Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

Toby watched him silently and emotionlessly, but as Neil moved around the room, his eyes followed him all the way.

“I want to know who you are,” said Neil. “I want you to give me some kind of sign.”

Toby smiled, without humor or human compassion. He said, in a hoarse, echoing voice, “There will be no signs. You will not interfere. You will leave the gateway intact.”

Neil replied, “No signs, huh? Well, in that case, I’m afraid the gateway goes. You can’t just use my son that way and expect me to cooperate. I’m going to go upstairs right this minute and turn your so-called gateway into cheap firewood.”

Toby growled, “I shall kill you.”

Susan, across the other side of the kitchen, whimpered. She could see now how malevolent and red Toby’s eyes were, and how his hands clenched and unclenched with impatient strength. She said, “Toby, for pity’s sake.”

Toby ignored her. He kept his eyes on Neil. At that moment, Neil was in no doubt at all that whatever was using Toby to speak this way, could and would destroy him. He could already feel the temperature dropping in the kitchen, and he could see the red line of the thermometer by the stove gradually sliding downward.

“I’m going up there,” said Neil. “If you want to stop me, then you’re going to have to fight me.”

He turned and opened the wooden door that led up to the stairs. In Toby’s room, across the landing, he could already hear shuffling and bumping sounds, as if a heavy piece of furniture were being shifted around. He turned and took a last look at Toby, but Toby didn’t move. The boy simply sat at the table, his face calm and smooth with intensely self-possessed hatred. Neil didn’t like to leave Susan, but he guessed that Toby probably wouldn’t harm her-Toby or whatever demonic thing was using Toby to speak to him.

“You are very unwise,” said Toby dispassionately.

Neil climbed the stairs as far as the landing. The bedroom door was closed, but now the bumping noises were louder and more frantic. It sounded like chairs and tables and beds being hurled from one side of the room to the other. He heard a lamp smash, and then a window break.

“Alien,” begged the voice, a persistent whisper beneath the clattering and thumping.

“Please, Alien … help …”

His heart was beating in slow, painful pulses as he approached the room. From underneath the door, strange, cold lights were flickering, like a blue neon sign that was short-circuiting. There was an odor, too, a chilly smell of burned electricity, mingled with an indescribable sourness. His throat was dry, and he felt so frightened that his legs hardly responded when he tried to go nearer.

“Fenner,” said a coarse voice, and he turned abruptly around. It was Toby, standing halfway up the stairs, his reddened eyes fixed on him in undisguised anger. I'm warning you, Fenner. Leave that wardrobe alone.”

“You just keep away,” said Neil. ‘I'm going to do what I have to do, and nobody’s going to stop me.”

“You’re a fool, Fenner,” grated Toby. From behind him, framed in the light from the kitchen, Susan pleaded uncomprehendingly, ‘Toby! Toby, what’s the matter? Toby!”

“Alien …” said the haunted whisper. “Alien, for Cod’s sake …”

There was a bursting, explosive sound from within Toby’s bedroom. Neil crossed the landing, took hold of the doorknob, and forced the door open. Immediately, there was another explosion, and he was sucked by a rush of freezing air into the darkness of the room itself. He fell against the opposite wall, jarring his back, and he lay with his hands protecting his head while the air screamed and howled all around him with a hideous cacophony of sound. Behind him the door slammed shut He opened his eyes. The room was quieter now, but still dark. The sounds died away to whispers. He strained to see what was happening, but it seemed as if the moon had died, as if the stars had gone out

Then, gradually, he became aware of a faint white phosphorescence on the other side of the room. He couldn’t make out what it was at first, but as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he could make out the shape of a human head and human shoulders.

He said, in a voice that was much more off-key than he had hoped, “Is there somebody there? Who is that?”

There was silence for a long time. He listened, but he couldn’t hear anyone breathing. There wasn’t any doubt, though, that what he could see was a human figure. It was sitting on the chair beside Toby’s wardrobe, and he could even see the glimmer of its eyes. It only occurred to Neil after several tense, hushed minutes that the wardrobe had been returned to its usual resting-place.

He said, “Is there someone there? I want to know who you are.”

The figure appeared to move, and as it moved, it creaked. It was a sound that terrified Neil beyond anything. It was the sound of wood, under stress. It was the sound of a man whose limbs were made out of varnished timber. It was the sound of a demon come to life in the form of a human, but in the substance of the forests.

“You are interfering in the schemes of the gods,” said the figure. “You are meddling with the past and with the future.”

Neil swallowed, although there was nothing in his throat to swallow except the dryness of his fear.

The faint phosphorescence wavered, and Neil saw the shine of a cheekbone of gleaming walnut The nicker of eyes that were wood, and yet saw. He glanced toward the door of the room, but he knew that even if he tried to make a run for it, the wooden man could get there first

“Who are you?” he said.

There was silence, and then that horrendous creaking sound as the figure rose to its feet It slowly stepped toward him, its wooden heels clattering on the floor, and then it stood over him, tall and dark and menacing.

“You want to know who I am?” it replied. Its voice sounded peculiarly distant, as if it was speaking from centuries away. “I am the wooden form of the greatest of those outside. I am not here, in this wood. I am not in your son, although your son speaks to yon in my voice, I am beyond the barrier, in the hunting grounds to which all manitous are consigned after their lives in the physical world have ended.”

“Why are you here?” asked Neil, in a shaky voice. “What do you want from us? Is Billy Ritchie right? Is it the day of the dark stars? Have you come to kill people?”

The wooden figure turned stiffly away. “It is not for you to know.”

Neil, scared, climbed slowly onto his feet. Even when he was standing up, the wooden figure loomed a good four or five inches over him. Neil stepped back across the room, reaching out behind him with his hands, trying to orient himself in the deep, cold darkness.

“You are a Fenner,” said the wooden man. “You will be spared because your ancestor helped my brothers. But only if you accept what is happening, and do not try to resist us. If you resist, I shall feed you as scraps of meat to the demons of the north wind.”

Neil answered breathlessly, “I have a right to know. I'm Toby’s father. You’re going to use Toby and I’m going to stop you.”

The wooden figure didn’t move. But it said, in its eerie, distant voice, “Before you talk about your rights, white man, before you talk about stopping me, remember the thousands of Indian families you slew, and of all those red men who died without rights. Not just fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters. Think of the women you raped and mutilated, of the braves you scalped. Then tell me that you have a right to know anything.”

Carefully stepping backward, sweating and trembling, Neil found the edge of Toby’s bed. He reached behind him and fumbled under the comforter for the sheet He heard the wooden man creak and those heels knock against the bedroom floor, and he froze. But then the wooden man stayed where he was, and Neil softly tugged the sheet out, and rolled it up into an untidy ball behind his back.