The manitou (7 page)

“Coffee is
terrific.”

He bleeped his
secretary to fetch us drinks, and then he sat back in his big black swivel
armchair and laced his hands behind his head.

“I’ve been
dealing with tumors for a good many years now, Mr. Erskine, and I’ve seen them
all.

I’m supposed to
be an expert in my field. But I can tell you straight out that I’ve never seen
a case like Karen Tandy’s, and I’m frankly bewildered by it.”

I lit a
cigarette. “What’s so special about it?”

“The tumor
isn’t the normal kind of tumor. Without going into too much grisly detail, it
doesn’t have any of the usual characteristics of tumorous tissue. What she has
there is a fast-growing swelling made of both skin and bone. In some ways, you
could almost describe the tumor as being like a fetus.”

“You mean – a
baby? You mean she’s having a baby – in her neck? I don’t understand you.”

Dr. Hughes
shrugged. “Neither
do
I, Mr. Erskine. There are
thousands of recorded cases of fetuses growing in the wrong place.
In the fallopian tube for example, or in various kinds of
annexations of the womb.
But there is no precedent for any sort of fetus
growing in the neck area, and there is certainly no precedent for any sort of
fetus growing as fast as this one.”

“Didn’t you
operate on her this morning? I thought you were going to remove it.”

Dr. Hughes shook
his head. “That was the intention. We had her on the operating table, and
everything was lined up for its removal.
But as soon as the
surgeon, Dr. Snaith, started making an incision, her pulse-rate and respiration
weakened so drastically that we had to stop.
Another two or three
minutes and she would have died. We had to satisfy ourselves with more X-rays.”

“Was there any
reason for this?” I asked him. “I mean, why did she get so sick?”

“I don’t know,”
said Dr. Hughes. “I’m having a series of tests run on her right now, which will
maybe give us the answer. But I’ve never come across anything like it before,
and I’m as mystified as anyone else.”

Dr. Hughes’
secretary brought us in a couple of cups of coffee and some biscuits. We sipped
in silence for a while, and then I asked Dr. Hughes the 64,000 dollar question.

“Dr. Hughes,” I
said. “Do you believe in black magic?”

He stared at me
thoughtfully.

“No,” he said.
“I don’t.”

“I don’t
either,” I replied. “But there’s something about this whole business that
strikes me as completely weird. You see, Karen Tandy’s aunt is also a client of
mine, and she has had the same kind of dream as Karen. Not so detailed, not so
frightening – but definitely the same kind of dream.”

“Well?” asked
Dr. Hughes. “What does that suggest to you – as a clairvoyant?”

I looked at the
floor. “I’ll confess to you here and now, Dr. Hughes, that I’m not a serious
clairvoyant. It’s my living, if you know what I mean. Usually I’m pretty
skeptical about spirits and the occult. But it does seem to me that there’s
some kind of outside influence causing Karen Tandy’s condition. In other words,
something is making her dream these dreams, and maybe it’s the same thing
that’s affecting her tumor and her health.”

Dr. Hughes was
suspicious. “Are you trying to tell me she’s possessed? Like The Exorcist or
something?”

“No, I don’t
think so. I don’t believe in that kind of demon. But I do believe that one
person can dominate another, through their mind. And I think that somebody or
someone is dominating Karen Tandy. Somebody is transmitting a mental signal to
her, a signal that’s powerful enough to make her ill.”

“But what about her aunt?
And this old
lady client of yours – the one who fell down the stairs this morning?”

I shook my
head. “I don’t think that this somebody really meant to harm them. But it’s
just like any powerful signal that’s sent over a considerable distance – any
receiver that happens to be in the area it’s being sent to
tends
to pick it up, too. Mrs. Karmann and Mrs. Herz were close to Karen Tandy, or to
places where she’d been, and they picked up the backwash from the main
transmission.”

Dr. Hughes
rubbed his eyes, and then looked at me narrowly. “All right – supposing someone
is sending a signal to Karen Tandy, with the intention of making her ill. Who
is it, and why are they doing it?”

“Your guess is
as good as mine. But don’t you think it might do some good if we talk to Karen
herself?”

Dr. Hughes
spread his hands. “She’s in pretty bad shape. Her parents are flying in this
evening, in case we can’t pull her around. But I guess it wouldn’t affect her
chances if we tried.”

He lifted the
phone and spoke to his secretary. In a few minutes, she bleeped back and said
she’d made arrangements for us to visit Karen.

“I’m afraid
you’ll have to wear a surgical mask, Mr. Erskine,” said Dr. Hughes. “She’s
quite weak, and we don’t want any more infections getting into her system.”

“That’s okay by
me.”

We went down to
the tenth floor, and Dr. Hughes showed me into a dressing room. As we tied on
green surgical robes and masks, he explained that he would have to ask me to
leave if her condition worsened even slightly.

“I’m only
letting you see her because you have a theory, Mr. Erskine, and anybody with a
theory could help us. But I warn you that this is all very unofficial, and I
don’t want to have to explain to anyone why you’re here.”

“I get you,” I
said, and followed him down the corridor to Karen Tandy’s room.

It was a big
corner room, with a view of the snowy night on two sides. The walls were pale
hospital green, and there were no flowers or decorations, except for a small
picture of a fall day in New Hampshire. Karen Tandy’s bed was surrounded with
surgical equipment, and there was a clear drip feed going into her right arm.
She had her eyes closed, and she looked as white and
wan
as the pillow she was lying on. There were dark umber circles around her eyes,
and I could hardly recognize her as the girl who had come into my apartment the
previous night.

But it was the
tumor that was the most startling. It had swollen and grown around her neck,
pale and fat and threaded with veins. It must have been twice the size it was
the night before, and it was almost touching her shoulders at the back. I
looked across at Dr. Hughes and he simply shook his head.

I pulled up a
chair to her bedside and laid my hand on her arm. She felt very cold. She
stirred a little, and her eyes opened slightly.

“Karen?” I said
softly. “It’s me – Harry Erskine.”

“Hello,” she
whispered. “Hello, Harry Erskine.”

I leaned
closer. “Karen,” I said. “I’ve found the ship. I went to the library and looked
it up and it was there.”

Her eyes
flickered toward me.

“You’ve – found
it?”

“It’s a Dutch
ship, Karen. It was built around 1650.”

“Dutch?” she
said weakly. “I don’t know what it could be.”

“Are you sure,
Karen? Are you sure you haven’t ever come across it before?”

She tried to
shake her head, but the distended tumor prevented her. It bulged from the back
of her neck like an awful pallid fruit.

Dr. Hughes laid
his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think we’re getting very far, Mr. Erskine.

Maybe we just
ought to leave it.”

I grasped
Karen’s wrist more firmly.

“Karen,” I
said.
“What about de boot?
What
about de boot, mijnheer?”

“The – what?”
she whispered.

“De boot,
Karen, de boot.”

She closed her
eyes, and I thought she’d gone back to sleep again, but then something seemed
to shift and stir on the bed. The bulging white tumor sudden wriggled, as
though there was something alive inside it.

“Oh, Christ,”
said Dr. Hughes. “Mr. Erskine, you’d better...”

“Aaaahhh,”
groaned Karen.
“Aaaahhhhh.”

Her fingers
clutched the sheets, and she tried to toss her head. The tumor squirmed and
wriggled some more, as if it was clutching the back of her head, and squeezing
it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
she screamed. “DE BOOOTTTTTT!!”

Her eyes rolled
toward me, and for one strange moment they looked like the eyes of someone else
altogether – bloodshot and fierce and remote. But then Dr. Hughes was ringing
the bell for the nurses, and fixing a syringe of sedative, and I was ushered
away from the bedside and into the corridor. I stood there, hearing her scream
and fight inside, and I felt as helpless and isolated as I’d ever been in my
whole life.

A
few minutes later, Dr. Hughes came out of Karen Tandy’s room,
stripping off his gloves and his mask with weary resignation. I went up to him
immediately.

“I’m sorry,” I
told him. “I just didn’t realize it would have that effect.”

He rubbed his
chin. “It’s not your fault. Neither did
I
. I’ve given
her a light sedative and it should help her to calm down.”

We walked back
to the changing-room together and took off our surgical robes.

“What worries
me, Mr. Erskine,” said Dr.
Hughes,
“is that she
responded so violently to those words you came out with. Up until then, she was
okay – or at least as well as anybody could be expected to be with that kind of
a tumor. But it seemed like you triggered something off there.”

“You’re right,”
I agreed. “But exactly what was it? Why should a normal intelligent girl like
Karen Tandy get so upset by the idea of an old Dutch galleon?”

Dr. Hughes
opened the door for me and led me out to the elevator.

“Don’t ask me,”
he said. “You’re supposed to be the mysticism specialist.”

He pressed the
button for eighteen.

“What did the
X-rays show you?” I asked. “The ones you took in the operating theater?”

“Nothing very
clear,” answered Dr. Hughes. “When I said there seemed to be a fetus in that
tumor, I should have said it was something fetus-like, but not exactly a baby
in the accepted sense of the term. There is a growth of bone and flesh, which
seems to have a systematic pattern of development, the same way that a baby
has, but whether it’s human or not, I can’t say. I’ve called in a gynecological
specialist, but he can’t make it here until tomorrow.”

“But supposing
tomorrow’s too late? She looks – well, she looks as though she’s going to die.”

Dr. Hughes
blinked in the bright light of the elevator. “Yes, she does. I just wish to
hell there was something I could do about it.”

The elevator
reached the eighteenth floor and we stepped out. Dr. Hughes led me into his
office and went straight over to his filing cabinet and brought out a bottle of
whiskey. He sloshed out two large glassfuls, and we sat down and drank in
silence.

After a while,
he said: “You know something, Mr. Erskine. It’s ridiculous and it’s insane, but
I believe that this nightmare has something to do with this tumor.”

“In what way?”

“Well, the two
seem closely inter-related. I guess you spiritualists would think that the
nightmare was causing the tumor, but I’d say it was the other way around – that
the tumor is causing the nightmare. But whichever it is, it seems to me that if
we can discover more about the nightmare we can discover more about the
condition.”

I swallowed a
burning mouthful of neat Scotch. “I’ve done all I can, Dr. Hughes. I located
the ship, and the ship seems to provoke a pretty severe reaction. But where can
we go from here?

I’ve told you –
I’m only a quack when it comes to the real occult. I don’t see what else I can
do.”

Dr. Hughes
looked thoughtful.
“Supposing you do what I’m doing, Mr.
Erskine.
Supposing you seek expert assistance.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well, surely
all clairvoyants aren’t – quacks, like you. Some of them must have genuine
talent for investigating things like this.”

I put down my
glass. “Dr. Hughes, you’re really serious, aren’t you? You really believe
there’s something occult going on here.”

Dr. Hughes
shook his head. “I didn’t say that, Mr. Erskine. All I’m doing is exploring
every possibility. I learned a long time ago that, in medicine, it can be fatal
to leave any avenue unexplored. You can’t be narrow-minded, not when a human
being’s life is at risk.”

“So what do you
suggest?” I asked him.

“Simply this, Mr. Erskine.
If you’re interested in trying to
save Karen Tandy from whatever it is that’s making her ill, go out and find a
real clairvoyant who can tell us just what this goddam ship thing is all
about.”

I thought for a
while, and then I nodded. After all, I had nothing to lose. At least, I didn’t
think I had anything to lose. And who knows, I might end up with some real
occult knowledge.

“Okay,” I said,
swallowing the last of my whiskey. “I’m on my way.” Back at my flat, I went
straight into the kitchen and made myself four slices of cheese on toast. I
hadn’t eaten a thing all day, and I was feeling sick. I opened a can of
Schlitz, and carried my meal into the living room. I couldn’t help sniffing
around the place, just to see whether the evil spirit that had possessed Mrs.

Herz was still
lurking in her shadows, but there was no evidence that anyone had been there.

Mind you, I
don’t suppose that spirits leave footprints.

Munching my toast,
I telephoned my friend Amelia Crusoe. Amelia ran a small knick-knackery store
in the Village, and I knew she was well into spiritualism and all that kind of
stuff. She was a tall dark lady with long brown hair and soulful eyes, and she
lived with a bearded guy called MacArthur, who made a living selling customized
social security plates.