Graham Masterton - The Manitou

By two in the morning, my eyelids began to droop, and I began to feel as though there was nothing I wanted more than a hot shower, a stiff drink and ten hours of sack time. I twisted myself around in my chair to wake myself up a bit, but it wasn't long before a relaxed and cloudy feeling started to seep over me again.

Without realizing it, I began to doze, and as I dozed, I began to dream. I dreamed I was surrounded by a warm and slippery darkness, but it wasn't claustrophobic or suffocating. It felt womb-like and comfortable, and it was giving me strength and nourishment. I felt as if I was waiting for something to happen — waiting for the right moment. When that moment came, I would have to slide out of this warm darkness into some chilly and unknown place. Somewhere frightening and alien.

The feeling of fear woke me up. I immediately looked at my watch to see how long I'd been asleep. Not more than five or ten minutes, I guessed. I stood up and went over to the window of Karen Tandy's room. She was still lying there, covered by a loose sheet, which hid most of the hideous bulge on her back. She was still unconscious, and her face was yellow and almost skull-like. Her eyes were circles with purple shadows, and there were deep drawn lines on her cheeks. She looked as though she were on the verge of death. Only the flickering needles of the electric diagnosis machines beside her bed showed that something was still alive inside her body.

The male nurse, Michael, sat cross-legged reading a science fiction paperback called Girl from Green Planet. I would gladly have traded it for my academic tome of the lifestyle of the Hidatsas.

I went back to my bony chair and sat down. Singing Rock was due to relieve me at three a.m., and I couldn't wait. I smoked and twiddled my thumbs. That time of night, you feel that the whole world is empty, and you're on your own in some strange secret time — a time when pulse rates slur and fade, and deep breathing takes you diving down into a bottomless well of monstrous dreams and nightmares.

I finished my cigarette, ground it out, and checked my watch again. It was two-thirty. Evening was long past, and morning was still a long way ahead. Somehow, the idea of facing Misquamacus by night was much more frightening than the thought of facing him by day. At night, you feel that evil spirits are much more ready to call, and that even shadows, or the odd shape of your clothes across the back of a chair, can take on a sinister life of their own.

When I was a child, I used to be terrified to go out to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because it meant passing by the open living-room door. I was frightened that one night, when the moonlight was slanting in through the venetian blinds, I would see people sitting silent and still in the chairs. Not blinking, not moving, not speaking. Previous occupants, long dead, relaxing stiffly in the chairs that were once theirs.

I had that same feeling now. I kept glancing down the long and empty corridor, to see if some blurry shape were moving in the distance. I looked at all the doors, to see if any of them were easing slowly open. Night is the province of magic and magicians, and my Tarot cards had warned me about night and death and men who worked evil wonders. Now I was facing the threat of all three of them.

At two-forty-five I lit another cigarette and puffed the smoke softly into the total silence of the empty corridor. By now, even the elevators had stopped running and the feet of the night staff were muffled by the thick plush carpets. For all I knew, I could be totally alone in the whole world. Every time I shifted my feet, I frightened myself.

Tired as I was, I began to wonder whether the whole situation was truly real, or whether I was dreaming it, or imagining it. Yet if Misquamacus didn't exist, how did I know his name, and what was I doing here, keeping up this lonely vigil in a hospital corridor? I smoked, and tried to read Dr. Snow's book a little more, but my eyes were too blurry with exhaustion, and I gave up.

It must have been the soft squeaking of skin on glass that made me look up at the window of Karen Tandy's room right then. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible sound, like someone cleaning, silver spoons in another part of the house. Squeak, squikkkkk …

I jumped with shock. There was a face pressed against the window, with horribly contorted features. It's eyes bulged and its teeth were bared in a stretched, silent howl.

It was only there for a second, and then there was a slushy, spraying sound, and the whole window was obliterated with blood. A spout of thick red liquid even pumped from the keyhole, and ran down the outside of the door.

"Singing ROCCCKKKK!" I yelled, and burst into the next-door room where he was sleeping. I banged on the light, and he was sitting up, his face crumpled with sleep, his eyes wide with expectancy and fear.

"What happened?" he snapped, rolling out of bed and pushing quickly out of the room into the corridor.

"There was a face there — at the window — just for a second. Then there was nothing but all this blood."

"He's out," said Singing Rock. "Or nearly. That must have been the male nurse you saw at the window."

"The nurse? But what the hell has Misquamacus done to him?"

"Old Indian magic. He's probably invoked the spirits of the body, and turned him inside-out."

"Inside-out?"

Singing Rock ignored me. He went swiftly back to his room, and opened up his suitcase. He took out beads and amulets, and a leather bottle full of some liquid. One of the amulets, a fierce green copper face on a rawhide thong, he hung around my neck. He sprinkled some reddish powder over my hair and shoulders, and touched me above the heart with the tip of a long white bone.

"Now you're reasonably protected," he said. "At least you won't end up like Michael."

"Listen, Singing Rock," I said. "I think we ought to have a gun. I know that it would kill Karen Tandy if we shot Misquamacus, but as a last resort, we might have to."

Singing Rock shook his head firmly. "No. If we shot Misquamacus, we would have his manitou pursuing us in vengeance for the rest of our lives. The only way we can defeat him forever is through magic. That way, he can never return. And anyway, in any kind of sorcery, a gun is more dangerous to the person who uses it than it is to the person who's being fired at. Now come on, we don't have much time to lose."

He led me back to the door of Karen Tandy's room. The blood had thinned on the window now, but all we could see inside was the dim glow of the bedside light, scarlet through the gore.

"Gitche Manitou, protect us. Gitche Manitou, protect us," muttered Singing Rock, and turned the door handle.

There was something wet and messy behind the door, and Singing Rock had to push hard to slide it all out of the way. There was a nauseating smell of vomit and feces, and my feet skidded on the floor as I stepped in. Michael's remains were lying in a raw red bubbly heap, strung with pipes and veins and intestines, and I could only glance at it. I felt as if I was going to puke.

There was blood spattered everywhere — all over the walls and the bedsheets and the floor. In the middle of this gory chaos lay Karen Tandy, and she was wriggling under her coverings — wriggling like a huge white bug trying to work its way out of a chrysalis.

"It's very soon," whispered Singing Rock. "She must have been struggling and Michael went to help her. That's why Misquamacus killed him."

Forcing my stomach to stop heaving, I watched in horrified fascination as the enormous bulge on Karen Tandy's back began to heave and twist. It was so large now that her own body seemed like nothing more than a papery carnival ghost, and her thin arms and legs were flopped about by the fierce squirming of the beast that was being born on her back.