Graham Masterton - Revenge of the Manitou

He looked back at Singing Rock. “I don’t know who you people are, or what kind of a stunt this is, but I warn you I’m going to find out, and then I’m going to put your ass in a sling. Twenty-two ancient Indian medicine men! They don’t even talk that crazy in the nuthouse.”

Singing Rock said earnestly, “I know how you feel, captain. It does sound crazy when you first hear it. But it’s the absolute truth. It’s happened before in New York, and if s happening again here. The spirits, the manitous of all those ancient wonderworkers have infiltrated the minds of the children. Right now, they’re preparing to summon down one of the greatest of their ancient gods.”

Captain Myers fixed his eyes on Singing Rock for a long moment. Then, without a word, he turned his back and continued to check over his map.

Harry shouted, “Are you pigheaded or are. you just pigheaded? Didn’t you hear what the man told you?”

“Yes!” snapped Captain Myers, jerking his head around. “And it makes me heave!

Every time there’s a murder, or a kidnapping, or an officer hurt in the course of his duty, the goddamned sewers open and people like you come crawling out! People who try to capitalize on human suffering and sensational crime! Now, get out of here before I have you arrested and locked up! You’re wasting my time!”

Harry looked at Singing Rock and gave a shrug that meant, well, we did try. Then the sergeant came forward, a big man with furry red forearms and a belly as big as a baby hippopotamus, and said, “Come on, you guys. Back in that truck and get moving.”

Under escort, they walked back across the roadway to Nell’s pickup. It had grown so dark now that Captain Myers was calling for spots and floods. From out of the west, another police helicopter came fluttering, its lights flashing against the oppressive clouds. There was a heavy metallic odor in the air, and lightning was walking across the far peaks of the Vaca Mountains. Every now and then, they felt a deep, rumbling vibration through the ground, as if an earthquake was threatened.

Suddenly, they heard a voice shout out: “Sir! Captain Myers, sir! Look at the bus!”

They had almost reached the pickup, but they turned, and then they ran back to the crown of the road. Beyond the police barriers, one hundred and fifty feet away in the middle of the bridge, the bus was faintly shimmering with a green fluorescence. It had the same kind of ghoulish glow as a painted skull on a ghost-train ride, dim and pulsing. The wheels, the bodywork, the windows, were all outlined in light.

There was a noise, too, a rising noise. It was so high-pitched that they could scarcely hear it, but it had a whining, grating edge to it which set their teeth on edge and made them feel as if their very bones were vibrating.

The noise grew louder and louder and harsher and harsher until NeU and Harry both clamped their hands over their ears. Only Singing Rock remained unmoved, staring at the glowing bus with a stoic, concentrated expression. The police took cover behind their cars and drew their guns, and Captain Myers called over his bullhorn for a rifle marksman.

Soon, the noise was an unending, tortured, screaming sound, all at the same high pitch, and it seemed to blot out any sensible thought. Harry could vaguely hear shouting and the running of feet, but even his vision seemed to be blurred by the noise.

Another policeman called, “Look! The door’s opening!” and a spotlight was immediately whipped across to light up the bus’s front entrance. With a hissing noise, barely audible over the endless screeching, the doors jolted apart and slid back. The policemen raised their guns, and trained them carefully on the darkened exit.

One officer called, “Hold your fire!” and then they saw who was there. Down the steps of the bus, white-faced in the spotlights, stumbled Mrs. Novato.

Captain Myers stood up with his bullhorn and shouted: “Mrs. Novato? Mrs. Novato?

Walk this way, please, Mrs. Novato. Keep walking and don’t look back. When you reach the barrier, you’ll find officers there to protect you.”

He didn’t know whether she’d heard him over the screaming noise, so he repeated the message slowly and carefully. Mrs. Novato, in her white pleated skirt and her green blouse and her sensible shoes, stood there swaying and didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“Walk this way, Mrs. Novato!” called Captain Myers. “Please, walk this way!”

When she remained where she was, he turned and called: “I want two volunteers to go out there and get her. On the double!”

Two officers scuttled across from behind the protection of their parked cars, and Captain Myers rapidly briefed them. But as he was talking, he suddenly paused and lifted his head. Mrs. Novato had taken an unsteady step toward them. Then she took another. Then another. Then she pitched forward and fell on her face.

“Get out there!” ordered Captain Myers, and the two officers, guns drawn, skirted around the police cars and sprinted out toward the bus. They weaved from side to side as they ran, and kept their heads low. When they reached the teacher, they took an arm each and ran back, trailing the heels of her sensible shoes along the road surface. They made it back to the protection of the barriers without any sign of interest or hostility from the cold, radiant bus.

They laid Mrs. Novato down on a plaid rug. The police medic knelt down beside her and took her pulse and blood pressure, and checked her eyes for response to light. It was only a few moments more before he stood up and said quite simply, “She’s dead.”

“How did she die?” asked Captain Myers. “Any quick ideas?”

The medic, a pale young officer with a six o’clock shadow and a pointed nose, said,

“Feel her for yourself. The abdomen.”

Captain Myers squatted down beside the body and gently touched the stomach with the flat of his hand.

“It feels pretty cold,” he said. “But that’s natural if that whole damn bus is frozen up.”

“Feel harder,” said the medic flatly. Captain Myers looked at him with a slightly aggrieved frown. He didn’t like people who acted funny.

He tried to squeeze the flesh of the stomach in his fingers, but he couldn’t. He looked up at the medic again, and said, “She’s solid, like rock. She feels like a piece of frozen beef.”

The medic bent forward and stripped back Mrs. No-vato’s white pleated skirt. From the knees upward, her thighs were pale blue, and they were as rigid and hard as marble. Her pubic hair was frosted white, and her lower stomach was solid but, worst of all, her vagina had been frozen so that it gaped obscenely wide, revealing blue-ribbed flesh inside.

Mrs. Novato’s body, from the thighs to the breasts, had been subjected to such intense cold that it was totally solidified.

Captain Myers, horrified, couldn’t resist touching her again, to feel how flesh that should have been soft and yielding had turned into something as cold and smooth as a stone pillar.

He stood up, and then he said in a dry, shaken voice,” “We’re going to treat this as homicide. I want you to get this body down to the autopsy people and I want you to tell them that they have to find out how this was done if it takes them all night and all day and all the next night. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

A little distance away, ignored by the sergeant who was supposed to be escorting them back to their pickup, Harry and Neil and Singing Rock watched the revelation of what had happened to Mrs. Novato in silence.

Then Neil turned away, and whispered, “My God. Oh, my God.”

Harry said softly, “How did that happen, Singing Rock?”

Singing Rock watched another medic arrive with a stretcher, and cover Mrs.