Revenge of the Manitou (14 page)

“Oh, yes?” said
a voice. “And who’s
Misquamacus
?”

Neil looked up.
On the landing, in his neatly laundered police uniform, stood
Officer Turnbull.

He was a lean,
punctilious cop with a blue chin and a sharply pointed nose, and Neil had never
particularly liked him. He stepped into the room and surveyed the ashes and the
burned furnishings with professional detachment. Neil let Susan go, and stood
watching Officer Turnbull poke around without speaking. After a while, Officer
Turnbull gave him a dry smile, and said, “You didn’t answer my question yet.”

“I was speaking
metaphorically,” mumbled Neil. “It wasn’t intended to be taken as the literal
truth.”

Officer
Turnbull eyed him for a few seconds. Then he said, “I see. And what’s the
literal truth of what happened here? You decide to have a
cookin
instead of a cookout?”

Neil wiped soot
from his face. “I was just breaking up that old wardrobe,” he said. “I guess I
had an accident with the matches.”

Officer
Turnbull sniffed. “Pretty disastrous accident, I’d say. You sure you weren’t
bent on burning the place down?”

“Why the hell
would I do that? I had an accident. I told you.”

“Well,” said
Officer Turnbull, “some folks who find themselves short of cash think they can
make a little extra from torching their houses. It’s the insurance money, you
understand?”

Neil looked at
him, disgusted. “Get out of here,” he said sharply.

“I’ll go when I
know what happened,” Officer Turnbull told him. “What was that you just said
about
Misky
-something?”

“It’s a pet
name,” said Neil. “It’s something we call Toby. Now, will you please get out of
here and give me the chance to clean the place up?”

Officer
Turnbull took out his pen and studiously wrote in his police notebook. Then he
cast his eyes around the room again, and said, “Let’s make this the last fire
we have in here, huh?

Bodega’s a nice
little community, and the last thing we want is to have it looking like the
South Bronx.”

“Is there
anything else?” asked Neil, with thinly disguised Impatience.

“I reckon
that’s all. But I have to file a report.”

“You can do
what you like. Thanks for dropping round. It’s nice to know that you can count
on the cops, as long as you’ve done something they can understand.”

Officer
Turnbull tucked away his notebook, shrugged, and went downstairs. They heard
the kitchen door close, and the sound of his patrol car leaving the yard. Neil
sighed, and stepped over the ash and debris to the landing.

Susan said,
“You didn’t have to speak to him like that. He was only doing his job. You
should be grateful he came.”

“Yes,” said
Neil dully. “I suppose I should. Where’s Toby?”

“He’s downstairs
in the kitchen. I think he’s all right now. After you went into his
bedroom-well, he seemed to relax. He became his normal self again.”

“That was
because
Misquamacus
left him, and took on the shape
of a wooden man.”

Susan didn’t
answer that. She said, “Let’s go downstairs. Maybe I should bathe those
blisters.

Those hands are
going to be sore in the morning.”

Neil leaned
against the wall. He felt suddenly exhausted, and his eyes hurt. It seemed
almost too much to fight this frightening thing
on his own
.
If only Susan believed him. If only one person believed him, apart from old
Billy Ritchie.

He said, “I’m
okay. I guess my arm could use a little ointment, but everything else is all
right.

Could you make
me some coffee?”

She kissed his
cheek solicitously. “Sure.
Whatever you want.
You just
rest up tonight, and in the morning you’ll feel fine.”

He took her
hand. “Susan,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Susan, I’m not going nuts. I
saw that wooden man up there as close as I’m standing here now.”

She gave him a
quick, noncommittal smile. “Yes, honey. I know. There was a wooden man.”

They went
downstairs. Toby was back at the table, finishing his drawing, and when Neil
came down he looked up at him with deep, serious eyes. Neil regarded his son
for a long, silent moment, trying to see the spirit of the wonder-worker who
might be lurking someplace inside him, but there didn’t seem to be any sign at
all.

He came up
close and hunkered down beside Toby’s chair. The boy gave him a cautious grin,
and said, “What’s the matter, Daddy? Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” nodded
Neil. “We just had a little accident
with matches, that’s
all. You should learn something from it. Don’t play with fire.”

“Yes, sir,”
said Toby, politely.

For some
reason, Toby’s manner seemed to discourage any further conversation, and Neil
couldn’t think what else to say. He glanced at Toby’s drawing, and asked,
“How’s it going? You finished it yet?”

“Sure.”

“Can I see it?”

Toby nodded.
“If you want.”

The boy took
his crooked arm away from the paper, and Neil took it off the table and
examined it. It was almost an abstract, colored mainly in blues and grays and
dull greens. There seemed to be clouds, with twisting tentacles writhing in
between them, and a suggestion of a face that wasn’t truly a face at all. It
was crude, and drawn with Toby’s usual heavy-handedness, but there was
something strangely subtle and disturbing about it as well. “What is it?” asked
Neil.

Toby gave a
quick shrug. “I don’t know, sir. It isn’t a person.”

Neil ran his
fingers lightly over the waxed surface of the drawing. In the back of his mind,
he heard that strange, distant voice again, the voice of the wooden man. “I am
the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human
shape.”

He ruffled
Toby’s hair, and laid the drawing back on the table. From across the kitchen,
Susan was eyeing him closely.

“It’s a nice
picture,” said Neil, for want of anything else to say. “It looks like some kind
of octopus.”

Susan said,
“Your coffee’s almost ready.”

Late that
night, when Susan and Toby had gone to bed, Neil went silently downstairs and
into the den. He sat at his desk in the darkness, and moved the telephone
toward him. He looked at the dial for a while, as if he
were
thinking, and then he picked up the receiver and called information.

It took him a
half-hour to locate the number he wanted. It was a Manhattan number, from an
address on Tenth Avenue. He checked his watch. It was almost three o’clock in
the morning in New York, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to wait any
longer. He had to know now, before another day dawned, before the spirits
gained even more time and even more strength.

The phone rang
and rang for almost ten minutes. When there was no reply, he put down the receiver,
dialed the number again, and let it ring some more.

Eventually, he
heard the phone at the other end being picked up. A nasal, sleep-worn voice
said,

“Yes? Who the
hell’s this?”

Neil coughed.
I’m sorry to wake you. I wouldn’t have called at all, but it’s desperately
urgent.”

“What’s
happening? Is the world coming to an imminent end?”

“Something
almost as bad,” said Neil.

“Don’t tell me.
They’re banning hot dogs because they give you bowlegs.”

“Mr. Erskine,”
said Neil, and he felt himself unexpectedly close to tears, “I’m calling you
because there’s nobody else.”

“Well,”
answered the voice, “if it’s that critical, you’d better tell me what you
want.”

“This isn’t a
joke, Mr. Erskine. I’m calling because of
Misquamacus
.”

There was
silence. To begin with, Neil wondered if Mr. Erskine had put the phone down.
But he could still hear the singing noise of the transcontinental telephone
cables. The silence lasted almost half a minute. Then Mr. Erskine queried
softly, “
Misquamacusl
What about
Misquamacus
?
Where did you ever hear about
Misquamacus
?” “Mr.
Erskine, I have met
Misquamacus
. Or a form that
Misquamacus
took. He came this evening, and it was only
luck that I wasn’t killed.”

Again, there
was silence.

“Are you
there?” asked Neil.

“Sure I’m
here,” said Mr. Erskine.
‘I’m just thinking, that’s all.
I’m thinking that I’m hoping that you’re not telling me the truth, only I know
that you are because nobody knows about
Misquamacus
except for the people who helped me get rid of him.”

“Then
it’s
true?” said Neil. “What
Misquamacus
said about you was actually true?”

“You say you’ve
seen him,” Mr. Erskine retorted. “What do you think?”

Almost swamped
with relief, Neil said, “It’s true. It must be true. My God, the whole damned
thing is true.”

“That’s what
makes it so frightening,” Mr. Erskine pointed out. “Did you say you saw him?”

“Only a form that he took.
The form of a
wooden man.
And he’s been speaking through my son, Toby, who’s eight. He
says that he’s coming back to take revenge on the white men. His spirit-his
manitou
-is going to take possession of Toby and get
reborn.”

“Almost the
same as it
happened
before.” said Mr. Erskine soberly.
“Listen-will you hold on to the phone while I fix myself a seltzer?”

“Sure,” said
Neil, and waited. After a few moments, the phone was picked up again, and Mr.

Erskine said,
“Do you know what he’s trying to do? Has he given you any kind of idea?”

Neil answered,
“Not very clearly. It’s something to do with the day of the dark stars, which
is a day when twenty-two of the most powerful medicine men from all ages in
history and all different tribes are supposed to get themselves reborn and call
down some of the Indian gods.

It’s the day
when they’re supposed to kill one white man for every Indian who ever died at
white hands.”

“That sounds
about
Misquamacus’s
style,” put in Mr. Erskine. “Did
you say two of the most powerful medicine men?”

“No, no-twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two?
You’ve got to be kidding.”

“That’s the
legend. And that’s what
Misquamacus
told me.”

There was more silence.
Then Mr. Erskine said, “Listen, fellow, I’ve got to talk to someone about this.
Why don’t you leave me your number, and your name, and I’ll call you back.”

“Sure,” said
Neil. “My name’s Neil
Fenner
,
and I live in Bodega out in northern California. Not far
from Sonoma, you know?
My number’s 3467.”
“I got
that,” Mr. Erskine told him. “Give me a couple of hours, and I promise I’ll
come back to you.”

“Mr. Erskine-”

“Call me Harry,
will you? We haven’t met yet, and we don’t know who the hell each other
is
, but if you’re talking seriously about
Misquamacus
, then I think we’d better get ourselves on
first-name terms.”

“Okay, Harry,
that’s fine. But what I wanted to say was that
Misquamacus
told me he had some kind of personal score to settle.”

“A personal score?”

“That’s right.
With you, and with some Indian called Singing Rock. He said that you’d
destroyed him when he tried to get himself reborn some time before, and that he
was going to fix you for it.”

Harry Erskine
sounded uncomfortable. “I see,” he said quietly. “Well, I guess that figures.

Misquamacus
is the revenge of a whole nation, all wrapped
up into one. If he says he’s going to kill us all, then by God, Neil, he means
it.”

A
t school that day, Mrs. Novato noticed that her class was
curiously quiet and diffident. They went through their morning’s lessons
without any fidgeting or misbehaving, and filed out for their lunch break in an
orderly way. She sat at her desk, watching them through the window, wondering
what it was about them that disturbed her so much.

It was only
when she saw them gathered at the far end of the school yard, talking solemnly
among
themselves, that
she realized what it was. None
of them had laughed all day. None of them had smiled.

She got up from
her seat and walked to the window, eating an apple. She hoped they weren’t
catching anything. It was the class outing to Lake
Berryessa
on Monday, and she didn’t want to have it spoiled by colds or flu.

She was curious
to see what the children were doing. Normally, they ran around the yard,
playing tag or ball. But today they were standing in a circle, all by
themselves, and they had linked arms. They were circling around and around,
their feet shuffling as if they were dancing.

She had never
seen children do anything like that before, and she found it strangely
upsetting.

A gray cloud
crossed the sun, and the school yard went dull. But the children continued to
shuffle and sway, and she was sure she could hear them singing.

At that moment,
Mr. Saperstein, the visiting music teacher, came in through the school porch
and waved a hand to Mrs. Novato in greeting. He was wearing his frayed Panama
hat and his frayed linen suit, and he had a camera slung over one shoulder and
a flute case over the other.

“Hello, Mrs.
Novato. How are you getting along? Doesn’t the weather get worse every year?
It’s the Russians and their magnetic fields. We should tell them to stop or pay
the price.”

Mrs. Novato was
frowning as she stared at the children, and she didn’t answer. Out in the hall,
Mr. Saperstein paused, and then came into her classroom and said, “What’s so
fascinating? I could have walked in naked.”