The manitou (10 page)

I spoke to Dr.
Hughes again. “Dr. Hughes, my friend here asks what’s going to happen to the
fetus. Supposing it’s still alive when Karen Tandy dies? What are you going to
do about it?”

Dr. Hughes
didn’t hesitate. “Mr. Erskine, in that event we will do what we always do. If
it is a child, and it’s normal and healthy, we’ll do everything we can to save
it. If it turns out to be a monster – well, we have injections that can dispose
of it quietly and quickly.”

“And if it’s a
medicine man?” I asked warily.

He paused.
“Well, if it’s a medicine man – I don’t know. But I can’t see how it could be,
Mr.

Erskine. I’m
willing to go some way toward the occult but how on earth could she give birth
to a three-hundred-year-old Indian? I mean, come on, let’s
be
serious.”

“Dr. Hughes, it
was you who suggested we try and find out if there was anything occult going on
here. And you did say that my opinion was as valid as anyone else’s.”

Dr. Hughes
sighed. “I know that, Mr. Erskine. I’m sorry. But you have to admit it sounds
pretty crazy.”

“Crazy or not,
I think we ought to try and do something about it.”

“What do you
suggest?” said Dr. Hughes dully.

“Something you
recommended has worked once, Dr. Hughes. You said I ought to bring an expert
in, and I did. I think it’s time we went looking for another expert – somebody
who knows more than we do about Indian lore and mysticism. Give me some time
and I’ll try to dig somebody up. There’s bound to be someone at Harvard or Yale
who knows.”

“Could be,”
said Dr. Hughes. “Okay, Mr. Erskine. Thanks for your interest and your help.
Don’t hesitate to call me if there’s anything else you want to know.”

I put the phone
down slowly. Amelia and MacArthur stood beside me, just as weary as I was, but
eager to help now, and really interested. They’d seen the face on the
cherrywood table, and they believed. Whatever the spirit was, whether it was an
Indian medicine man or a malignant ghost of the present, they wanted to help me
fight it.

“If you ask
me,” said MacArthur, “the Dutch should have kept their twenty-four dollars and
left Manhattan to the Indians. It looks as though the original owners are
getting their revenge.”

I sat down and
rubbed my eyes. “It looks that way, MacArthur. Now let’s get some sleep. We’ve
got a lot to do tomorrow.”

I
t took us four hours to track down Dr. Ernest Snow. A friend of
Amelia’s knew someone at Harvard who knew someone else who was a student of anthropology,
and in turn the student of anthropology put us on to Dr. Snow.

His credentials
were impressive. He had written five monographs on Indian religious and magical
rites, and a book called Rituals and Lore of the Hidatsa. What’s more, he lived
within reach, in Albany, New York.

“Well,” said
MacArthur, yawning through the gloom of a dark and wintry Sunday morning, “are
you going to phone him?”

“I guess so,” I
told him. “I was just wondering whether we haven’t gone off on the wrong
track.”

“What do you
mean?” asked Amelia.

“Well, I mean
this whole Indian business. We don’t really have any evidence to support it.
Just because the face on the table looked something like a Red Indian, there’s
no real reason to think that he really was.”

Amelia shrugged
“But what else have we got to go on? And there is all this stuff about rebirth.

Come on, Harry,
we have to try it.”

“Okay, then,
here goes,” I said, and picked up the phone. I dialed Dr. Snow’s number and
listened to it ringing. He seemed to take a long time to answer.

“Snow here,”
said a dipped crisp voice.

“Dr. Snow, I’m
sorry to disturb you on Sunday, but when I tell you why I’m calling, I hope
you’ll understand. My name’s Harry
Erskine,
and I’m a
professional clairvoyant.”

“You’re a
what?” snapped Dr. Snow. He didn’t sound very amused.

“I tell
fortunes. I work in New York City.”

There was a
tense pause, and then Dr. Snow said: “Mr. Erskine, it’s very good of you to
call me on a Sunday morning and tell me that. But I don’t understand why your
being a fortune teller is so particularly urgent.”

“It’s like
this, Dr. Snow. I have a client who’s in hospital right now, a young girl, and
she’s very sick. She has a kind of tumor on her neck, and the doctors are
pretty baffled.”

“I’m sorry to
hear that,” said Dr. Snow, “but I don’t quite see what it’s got to do with me.
I’m a doctor of anthropology, not of medicine.”

“That’s exactly
why I’m calling you, Dr. Snow. You see, I believe my client is being used as a
host for the reincarnation of an Indian medicine man. I think that tumor of
hers is actually the fetus of a redskin. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?
The way they drank blazing oil and got themselves reborn in the
past or the future.”

This time,
there was a longer and tenser pause. Then Dr. Snow said: “Are you serious,
Mr...”

“Erskine.”

“Mr. Erskine,
do you know what you’re saying? You’re telling me that there is somebody in New
York City today, alive now, who is harboring a reincarnated medicine man?”

“That’s exactly
it, sir.”

“Is this some
kind of a hoax? Are you putting me on? Students do that, you know.”

“I realize
that, sir. But if you give me the chance to come and talk to you for half an
hour, I think you’ll realize that we’re not kidding. If you want to check up on
me, you can ring Dr. Hughes at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital. We’re doing
this work with his approval.”

“We?”

“Myself and two friends.
One of them is a medium.”

I could almost
hear Dr. Snow’s mind churning around on the end of the telephone. Amelia and
MacArthur stared at me nervously as I waited for the old man’s reply.

“All right,” he
said finally. “I suppose you want to come and see me today?”

“As soon as possible, Dr. Snow.
I know this is a real
inconvenience, but a girl is dying.”

“Oh, it’s no
inconvenience. My wife’s sister is coming over today, and the less I have to
see of her, the better I like it. Come up anytime.”

“Thank you, Dr.
Snow.”

I put the phone
down. It was as simple as that I’m always amazed how readily and quickly people
will accept the occult and the supernatural, once the evidence is there in
front of their eyes. Dr. Snow had probably read about medicine man
reincarnation for years, without really believing it was possible, but as soon
as someone had told him it had actually happened, he was ready to accept it
without a qualm.

Anyway, I
grabbed my car keys and put on my herringbone coat.

“Who’s coming
to Albany?” I asked, and Amelia and MacArthur both got up to get ready.

“I hate to say
this,” said MacArthur, “but this is a damn sight more interesting than selling
social security plates.”

Dr. Snow lived
in a small, tight, brick-built house on the outskirts of Albany. It was
surrounded by dark, mournful cypress trees, and its windows were hung with
yellowed lace. The sky was threatening and metallic as we drove up through the
thick slush and ice, and there was a keen persistent wind blowing from the
northeast. There was a strange silence around, like the silence of children
waiting for a teacher they feared.

We stood around
on the doorstep clapping our hands to get the circulation back, and I rang the
bell. It went ding-donggg, deep in the recesses of the old house.

The door
opened, and Dr. Snow stood there. He was a tall, bent man with white monkish
hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. He was wearing a maroon cardigan with baggy
pockets, and plaid carpet slippers.

“Mr. Erskine?”
he said. “You’d better come in.”

We shuffled
into the gloomy hallway. There was a strong smell of lavender polish, and a
long-case clock ticked wearily in the corner. We took off our coats, and Dr.
Snow led us through into a chilly parlor. There were fierce Indian masks all
around the walls, contrasting with the English delicacy of stuffed linnets in
glass domes, and faded little Stevengraphs.

“Sit down,”
said Dr. Snow. “You’d better explain what this is all about. My wife will bring
you some coffee in a moment. I’m afraid we don’t drink liquor in this house.”

MacArthur
looked decidedly glum at that. There was a flask of bourbon in the car, but he
was too polite to ask if he could go and get it.

Dr. Snow sat
down on a hard little cane chair, and crossed his hands in front of him. Amelia
and I shared a low and uncomfortable settee, and MacArthur perched himself on
the window seat, so that he could stare out at the snowy trees.

As briefly as I
could, I explained Karen Tandy’s condition to Dr. Snow, and told him about the
seance we had held the night before. He listened quite intently, occasionally
asking me questions about Karen and her aunt, and about the apparition we had
seen on Mrs. Karmann’s cherrywood table.

When I’d
finished, he sat there for a while with his hands clasped, and considered. Then
he said:

“From what
you’ve told me, Mr. Erskine, the case of this unfortunate girl sounds genuine.
I think you’re right. There is only one other recorded case of a person being
chosen as the host for a medicine man’s rebirth, and that was in 1851, at Fort
Berthold, on the Upper Missouri, among the Hidatsa Indians. A young Indian girl
had a swelling on her arm, which eventually grew so large that it overwhelmed
her, and she died. Out of the swelling emerged a complete and fully-grown man,
who was said to be a magician of the tribe from fifty years previous.

“There was very
little documentary evidence to support the truth of this story, and up until
now it has been regarded as myth or legend. I have even called it that myself
in my book on the Hidatsas. But the parallels with your Miss Tandy seem so
close that I can’t see what else it could be. There are also stories among the
Kiowas that medicine men could appear as trees, and talk to people of the
tribe. Apparently trees and wood have a mystic life-force of their own which
medicine men were able to exploit for their own purpose. And that is why I
believe your story of the cherrywood table. I thought at first you were trying
to hoax me, but your evidence is overwhelmingly convincing.”

“So you believe
it?” asked Amelia, brushing her hair away from her eyes.

“Yes,” said Dr.
Snow, peering back at her through his spectacles. “I do believe it. I also took
the trouble to do what you suggested, and I called Dr. Hughes at the Sisters of
Jerusalem. He confirmed what you told me. He also told me that Miss Tandy was
in a critical condition, and that anything that anyone could do to save her
would be very important.”

“Dr. Snow,” I
said, “is there any way to fight this medicine man? Is there anything we can do
to destroy him, before he kills Karen Tandy?”

Dr. Snow
frowned. “What you have to understand, Mr. Erskine, is that the magic of the
Indians was very powerful and far-ranging. They drew no clear distinction
between the natural and the supernatural, and every Indian saw himself as being
in close touch with the spirits that ruled his existence. The plains Indians,
for instance, spent as much time on their religious ceremonies and medicine
signs as they did on perfecting their hunting skills. They considered it
important to be able to hunt their buffalo with craftsmanship and cunning, but
at the same time they thought that only the spirits would give them the
strength and the bravery to be able to carry out the hunt successfully.

“The Indians
were seekers of visions and practicioners of ritual, devoted to ceremonies that
brought them into close touch with the cosmos. They were in fact, one of the
great magical societies of modern times. Much of their secret lore has been
lost to us, but there is no doubt at all that they had real and extraordinary
powers.”

Amelia looked
up. “What you’re trying to tell us, Dr. Snow, is that none of us have enough
magical power to be able to combat this medicine man...”

The doctor
nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right. And if the medicine man is really three
hundred years old, he comes from a time when the magic of the Indians was still
amazingly strong. It would have been pure ethnic occult art, undiluted with
European preconceptions, and unimpressed by Christianity.

“The occult
spirits of North America, at the time of the early settlers, were a million
times more powerful and dangerous than any of the devils or demons of Europe.
You see, a spirit can only work its magic in the world of humans through the
medium of men and women who believe in it and understand it. Spirits do have an
independent existence, but they can have no material power in our own material
world unless they are summoned, consciously or subconsciously.

And if no one
believes in a particular spirit, or is able to understand it, it cannot be
summoned, and so it remains in limbo.

“The demons of
Europe were pitiful compared with the demons of the Red Indians. All they were
– or are, if you still believe in them – were opposites to the good and holy
tenets of Christianity. In The Exorcist, the story uses the demon Pa-zuzu, the
personification of sickness and ill health.
To the red man, a
demon like that would have been ridiculous – nothing more terrifying than a
mongrel dog.
The whole concept of life and health and the meaning of
physical existence
was
rolled up in the red man’s
equivalent spirit, and that made this particular spirit an incredible being
with monstrous powers.

“To my mind,
the real decline of the red man
came
not so much
through the treachery and greed of the whites, but through the erosion of the
occult powers of the medicine men. When the red tribes saw the scientific
marvels of the white man, they were unduly impressed, and lost faith in their
own magic. It’s arguable that this magic, if it had been used properly, could
have saved them.”