Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

“Don’t count chickens,” warned Harry. “From what I saw of Misquamacus the last time, hell could be a much more comfortable alternative.”

They left Toby’s room, and walked quietly along the landing until they came to the main bedroom. Neil raised his finger to his lips and then slowly opened the door, beckoning Harry to follow him.

Toby and Susan were both fast asleep. The moon had passed by now, and the room was thick with shadows. The luminous dial of the bedside clock, which chattered softly in the corner, said three-thirty.

“This is your boy?” said Harry, quietly hunkering himself down beside Toby’s bed. He touched the flushed, sleeping cheek, and stroked the untidy hair. Toby stirred slightly, and his small hand opened a little, but his breathing remained calm and even.

“The trouble is, this is a war,” Harry whispered. “It’s not just one evil character trying to get his own back.

It’s the red nation fighting to get their revenge on the white nation. A real war.”

He stood up, still looking down at Toby. “And the sad thing is that, in wars, it’s always the innocent people who get hurt the worst.”

Neil watched Harry tiredly.

“Do you want to get some sleep?” Neil asked. “There’s a big couch in the front room, and I can find you some blankets.”

Harry said, “Yes, for sure. Have you ever tried sleeping on a plane with fifty-five rabbis? They spent the whole flight chattering about how they were going to go see Carole Doda. I’m sometimes glad my mother was a Catholic.”

Stepping around the end of the bed, Neil went to make sure that Susan was warm and comfortable. He bent over her and listened to her steady breathing for a while, but he didn’t kiss her or touch her. He felt as if he had somehow failed her, as if he hadn’t protected her as a husband should. There didn’t seem to be any way to make up for what had happened except to destroy Misquamacus, and to free his house and his family from the terrible curse that seemed to have descended on them.

Harry was waiting for him by the door, darkly silhouetted by the light from the landing. He said, “Are you okay? You look as if you could use some sleep yourself.”

Neil took a last look at the bedroom and nodded. “I feel bushed, to tell you the truth.”

He was about to close the door when he heard Toby stirring in his bed. The boy whimpered and moaned, and seemed to struggle for a while with his sheets. Harry turned and raised a questioning eyebrow, but Neil said, “I think he’s all right. He’s been pretty restless ever since the dreams started.”

Harry gave a small, nervous grunt, and made sure that he kept his eye on Toby’s sleeping body until Neil had closed the door. It was only when they were halfway down the landing that both of them felt a strange cold surge in the ah-, as if an ocean wave had suddenly rippled under the rug. The grandfather clock at the end of the landing abruptly stopped ticking, and there was a sharp odor in the air, like burnt electricity.

Harry said, in a hollow voice, “He knows I’m here.”

“How can he?” asked Neil.

“He knows, that’s all. It’s what he’s been waiting for.”

Neil looked at Harry with a face lined with exhaustion and anxiety. “I just hope we’ve got the strength to fight this thing,” he said, hoarsely. “I just hope to God we’ve got the strength.”

On Sunday afternoon, a dry windy afternoon of dust-storms and tumbling newspapers, Harry and Neil and Toby drove around Bodega to visit Toby’s classmates at home. Toby had been quiet and pale all morning, but he hadn’t objected when Neil ushered him into the battered Pinto, and asked him to direct Harry to each of his friends’ houses. He was Toby today, with no sign of the malevolent personality of Misquamacus, although he was unusually listless and distracted. If Neil hadn’t known what was wrong with him, he might have guessed that he was coming down with flu.

“Singing Rock said it was very important to take a look at the opposition,” remarked Harry, smoking a Camel Light down to halfway and tossing the butt out of the window. “He said we need to know names, or signs, or anything which might tell us who these twenty-two medicine men are. Some medicine men, even the most famous, had weak spots we could use to break them up.”

“You think Toby’s classmates are really going to tell us that stuff?”

Harry shook his head. “Of course not. But we have to do our best. If we could find out just one name, that’d be something.”

Toby said flatly, “Here. This is Andy Beaver’s house, right here.”

They pulled up outside a small weatherboard house with an overgrown veranda and a yard full of rye grass and strutting chickens. Henry Beaver, in denims and suspenders, was sitting on the veranda reading the San Francisco^ Sunday-Examiner. Andy was jumping through the grass with a toy pistol, playing explorer.

Harry got out of the car and leaned against the roof.

“How do you do,” he called to Mr. Beaver.

Henry Beaver folded his paper, dropped it beside him, and then crossed his arms over his huge belly. “How do you do yourself,” he replied.

Neil climbed out of the car, too, more cautiously. “Hi, Henry,” he said, with an awkward smile.

Henry Beaver didn’t smile back. “Still chasing ghosts, Neil Fenner?” he asked.

“Caught one yet?”

Harry closed the door of the Pinto and walked across to Mr. Beaver’s veranda railing.

He leaned his arms on it, and then rested his chin on his arms, and regarded Mr.

Beaver very seriously. Mr. Beaver, uncertain and unsettled, glanced at Neil for some kind of explanation. Neil remained expressionless.

“Mr. Beaver,” said Harry benignly, “I flew in from New York City last night because I heard of the trouble that Mr. Fenner had been having here in Bodega.”

Henry Beaver looked him up and down. “You’re not FBI, are you?” he wanted to know.

Harry shook his head. “I’m a special investigator of matters pertaining to specters and apparitions. I’m an occultist, if you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly,” replied Henry Beaver suspiciously. “Is it something to do with eye tests, or what?”

“You’re thinking of an oculist, Mr. Beaver,” said Harry, in a smooth, salesmanlike tone. “But you’re almost right. I investigate strange things that people have seen, and I try to determine the truth of them. You got me?”

“You mean ghosts, things like that?” “Well, yes, if that’s the way you want to put it.”

Henry Beaver slowly shook his head and picked up his newspaper again. “I’m sorry, mister, but nobody ain’t seen no ghosts around here, except for Neil Fenner there.”

He nodded toward Neil with an emotionless face. “The truth is, we don’t believe that kind of garbage around these parts, and that’s the long and short of it.”

Harry wasn’t at all put off. He climbed the veranda steps and sat down on the end of Mr. Beaver’s lawn chair.

“Mr. Beaver,” he said, “I don’t want you to be too hasty. You see, the truth of the matter is that some very reliable apparitions have been appearing to school-age children all over California, particularly in these parts, and my people have been very interested in hearing some firsthand reports.”

“Your people?” asked Henry Beaver. He still looked massively unconvinced.

“The people I work for. The Occultist Investigation League of America.”

Henry Beaver sniffed. “Well, so?”

“Well, it’s possible that your son Andy might have seen something and not told you about it,” said Harry. “He could have easily glimpsed a ghost or some kind of a specter, and not thought to tell you. Maybe fie thought you’d laugh at him. Maybe he just forgot to mention it.”