Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

“Then what’s this thing?” asked Harry. “Just a minor-league stooge?”

“In comparison, yes,” said Singing Rock. “Its name is Sak, which simply means ‘the past.’ It is a beast that has existed on this planet for countless millions of years, or so the Algonquian say. Its chosen duty has always been to encourage humans to summon the elder gods, so that the elder gods may devour them as sacrificial gifts, and reward Sak with whatever a beast like that might want as a reward.”

“A gold ball-point pen?” asked Harry. “Who knows what demons want?”

Neil couldn’t even find it in himself to laugh. He kept looking at the pictures of Toby, and the face of Misquamacus was sharply clear in every one of them.

Singing Rock stood up. “Sak will want more than that and, unfortunately for us, he’s going to get it pretty soon. When I talked to the elders of my tribe about this matter, they said that before the day of the dark stars could dawn, several essential rituals had to be completed. The penultimate ritual was the summoning of Sak, who would make the way ready for Ossadagowah. After that, ah1 the twenty-two medicine men have to do is join their strength together in the name of whatever spirits they choose-tree spirits or water spirits or rock spirits. Knowing what little we do about Misquamacus, I’d say they probably chose tree spirits.”

Harry said, “You think they’re already done that?”

Singing Rock nodded. “Almost certainly. If you want me to hazard a guess, I’d say they probably did it on Friday, before they all had to go home for the weekend. When they went out on that school trip this morning, they were ready for the day to begin.

The day of the dark stars, or the day when the mouth comes down from the sky.”

“You mean it could be today?” asked Neil, frightened.

Singing Rock checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. The day of the dark stars begins at noon and lasts through until the following noon. It’s supposed to be twenty-four hours of chaos and butchery and torture, * the day when the Indian people have their revenge for hundreds of years of treachery and slaughter and rape, all in one huge massacre.”

Mr. Saperstein took his photographs back and looked at them in bewilderment. Then he said to Singing Rock, “Is this true, what you’re saying? Or is it simply fantasy?”

Singing Rock pointed to the misty, wriggling shape of Sak. “Is that true?” he asked.

“Or is that simply fantasy?”

Mr. Saperstein took off his glasses. “It’s incredible. I don’t know why I didn’t even see it at the time. It’s enormous.”

“That’s one thing we’ve learned, Mr. Saperstein,” said Harry. “Demons and spirits can be seen through some photographic lenses, even when they’re almost invisible to the naked eye. It’s happened before.”

“I thought I was going crazy,” said Mr. Saperstein. “I took those pictures out and looked at them, and I was sure I was going crazy.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Neil softly. He held out his hand to Mr. Saperstein. “Join the club.”

Singing Rock said, “We have much less tune than I thought. If the day of the dark stars begins at noon today, that means OssadagoWah and the rest of the demons will be summoned when Nepauz-had, the moon goddess, appears.”

Mr. Saperstein opened another of his desk drawers, shuffled through it like a rat looking for eggs in a hayloft, and at last produced a battered maroon diary. He licked his thumb and turned the pages until he came to the one he wanted.

“Moonrise tonight is 10:02,” he announced. “I presume that’s what you mean.”

“Thank you, Mr. Saperstein, it is,” said Singing Rock. “And that means we have less than ten hours to prepare ourselves. Quite apart from that, we don’t even know where the children are.”

“They went to Lake Berryessa,” said the music teacher. “It was their school outing.”

“They were supposed to go to Lake Berryessa,” said Singing Rock. “But remember the legend speaks of twenty-two medicine men.”

“So? What does that have to do with it?” asked Harry.

“It could have everything to do with it,” said Singing Rock. “There are only twenty-one children in the class, and therefore the twenty-second medicine man must be emerging inside one of the adults aboard that bus.”

“There’s only Mrs. Novato and the driver,” said Mr. Saperstein, aghast. “You don’t think that Mrs. Novato-?”

Harry said, “I wouldn’t have thought so myself. She didn’t look like the type. Too homely, even for your average medicine man from 1830.”

“Who’s the school bus driver?” asked Singing Rock.

“Well, it’s usually Jack Billets, from Valley Ford,” said Mr. Saperstein. “But I think he’s been off sick lately. I don’t know who they used today. I didn’t see him.”

Neil picked up Mr. Saperstein’s telephone and dialed the operator. When he was through, he said, “Amy? Is that you? Listen, this is very urgent. Do you have Jack Billets’s number, down at Valley Ford? Sure. Could you put me through?”

He waited a little while, and then they heard a faint voice at the other end of the telephone.

“Jack?” asked Neil. “This Neil Fenner. Yes. Hi. Listen, I heard you were sick. That’s right. Well, I hope it improves. But listen, Jack, do you know who’s taking the bus up to Lake Berryessa today? It’s pretty important, you know?”

The faint voice replied, and then Neil said, “Thanks, Jack. I’ll buy you a drink for that.

Okay, fine. Thanks a whole lot.”

He set the phone down, and then looked at Harry and Singing Rock and let out a long, controlled breath. “The driver is an old retired sailor who sits around the dock at Bodega Bay. A guy named Doughty. I met him on Friday, and he did everything he could to persuade me not to go on with all the fuss I was making about the children.

He said Susan had told him to talk to me. Now I know it was a damn sight more than Susan. It was Misquamacus.”

Neil tapped his finger against his head, and snapped, “It was Misquamacus, inside of here!”

Neil went to the window and looked out over the back of the school, at the green, rounded hills beyond the fence, at the distant grayness of ocean mist. He said softly,

“It all makes a lot more sense now. It was Doughty who suggested I go visit Billy Ritchie, and that was how I found out about Misquamacus in the first place. If I hadn’t have known about Misquamacus — if I hadn’t have believed in the day of the dark stars — then I wouldn’t have called you or Singing Rock to help me.”

Singing Rock, from his chair in the comer of the office, smiled and nodded.

“You’re beginning to understand the deviousness of Misquamacus, aren’t you? He wanted both of us here in California, Harry and me, so that he could take his revenge on us before any other white man or mercenary Indian. It would have used too much energy, too much magic, to bring us by any mystical means. So he simply had Doughty put you on to Billy Ritchie, who was the only person around who could tell you the truth.”

Neil tiredly rested his head against the window. “And when it was all over, he made sure that Billy Ritchie was killed.”

“Harry told me about that,” said Singing Rock. “It was a favorite method of quick death, the lightning-that-sees. It strikes like an occult guided missile. Misquamacus once used it against two of Harry’s closest friends.”

“All this accounts for something else, too,” said Neil “The appearance of Dunbar’s ghost in the bay. He was there because Doughty was there. He was warning me, just like he kept trying to warn me everyplace else.”

Singing Rock looked at his watch again. “The first thing we have to do is find out where that school bus is. Then, before it gets dark, we have to get those children together somehow, so that I can arrange a medicine circle around them. One of the elders has given me a spell that was supposed to have kept Coyote away from the daughters of Roman Nose, and that should keep their activities confined for a little while. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than taking their first attack in the chest.”