Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

She looked up at him, her face smudged with tears.

“But what did you do in here?” she asked him. “Why is everything burned?”

He stared at her. It occurred to him, with a feeling of awful coldness, that she still didn’t believe what was going on. She hadn’t seen the wooden figure, after all. She had heard nothing but noises. Now, he was standing amid cinders and ashes, with no way to prove what he had seen or heard.

He said, slowly, “The wooden man was here. That’s all that’s left of him.”

“The wooden man?” she frowned. “Neil, I-”

He pointed savagely toward the wardrobe. “The wooden man was here and he talked to me. He told me who he was, and he told me what was happening, and everything that old-timer told me up in Calistoga was right. The Indian medicine men are being reborn, in the bodies of our children, and they’re going to kill as many white men as they possibly can.”

“Neil, stop it! Neil, please, it’s just your imagination!”

“What about the way Toby spoke downstairs? You think that’s imagination?”

Susan held him tight. “Toby’s just unsettled, that’s all. He sees you behaving like this, and it scares him. He says things because he’s sensitive, because he doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

“He says things because he’s possessed by a Red Indian magician!” shouted Neil.

“He says things because Misquamacus makes him!”

“Oh, yes?” said a voice. “And who’s Misquamacus?”

Neil looked up. On the landing, in his neatly laundered police uniform, stood Officer Turnbull. He was a lean, punctilious cop with a blue chin and a sharply pointed nose, and Neil had never particularly liked him. He stepped into the room and surveyed the ashes and the burned furnishings with professional detachment.

Neil let Susan go, and stood watching Officer Turn-bull poke around without speaking. After a while, Officer Turnbull gave him a dry smile, and said, “You didn’t answer my question yet.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” mumbled Neil. “It wasn’t intended to be taken as the literal truth.”

Officer Turnbull eyed him for a few seconds. Then he said, “I see. And what’s the literal truth of what happened here? You decide to have a cookin instead of a cookout?”

Neil wiped soot from his face. “I was just breaking up that old wardrobe,” he said. “I guess I had an accident with the matches.”

Officer Turnbull sniffed. “Pretty disastrous accident, I’d say. You sure you weren’t bent on burning the place down?”

“Why the hell would I do that? I had an accident. I told you.”

“Well,” said Officer Turnbull, “some folks who find themselves short of cash think they can make a little extra from torching their houses. It’s the insurance money, you understand?”

Neil looked at rum, disgusted. “Get out of here,” he said sharply.

“I’ll go when I know what happened,” Officer Turnbull told him. “What was that you just said about Misky-something?”

“It’s a pet name,” said Neil. “It’s something we call Toby. Now, will you please get out of here and give me the chance to clean the place up?”

Officer Turnbull took out his pen and studiously wrote in his police notebook. Then he cast his eyes around the room again, and said, “Let’s make this the last fire we have in here, huh? Bodega’s a nice little community, and the last thing we want is to have it looking like the South Bronx.”

“Is there anything else?” asked Neil, with thinly disguised Impatience.

“I reckon that’s all. But IN have to file a report.”

“You can do what you like. Thanks for dropping round. It’s nice to know that you can count on the cops, as long as you’ve done something they can understand.”

Officer Turnbull tucked away his notebook, shrugged, and went downstairs. They heard the kitchen door close, and the sound of his patrol car leaving the yard. Neil sighed, and stepped over the ash and debris to the landing.

Susan said, “You didn’t have to speak to him like that. He was only doing his job.

You should be grateful he came.”

“Yes,” said Neil dully. “I suppose I should. Where’s Toby?”

“He’s downstairs in the kitchen. I think he’s all right now. After you went into his bedroom-well, he seemed to relax. He became his normal self again.”

“That was because Misquamacus left him, and took on the shape of a wooden man.”

Susan didn’t answer that. She said, “Let’s go downstairs. Maybe I should bathe those blisters. Those hands are going to be sore in the morning.”

Neil leaned against the wall. He felt suddenly exhausted, and his eyes hurt. It seemed almost too much to fight this frightening thing on his own. If only Susan believed him. If only one person believed him, apart from old Billy Ritchie.

He said, “I’m okay. I guess my arm could use a little ointment, but everything else is all right. Could you make me some coffee?”

She kissed his cheek solicitously. “Sure. Whatever you want. You just rest up tonight, and in the morning you’ll feel fine.”

He took her hand. “Susan,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Susan, I’m not going nuts. I saw that wooden man up there as close as I’m standing here now.”

She gave him a quick, noncommittal smile. “Yes, honey. I know. There was a wooden man.”

They went downstairs. Toby was back at the table, finishing his drawing, and when Neil came down he looked up at him with deep, serious eyes. Neil regarded his son for a long, silent moment, trying to see the spirit of the wonder-worker who might be lurking someplace inside him, but there didn’t seem to be any sign at all.

He came up close and hunkered down beside Toby’s chair. The boy gave him a cautious grin, and said, “What’s the matter, Daddy? Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” nodded Neil. “We just had a little accident with matches, that’s all. You should learn something from it. Don’t play with fire.”

“Yes, sir,” said Toby, politely.

For some reason, Toby’s manner seemed to discourage any further conversation, and Neil couldn’t think what else to say. He glanced at Toby’s drawing, and asked,

“How’s it going? You finished it yet?”

“Sure.”

“Can I see it?”

Toby nodded. “If you want.”

The boy took his crooked arm away from the paper, and Neil took it off the table and examined it. It was almost an abstract, colored mainly in blues and grays and dull greens. There seemed to be clouds, with twisting tentacles writhing in between them, and a suggestion of a face that wasn’t truly a face at all. It was crude, and drawn with Toby’s usual heavy-handedness, but there was something strangely subtle and disturbing about it as well.

“What is it?” asked Neil.

Toby gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know, sir. It isn’t a person.”

Neil ran his fingers lightly over the waxed surface of the drawing. In the back of his mind, he heard that strange, distant voice again, the voice of the wooden man. “ I am the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape.”

He ruffled Toby’s hair, and laid the drawing back on the table. From across the kitchen, Susan was eyeing him closely.

“It’s a nice picture,” said Neil, for want of anything else to say. “It looks like some kind of octopus.”

Susan said, “Your coffee’s almost ready.”

Late that night, when Susan and Toby had gone to bed, Neil went silently downstairs and into the den. He sat at his desk in the darkness, and moved the telephone toward him. He looked at the dial for a while, as if he were thinking, and then he picked up the receiver and called information.