Graham Masterton: The Manitou

Singing Rock listened for a while longer, but the cameraman said nothing more. He carefully removed the beads from the man's head, and said: "Well, that seems to be it."

"Is he okay?" I asked. "I mean, he's not —"

"No," said Singing Rock. "He's not dead. I don't think he'll ever be the same again, but he's not dead."

"The squid," I said. "Do you know what that was?"

Singing Rock said: "Yes. This man was privileged to see something that has been banished from the earth for centuries. He didn't see all of it, which is probably just as well. The Great Old One is among us again."

I followed Singing Rock out of the first-aid room and into the corridor. His black eyes were glittering again with some of the zeal that I had slowly seen extinguished by our long and harrowing night. He said: "This is it, Harry. Are you coming to help me?"

"This is what? What the hell's going to happen?"

Singing Rock licked his lips. His voice was breathless, and he looked as if he were feverishly ill. "The Great Old One is here. To wrestle with the Great Old One himself — don't you understand what that means to a medicine man? It's like a Christian having the chance to fight with Satan in person."

"Singing Rock —"

"We have to do it," said Singing Rock. "We have no time left at all. We have to go down there and do it."

"Go down there? You mean — back to the tenth floor?"

Singing Rock appeared to grow in size, as if some magical wind was inflating him. He was trembling with fear and anticipation, and the ultimate lust of risking his life against the greatest evil being of mythical America. When I said nothing more, he simply turned away and began to walk quickly toward the stairs, so fast I could hardly keep up with him.

I snatched his sleeve, and he turned around.

"Singing Rock," I said. "For Christ's sake — eleven armed men were killed down there. You saw what happened."

"It's too late," said Singing Rock. "The Great Old One is here, and what happens now will be worse."

"Singing Rock —"

He pulled himself away. He opened the door that led to the darkened stairway and said: "Are you coming? Or are you staying behind?"

Echoing up the stairwell, I heard the loathsome moaning of that windless wind, and the hairs prickled on the back of my neck. The fetid stench of the Great Old One filled the air, and I could hear noises from down below that reminded me of Doré's engravings of hell. Demons and beasts and nameless things that walked by night. Things that drove men mad. Things that hopped and crawled and dragged themselves across the darkness of terrified imagination.

I swallowed hard. No matter how frightened I felt, I couldn't let Singing Rock go down there on his own. I said: "I'm coming," and pushed past him on to the concrete landing. If I didn't go now, I never would.

Once the door swung closed behind us, we were plunged into suffocating gloom. We held on to the handrail, and groped our way downward stair by stair. Each shadow filled me with creeping fear, and every shuffle and echo made my heart tense up. I could have sworn I heard footsteps descending the stairs just out of sight below us, but there was no time to stop and listen.

"Singing Rock," I whispered. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm trying to think," said Singing Rock quietly. "But I can't judge the situation until I see it for myself. I just hope that I can invoke Unitrak's spirit at the right time, and in the right way. I just hope, too, that Unitrak isn't as hostile to us as it is to the Great Old One. There's always that risk."

I coughed. "Supposing we simply surrender? Wouldn't that save more lives? If we fight like this — God knows how many people are going to get hurt."

Singing Rock shook his head. "This is not a fight in the sense you think it is. This is an act of revenge by a Red Indian sorcerer in the name of all the pain and treachery and slaughter that his people suffered at the hands of the white man. You cannot surrender to someone who is seeking vengeance. Misquamacus will only be satisfied when we are all dead, and as for the Great Old One —"

"What about the Great Old One?"

Singing Rock shrugged. "I don't know what bargain Misquamacus has made with him. But the Great Old One is known in Pueblo culture as the Great Devourer. The Paiute had another name — He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit. You can draw your own conclusions."

As we descended through the darkness, the mournful whining and moaning of the wind that wasn't wind became even louder and even more depressing. I began to develop a pounding migraine, and I could hardly see straight. I felt itchy and uncomfortable, and I had the feeling that my clothes were riddled with lice. If I'd had any choice, I would have given up then, and let the Great Old One, He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit, do his worst.

Singing Rock said: "We're getting nearer. That's why you feel so bad. Here — take this bead necklace. It isn't much, but it should help to protect you against tricks and illusions."

Almost deafened by the shrieking wind, we reached the tenth floor. Singing Rock produced the piece of paper on which he had written the numbers from Unitrak, and peered at them closely through the gloom. Then he gave me the thumbs-up, and gently pushed open the door that led into the corridors where Misquamacus lurked, and where now the Great Old One, the terrible malevolent manitou of centuries past, was hideously coming to life.

The stench was sickening. Even though the corridors were empty, there was a scuttling, rat-like noise everywhere — a noise that even the moaning of the wind could not drown. It was as if the whole place was alive with invisible rodents, swarming and clustering around the decaying smell of the Great Old One. Singing Rock turned around to reassure himself that I was still behind him, and then led the way toward Karen Tandy's room — the room where Misquamacus had first made his obscene appearance.

The drone of the Star Beast's astral wind made me feel exhausted and irritable. As we came nearer to Karen Tandy's room, the noise grew louder and louder, until it sawed through all my senses with the coarse pain of a rusty blade. All around us, as we walked, there was the scuttling of ghostly rat creatures, as if we had a loathsome escort of parasites wherever we went. Once, I felt as if one of them had jumped on my back, and I found myself tugging at my shirt in disgust and fear.

Singing Rock had begun his incantations. He was calling on the spirits of the Sioux nation to protect us from the devouring evil of the Great Old One; on the manitous of the air, the rocks and the soil; on the demons of sickness and plague to strike Misquamacus down. I could hardly hear what he was saying above the shrieking of that unearthly wind, but I could feel that our rat escort was treating us with a certain amount of impatient respect.

We turned a corner — and suddenly, the corridor was laced with brilliant flashes of light, which crackled and spat all around us. Singing Rock raised his hands, palm outward, and the light poured against them and spent itself on the concrete floor. It was the lightning-that-sees — the first indication that Misquamacus knew we were here.

We reached the stretch of corridor in which Karen Tandy's room actually was. The lightning-that-sees seemed to have dispersed most of the phantom rat creatures, but the groaning wind continued, and now it was a real wind, that blew against our faces like grit. Singing Rock beckoned me onwards, and we fought our way nearer and nearer to our inevitable confrontation with Misquamacus and the Great Old One. The shrieking and howling of the wind made it impossible for us to speak, and out of the door of Karen's room we saw sizzling flashes of astral light — the cold blue energy that had created the gateway for the greatest and most terrible of all legendary beings.