Graham Masterton - The Manitou

But, inch by inch, Misquamacus began to work himself off the bed. He kept his eyes on both of us all the time. Singing Rock was throwing powders and beating his bones, but Misquamacus seemed unaffected by everything that he was doing. The medicine man dropped himself heavily to the floor, and crouched on his ghastly little legs within the magic circle, his face a mask of impassive hate.

Painfully, using his hands to swing himself along like an ape, Misquamacus approached the circle. If that doesn't hold him, I thought, I am going to be out of that door and halfway to Canada before you can say cold-blooded cowardice.

Singing Rock's voice grew shriller and shriller. "Gitche Manitou, hold Misquamacus away from me!" he called. "Keep him within the circle of charms! Lock and chain him!"

Misquamacus paused, and stared balefully around at the medicine circle. For a moment, I thought he was going to heave himself straight across it, and launch himself toward us. But then he paused, and settled back on his hips, and closed his eyes again. Singing Rock and I stood silent for one breathless moment, and then Singing Rock said: "We've held him."

"You mean he can't get out?"

"No, he can get across it all right. But not yet. He hasn't the strength. He's resting to get it back."

"But how long is he going to need? How long do we have?"

Singing Rock looked warily at the hunched naked form of Misquamacus.

"It's impossible to say. It might be a few minutes, it might be a few hours. I think I've called enough spiritual interference down to give us thirty or forty minutes anyway."

"What now?"

"Well just have to wait. As soon as Dr. Hughes gets here, I think we ought to have this floor of the hospital evacuated. He's going to wake up before long, and then he's going to be angry and vengeful and almost impossible to deal with, and I don't want innocent people hurt."

I checked the time. "Jack should be here at any minute. Listen, do you really think we shouldn't have a few guns?"

Singing Rock wiped his face. "You're a typical white American. You've been brought up on a diet of TV Westerns and Highway Patrol, and you think that the gun is the answer to everything. Do you want to save Karen Tandy or not?"

"Do you seriously think she can be saved? I mean — just look at her."

The limp, shriveled form of Karen Tandy's body was lying awkwardly and emptily across the bed. I could hardly recognize her as the same girl who had come into my flat only four nights before, telling me about her dreams of ships and moonlit coasts.

Singing Rock said softly: "According to the lore of Indian magic, she can still be saved. If there's a chance, I think we ought to try."

"You're the witch doctor."

At that moment, Dr. Hughes and Wolf, the other male nurse, came clattering down the corridor. They took one look at the blood, and at the silent form of Misquamacus, and stepped back in horror.

"God," said Jack Hughes shakily. "What the hell happened?"

We stepped out of the room and into the corridor with him.

"He killed Michael," I said. "I was sitting here when it happened. It was too quick to do anything about it. Then he forced his way out of Karen. Singing Rock thinks we've held him for a while with the medicine circle, but we don't have long."

Dr. Hughes bit his lips. "I think we ought to call the police. I don't care what century that thing is from, he's murdered enough people."

Singing Rock firmly protested. "If we call the police, he will only kill them as well. Bullets can't solve this problem, Dr. Hughes. We've decided to play this game a particular way, and now we're stuck with it. Only magic can help us now."

"Magic," said Dr. Hughes bitterly. "To think I'd end up using magic. "

"Singing Rock thinks we ought to evacuate this floor of the hospital," I said. "Once Misquamacus wakes up, he's going to use everything he's got to get his revenge on us."

"There's no need," said Dr. Hughes. "This is a surgical and operating floor only. We had Karen down here so that she could be nearer the theater. There are no other patients on ten. All I have to do is tell the rest of the staff to stay away."

He dragged some more chairs into the corridor and sat down, keeping a watchful eye on the motionless bulk of Misquamacus. Wolf went up to Dr. Hughes' office and came back with a couple of bottles of bourbon, and we revived ourselves. It was three-forty-five, and we still had a long night ahead of us.

"Now that he's emerged," said Dr. Hughes, "how are we going to deal with him? How are we going to make him give up Karen Tandy's manitou?" I could tell he was embarrassed about using the Indian word for spirit.

"The way I see it," said Singing Rock, "we have to convince Misquamacus somehow that he's in a hopeless situation, which he is. Although he is very powerful, he's an anachronism. Magic and sorcery may be dangerous, but in a world where people don't believe in it, they have very limited uses. Even if Misquamacus kills all of us — even if he kills everyone in this hospital — what's he going to do in the outside world? He's physically crippled, he's completely unversed in contemporary culture and science, and one way or another, he will just be overwhelmed. Even if it doesn't happen right here, somebody's going to put a bullet in him sooner or later."

"But how are you going to convince him?" I asked Singing Rock.

"I guess the only way is to tell him," said Singing Rock. "One of us will have to open up his mind to Misquamacus, and give him a mental tour of what the modern world is really like."

"Won't he think that's just a magical trap? A bluff?" asked Dr. Hughes.

"Possibly. But I don't see what else we can do."

"Wait a minute," said Dr. Hughes, turning to me. "Something just occurred to me. You remember when you told me about Karen Tandy's dream, Harry — the one about the ship and the coast and all that stuff?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, what strikes me about that dream is that there was so much fear in it. Misquamacus was afraid of something. And it was obviously something that was terrifying enough to make him risk this whole business of swallowing burning oil and being reborn. Now, what do you think he could have been afraid of?"

"That's a good point," I said. "What do you think, Singing Rock?"

"I don't know," said the Sioux. "He might simply have been afraid of death at the hands of the Dutch. Just because their manitou go on living in limbo after death, that doesn't mean that medicine men aren't concerned about being killed. And there are ways of killing medicine men so that their manitous can never return to the earth. Maybe the Dutchmen knew how to do it, and threatened him."

"That still doesn't make sense," said Dr. Hughes.

"We've seen already how Misquamacus can defend himself. No Dutchman could have gotten close enough to harm him. Yet he was still frightened. Now, why? What did the Dutch have in the seventeenth century that could have terrified a medicine man like Misquamacus?"

"I guess they had guns," said Wolf "The Indians didn't have guns, did they?"

"That wouldn't fit," replied Singing Rock. "Misquamacus is powerful enough to resist guns. You saw what he did to Harry's friends, with the lightning-that-sees. You would only have to point a gun at him, and he could blow it up in your hand."

"The Dutch were Christians," I suggested. "Do you think there's anything in the Christian religion which could have exorcised Misquamacus' demons and manitous?

"No way," Singing Rock said. "There is nothing in Christianity to equal the power of the old Indian spirits."

Dr. Hughes was frowning deeply, as though he were trying to remember something he'd heard about years and years ago. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers.