Revenge of the Manitou (16 page)

“Are you
joking?”

“Do I sound as
if I’m joking?”

Neil stepped
aside to let a fishmonger pass with a barrow of fresh blue-green lobsters.

“No,” he said.
“You don’t sound as though you’re joking at all.”

“Okay,” replied
Harry. “Now, this is what Singing Rock wants you to do. He wants you to keep a
close watch on your son, and he wants you to make sure that he doesn’t go off
on his own this weekend. Do whatever you have to do-take him bowling, or
swimming, or whatever it is you people do out at Bodega Bay. Just don’t let him
out of your sight.
And one more thing.
Make sure that he
doesn’t get together with any of his classmates from school. If you can go and
get him out of school right now-so much the better. Singing Rock says that
before the twenty-two wonder-workers can emerge, they have to go through some
kind of performance with lizards or something, and they have to do it all
together.”

“Lizards?”
frowned
Neil.

“Don’t ask me,”
said Harry. “I know as much about Indian magic as I do about dancing the
Highland fling. Apparently, the medicine men do something repulsive with lizards.”

“Okay,” said
Neil. “I’ll do what I can.”

“There’s
something else,” Harry put in. “If you think that
Misquamacus
is really starting to get a grip on your son-if your son starts talking like
Misquamacus
and looking as though his face is changing-then
call me right away. If it gets really bad, then get the hell out of there.”

“But what about Toby?
If it does get bad, what’s going to
happen to him?”

“It’s pretty
hard to say. He might have a chance of survival. But if you and your wife stay
around too long, you’re going to find yourselves in much worse danger than
him.”

“What kind of
danger? What are you talking about? What do I have to look for?”

“You don’t have
to look for anything,” said Harry dryly. “Whatever it is, it’s going to come
looking for you.”

He met Doughty
on the jetty. The old man was sitting on the front bumper of Neil’s pickup,
smoking his pipe. Neil said hi.

Doughty stood
up. He questioned, “Did you hear the news?”

Neil shook his
head. “What news?”

“Billy Ritchie
died this morning. I thought you might have heard.”

Neil felt cold
with shock. “He died? How did it happen? He looked fit enough to me, apart from
his legs.”

“His house was
burned out,” said Doughty. “His neighbor said it was a freak stroke of
lightning, sent the whole place up like a bonfire.”

“Lightning?
We haven’t had an electric storm for weeks.”

“I know. But
that’s what the neighbor said. The whole place was sent up like a bonfire. Poor
old Billy, not having the use of his legs, was trapped in his living room.
Burned to death, black cat and all.”

Neil swallowed,
and his throat was as dry as a nylon rug. The day seemed suddenly hot and
oppressive, and the clank and clatter of boats’ rigging was like the tolling of
toneless, funereal
handbells
.

Neil admitted,
“I saw him only yesterday. I was talking to him, as close as we’re standing
now.”

Doughty looked
away, and puffed a couple of times at his pipe.

Neil said, “Did
you find out anything else about it? Or was that all?”

Doughty turned around,
and eyed him up and down. “All? What more do you want? You know what they’ve
always said in Napa County. Where there’s a
Fenner
,
there’s a bad wind blowing.”

“What kind of a
saying is that?”

Doughty
shrugged. “I’m not sure I know. But I guess it’s one of those sayings
that’s
based on experience.”

Neil stared at
the blue-gray Pacific for a while, at the wavelets which lapped at the fishing
boats and pleasure cruisers tied up at the jetty. Then he said, “Billy Ritchie
talked about the old days, about the times when Bloody
Fenner
was still alive, and about the Indian massacres. He told me all about
Ossadagowah
, and some of the other Indian demons.”

Doughty took
the stem of his pipe out of his mouth and spat a distance of ten feet into the
water. “So what are you saying?” he asked. “You think he talked too much, and
some of them Indian demons set ablaze to his house?”

Neil looked at
him sharply. “It’s nothing to joke about, Doughty. Those demons are dangerous,
just as much today as they were in the old days.”

“Neil,” growled
Doughty, in his old sea-dog voice, “you’re letting yourself get out of hand.”

“You think so?
What if I tell you I saw a ghost with my own eyes right out there on the bay?

What if I tell
you that one of the most powerful Red Indian medicine men who ever lived came
alive in my house last night?”

Doughty thought
about it, and then reached out and held Neil’s arm. “I know what you must be
feeling, Neil. I know you’ve been working hard. Maybe you’re feeling even worse
now, because of poor Billy going up in smoke. But you’re not going to make
anything better if you keep on letting these
ghoulies
and
ghosties
scare you so much.”

Neil frowned.
“Have you been talking to Susan?”

Doughty kept
his eyes steady for a moment,
then
looked away.

“When did she
come down here?” asked Neil.

Doughty
shrugged. “Yesterday afternoon, while you
was
up in
Calistoga.”

“And what did
she say? That I was crazy?”

“Not at all,”
insisted Doughty. “She said she was worried about you,
that’s
all, and she asked if you’d been working too hard on them boats. I told her no,
you seemed fine to me. But she was still worried about some of the things you’d
been saying, and some of the things you’d been thinking. She said you were
acting like a man with something on his mind. She’s been thinking of getting
you down to a shrink, I can tell you.”

Neil rubbed his
face with the flat of his hand. “Do you think she’s right?” he asked Doughty.

“Do you think I
need analysis, too? Do you think I’m a head case?”

Doughty didn’t
answer.

Neil said,
“Well? Am I sane or insane? Am I dreaming or am I awake? Why don’t you tell me
the way you feel?”

Doughty said
uncomfortably, “It’s not for me to say, Neil.”

“But what the
hell do you think’s going on here? Toby starts seeing ghosts in long white
duster coats, the kids in his class start having nightmares about Indian
massacres, and now Billy Ritchie gets himself killed in a freak fire, the day
after he told me about redskin demons. None of this is normal, Doughty, but
it’s happening for real, and it’s no use this town pretending it doesn’t
exist.”

“Neil-” began
Doughty. Then he changed his mind and shook his head.

“What were you
going to say?”

“Oh, dammit,
Neil, you’ve got to realize you’re fighting yourself an uphill battle.
Everybody’s thinking you’ve lost your marbles. Don’t you think you’d be better
off forgetting the whole business?”

Neil turned
away in exasperation. But then, in a low, intent voice, he told Doughty,
“Listen-if I was like you, if I tried to pretend that nothing was happening,
then this town would suffer the worst tragedy it’s ever known. It’s coming,
Doughty, I warn you. It’s coming soon. I didn’t want to believe it myself, and
even now I wish I’d never gotten myself mixed up in it. But it’s happening
because of Bloody
Fenner
, my ancestor, and I don’t
have any choice. If I don’t fight back, then
you and me and
Susan and
Toby and thousands of people are going to die, and that’s all
I know.”

“Neil-”

“That’s it,
Doughty. No more advice. No more nothing. From now on, anybody who doesn’t believe
me is against me, and that’s the way it has to be.”

He left Doughty
sitting on the pickup’s bumper, and went down to the White Dove to collect his
metal polish and cleaning rags.

In the middle of
the night, with bluish moonlight irradiating the room, he woke up suddenly and
lay silent, listening to Susan breathing beside him and Toby softly snoring in
the cot across by the door. He must have stayed like that, unmoving and
watchful, for almost ten minutes, for the brilliant edge of the moon slowly
appeared in the corner of the window, and the light grew brighter and brighter.
A voice whispered, “Neil.”

He raised his
head. There was nobody there. The moon glistened on the rails of the wide brass
bed, and on the handles of the painted pine bureau, but even in the shadows
behind the closet and in the alcove by the door, there were no apparitions, no
ghosts in long white coats or clad in shiny wood.

The voice
repeated, “Neil.”

He looked all
around the room, straining his eyes, his heart beating quickly and irregularly.
It was as still and silent as when he had first awakened.

“Where are
you?” he whispered.

There was a
pause, and then the voice said, “Beside you.”

He jerked his
head around. Next to him, Susan was fast asleep, her blond hair spread on the
pillow, her lips slightly parted.

“Where?” he asked.
“I don’t see you.”

Susan’s lips
moved almost imperceptibly, and a man’s voice spoke out of her throat. “Here.

Beside you.
I can’t show myself because of
Quamis
.”

“Is
Quamis
here?”

“You bet. He’s
inside your son. He’s like a moth inside of a chrysalis, and it won’t be long
before he bursts out of there and spreads his wings.”

Neil breathed,
“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“You’ve seen me
before. The name’s Dunbar. I was out of Sacramento in ‘31. I thought you was
Alien at first, you looked so similar.
The spitting image of
Alien.”

“It was you in
the beard and the long white duster?’

“That’s right.
In those days, there was me and nineteen others, and our wives, and all of our
children. The
Wappos
took us by surprise up by Las
Posadas, and killed us all. Alien was the scout on that trip, and went for
help.”

Neil stared at
Susan. She seemed to be more than asleep. Her breathing was slow and shallow,
as if she was in a coma. The voice continued, “Alien went for help, but he
didn’t get back in time.

He said he was
going to go for the Mexican camp down in the valley, make his way back up the
creek. But he never came back. They cut us all down, the
Wappos
,
women and children too, and I saw my dear little Margie with an arrow clean
through her face.”

“Why are you
here?” asked Neil. “What do you want from me?”

The voice
sighed. “I’m here because I’m here. It’s not for any reason. It’s dark out here
on the outside, Neil, and time doesn’t mean what it does to you. All times
are the same time
.
It’s
‘31 still,
Neil, and the
Wappos
are still cutting us down, and
always will. We’re still waiting for Alien to help us. We’re still dying,
Neil.”

The voice began
to falter, and grow faint Neil said, “Dunbar-don’t go. Dunbar!”

“I’m here,
Neil.”

“Dunbar, what
do you know of
Quamis
?”

There was a
longer pause. Then Susan breathed, “
Quamis
is
everywhere. Always has been and always will be. The Indians told us he never
died and never would. Maybe that was part story, but then maybe it was part
truth, too. You could hear about
Quamis
from the
woods of Massachusetts clear across to Denver, Colorado, and even beyond that.
They said he lived in the wind that blew through the Georgia pines, and in the
grass of the plains east of the Platte River.

A great
wonder-worker, they used to say, and still do.”

Dumbar’s
last words were so faint in Susan’s mouth that
Neil could hardly hear them. He had to bend his ear close to her lips so that
he might distinguish any syllables at all amid the hoarse breathing that came
from her somnolent larynx, and he was sure that there was more, but it was
inaudible. He thought he heard the word assistance, but he couldn’t be sure. It
may have been nothing more than a sibilant whisper.

He sat up. The
moon was now fully visible, and the light in the bedroom was almost unnaturally
bright. He felt strangely calmed by Dunbar’s visitation, as if he had been reassured
that he wasn’t alone in his fight against
Misquamacus
.
Perhaps it was Dunbar who had destroyed the blazing wooden image last night.
After all, he remembered seeing the faintest hint of a white coat, and a hand
holstering a gun.

He reached down
the bed and adjusted the patchwork quilt so that it covered Susan’s bare feet.

Then he glanced
across at Toby to make sure that he was still asleep. Toby was less restless
since they had moved him into their own bedroom, but he still mumbled as he
slept, and had bouts of fierce tossing and turning.

Neil stiffened.
Toby was sitting up in bed and was staring at him. His small face was white,
white as the silvered light from the moon, and his eyes were intense and
glittering. He wasn’t smiling.

He wasn’t
frowning. His expression was calm and controlled, and because of that, it was
even more frightening. Eight-year-old boys grin, or cry, or show some feeling,
thought Neil. Why is Toby just staring at me like that?

“Toby,” he said
in a hesitant whisper. Toby continued to stare. “Toby, are you okay?”

Toby’s eyes
sparkled with malevolence. His features seemed to shift and change in the
moonlight, one layer of features superimposing another, until he
looked liked
someone else altogether.
Someone
older, someone infinitely older, and someone infinitely more evil.
“Toby,” insisted Neil.