised his head.

For a fraction
of a second, he thought he saw the outline of a man’s feet, and the hem of a
pale-colored coat. He thought he saw a hand move, the way a hand moves when a
gun goes back to its holster. But then there was nothing but the landing, and
Susan, pale-faced and frightened, under the harsh light from the lamp on the
ceiling.

She came into
the room and helped him up. He brushed ash and burned wood from his shirt and
coughed. His hands and his forearm were blistered, and his hair was singed, but
apart from that he was unhurt

“Neil” Susan
wept.
“Oh, Neil.”

He held her
close. He was trembling, and he felt shocked, but he had the feeling that he
had been saved by some kind of spiritual intervention, that a ghostly force had
recognized his danger and come to save him. It gave him, for the first time
since Toby had started having nightmares, a feeling of strength and confidence.
He gently stroked Susan’s hair and said, “Don’t cry. I think we’re going to
make it. I think we’re going to be all right.”

She looked up
at him, her face smudged with tears.

“But what did
you do in here?” she asked him. “Why is everything burned?”

He stared at her.
It occurred to him, with a feeling of awful coldness, that she still didn’t
believe what was going on. She hadn’t seen the wooden figure, after all. She
had heard nothing but noises. Now, he was standing amid cinders and ashes, with
no way to prove what he had seen or heard.

He said,
slowly, “The wooden man was here. That’s all that’s left of him.”

“The wooden
man?” she frowned. “Neil, I-”

He pointed
savagely toward the wardrobe. “The wooden man was here and he talked to me. He
told me who he was, and he told me what was happening, and everything that
old-timer told me up in Calistoga was right. The Indian medicine men are being
reborn, in the bodies of our children, and they’re going to kill as many white
men as they possibly can.”

“Neil, stop it!
Neil, please, it’s just your imagination!”

“What about the
way Toby spoke downstairs? You think that’s imagination?”

Susan held him
tight. “Toby’s just unsettled, that’s all. He sees you behaving like this, and
it scares him. He says things because he’s sensitive, because he doesn’t
understand what’s happening.”

“He says things
because he’s possessed by a Red Indian magician!” shouted Neil. “He says things
because
Misquamacus
makes him!”