The manitou (17 page)

Slowly,
Misquamacus stretched his hard muscular arms, scarred with magical patterns. He
raised his head, with his eyes still shut, so that it was facing directly at
us.

“Is he awake?”
whispered Jack Hughes.

“I don’t know,”
said Singing Rock. “But he will be soon.”

Suddenly, we
heard a breathy noise from the bed. The blue-white lips of Karen Tandy’s body
seemed to be moving, and air was hissing in and out of them.

“She’s still
alive,” said Wolf.

“No,” said
Singing Rock. “Misquamacus is doing that. I think he’s going to speak to us
through her, like he did before. He’s using her like a microphone, so that he
can talk to us in our own language.”

“But that’s
impossible,” protested Jack Hughes. “He’s nowhere near her.”

“It might be
scientifically impossible,” said Singing Rock quietly. “But this is not
science. This is Indian magic.”

We stood
stock-still as deeper breaths began to hiss and gurgle from Karen Tandy’s
throat.

Then she began
to whisper to us, in a faint hollow voice that froze every nerve in my body.

“You – have –
tried – to – defy – me – hisssss,” breathed the voice. “You – have – hurt – me –
and – I am – feeling – great – pain. I – intend – to – punish – you – for –
that – sssssssss.”

Her dead lungs
collapsed, and her lips stopped quivering. We turned back to look at
Misquamacus himself. His yellowy eyes suddenly opened, and stared at us with
glittering malevolence. The same smile that had tightened his face when he
appeared on the cherrywood table crossed his expression now.

Singing Rock
started his incantations, and tapped his bones in a soft, knocking rhythm. But
we could tell that his sorcery was nothing compared to that of Misquamacus,
because the neon lights in the room began to flicker and fade, and within a few
seconds we were plunged into complete darkness.

I stretched my
arms out, trying to take a friendly hand, but I couldn’t seem to reach anyone.
I was terrified in case I touched the still-slimy face of Misquamacus.

“Don’t move,” hissed Singing Rock, with fright in his voice.
“Don’t anybody move.”

But somebody or
something was moving in the room, and it was shuffling toward us with a slow,
irresistible gait.

W
olf struck his cigarette lighter, and turned the gas up full, and
the tall yellow flame lit the room in a carousel of hideous shadows.

Misquamacus,
with an animal grin on his glistening face, was still crouched within the
medicine circle, but just in front of him, on the floor, the red and white
powders that singing Rock had set down were shifting and sliding apart, like
iron filings drawn away by a magnet.

“He’s breaking
it!” shouted Jack Hughes.
“Singing Rock – for God’s sake!”

Singing Rock
took a step forward and stood right in front of Misquamacus – only a couple of
feet away from the deformed medicine man, and with only the rapidly dispersing
powders of the medicine circle between them.

He cast more
powders at Misquamacus, and drew signs in the air with his bones, but
Misquamacus simply twitched and flinched, as though he were batting away
midges. From Karen Tandy on the bed, we heard a soft and hideous laugh, dying
away in a bellows-like hiss.

The last of the
medicine circle slithered away, and now there was nothing between us and the
hell-bent
Misquamacus. I didn’t know whether to stay put or
run, but I knew that Singing Rock needed all of us badly, to support his
sorcery, and so I stayed where I was, tingling with fear.

The naked
Misquamacus raised himself as tall as he could on his stunted legs, and spread
his arms wide. Out of his own lips, in a harsh and guttural voice, came a long
Indian incantation, repetitive and involved, and then with one bony hand he
pointed across the room.

I followed the
line of his finger. He was pointing directly at the gory corpse of Michael, the
male nurse.

Singing Rock
stepped back quickly. “Get out of here, now!” he snapped, and pushed us toward
the door.

Just as I got
out into the corridor, I saw something that literally started my teeth
chattering. The bloody heap of Michael’s body was moving: exposed arteries were
pulsing, naked nerves were throbbing, and his inside-out lungs, like two
dripping balloons, were drawing breath again.

By the feeble
orange light of Wolf’s cigarette lighter we saw the shambles of Michael’s body
rise gorily to its feet. Deep in the bleeding tissue of the inverted face, two
watery eyes stared out at us – squid’s eyes, from a terrible submarine
nightmare.

Then step by
liquid step, leaving behind it a trail of viscous membrane, Michael’s corpse
started to walk toward us, smearing everything it touched with blood.

“Oh, Christ,”
said Jack Hughes, in a desperate, horrified voice.

But Singing
Rock was not idle. He fumbled in his pocket for his leather bottle, unstoppered
it, and poured some of its contents into the palm of his hand. With wide,
sweeping strokes, he sprayed a pattern of magical liquid into the air, across
and over the shambling wreck of Michael’s body.

“Gitche
Manitou, take life from this creature,” he muttered. “Gitche Manitou, reward
this servant with death.”

Michael’s body
sagged, and dropped to its knees, bare muscles sliding over exposed bones. It
finally collapsed, and lay in a heap beside the door.

Inside the
room, Misquamacus was at work again. We couldn’t see him now, because Wolf’s
cigarette lighter flame was rapidly sinking, but we could hear him chanting and
talking, and tossing the bones and hair that Singing Rock had used to make his
medicine circle.

“Wolf,” said
Singing Rock. “Go and fetch us a few flashlights. We must be able to see what
we’re doing. Misquamacus can see in the dark, and it’s easier for him to summon
his demons in the dark. Please – as
quick
as you can!”

Wolf handed me
his hot cigarette lighter, with its bead of diminishing flame, and ran down the
corridor to the elevators. He almost didn’t make it. As he turned the corner,
there was a blue-white flash of dazzling fire. It sent sparks crawling across
the floor, and left a searing orange after-image on my eyes.

“Wolf!” called
Singing Rock. “Are you okay?”

“Okay, sir!”
shouted back Wolf. “I’ll be right back”

“What the hell
was that?” said Jack Hughes.

“The lightning-that-sees,”
said Singing Rock. “That was what killed your friends, Harry. I thought
Misquamacus would try to get him like that once he was away from me, so I
diverted it.”

“It still went
damn close,” said Jack.

“A miss is as
good as a mile,” I commented. The lighter had almost dwindled away now, and I
was straining my eyes to see what was happening in Karen Tandy’s room. I could
hear shufflings and bumpings, but it was impossible to make anything out.

Darkness
enveloped us again. We kept a hand on each other’s shoulders, so that we
wouldn’t be separated. It also helped to concentrate the force of Singing
Rock’s spells, whenever he cast them. With complete blackness pressing against
our eyes, we kept our ears pricked up for the slightest sound.

After a few
moments, we heard Misquamacus chanting again.

“What’s he
doing?” whispered Dr. Hughes.

“Something I
was afraid of,” said Singing Rock. “He’s summoning an Indian demon.”

“A demon?”
asked Jack.

“Not exactly a
demon in European terms.
But the Indian equivalent.
One of the ancient ones.”

“Do you know
which one he’s calling?” I said.

Singing Rock
listened to the coarse, muttering incantation as closely as he could.

“I don’t know.
He’s using a name from his own tribal language. Although the demons are all the
same throughout North America, each tribe has a different name for them. This
one is something called Kahala, I think, or K’malah. I’m not sure.”

“How can you
fight it if you don’t know which one it is?” I said.

I could imagine
Singing Rock’s lined lugubrious face.

“I can’t. I’ll
have to wait and see when it appears.”

Clinging
together, we waited for the ancient apparition to manifest
itself
.
Through the darkness, we saw pale flickers of greenish light coming from Karen
Tandy’s room, and coils of pallid smoke.

“Is the place
on fire?” asked Dr. Hughes.

“No,” said
Singing Rock. “The manitou is being formed out of that smoke. It’s like
ectoplasm, you know, in European spiritualism.”

The green light
faded, and then we heard more noises from inside the room. There was a sound
like scaly claws scratching the floor, and then we heard Misquamacus talking.
He spoke for at least a couple of minutes, and then, to my horror, I heard
someone talking back to him.

Someone who spoke in a grating, unearthly voice – guttural and
cruel.

“He’s telling
the demon to destroy us,” said Singing Rock. “Now, whatever you do, keep hold
of each other, and don’t try to run. If you run, you’ll be out of my
protection, and he’ll get you.”

Two lines from
The Ancient Mariner suddenly pounded through my brain – about the man who looks
back and then no longer turns his head “because he knows a fearful fiend doth
close behind him tread.”

The scraping of
claws on the floor of Karen Tandy’s room began to move toward us. Through the
gloom, I began to make out a tall dark shadow standing in the doorway, facing
us across the corridor. It seemed to be like a man, and yet completely unlike a
man. I squinted into the darkness, and made out things that looked like claws
and scales.

“What is it...”
hissed Jack Hughes.

“It’s the demon
we called Lizard-of-the-Trees,” said Singing Rock. “He is the evil manitou of
forests and woods and all trees. I think that Misquamacus has chosen him
because he knows I am from the plains, and I have less control over the
manitous of the forest.”

The dark being
in the doorway started to move toward us, uttering a thin insect-like piping in
its throat. Singing Rock immediately cast powders and liquid at it, and rattled
his magic bones.

It could only
have been two or three feet away when it stopped.

“You’ve done
it,” said Jack. “You’ve stopped it.”

“It won’t kill
us, because my medicine is too strong for it,” Singing Rock said breathlessly.
“But it refuses to return to limbo without a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice?
What the hell does it want?”

“A small piece
of living flesh, that’s all.”

I said: “What?
But how can we give it that?”

“Anything,”
said Singing Rock.
“A finger, an ear.”

“You can’t be
serious,” I said.

“It won’t leave
without it,” Singing Rock replied. “And I can’t hold it back for very much
longer.

It’s either
that, or we’ll be torn to shreds. I mean that. This creature has a beak, like
an octopus, or a pterodactyl. It can rip you open like a sack of beans.”

“All right,”
said Dr. Hughes quietly. “I’ll do it.”

Singing Rock
took a deep breath. “Thank you, Dr. Hughes. It should be quite quick. Stretch
your hand out toward it. Give it your little finger. Fold all the rest of your
fingers right back. I will try and keep most of your hand within the circle of
my spell. Once it’s bitten, take your hand away at once.
As
quickly as you can.
You don’t want it to take any more.”

I could feel
Dr. Hughes shaking as he reached out his hand toward the shadowy bulk of the
Lizard-of-the-Trees. I heard razor-like claws scraping on the floor as he
stretched nearer and nearer, and that thin piping sound as the demon breathed.

There was a
horrible excited rustle, and the claws skidded frantically on the corridor
floor, and then a crunch like I never want to hear again.

“Aaaaahhhhh,”
shrieked Dr. Hughes. He abruptly sagged and collapsed between us. I felt warm
sticky blood pump over my legs and hand as I reached down to help him.

“Aaahh, shit,
shit, aahh, shit,” he screamed. “Oh God, it’s taken half my fucking hand!
Oh Christ!”

I knelt down
beside him and whipped out my handkerchief. Working as well as I could in the
dark,
I bound up the bitten flesh. From what I could feel
the demon’s beak had scrunched off at least two or three fingers and half his
knuckles. The pain was obviously unbearable, and Jack Hughes was twisting
around and weeping with agony.

Singing Rock
knelt down too. “The creature has gone,” he said, “It just faded and vanished.
But I don’t know what kind of spirit Misquamacus will summon up next. That thing
was only a minor creature. There are far worse manitous than that.” “Singing
Rock,” I said, “we’ve got to get Dr. Hughes out of here.”

“But we can’t
leave Misquamacus now. I don’t know what he’ll do if we let him alone now.”

“Dr. Hughes is
in terrible pain. If he doesn’t have that hand attended to, he’s going to die.
It would be better to lose Karen Tandy than Dr. Hughes.”

“That’s not the
point,” said Singing Rock. “If we let Misquamacus alone now, he’ll destroy the
whole place. Hundreds of people could die.”

“Oh God,” wept
Dr. Hughes.
“Oh God, my hand, oh God.”

“Singing Rock,”
I snapped, “I’ve got to get him out. Look, do you think you can hold
Misquamacus off by yourself for a few minutes? Keep that fire away from us
while I take him up the corridor, then I’ll get him to a medic and come
straight back.”

“All right,”
said Singing Rock. “But don’t take your time about it. I need at least one
other person on my side.”