Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

Singing Rock said, “You’re very unusual for a white man, Mr. Fenner, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“What do you mean?” asked Neil.

“You were prepared to believe in the supernatural before you started trying to think of rational explanations for what you saw. Most white men think of the rational explanations first, and only believe the supernatural when they have no other choice.

Even then, they frequently don’t believe it.”

“How could I ignore it?” said Neil. “I spoke to Dun-bar. I was only ten or twelve feet away from his ghost, and there isn’t anybody alive who can tell me I was dreaming.”

“And you saw Misquamacus, too, as a wooden man?”

“That’s right.”

Singing Rock glanced at Harry, and from his expression, Harry could see that he was deeply disturbed about what he was hearing.

Singing Rock continued, “I don’t want to alarm you too much, Mr. Fenner, but there’s something I believe you ought to know.”

“Call me Neil, please.”

“All right, Neil. What you have to know is that every manitou, according to Indian belief, is reincarnated seven times, and that each time it lives and dies and lives again, it gains strength and wisdom. After its seventh life on earth, it’s wise enough to join the gods outside, in what the Micmac used to call Wajok, the abode of the great ones.”

“I see,” said Neil, turning right and driving up the dusty roadway that wound over the hills toward his house. “So what does that have to do with Misquamacus?”

“Just about everything. The last time Harry and I encountered Misquamacus, he was into his fourth, or more likely his fifth, reincarnation. I could judge that because of the vast distance of time he had covered in one leap-from 1650 to the present day. It takes a powerful medicine man to do that. Now, from what you’ve told us about the things you found out in Calis-toga, Misquamacus lived again in the 1830s, and that would have been his sixth reincarnation.”

Neil wiped dust from his mouth with the back of his hand. The house was in sight now, and he was driving more slowly.

“You’re trying to tell me this is his last reincarnation?”

“I believe so,” nodded Singing Rock. “He’s almost ready to take his place in Wajok, and that means he’s immensely powerful, immensely strong, and almost unbeatable by any other medicine man. He had to go through a physical rebirth the last tune we met him, like a human fetus, but now he’s growing himself inside of your son’s mind.

Don’t ask me how he does it. It’s beyond my medicine. But he’s doing it and, even before he’s finished doing it, he’s demonstrated some magic that no present-day wonder-worker could even touch. Creating that wooden man, Neil, takes occult powers that could make earthquakes. And that’s before he’s emerged from your son’s mind, before he’s ready to zap us with everything he’s got. There isn’t any doubt at all that he’s going to call down Ossadagowah, and when he does that, we’re really up against it.”

Neil stopped the pickup outside his backyard and took out the keys.

“Are we going to die?” he asked Singing Rock quietly.

Singing Rock sighed. “That is one prediction I don’t care to make,” he replied. “But remember this is Misquamacus’s seventh and last reincarnation. After this, he won’t have any further opportunities to take his revenge on the white people, except if this manitou is summoned to earth by other medicine men. And when you consider the general condition of Indian magic in America today, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.”

They pulled up outside Neil’s weatherbeaten house and climbed out. Neil led the way across the yard and into the kitchen, and he showed Singing Rock to the bathroom to freshen up. Harry carried his suitcase into the parlor.

“Does Singing Rock drink?” asked Neil, taking a six-pack of Coors out of the icebox.

“I don’t think so. But he might appreciate a cup of coffee.”

Singing Rock returned, hung his sport coat on the back of his chair, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His arms were muscular and sinewy, and decorated with elaborate patterns of tattoos and scars. As he sat down at the pine table, Neil had the feeling that he had some experienced, professional help at last.

“I want to see everything,” said Singing Rock. “The children’s paintings, the wardrobe upstairs, the sheets that attacked your wife. I want you to tell me everything, too, all over again, in as much detail as you can remember it. If we’re going to win out against these medicine men at all, we have to know as much about them as possible.”

Neil reached up to one of the top cupboards and brought down the sheaf of paintings from Toby’s classmates. Singing Rock went through them all meticulously, peering at every figure, and comparing one nightmare picture closely with another.

As he examined the pictures, he asked Neil to tell him about the first appearance of the visitation they knew as “Dunbar,” and everything that Billy Ritchie had told him about Bloody Fenner and that grisly day up at Conn Creek.

Neil was nervous” at first, but as he drank and talked, he found he was able to confide in Singing Rock, and tell him everything about his days of fear and horror.

Singing Rock glanced at him from time to time, and the Indian’s eyes were understanding and wise in a way that Neil had never seen before in anyone. Harry, who had heard it all before, sat at the end of the table smoking and drinking his beer out of the can.

Eventually, when Neil had finished, Singing Rock laid out the paintings on the kitchen table, twenty-two garish illustrations of the same terrible incident

“I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened,” he told them. “The medicine men needed to draw on the strength of an Indian victory to help them in their reincarnation. It’s difficult to explain it exactly, but they’ve used the massacre at Las Posadas as a focal point for their rebirth, like a politician trying to make a comeback by reminding people of his past achievements. The massacre was what Misquamacus meant when he was referring to the gateway. He didn’t want you to disturb the historic vibrations that he had been setting up with Alien Fenner’s guidance. You-because you’re a Fenner yourself-would have been more likely to upset things than anyone.”

Neil asked, “But why did Dunbar appear? Misquamacus wouldn’t have wanted him around, surely?”

Singing Rock slowly shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain. The most likely explanation is that all this spirit activity connected with the incident in which Dun-bar died was enough to disturb his manitou, and he began to make ghostly appearances. You have to remember that this is the single most powerful psychic incident that has ever occurred in modern America, and it involves more upheaval of the ethos than you can possibly imagine. Why do you think you can feel all this tension? The spiritual planes are in chaos and crisis. No wonder a few shades from the past are turning over in their graves.”

Harry said, “What we really need are the ghosts of the entire Seventh Cavalry. Do you think you could manage to raise them up?”

Singing Rock smiled. “You’d be sorry if I did. The Seventh Cavalry was a great deal more vicious than the Indians most of the time.”

Neil looked over Singing Rock’s shoulder at the school paintings. “Do these words mean anything to you?” he asked. “I couldn’t make them out at all.”

Singing Rock picked up one or two. of the paintings. “They’re in different dialects,” he said, “but they all seem to refer to the day of the dark stars in one way or another.

Ta-La-Ha-Lu-Si was the name the Patwin Indians used for Napa Valley. It simply means ‘beautiful land.’ Kaimus was the Wappo name for the town of Yountville, which is halfway up the valley, as you obviously know. These words here, though, sokwet and oweaoo and pados are all Algonquian.”