The manitou (23 page)

The intern
carefully inserted the hypodermic into the cameraman’s arm and squeezed the
plunger. After a few moments, the facial spasms and the shuddering seemed to
die away, and apart from a few isolated twitches, the cameraman began to calm
down.

“I don’t know
what it is,” said the intern, shaking his head. He was a callow young doctor
with carefully combed hair and a round, freshly poured face. “It looks to me
like some kind of severe psychological shock.
Probably a
delayed reaction to everything that’s been going on here.”

“Let’s get him
out of here and try to fix him up more comfortably,” called Dr. Winsome. Three
or four of the doctors went for a trolley, while the rest of us, frustrated and
frightened, dispersed in awkward silence to wait for whatever manifestation was
going to make its presence felt on us next. I heard Lieutenant Marino talking
angrily on the telephone to his reinforcements, and it was clear that they were
still having trouble gaining access to the building. Mingled with the moans of
Misquamacus’s wind, I could hear more sirens howling in the streets outside,
and I could see spotlights flickering against the windows. In an hour or two,
it would start to grow light, if we survived long enough to see it. The putrid
stench of the Great Old One was thick in the air now, and two or three people
were retching. The temperature kept fluctuating from stifling heat to
uncomfortable cold, as if the whole building had a raging and uncontrollable
fever.

I went back to
Singing Rock. He was scribbling down a series of numbers on the corner of a
magazine, and he looked intense and anxious. I waited for him to finish, then
said: “Do you think you can make it?”

Singing Rock
examined the figures carefully. “I’m not sure, but there’s something here. The
computer programmer said that the machine had no police records on anyone
called the Great Old One, and he combed back for ten years through every known
criminal alias. But Unitrak did respond with a message and a series of
numbers.”

“What do they say?”

“Well – the
programmer translated the message for me, and it says Call Procedure Follows
Promptly. Then we get the numbers.”

I wiped my
forehead with my stained handkerchief. “Does that help? Does that mean
anything?”

“I think so,”
said Singing Rock. “At least Unitrak answered. And if it answered – well, maybe
it knows that we want.”

I pointed to
the numbers. “You mean these numbers tell you how to summon its manitou?”

“Possibly.
We don’t know until we try.”

I sat down
wearily. “Singing Rock, it all sounds too far-fetched for me. I know what I’ve
done and I know what I’ve seen, but don’t tell me that some publicly funded
computer is going to tell us how to raise its own spirit. Singing Rock, it just
doesn’t sound sane.”

Singing Rock
nodded. “I know, Harry, and I don’t think I believe it any more than you do.
All I can say is that the message from Unitrak is here, and that these numbers
do tally with the appropriate ritual for summoning the manitous of manmade
objects. In point of fact, it’s one of the easiest of rituals. I was taught it
by the medicine man Sarara, of the Paiute, when I was only twelve years old. I
learned to raise the manitous of shoes and gloves and books and all kinds of
things. I could make a book turn all its pages, without touching it at all.”

“But a book is
a book, Singing Rock. This is a multimillion-dollar computer. It’s powerful. It
could even be dangerous.”

Singing Rock
sniffed the stench of the Great Old One that was already crowding the room.

“Nothing could
be more dangerous than what we are about to experience now,” he said. “At least
if we have to die, we will die a hero’s death.”

“A hero’s death
doesn’t interest me.”

Singing Rock
laid his hand on mine. “You didn’t think of that when you faced the Star Beast
alone.”

“No, but I’m
thinking of it now. Twice in one night is too much for any man.”

Singing Rock
said: “What was all that noise outside? Was someone hurt?”

I reached for a
cigarette from the pack on the desk. “I don’t think so. It was a cameraman from
CBS. He was walking about filming and he just collapsed. I guess he must’ve
been epileptic or something.”

Singing Rock
frowned. “He was filming?”

“That’s right.
I guess he was just taking shots of everybody in the whole place. He went over
like someone had knocked him on the head. Don’t ask me – I didn’t see it.”

Singing Rock
thought for a moment. Then he walked quickly out of the office, and over to the
CBS reporters. They were standing in an uneasy circle, five or six of them,
smoking and trying to figure out what to do next.

Singing Rock
said: “Your friend – is he all right?”

One of the
reporters, a short stocky man in a plum-colored shirt and heavy glasses, said:
“Sure.

He’s still with
the doctors, but they say he’s going to be okay. Say listen, do you know what
the hell’s going on here? Is this true, about evil spirits?”

Singing Rock
ignored his questions. “Is your friend prone to fits?” he asked intently.

The TV reporter
shook his head slowly. “Never saw him have one before. This is the first time,
far as I know. He never said he was an epileptic or nothing like that.”

Singing Rock
looked grave. “Was anyone else looking through a camera at the same time?” he
asked.

The TV reporter
said: “No sir. We only have this one camera here. Say – do you know what that
terrible smell is?”

Singing Rock
said: “May I?” and lifted the portable television camera out of its case. It
was dented where the falling cameraman had dropped it, but it was still
working. One of the technicians, a dour man in blue denim, showed him how to
heft it on to his shoulder, and how to look through the viewfinder.

The floor of
the room began to tremble and pulsate, like someone shaking in fright, or a dog
reaching a sexual climax. The lights dimmed again, and the sound of that
gruesome wind grew steadily louder. There was a panicky babble from the twenty
or thirty doctors and police and reporters crowded into the room, and Dr.
Winsome, ashen-faced and sweating, finally had to leave his clamoring internal
phones off the hook. We didn’t dare to think what was happening in other wards
and offices, and we couldn’t get to them now if we did. Lieutenant Marino was
still hanging on to the phone, waiting to hear from his reinforcements, but he
had given up any semblance of optimism. He chain-smoked, and his face was set
hard and grim.

As the floor
spasm passed, Singing Rock pressed his eye to the black rubber socket of the
television camera’s viewfinder, switched it on, and slowly began to scan the
room. He covered it in careful, systematic sweeps, exploring every corner and
behind every door. The CBS crewmen watched uneasily as he circled the room,
bent forward like
a water
diviner his thin body tense.

“What the
hell’s that guy up to?” said one of the technicians suspiciously.

“Ssh,” said his
colleague. “Maybe he’s trying to find out where the smell comes from.”

After a few
minutes of careful searching, Singing Rock laid the camera down. He beckoned me
across, and spoke to me in a low, hurried murmur, so that nobody else could
hear.

“I think I know
what happened,” he muttered. “The demons which always accompany the Great Old
One have passed through here. They are gone, now – probably down to the tenth
floor to gather around Misquamacus. But I believe the cameraman saw them.”

“He saw them?
How?”

“You know the
old story that Indians believed they should never be photographed, because
cameras would steal their spirits from them. Well, in a manner of speaking that
was correct. A camera lens, even though it can never steal a man’s manitou, can
perceive it. That is why there have been so many strange pictures in which
ghosts – unseen when the picture was being taken –

have
mysteriously appeared when the picture is printed up.”

I coughed. “You
mean the cameraman saw these demons through the viewfinder? That’s why he
collapsed?”

“I think so,”
said Singing Rock. “We’d better go and talk to him, if he’s still conscious. If
he can tell us which demons he saw, we may be able to work out when the Great
Old One is due to make his appearance.”

We called Jack
Hughes over and explained what was going on. He said nothing, but nodded in
agreement when Singing Rock suggested speaking to the cameraman. He had a brief
word with Dr. Winsome, and then he beckoned us through to the first-aid room.

It was silent
in there. On a high hospital couch, the cameraman
lay
pallid and twitching while three doctors kept a close watch on his pulse rate
and other vital signs. They greeted Jack Hughes as we came in, and stood aside
to let us gather round the cameraman’s bed.

“Don’t be too
rough with him,” said one of the interns. “He’s had a bad shock, and he’s not
up to much.”

Singing Rock
didn’t answer. He leaned over the white-faced cameraman and whispered: “Can you
hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

The cameraman
simply shuddered. Singing Rock said again: “Can you hear what I’m saying? Do
you understand where you are?”

There was no
response. The interns shrugged, and one of them said: “He’s deeply unconscious,
I’m afraid. Whatever it was that happened to him, his mind has kind of
retreated and it isn’t coming back out for anyone. It’s quite common in severe
shock cases. Give him time.”

Under his
breath, Singing Rock said: “We don’t have time.” He fished in his coat pocket
for a necklace of strangely painted beads, and he gently laid them on the
cameraman’s head, like a halo. One of the interns tried to protest, but Jack
Hughes waved him away.

With his eyes
closed, Singing Rock began an incantation. I couldn’t hear the words at all,
and those which I could hear were in Sioux. At least I presumed it was Sioux.
I’m not a linguist myself, and for all I know it could have been French.

The spell
didn’t seem to work at first. The cameraman remained pale and still, his
fingers occasionally twitching and his lips moving soundlessly. But then
Singing Rock drew a magic figure in the air over his head, and without any
warning at all, the cameraman’s eyes blinked open. They looked glassy and
ill-focused, but they were actually open.

“Now,” said
Singing Rock gently. “What did you see, my friend, through your camera?”

The cameraman
shuddered, and there were bubbles of saliva at the corners of his mouth. He
looked like a man dying from rabies, or in the terminal stages of syphilis.
Something so terrible was imprinted on his mind that there was nothing he could
do to exorcise it from his memory.

He couldn’t
even die.

“It’s – it’s –
“ he
stuttered.

“Come on, my
friend,” said Singing Rock. “I bid you to speak. It will not get thee. Gitche
Manitou will protect thee.”

The cameraman closed
his eyes. I thought for a moment that he had dropped back into unconsciousness.
But after a few seconds, he began to speak – very quickly and almost
unintelligibly – in a wordy rush.

“It swam, it
was swimming, it came swimming across the room and through the room at the same
time and I caught a glimpse of just the edge of it like a sort of squid, like a
squid, with waving arms, all waving, but it was big as well, I can’t say how
big it was, I was so frightened there was something inside my head like my
whole brain was stolen.
Only a glimpse, though, just a
glimpse.”

Singing Rock
listened for a while longer, but the cameraman said nothing more. He carefully
removed the beads from the man’s head, and said: “Well, that seems to be it.”

“Is he okay?” I
asked. “I mean, he’s not...”

“No,” said
Singing Rock. “He’s not dead. I don’t think he’ll ever be the same again, but
he’s not dead.”

“The squid,” I
said. “Do you know what that was?”

Singing Rock
said: “Yes. This man was privileged to see something that has been banished
from the earth for centuries. He didn’t see all of it, which is probably just
as well. The Great Old One is among us again.”

I
followed Singing Rock out of the first-aid room and into the
corridor. His black eyes were
glittering
again with
some of the zeal that I had slowly seen extinguished by our long and harrowing
night. He said: “This is it, Harry. Are you coming to help me?”

“This is what?
What the hell’s going to happen?”

Singing Rock
licked his lips. His voice was breathless, and he looked as if he were
feverishly ill.

“The Great Old
One is here. To wrestle with the Great Old
One
himself
– don’t you understand what that means to a medicine man? It’s like a Christian
having the chance to fight with Satan in person.”

“Singing
Rock...”

“We have to do
it,” said Singing Rock. “We have no time left at all. We have to go down there
and do it.”

“Go down there?
You mean – back to the tenth floor?”

Singing Rock
appeared to grow in size, as if some magical wind was inflating him. He was
trembling with fear and anticipation, and the ultimate lust of risking his life
against the greatest evil being of mythical America. When I said nothing more,
he simply turned away and began to walk quickly toward the stairs, so fast I
could hardly keep up with him.

I snatched his
sleeve, and he turned around.

“Singing Rock,”
I said. “For Christ’s sake – eleven armed men were killed down there. You saw
what happened.”

“It’s too
late,” said Singing Rock. “The Great Old One is here, and what happens now will
be worse.”