The manitou (19 page)

They have no
sense of human conscience and no sense of pity. Do you think that Lizard pitied
Jack Hughes when it bit his hand off? If you want these demons on your side, you
have to want something very pitiless done for you, and you have to disregard
the possible consequences of something going wrong.”

“You mean
they’re all evil?” I asked him. I sent my flashlight beam up the corridor to
probe a suspicious-looking shape. It turned out to be a hunched-up wastepaper
sack.

“No,” said
Singing Rock. “They’re not evil in the sense that we understand it. But you
have to understand that the natural forces in this planet are not in sympathy
with mankind. Mother Nature, whatever it said in your Sunday-school catechism,
is not benign. We cut down trees, and the spirits and demons of the trees are
dispossessed. We dig out mines and quarries, and disturb the demons of the
rocks and soil. Why do you think there are so many stories of devils possessing
people on isolated farms? Have you ever been around Pennsylvania, and seen the
pentacles and amulets that farmers wear, to ward off the demons? Those farmers
have disturbed the demons of the trees and fields, and they are paying for it.”

We turned
another corner. Suddenly, I said: “What’s that?”

We peered into
the darkness. We had to wait for two or three minutes before we saw anything.

Then, there was
a brief flicker of blueish light from one of the doorways.

Singing Rock
said: “That’s it. Misquamacus is up there. I don’t know what he’s doing, but
whatever it is, we’re not going to like it.”

I took my vial
of influenza virus out of my pocket. “We’ve got this,” I reminded him. “And
whatever Misquamacus has in store for us, it can’t be as bad as what we’ve got
in store for him.”

Singing Rock
sniffed. “Don’t get too confident, Harry. For all we know, Misquamacus is
immune.”

I slapped his
shoulder and tried to make a joke. “That’s right, bolster my confidence!” But
all the time I felt as if every nerve in my body was tingling, and I would have
done anything to relieve my watery, sliding bowels.

I killed the
flashlight and we walked tentatively up the corridor toward the flickering
light. It looked like someone was welding something, or the reflection of
distant lightning. The only difference was, it had an unearthly quality about
it, a strange coldness that reminded me of stars, when you stare up at the sky
on a lonesome winter’s night, and they’re twinkling chill and distant and
utterly remote.

We reached the
door. It was closed, and the blueish light was shining through the small window
in the top, and underneath. Singing Rock said: “Are you going to take a look,
or shall I?”

I shivered,
like someone was stepping on my grave. “I’ll do it. You’ve done enough for the
moment.”

I crossed the
corridor and pressed myself to the wall along side the door. The wall was oddly
cold there, and when I got closer to the window in the door, I realized that
there were spangles of frost on the glass. Frost – in a heated hospital
?^
I pointed it out to Singing Rock, and he nodded.

Gingerly, I
raised my face to the window, and looked into the room. What I saw there made
my skin creep, and my scalp rise like a terrified porcupine.

M
isquamacus was sitting heavily in the center of the room,
supporting his deformed bulk on one arm. All the furniture in the room – which
looked like a lecture theater – had been tossed aside as if by a violent wind.
The floor was cleared, and Misquamacus had marked it out with chalk.

There was a
wide circle, and inside it, Misquamacus had drawn dozens of cabbalistic symbols
and figures. The reincarnated magician had his left hand raised over the
circle, and he was chanting something in hoarse, insistent whispers.

It wasn’t the
circle and the casting of spells that terrified me, though. It was the dim,
half-transparent outline that appeared and disappeared in the center of the
circle – an outline of trickling blue light and shifting shapes. Shielding my
eyes, I made out a curious toad-like shape that seemed to writhe and vanish,
change and melt.

Singing Rock
stepped softly across the corridor and joined me at the window. He took one
look, and said: “Gitche Manitou protect us, Gitche Manitou shield us from harm,
Gitche Manitou ward off our enemies.”

“What is it?” I
hissed. “What’s going on?”

Singing Rock
finished his incantation before he answered me. “O Gitche Manitou
afford
us help, O Gitche Manitou save us from injury. Give
us luck and good fortune all our moons.”

“Singing Rock –
what is it?”

Singing Rock
pointed to the hideous distorted shape of the toad-being. “It’s the Star Beast,
which is about the nearest translation I can manage. I have never seen it
before, only in drawings, and from what old wonder-workers have told me. I
didn’t think that even Misquamacus would dare summon that.”

“Why?” I
whispered. “What’s so dangerous about it?”

“The Star Beast
is not particularly dangerous in itself. It could destroy you without even
thinking about it, but it isn’t powerful or supreme. It’s more like a servant
to the higher beings.
A go-between.”

“You mean that
Misquamacus is using it like a messenger – to call on other demons?”

Singing Rock
said: “Something
like
that. I’ll tell you later. Right
now, I think we’d be well advised to get out of here.”

“The virus – what about the virus?
Singing Rock – we have to
take a chance and use it!”

Singing Rock
moved away from the door. “Forget the virus. It was a clever idea, but it isn’t
going to work. Not now, anyway. Come on, let’s go.”

I stayed where
I was. I was terrified, but if there was any chance of destroying Misquamacus,
I wanted to do it.

“Singing Rock –
we can threaten him with it! Tell him that if he doesn’t close that gateway,
we’ll kill him! For Christ’s sake – it’s worth a try!”

Singing Rock
came back to the door and tried to pull me away. “It’s too late,” he whispered.

“Don’t you
realize what those demons are? They’re a form of virus in themselves. The Star
Beast will laugh at your influenza, and give you the worst death you can think
of.”

“But
Misquamacus...”

“Misquamacus
may be threatened, Harry, but once he’s summoned these demons,
it’s
too late.

It’s more
dangerous to kill him now than ever. If one of these beasts comes through, and
Misquamacus dies, then there is absolutely no way of sending it back. Look at
it, Harry. You want to risk that being loose in Manhattan?”

The Star Beast
rippled and shimmered in its own ghastly fluorescence. Sometimes it seemed to
be fat and glutinous, and at other times it seemed to be composed of nothing
but sinuous clouds. It gave off an indescribable atmosphere of freezing terror,
like a mad and vicious dog.

“It’s no good,
Singing
Rock,” I told him. “I have to try.”

Singing Rock
said: “Harry – I can’t warn you enough. It’s no use.”

But I had made
up my mind. I put my hand on the ice-cold handle of the door, and prepared to
open it.

“Give me a
spell or something to cover me,” I said.

“Harry – a
spell isn’t a six-gun!
Just don’t go, that’s all!”

For the space
of two seconds, I wondered just what the hell I was doing. I am not the stuff
from which heroes are usually made. But I had the means to destroy Misquamacus,
and the opportunity, and somehow it seemed easier and more logical to try and
kill him than it did to let him go. If there was anything worse than the Star
Beast, I didn’t want to see it, and the only way to stop any more
manifestations was to get rid of the medicine man. I counted to three and flung
open the door.

I was not at
all prepared for what it was like in there. It was so cold that it was like
being in a dark refrigerator. And somehow, as I tried to rush forward, my legs
could only move in slow motion, and whole minutes seemed to pass as I waded
through the gluey air, my arm upraised with the glass vial of virus, and my
eyes wide.

It was the
sound that was the worst, though. It was like a terrible chill depressing wind,
a note that was constantly falling and yet which never sank below a dull
rushing monotone. There was no wind at all in the room, but that intangible
hurricane screamed and roared and blotted out all sense of time and space.

Misquamacus
turned toward me, slowly, like a man in a nightmare. He made no attempt to ward
me off or to protect himself. The Star Beast, only yards away in the center of
the frosty gateway, shifted and pulsated like coils of toadspawn, or twists of
smoke.

“Misquamacus!”
I shrieked. The words came out of my mouth
like slow drips of melting wax, and seemed to freeze in mid-air.
“Misquamacus!”

I stopped only
two or three feet away from him. I had to hold one hand against my ear to try
and blot out the deafening moan of the wind that wasn’t there. But in my other
hand, I gripped the infected vial of influenza, and held it up above me like a
holy crucifix.

“Misquamacus –
this is the invisible spirit which struck down your people! I have it here – in
this bottle! Close the gateway – send back the Star Beast – or I will release
it!”

Somewhere in
the back of my brain I heard Singing Rock shouting “Harry – come back!” But the
hurricane was too loud, and my adrenalin was pumping too fast, and I knew that
if I didn’t push Misquamacus to the brink, we might never rid ourselves of the
wonder-worker, or his demons, or any of the fearful legacy from a magical past.

But I’m a
clairvoyant, not a medicine man, and what happened next was something I just
couldn’t cope with. I felt something cold and wriggly in the palm of my hand.
When I looked up at the vial, it had turned into a black squirming leech. I
almost dropped it in disgust – but then a small warning in my mind said it’s an
illusion, another of Misquamacus’s tricks – and I held it tight instead. As I
gripped it, though, the wonder-worker outmaneuvered me. The vial appeared to
burst into flames, and my brain wasn’t fast enough to override my nervous
responses and reassure me that this was an illusion, too. I dropped the vial,
and it sank slowly toward the floor – unnaturally slowly, like a stone sinking
in transparent oil.

Terrified, I
tried to turn away and run for the door. But the air was heavy and limpid, and
every step was congealed into a massive effort. I saw Singing Rock in the
doorway, his hands stretched out toward me, but he seemed to be miles and miles
distant, a lifesaver on a shore I couldn’t reach.

The writhing,
colorless shape of the Star Beast had an irresistible attraction all of its
own. I felt myself being physically drawn away from the door and back toward
the center of the magic gateway, even though I was using all my strength to try
and escape. I saw the vial of influenza virus literally change course in
mid-fall, and move through the air toward the Star Beast tumbling and turning
like a satellite falling through space.

Intense cold
drowned itself over me, and in the dirgelike din of that windless wind, I saw
my breath forming clouds of vapor, and stars of frost collecting on my coat.
The vial of virus froze into crystals of glass and ice, which rendered it as
harmless to Misquamacus as an empty gun.

I turned – I
couldn’t help turning – to look at the Star Beast behind me. Even though I was
struggling across the room away from the gateway, my steps took me no further
in the direction of the door. My feet were now only inches away from the
chalked circle, and within the center of the circle, the horrifying tangle of
disturbed air that constituted the Star Beast was drawing me nearer.
Misquamacus, his head lowered and his left arm raised, was intoning a long and
deafening chant that appeared to excite the Star Beast even more. The monster
was like the shadowy X-ray of a stomach, churning and twitching in digestive
peristalsis.

I had been
fighting to escape, but the cold was so bitter that it was difficult to think
about anything else except how good it would be to get warm. My muscles ached
with the frosty clutch of zero degrees and below, and the effort of running
through the moaning gale and the oil-thick air was almost beyond me. I knew
that I would probably have to surrender, and that whatever Misquamacus had in
store for me, I would have to accept I remember I dropped to my knees.

Singing Rock
was screaming at me from the doorway. “Harry!” he yelled. “Harry! Don’t give
up!”

I tried to lift
my head to look at him. My neck muscles seemed to be frozen, and the hoar frost
on my eyebrows and hair was so thick that I could hardly see anything at all.
My hair was laden with frost, and there was a beard of icicles around my nose
and mouth, where my breath had frozen. I felt nothing but a distant Arctic
numbness, and all I could hear was the terrifying rush of that wind.

“Harry!”
screamed Singing Rock.
“Harry – move, Harry!
Move!”

I raised my
hand. I tried to struggle to my feet again. Somehow, I managed to pull myself a
few inches away from the gateway, but the Star Beast was far too strong for me,
and the magic charms of Misquamacus held me like a weakly flapping fish in a
net.

There was an
electric typewriter, its keys thick with ice, lying on its side on the floor.
It suddenly occurred to me that if I threw something like that at Misquamacus,
or maybe at the Star Beast itself, it would give me a few seconds’ diversion to
pull myself free. That was how little I knew about the powers of occult beings
– I was still treating them like cowboys and Indians. I reached out my
frostbitten hands and lifted the typewriter up with tremendous effort. It had
so much ice on
it,
it was nearly twice its normal
weight.