Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

Mr. Saperstein said, “Is there anything I can do? I’d like to help. I don’t quite understand what’s going on, but H you don’t mind that, you’re welcome to whatever I can do.”

Harry suggested, “Why don’t you call the Highway Patrol? Tell them that some of your kids went off on a day trip to Lake Berryessa, and that a mother just telephoned to say that her son took her Librium pills in his lunch box, thinking they were candies.”

Singing Rock stood up. “That should do fine. If you want us, Mr. Saperstein, we’ll be over at Neil Fenner’s house. And thank you.”

The teacher gave a nervous, self-deprecating grin. “It’s been a pleasure, I guess. It’s such a relief to find out you’re not going out of your mind.”

“Mr. Saperstein,” said Singing Rock, resting a gnarled hand on the music teacher’s arm, “there may be times in the next twenty-four hours when you wish that you were.”

Singing Rock worked over the kitchen table until midafternoon, the blinds drawn to keep the light from distracting him, and an angular desk lamp over his papers and magical artefacts. While Harry and Neil paced the veranda waiting for Mr. Saperstein to call with news from the Highway Patrol, the South Dakota medicine man laboriously prepared lists of the enemies they were about to face, and gathered together as many spells as he could to hinder and obstruct those enemies. Out of his suitcase came bones, hanks of hair, and earthenware jars of powder. Just after three o’clock, when the sky was low and heavy with metallic gray clouds, he came out of the kitchen door and stretched.

Harry asked him, “Are you finished in there?”

Singing Rock shrugged. “As finished as I’ll ever be.”

“I never knew Indians were such pessimists,” retorted Harry. “No wonder you lost the West.”

“We were pessimists because we’d already lost the East,” Singing Rock reminded him.

Harry lit another cigarette and coughed. “I sometimes wonder whether you’re fighting on the right side. With an attitude like yours, you and Misquamacus would make a fine pair.”

Singing Rock raised his head a little, and looked across at Harry with eyes that were bright and penetrating.

“One day, in one of my lives, I hope to be far greater than Misquamacus,” he said.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “You’re trying to tell me that you've lived before, too?”

Singing Rock smiled. “It always used to amuse the Indians, before they began to understand how callous the white men.actually were, how much the white men knew about living, and how little they understood about life.”

“You’re in a very philosophical mood.”

Singing Rock pulled across a weather-bleached chair and sat down, resting one booted foot on the veranda railing. “Maybe I am,” he said quietly. “But I believe we’ll be facing Misquamacus again tonight, and this time he’ll be ready for us.”

Harry walked to the edge of the veranda and rested his hands on the railing. He felt unpleasantly sticky and hot, and the afternoon seemed completely airless. Even out here, it was like being shut in a cupboard. The smoke from the cigarette drifted lazily away in blue puffs.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose it’s a great honor to be first on the zapping list of the greatest Indian medicine man who ever lived. Just think, I may never have to eat at the Chock full o’ Nuts again.”

Neil said, “Have you worked out who most of the medicine men are?”

“Yes,” said Singing Rock. “They come from the times before the white men arrived on our shores, in those ancient days when Indian magic was at its height. In those days, the gods themselves were supposed to have walked America, and these medicine men worked out their apprenticeships as shamans and wonderworkers with the gods themselves to guide them. Their power is inestimable. Together, under the direction of Misquamacus, they will be devastating.”

“Do you have a plan?” asked Neil.

“Sure,” put in Harry. “We promise them beads and firewater, just like we used to do in the old days. Then, when they’re trying on their beads and drinking their firewater, we steal their sacred medicine circle and build a downtown shopping mall on it.”

Singing Rock took out a pack of chewing tobacco and grinned. “I’m sorry, Harry. It won’t work a second time.”

Neil bit his lip. “Listen,” he said, “that’s my son out there. My son and all my son’s friends. Wheat’s going to happen to them?”

With a measured bite, Singing Rock took a mouthful of tobacco and chewed it steadily for a moment. Then he spat out onto the dust.

“That’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said, in his deep, serious voice. “You have to understand that if Misquamacus successfully emerges out of Toby’s mind and takes on physical shape, then the drain on energy which Toby suffers will almost certainly be fatal.”

Neil felt as if someone had hit him from behind. “What?” he said weakly.

Singing Rock lifted both his hands. “I am telling you that because you must be prepared for the very worst. There is very little chance that once the medicine men have used those children to reincarnate themselves, they will allow them to live.”

“Then what’s the use?” asked Neil. His face was very white. “What’s the use of trying to save them at all?”

“It’s not just the children,” said Harry. “We’re trying to prevent this whole state from being torn apart. But there’s something else, too, isn’t there, Singing Rock?”

Singing Rock hesitated, then nodded. “I guess you have a right to know the best as well as the worst. If by any slim chance we do manage to defeat these medicine men, and send them back to the outside, then the children will be restored unharmed. It is hard to explain to a white man why this should happen, but there is an eternal natural principle in Red Indian magic of balance and redress. A sort of occult Newton’s Law.”

Neil turned away and walked to the end of the veranda. Harry glanced at Singing Rock with an expression that suggested he might go after him and try to reassure him, but Singing Rock shook his head.

“Leave him. If he’s going to help us, he has to face up to the truth.”

Neil heard Singing Rock’s words, but he didn’t turn around. He looked out over the small yard that, until last week, had been his plain but happy home. With a feeling that brought tears to his eyes, he noticed that Toby had left his Tonka bulldozer out by the woodshed. He would have been annoyed normally, in case it rained and the bulldozer got rusty. But now it didn’t matter. Toby was never going to play with it again. It might as well stay there.

Inside the house, the telephone was ringing. He guessed it was probably Mr.

Saperstein, but somehow he couldn’t summon the energy to move from where he was. He heard Harry go inside and bang the kitchen door. His senses seemed to be dulled, and all he wanted to do was find a bed someplace and go to sleep.

Out of the corner of his eye, though, he was sure he could see something wavering in the grass beyond the fence. He peered more intently, and shaded his face against the dull, coarse light that filtered through the heavy clouds. There was something out there that was shifting and flapping like a pale transparent flag. Then it began to grow clearer, an instant photograph developing on plain paper. It was the figure of Dunbar, in his wide-brimmed hat and his coat, and with his gun belt slung low around his hips.

“Singing Rock!” said Neil, breathlessly.

Singing Rock raised his eyes, and then quickly looked to the place where Neil was pointing.

“It’s Dunbar!” said Neil. “That’s him-the man in the long white duster coat!”