Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

The wooden man said: “I am the greatest of those outside, the unquestioned master of the wonder-workers of ancient times. I am the chosen of Sadogowah, the instrument of Nashuna. I have scores to settle from times deeper than you can imagine, white man. I have a score with the Dutchmen, for the diseases they brought to Manhattan. I have a-score with the pilgrims, for the ways they taught the Wampanoags and the Nansets. I have a score with the settlers and the fanners and the railroad men, for the Cheyenne who died, and the Sioux who died, and the Apaches and Paiute. We were at one with the lands, white man, and all the forces and the influences of the lands, and all the gods and the spirits for whom trees grow and stones are thrust up from the earth’. We were the greatest of the nations of the earth, and you slew us with rifles and diseases and empty promises. We shall have our revenge, white man, in the way that is prophesied on the great stone redwood, and you shall all taste blood.”

Neil slid his hand in his pocket and felt for the box of matches. He could almost hear old Billy Ritchie now. “A man of rock or wood is just as vulnerable as rock or wood.”

The figure said, “The white man, Fenner, helped my Wappo brothers in years gone by. He helped them because he understood their struggle, and because he had Wappo blood in his own veins. That is why your son is chosen, white man. That is why we were led at last to bring down the spirits of the great Nashuna and Ossadagowah in this place, at this time.”

Neil managed to fumble a match from the box. He scratched it against the side and he smelled burnt phosphorus, but it didn’t catch. He was sweating, in spite of the bitter cold, and his teeth were clenched in tension. As it spoke, the wooden figure came closer and closer, until it was standing only two or three feet away, its dark wooden head towering over him.

“I have a personal score to settle, too,” the wooden man said, in that uncanny voice that was far away, and yet so close that Neil seemed to be hearing it inside his head.

“A personal score?’ asked Neil. He scratched again at the side of the matchbox.

“I have visited your time before, in the body of a young woman. I was reborn to wreak vengeance on those who had laid waste to the islands you now call New York.

I was born as a human, in my own flesh, but I was destroyed in that form by a white charlatan and a treacherous red man from the plains. That is the personal score I have to settle. I will find the white man called Erskine, and the red man called Singing Rock, and I will destroy them both.”

The figure’s body creaked again and it raised one of its arms.

“I am the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape. I am the Messenger of the Great Old One, the Chosen of Sadogowah. I am the Keeper of the Elder Seal, and the worker of wonders unknown in future times. My name is Quamis, known to the Wampanoag as Misquamacus. I have arrived for the day of the dark stars.” The wooden man raised both arms and stretched out for Neil’s throat Neil, with a high-pitched whine of fear, ducked sideways, and simultaneously struck at his match. It flared up, and caught at the crumpled sheet

In the sudden leaping light of orange flames, Neil glimpsed a wooden face that was contorted with anger. Fierce eyes glistened above a hooked Indian nose and a mouth drawn back on wooden teeth. It was Misquamacus, the same face he had seen in Billy Ritchie’s photographs, only this time it was vengeful and twisted with rage.

The sheet flared up even more violently, burning Nefl’s hand. With a sweep of his arm, he threw the fiery cloth over the wooden man’s head, so that the figure was enveloped in flames. Then he pushed his way toward the door, and struggled to open it

“Susan!” he yelled. “Susan! Open this door! It’s jammed! Susan!”

He frantically looked behind him. The wooden figure of Misquamacus was standing beside Toby’s bed, and already its head and shoulders were starting to blaze. There was a rank odor of burned cotton and wood.

“Susan!” he shouted, rattling the door knob. “Susan, for God’s sake!”

He thought for a terrible moment that Toby might have done something to Susan, might even have killed her, but then he heard her calling, “I’m here! I called the police!”

“Push the door!” called Neil “I can’t get out of here! Push the door!”

He turned around again, and to his terror, the fiery figure of Misquamacus was walking slowly toward him, arms outstretched to seize him. There were flames rippling up from the wonder-worker’s chest, and his head was a mass of fire, but he kept coming, and Neil could feel the heat from his burning body.

“You are as weak as the grass.against me,” said the blazing lips. “I shall devour yon if yon try to cross me, and I shall offer yon up to the most terrible of my gods.”

“Susan!” Neil screamed. He shook and tugged at the door, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“The door is fastened by my will alone,” said Misquamacus. “You will never open it in a hundred moons.”

The room was filling with blinding, choking smoke. Through its billows, impossibly tall and shuddering with flame, the wooden figure stalked nearer, until Nefl had to abandon the door and scramble toward the window. He glanced quickly out through the broken pane. It was a long drop onto hard ground, and even if he didn’t break his neck, “he’d probably wind up with a couple of fractured legs.

He turned back toward the medicine men. The breeze from the window was feeding the flames, and the wooden body burned with a soft, sinister, roaring sound.

“I have you now, white man,” whispered the charring mouth. “I have you now.”

Beside him, the linen cover of Toby’s bedroom chair began to smolder and burn, and one of the drapes caught afire.

Neil raised his arm to protect his face from the heat *The fiery fingers clawed closer, and one of them seized his sleeve, viciously strong and searingly hot. He kicked out against the wooden figure, but it slammed him against the window frame, and he heard his back crack. All he seemed to be able to see was fire, and the grotesque outline of a face wrought in blazing charcoal.

Suddenly, the flames burst out higher. The bedroom door was open, and even more oxygen was nourishing the wooden figure’s fire. Neil wrenched Ms arm free and dropped to his knees, scorched and agonized.

The next thing he knew there was a strange series of sounds. They were slow and ghostly, and they sounded like the surf on the ocean shelf, like something being played in slow motion. Above him, the wooden figure faltered, turned, and then abruptly began to burst into thousands of shattering, whirling fragments of blazing ashes.

The fire exploded over Neil as he lay crouched on the floor, raining all around him.

His neck and his hands were prickled with cinders. But then there was nothing but burned-out chunks of blackened walnut, and a fine dusting of gray ash. Neil blinked, and slowly raised his head.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the outline of a man’s feet, and the hem of a pale-colored coat. He thought he saw a hand move, the way a hand moves when a gun goes back to its holster. But then there was nothing but the landing, and Susan, pale-faced and frightened, under the harsh light from the lamp on the ceiling.

She came into the room and helped him up. He brushed ash and burned wood from his shirt and coughed. His hands and his forearm were blistered, and his hair was singed, but apart from that he was unhurt

“Neil’ Susan wept. “Oh, Neil.”

He held her close. He was trembling, and he felt shocked, but he had the feeling that he had been saved by some kind of spiritual intervention, that a ghostly force had recognized his danger and come to save him. It gave him, for the first time since Toby had started having nightmares, a feeling of strength and confidence. He gently stroked Susan’s hair and said, “Don’t cry. I think we’re going to make it. I think we’re going to be all right.”