Charnel House (15 page)

“What's going on?” I asked him. “What's happening in there?”

Jim took my arm and led me forward to the glass panel, which looked into the depths of the unit itself. It was still illuminated with blue light, but somehow the light seemed dimmer and more restless, like the cold phosphorescence that crawls across the sea at night, or the uncanny glow of decaying fish. I could make out the shape of the couch, and around the couch I could still see the chromium stands with saline drips and plasma. I thought I could see the bone-white curve of Bryan Corder's skull, too, but on the couch itself there was an indefinable lump of twisted limbs and flesh, and it was too dark to understand what it could possibly be.

“Dan Machin's in there?” I asked. “I don't see where.”

“Can't you get in?” Jane asked.

Lieutenant Stroud, tall and urbane as usual, answered, “Lady, we're not standing out here for our health. We've tried six or seven times to get inside and each time we've been repulsed.”

“Repulsed?” I queried. “What do you mean, ‘repulsed'?”

“Try it for yourself,” suggested Lieutenant Stroud. “The door's right here.”

I stepped forward, but George Thousand Names said, very softly, “Don't, Mr. Hyatt. It's not worth it.”

Lieutenant Stroud said, “What do you know?”

George Thousand Names glanced at me through the gloom, and I could see that he was trying to suppress a smile.

“This is George Thousand Names, Lieutenant,” I said. “I brought him down tonight from the Round Valley Reservation.”

“You're still gibbering about this Red Indian stuff?”

“You can call it gibbering,” I put in quietly. “But so far it's the only reasonable explanation. George Thousand Names believes that what we're witnessing here is the rebirth of an Indian demon from way back in time.”

Lieutenant Stroud looked at Dr. Jarvis, then at the other doctors, then at his two flatfoots. Then he turned to George Thousand Names with a sarcastic, beatific smile. “A Red Indian demon from way back in time? Is that right?”

George Thousand Names was too old and self-possessed to be fazed by sarcasm. He simply nodded. “That's right. The demon's name is Coyote, sometimes called the First One to Use Words for Force. He is generally understood to be the demon of confusion, anger, and argument, apart from his insatiable lust for women.”

Lieutenant Stroud laughed, short and harsh. “The demon rapist?”

George Thousand Names smiled, but kept his cool. “That's just about right, Lieutenant. The demon rapist. There's an old Navajo song that tells how Coyote met a young woman on a mountain pass, and how he tricked her into lifting her dress for him. It's a charming song, in its way. But what it omits is that Coyote was the most fierce and fearsome looking of all demons anywhere, and that once he'd seduced a woman he'd generally behave like less than a gentleman.”

“What do you mean, ‘less than a gentleman'?” asked Lieutenant Stroud coldly.

“There are ladies present,” George Thousand Names said.

“None of the ladies here are going to worry about anatomical details, if that's what you're thinking.”

“It's not that,” he replied. “It's just that if this demon does manage to bring himself back to life, then no woman in San Francisco will be safe, and I'd hate to frighten these ladies unnecessarily.”

“Spit it out, will you?” demanded Lieutenant Stroud. “If there's something going on here, I want to know what it is!”

“Very well,” said George Thousand Names. “Coyote first seduces his women, then he treats them to what the Navaho used to call the Ordeal of Three.”

Jane said, “My God. I've heard of that.”

George Thousand Names touched her arm. “It was the strangest of all ancient tortures, and its history goes back far beyond the civilization of the North American tribes. It is said by many of our wise men that it was Coyote's personal invention, but who can say?”

Jim frowned. “I've never heard of the Ordeal of Three. What the hell is it?”

George Thousand Names touched one of the amulets around his neck. He said, in a toneless voice, “The Ordeal of Three involved cutting open a woman's stomach and sewing up into her stomach a live reptile, like a Gila monster, then cutting open a horse or a cow and disemboweling it, then sewing up the woman inside the horse. The art of the torture was to keep all three victims, lizard, woman, and horse, alive as long as possible.”

Dr. Weston said, “Oh, come on. You're just making that up.”

George Thousand Names shook his head. “Check with your own anthropologists if you have to. The skeletons of a lizard, a woman, and a horse, one inside the other like a Chinese puzzle, were dug up at Lake Winnemucca, in Nevada, not six years ago, by Professor Forrester of the University of Colorado.”

Lieutenant Stroud pulled at his lower lip. “Okay, Mr. Thousand Names. If you know what goes on around here, what do you suggest is going on
there
?”

He pointed through the glass panel to the dim and shadowy forms on the care-unit couch. Something was moving in there, some shape, bulky and dark, moving and twitching with that jerky, unpleasant twitching that characterizes the first movements of insects as they work their way out of their chrysalis.

George Thousand Names said, “The Gray Sadness was enough to show me. What you're seeing here is the coming together of Coyote, the foulest of Red Indian demons. When he was banished to the underworld, he concealed his breath and his blood and his heartbeat, and now he's managed to bring them all back together again in one place. He's coming to life, whether you like it or not.”

Lieutenant Stroud stared at George Thousand Names for quite a while, his eyes glistening attentively in the darkness. “So you really believe it. You really believe that's happening.”

“It's not belief, Lieutenant. It's not an act of faith. I
know
what's happening. It's as plain to me as a flat tire on an automobile is to you. It's a fact,” George Thousand Names insisted.

“Then what, then what's going on here?” Jim asked.

“Go get a flashlight and you'll see,” said George Thousand Names, rather too calmly for my liking. “The breath and the heartbeat are joining together. Soon, all Coyote will need is his blood and his terrible face.”

“Jane,” I said, leaning over and speaking quietly in her ear. “The doorknocker at Pilarcitos Street. Can you go get it? Knock it off the door with a hammer if you have to.”

Jane held my arm. “I don't want to leave you, John. Not now.”

I took out a ten-dollar bill and folded it into her hand. “You won't be away for long. Take a taxi. But just get ahold of that doorknocker before anyone else does.”

Jane looked up at me with those wide china-blue eyes, then she put her arm around my neck and kissed me. “Maybe we should have stayed together, you and I,” she whispered, and then she slipped out of the room and made her way off to 1551.

Lieutenant Stroud was saying: “We've tried flashlights. It's the angle of the glass or something, but they won't penetrate.”

George Thousand Names turned from Lieutenant Stroud to Dr. Jarvis and back again. “In that case,” he said, “the great Coyote has gained more strength than I thought. He is powerful enough to absorb your light completely.”

Dr. Weston said, “Absorb? What are you talking about?” She clearly didn't think much of George Thousand Name's ethnic folklore. She had enough ethnic folklore of her own.

“You haven't been reading your
Scientific American
lately,” George Thousand Names said. “When an object has sufficient density, it can actually prevent light from reflecting away from it. It attracts the light back to itself by its intense gravitational pull. That's what's happening here. Coyote is a beast of the underworld. If you like, he's a living black hole.”

“You mean, he's going to be completely invisible?” Jim asked.

George Thousand Names shook his head. “Only when he desires it.”

“What about his blood?” Dr. Crane put in. “If his heartbeat and his breath are getting together here, shouldn't we try to isolate Mr. Wallis? He's the vessel for this demon's blood, I presume.”

“Yes,” answered the medicine man. “Try to get him away. But be careful of the birds, and be careful of any magical tricks that Coyote might try to pull to prevent you doing it.”

“Magical tricks?” asked Lieutenant Stroud skeptically. “Like what?”

“Lieutenant, this may seem like a joke but it's not. When I say magical tricks, I'm not talking about lifting rabbits out of a hat or sawing ladies in half. I'm talking about death and injury and illusions like you've never seen,” the medicine man claimed.

I put in, “It makes sense, Lieutenant. Everything that George has said so far, it makes sense.”

“Who asked you?” snapped Lieutenant Stroud.

Dr. Jarvis said, “There's no point in arguing, Lieutenant. None of us has a better idea.”

“You don't think so?” said Lieutenant Stroud, turning around. “Well, maybe I've got myself a better idea. Maybe this whole damned thing is a hoax.”

“A
hoax
?” I said. “You think we'd take the flesh off a man's skull for a hoax?”

“Well, all this damn stupid stuff about Indian demons—”

“Stuff!” said George Thousand Names, bristling. “You call our demons
stuff
! Are you crazy? Do you know what Coyote can do? Do you have any idea?”

Lieutenant Stroud was taken aback by George Thousand Names's ferocity. “Well, you mentioned the Ordeal of Three …”

“That's
nothing
!” he retorted. “That's what he does with the women he's played with and thrown aside! Coyote has powers beyond all human comprehension. Powers that made it almost impossible for all the good and evil gods combined to destroy him. And that's without the added powers he stole from other demons like Big Monster and the Loogaroos.”

“The Loogaroos?” said Lieutenant Stroud, in disbelief.

“That's what the French colonists called them, when they first came to America. It's a corruption of
loups-garous
, which means ‘werewolves.' Coyote took powers from all of them. He covers his back with the hide of a werewolf and wears on his head the scalp of Big Monster, and with those he is almost indestructible.”

Lieutenant Stroud listened to this outburst, and then stood there silent for a long moment, while all of us watched his face, wondering how the hell he was going to respond. I thought at first he was going to dismiss everything that George Thousand Names had said as garbage, but then I saw his expression soften and the lines around his mouth deepen, and I knew that the medicine man's conviction had almost convinced him.

“I want to know what's going on in there, inside that room. I want you to explain it to me,” he said finally.

George Thousand Names stepped forward. The blue light that irradiated from the intensive-care unit made his eyes glisten and painted the lines and creases of his face in ultramarine. He raised one shriveled hand, his fingers decorated with silver rings and his wrist hung with bead bracelets, and pressed it against the glass, as if he could feel vibrations from the dark and twisted mass that was Dan, or Bryan, or both of them, or neither.

With his other hand holding his golden amulet, he said softly, “It is almost time for Coyote to make himself live once more, to model himself out of the clay of human flesh. He needs blood but he can rise without blood. He is molding himself from the bodies of those who possess his heartbeat and his breath.
Look!
”

All the time that George Thousand Names had his hand pressed to the window, he must have been mentally struggling against the powers of Coyote. Because when he said,
“Look!”
the blue light rose and brightened, and in that brief and horrifying brightness we actually saw what it was that he had been trying to explain to us. We saw the beginnings of Coyote, the demon, the rapist and traitor, the First One to Use Words for Force.

On the couch, we saw limbs rising and falling. At first they looked like the arms and legs of people drowning in a lake of darkness, but then the contorted mass of flesh seemed to rise up and stand almost upright, and all I could do was stare at what it was and feel a horrifying shudder all the way down my back.

In some unspeakable way, Dan Machin and Bryan Corder had been twisted together as one creature. It was almost eight feet tall, rearing blindly off the couch with Bryan's fleshless skull as its head, but with both men's arms and legs reaching out toward us. Their torsos were combined in a shapeless double torso of knotted muscle, and Dan Machin's ghastly face appeared momentarily from inside the beast's stomach, pressed against the translucent skin with his mouth wide open in a hellish howl
.

Jim said, “It's impossible!” and Dr. Weston moaned as if she was hurt. But then the blue light dimmed again, and all we could see was the murky outline of that monstrous creature, and the white reflection of the emergency lamps from what had once been Bryan's head.

Lieutenant Stroud, his voice dry, said, “All right, Mr. Thousand Names, what is it?”

George Thousand Names lifted himself wearily away from the window. “It's Coyote,” he said simply. “He takes on many forms, but this one more than most. It could have been a woman, or a deer, or even a fish. He is said once to have molded his earthly manifestation out of a girl and a tarantula. But tonight he's lucky. He has two strong young men for his reincarnation, and downstairs in the morgue you have Seymour Wallis's blood.”

“Did you give orders to get rid of that blood?” demanded Lieutenant Stroud.

“Dr. Crane's taken care of it,” Dr. Jarvis said. “Seymour Wallis's body should be halfway to Redwood City by now.”