Revenge of the Manitou (22 page)

“Maybe the
light got into the film, you know, and fogged it,” suggested Neil.

Mr. Saperstein
shook his head. “That’s not fogging, Mr.
Fenner
. Any
amateur could tell you that.”

“You’re right,
Mr. Saperstein,” concurred Singing Rock, quietly. “These pictures are not
fake
.”

“But how can
you tell?” asked Neil. “It must be easy to take an airbrush or something and-”

Singing Rock
smiled, and benignly silenced him. “No amount of airbrushing could ever portray
what’s on this photograph, Neil, because no artist knows what this creature
looks like or what it is. This creature is one of the shapeless ones who guard
the threshold between this world and outside. They are messengers of the ethos
in which the great old ones have dwelled for more centuries than I could count.

“This thing is
a herald, if you can call it that, for Pa-la-
kai
the
demon of blood, and
Nashuna
the demon of darkness,
and for
Quul
the demon of insanity. Those three, in
their turn, are servants of
Rhenauz
the demon of
evil, and Coyote the demon of corruption. Above all these, though, and guarded
by a pack of creatures called the Eye Killers, is
Ossadagowah
,
the son of
Sado-gowah
, the demon who can be conjured
up but can never be returned, except of his own free will.”

“Then what’s
this thing?” asked Harry.
“Just a minor-league stooge?”

“In comparison,
yes,” said Singing Rock. “Its name is
Sak
, which
simply means ‘the past.’ It is a beast that has existed on this planet for
countless millions of years, or so the Algonquian say. Its chosen duty has
always been to encourage humans to summon the elder gods, so that the elder gods
may devour them as sacrificial gifts, and reward
Sak
with whatever a beast like that might want as a reward.”

“A gold
ball-point pen?” asked Harry. “Who knows what demons want?”

Neil couldn’t
even find it in himself to laugh. He kept looking at the pictures of Toby, and
the face of
Misquamacus
was sharply clear in every
one of them.

Singing Rock
stood up. “
Sak
will want more than that and,
unfortunately for us, he’s going to get it pretty soon. When I talked to the
elders of my tribe about this matter, they said that before the day of the dark
stars could dawn, several essential rituals had to be completed. The
penultimate ritual was the summoning of
Sak
, who
would make the way ready for
Ossadagowah
. After that,
all the twenty-two medicine men have to do is join their strength together in
the name of whatever spirits
they
choose-tree spirits
or water spirits or rock spirits. Knowing what little we do about
Misquamacus
, I’d say they probably chose tree spirits.”

Harry said,
“You think they’ve already done that?”

Singing Rock
nodded.
“Almost certainly.
If you want me to hazard a
guess, I’d say they probably did it on Friday, before they all had to go home
for the weekend. When they went out on that school trip this morning, they were
ready for the day to begin.
The day of the dark stars, or the
day when the mouth comes down from the sky.”

“You mean it
could be today?” asked Neil, frightened.

Singing Rock
checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. The day of the dark stars begins at noon
and lasts through until the following noon. It’s supposed to be twenty-four
hours of chaos and butchery and torture, the day when the Indian people have
their revenge for hundreds of years of treachery and slaughter and rape, all in
one huge massacre.”

Mr. Saperstein
took his photographs back and looked at them in bewilderment. Then he said to
Singing Rock, “Is this true, what you’re saying? Or is it simply fantasy?”

Singing Rock
pointed to the misty, wriggling shape of
Sak
. “Is
that true?” he asked. “Or is that simply fantasy?”

Mr. Saperstein
took off his glasses. “It’s incredible. I don’t know why I didn’t even see it
at the time. It’s enormous.”

“That’s one
thing we’ve learned, Mr. Saperstein,” said Harry. “Demons and spirits can be
seen through some photographic lenses, even when they’re almost invisible to
the naked eye. It’s happened before.”

“I thought I
was going crazy,” said Mr. Saperstein. “I took those pictures out and looked at
them, and I was sure I was going crazy.”

“That’s what I
thought,” said Neil softly. He held out his hand to Mr. Saperstein. “Join the
club.”

Singing Rock
said, “We have much less time than I thought. If the day of the dark stars
begins at noon
today, that
means
OssadagoWah
and the rest of the demons will be summoned when
Nepauzhad
,
the moon goddess, appears.”

Mr. Saperstein
opened another of his desk drawers, shuffled through it like a rat looking for
eggs in a hayloft, and at last produced a battered maroon diary. He licked his
thumb and turned the pages until he came to the one he wanted.

“Moonrise tonight
is 10:02,” he announced. “I presume that’s what you mean.”

“Thank you, Mr.
Saperstein, it is,” said Singing Rock. “And that means we have less than ten
hours to prepare ourselves. Quite apart from that, we don’t even know where the
children are.”

“They went to
Lake
Berryessa
,” said the music teacher. “It was
their school outing.”

“They were
supposed to go to Lake
Berryessa
,” said Singing Rock.
“But remember the legend speaks of twenty-two medicine men.”

“So? What does that
have to do with it?” asked Harry.

“It could have
everything to do with it,” said Singing Rock. “There are only twenty-one
children in the class, and therefore the twenty-second medicine man must be
emerging inside one of the adults aboard that bus.”

“
There’s
only Mrs. Novato and the driver,” said Mr.
Saperstein, aghast. “You don’t think that Mrs. Novato-?”

Harry said, “I
wouldn’t have thought so myself. She didn’t look like the type.
Too homely, even for your average medicine man from 1830.”

“Who’s the
school bus driver?” asked Singing Rock.

“Well, it’s
usually Jack Billets, from Valley Ford,” said Mr. Saperstein. “But I think he’s
been off sick lately. I don’t know who they used today. I didn’t see him.”

Neil picked up
Mr. Saperstein’s telephone and dialed the operator. When he was through, he
said, “Amy? Is that you? Listen, this is very urgent. Do you have Jack
Billets’s
number, down at Valley Ford? Sure. Could you put
me through?”

He waited a
little while, and then they heard a faint voice at the other end of the
telephone.

“Jack?” asked
Neil.
“This Neil
Fenner
.
Yes. Hi. Listen, I heard you were sick. That’s right. Well, I hope it improves.
But listen, Jack, do you know who’s taking the bus up to Lake
Berryessa
today? It’s pretty important, you know?”

The faint voice
replied, and then Neil said, “Thanks, Jack. I’ll buy you a drink for that.
Okay, fine. Thanks a whole lot.”

He set the
phone down, and then looked at Harry and Singing Rock and let out a long,
controlled breath. “The driver is an old retired sailor who sits around the
dock at Bodega Bay.

A guy named
Doughty. I met him on Friday, and he did everything he could to persuade me not
to go on with all the fuss I was making about the children. He said Susan had
told him to talk to me. Now I know it was a damn sight more than Susan. It was
Misquamacus
.”

Neil tapped his
finger against his head, and snapped, “It was
Misquamacus
,
inside of him!”

Neil went to
the window and looked out over the back of the school, at the green, rounded
hills beyond the fence, at the distant grayness of ocean mist. He said softly,
“It all makes a lot more sense now. It was Doughty who suggested I go visit
Billy Ritchie, and that was how I found out about
Misquamacus
in the first place. If I hadn’t
have
known about
Misquamacus
-if I hadn’t believed in the day of the dark
stars-then I wouldn’t have called you or Singing Rock to help me.”

Singing Rock,
from his chair in the corner of the office, smiled and nodded.

“You’re
beginning to understand the deviousness of
Misquamacus
,
aren’t you? He wanted both of us here in California, Harry and me, so that he
could take his revenge on us before any other white man or mercenary Indian. It
would have used too much energy, too much magic, to bring us by any mystical
means. So he simply had Doughty put you on to Billy Ritchie, who was the only
person around who could tell you the truth.”

Neil tiredly
rested his head against the window. “And when it was all over, he made sure
that Billy Ritchie was killed.”

“Harry told me
about that,” said Singing Rock. “It was a favorite method of quick death, the
lightning-that-sees. It strikes like an occult guided missile.
Misquamacus
once used it against two of Harry’s closest
friends.”

“All this
accounts for something else, too,” said
NeiL
“The
appearance of Dunbar’s ghost in the bay. He was there because Doughty was
there. He was warning me, just like he kept trying to warn me everyplace else.”

Singing Rock
looked at his watch again. “The first thing we have to do is find out where
that school bus is. Then, before it gets dark, we have to get those children
together somehow, so that I can arrange a medicine circle around them. One of
the elders has given me a spell that was supposed to have kept Coyote away from
the daughters of Roman
Nose
, and that should keep
their activities confined for a little while. It’s not ideal, but it’s better
than taking their first attack in the chest.”

Mr. Saperstein
said, “Is there anything I can do? I’d like to help. I don’t quite understand
what’s going on, but if you don’t mind that, you’re welcome to whatever I can
do.”

Harry
suggested, “Why don’t you call the Highway Patrol? Tell them that some of your
kids went off on a day trip to Lake
Berryessa
, and
that a mother just telephoned to say that her son took her Librium pills in his
lunch box, thinking they were candies.”

Singing Rock
stood up. “That should do fine. If you want us, Mr. Saperstein, we’ll be over
at Neil
Fenner’s
house. And thank you.”

The teacher
gave a nervous, self-deprecating grin. “It’s been a pleasure, I guess. It’s
such a relief to find out you’re not going out of your mind.”

“Mr.
Saperstein,” said Singing Rock, resting a gnarled hand on the music teacher’s
arm, “there may be times in the next twenty-four hours when you wish that you
were.”

Singing Rock
worked over the kitchen table until midafternoon, the blinds drawn to keep the
light from distracting him, and an angular desk lamp over his papers and
magical artifacts. While Harry and Neil paced the veranda waiting for Mr.
Saperstein to call with news from the Highway Patrol, the South Dakota medicine
man laboriously prepared lists of the enemies they were about to face, and
gathered together as many spells as he could to hinder and obstruct those
enemies. Out of his suitcase came bones, hanks of hair, and earthenware jars of
powder. Just after three o’clock, when the sky was low and heavy with metallic
gray clouds, he came out of the kitchen door and stretched.

Harry asked
him, “Are you finished in there?”

Singing Rock shrugged.
“As finished as I’ll ever be.” “I never knew Indians were such pessimists,”
retorted Harry. “No wonder you lost the West.”

“We were
pessimists because we’d already lost the East,” Singing Rock reminded him.

Harry lit
another cigarette and coughed. “I sometimes wonder whether you’re fighting on
the right side. With an attitude like yours, you and
Misquamacus
would make a fine pair.”

Singing Rock
raised his head a little, and looked across at Harry with eyes that were bright
and penetrating.

“One day, in
one of my lives, I hope to be far greater than
Misquamacus
,”
he said.

Harry raised an
eyebrow. “You’re trying to tell me that you’ve lived before, too?”

Singing Rock
smiled. “It always used to amuse the Indians, before they began to understand
how callous the white men actually were, how much the white men knew about
living, and how little they understood about life.”

“You’re in a
very philosophical mood.”

Singing Rock
pulled across a weather-bleached chair and sat down, resting one booted foot on
the veranda railing. “Maybe I am,” he said quietly. “But I believe we’ll be
facing
Misquamacus
again tonight, and this time he’ll
be ready for us.”

Harry walked to
the edge of the veranda and rested his hands on the railing. He felt
unpleasantly sticky and hot, and the afternoon seemed completely airless. Even
out here, it was like being shut in a cupboard. The smoke from the cigarette
drifted lazily away in blue puffs.

“Well,” he
said, “I suppose it’s a great honor to be first on the zapping list of the
greatest Indian medicine man who ever lived. Just think
,
I may never have to eat at the Chock full o’ Nuts again.”

Neil said,
“Have you worked out who most of the medicine men are?”

“Yes,” said
Singing Rock. “They come from the times before the white men arrived on our
shores, in those ancient days when Indian magic was at its height. In those
days, the gods themselves were supposed to have walked America, and these
medicine men worked out their apprenticeships as shamans and wonderworkers with
the gods themselves to guide them. Their power is inestimable. Together, under
the direction of
Misquamacus
, they will be
devastating.”