Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  “Like many bears, with claws. And with eyes like coals from a furnace.”

  “You have seen it, haven’t you?” said Dog Brother, with a smile that revealed crowded, pointed teeth. “I never thought that anybody ever would. Well … you can go back to your lodges now and tell them that it was all a bad dream. Tell them it’s over, and that the Changing Bear Maiden will never trouble them again. Unless, of course, it chooses to. But then you can never tell with the Changing Bear Maiden. She’s always so spontaneous.”

  He laughed, a crackling laugh like dry twigs breaking. In the dim light, Jim could see Catherine sitting hunched on the sofa, her hands lying in her lap, upturned. Next to her sat John Three Names, conspiciously tense. He kept drumming his fingers on his knees and shuffling his feet. If a ticker-tape had come out of his brain, it would have read, ‘Come on, come on. Let’s get going. For Christ’s sake, Jim, let’s cut the niceties and get the hell out of here.’

  Jim leaned forward so that he was looking directly into Dog Brother’s glasses. “Let’s cut straight to the chase, shall we? Henry Black Eagle has authorized me to make you an offer of stocks, bonds and ready cash. All you have to do is name your price.”

  Dog Brother stared back at him for a long, long time without saying anything. Then, as if had just woken from a coma, said, “Price? What are you talking about, price?”

  Jim reached into his pocket and took out his organizer. In it, he had clearly written a list of all of Henry’s stocks, bonds and insurance investments. He had also jotted down that in the last resort, Henry would give him a percentage share in his next contract with Fox TV, and a percentage share in all of his royalties, ‘in perpetuity and for ever,’ as they like to say in Hollywood contracts.

  “Henry can raise $950,0000. Just say the word, and it’s all yours. No more living in a trailer, hunh? You’ll be able to build your own house for this, with pool.”

  “Is this some kind of… dowry?” asked Dog Brother.

  “No, no. I don’t think you get it. Henry is offering you this $950,000 so that you won’t chase after Catherine any longer.”

  “I won’t chase after her. I promise. Why should I need to? She’ll be here, sitting by my side.”

  Jim took off his reading-glasses and tucked them into his shirt-pocket. “Dog Brother, we’re talking at cross-purposes here. Henry Black Eagle is offering you this money to set Catherine free – to tear up your marriage agreement. The money isn’t a dowry, sir. It’s a form of compensation. A goodwill gesture, if you like.”

  Dog Brother turned to John and snapped, “You told me this white man was bringing Catherine White Bird back to me.”

  “Well, he is, and he has.”

  “Excuse me,” said Jim. “You’re not thinking of taking both of them, are you? The girl and the money? Because I’m afraid that this is a ‘tick one box only’ situation. Either you get to keep Catherine, who has made it perfectly clear to me over the past few days that she wouldn’t live back on the reservation if you gave her all the peanuts in Georgia. Or, you can take the money. But not both.”

  “No,” said Dog Brother.

  “No, what? No, you’re quite aware that you can’t have both? Or, no, you don’t want the money but you do want the girl? Or, no, you want the money but you do—”

  “Enough!” said Dog Brother. “You’ve done well to bring me back this woman. Now you can go.”

  He climbed out of his chair and took hold of Catherine by the wrist. “You see this scar?” he said. “That was where our blood was mingled when she was fifteen years old. She belonged to me from that day onward. You can’t change that with money.”

  “Mr Dog Brother,” said Jim. “I know that you feel that Catherine belongs to you, but the fact is that in the eyes of the law your betrothal doesn’t mean squat.”

  “Take it easy, Jim—” John Three Names cautioned him.

  “What do you mean, ‘take it easy’?” Jim demanded. “Are you part of this, too?”

  “We couldn’t fight it, Jim. You’ve seen it for yourself. After your college boy died, and Paul and Grey Cloud were accused of killing him – Henry knew that he didn’t have any choice.”

  “You mean that he didn’t send me here to bargain at all? All he wanted me to do was to take Catherine back to this feather-nippled yahoo?”

  “Jim! They couldn’t risk any more killing!”

  “Then why didn’t they come back here and turn this creep over to the cops?”

  “Because who would believe them? Even the Navajo cops wouldn’t believe them.”

  Dog Brother was still holding onto Catherine’s arm, still grinning widely. His teeth looked as if he could take a bite out of a three-inch mahogany tabletop. “John Three Names is right. Nobody would believe that you had seen the Changing Bear Maiden. You would be locked up by the same people you had asked for help, and they would throw away the key.”

  Jim said, “You refuse the money?”

  “I would be happy with the money, if Henry Black Eagle wishes to give it to me.”

  “But you’re not letting Catherine go free?”

  “Absolutely not. She’s going to be my wife. She’s going to bear my children. She’s going to feed me and bathe me and worship me. She’s going to lick the sweat from between my toes.”

  Catherine was staring at him. There was a turmoil of darkness around her. John Three Names obviously couldn’t see it, but Jim could, and the way in which Dog Brother was taunting her made Jim wonder if he could, too – or maybe sense it, at the very least.

  “I don’t want to marry you!” Catherine retorted. “I won’t ever marry you!”

  “Of course you’ll marry me. You’ll grow to love me so much that you’ll cry every time I’m out of your sight.”

  “I won’t! I hate you!” The darkness began to leap and dance with a life of its own, and to coagulate around her shoulders in hunched, shadowy knots.

  Jim said, “Come on, Dog Brother, let her go.”

  “You!” said Dog Brother, contemptuously. “You’ve been warned, haven’t you? This is your day to die!”

  “I’ve heard enough of that for one week,” Jim told him. He was angry now – angry and tired and frustrated. “All you have to do is let her go and then we can negotiate this situation like reasonable men.”

  “You think you were sent here to negotiate?” Dog Brother sneered at him. “You were sent here for two reasons only – to bring Catherine White Bird back to me, and to see that the Changing Bear Maiden returns to the great outside, where she came from, because you’re the only one who can. That was the one single condition that Henry Black Eagle asked for, before he returned his beautiful daughter, and who was I to refuse him? A promise is a promise.”

  Jim said, “John, is this true?”

  John Three Names nodded. “I’m sorry, Jim. I didn’t like deceiving you, believe me, but there was no other way. Dog Brother and Catherine are supposed to be exchange their marriage-promises – and when they do, you’re supposed to witness the spirit-beast disappearing back to the spirit-world.”

  “Oh, I see. Then you’ve been telling me lies right from the start.”

  Dog Brother smiled. “They weren’t exactly lies, Mr Rook. They were just a way of getting you out here, and to make sure that Catherine got here, too. You’ve seen the beast. You’ve seen what it can do. Even I can’t control it sometimes.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen it, thanks, and I’ve seen what it can do. It killed a promising young student. It wrecked my apartment and killed my cat. It turned the West Grove locker room into a disaster area. And yesterday it killed – a woman I was very fond of.”

  “So you’d like to see it go for good?” said John Three Names.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Then let’s see Dog Brother and Catherine married, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “And what about Paul and Grey Cloud?”

  “You can go back to LA and testify to what you saw.”

  “Oh, sure, an
d a jury’s going to believe me?”

  “You can take a polygraph test.”

  “Inadmissible as evidence. You know that.”

  “But what if somebody else were killed in exactly the same way, hundreds of miles distant, while Paul and Grey Cloud were still in custody?”

  Jim stared at him. “You’re talking about Susan?”

  “Too badly burned, I’m afraid. You see, Susan was a necessary sacrifice to Coyote. You don’t walk on the master’s territory without paying him homage.”

  “You mean that Susan was a burnt offering?”

  John Three Names shrugged. “That was why I built the fire. I expected her to come out looking for Catherine, but I didn’t expect you. All the same, you were quite a help. Pity about the blanket.”

  “You mean you summoned up that beast? You did it on purpose? Just so that Susan could be murdered and burned?”

  Dog Brother said, “Coyote always appreciates the smell of human flesh, burned in his honor. It makes him more amenable to the human race. In the old days, they burned virgins, and buffalo, and they burned them alive.”

  “Just a minute,” said Jim. “If you’re not talking about Susan being killed in exactly the same way, who are you talking about?”

  Dog Brother said, “You brought some friends with you, didn’t you, just like Henry Black Eagle asked you to?”

  “Hey – wait a minute,” said Jim. “Nobody touches one hair of those students’ heads. You talk about promises? I made three promises when I agreed to come here. I promised Henry Black Eagle that I would try to negotiate Catherine’s release from her marriage vows. I promised my students that I would take care of them. And I promised myself that I wasn’t going to die. Not today.”

  “Pretty hard promises to keep,” said Dog Brother, slowly approaching him, until Jim could see every blackhead in every pore of his nose. “I’m taking Catherine, don’t you have any doubt about that; and I’m going to give Henry Black Eagle all the evidence he needs to free his sons from prison; and if you raise any objection whatsoever, then so help me I’ll hunt you down for the rest of your life, and destroy everything that means anything to you, and kill anybody you love. That’s what it means to die, my friend. That’s what it really means to die. That’s what the white men did to us, not so very long ago. Destroyed our houses and burned our crops and killed our cattle. Our women and children starved and what did you care? You spat on our graves.

  “Today, you die,” Dog Brother repeated. “Tomorrow, you die. Every day for the rest of your life, you die.”

  Jim stared back at him and thought, Christ, what am I going to do? He looked across at John Three Names, who held his gaze for only a moment before he uncomfortably looked away. Then he looked at Catherine, whose expression was a tangle of confusion and fright.

  “All right, then,” he said. “I guess if it’s Catherine you want, you can have her. What can I do?”

  Dog Brother slowly grinned. “That’s good. I like a realist. Now, which of your students can we have, on shall we take them both?”

  Jim was appalled at Dog Brother’s cold-bloodedness. How can I possibly sacrifice one of my class? And even if I could, which one would it be? Sharon, who had a future ahead of her as a social worker or even a local politician for black causes; or Mark, who would probably end up just like his father, beating automobile panels, but whose humour and poetic insight would break the mould of his father’s ignorance, and make sure that his son had a chance?

  “Maybe I should ask them to toss a coin,” he said. “They don’t need to know what it’s for.”

  Dog Brother seemed to like that. “I knew that you were an intelligent man, when I first saw you. Henry Black Eagle chose wisely.”

  “Catherine?” said Jim. He tried to catch her full attention – tried to appeal to Catherine White Bird, instead of the shadowy shape that was forming all around her. “Catherine, I’m sorry. You see what kind of position I’m in.”

  Catherine said, “I – I don’t know what you mean. What are you trying to say to me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that you have to marry Dog Brother. I don’t have any choice.”

  He stepped up close to her and took hold of her hand. Already he could feel the prickle of harsh, invisible hair, like static electricity.

  He leaned forward as if to kiss her cheek. “I’m going to grab your hand real tight,” he murmured. “When I do that, run, you understand?”

  He stood up straight. There was nothing in her face to tell him if she had understood him or not – just the same bewilderment, the same fear.

  “Okay, then,” he said to Dog Brother. “I guess I’ll go out and ask my students to decide which of them is going to live and which of them is going to go the Happy Hunting Ground.”

  John Three Names said, “I guess I’ll be going, too. I’ve seen enough blood for one week, believe me.”

  He turned, and Dog Brother stepped back to let him pass, and at that moment Jim pushed Dog Brother flat in the chest, so that he lost his balance and fell back against the armchair. John Three Names turned back again, but Jim shouldered him roughly out of the way. He gripped Catherine’s hand and shouted, “Now!”

  He tried to pull at her hand, but as he did so Dog Brother let out a high, unearthly shriek. Catherine’s hand seemed to explode inside his. One second her fingers were slim and smooth – the next he was holding a gigantic, bristly claw. He cried out, “Ahh!” and whipped his hand away. There was no longer a slight, long-haired girl behind him, but a bulky bearlike shadow that reached almost to the trailer’s ceiling. It had tiny eyes that glared red like the perforations in a furnace-door, and claws that literally clattered as it lifted them up.

  Jim dropped to the floor, shielding his face with his arm. As he did so, one claw whisked past him, so close that it tore the skin along his knuckles. It struck the side of the trailer with a thunderous crash, breaking a Formica cabinet in half and puncturing the aluminum wall, so that five jagged stars of daylight suddenly burst through.

  “Catherine!” Jim yelled at it. But the beast lurched forward yet again, so that the whole trailer shook. It swung at Jim again and again, but Jim rolled away across the floor and slid beneath one of the couches. He heard Dog Brother howling and whooping, and singing some kind of high-pitched, repetitive chant. “Aheeiioo – ahane – aheeiioo – saabate –”

  The beast lashed out in all directions, its claws tearing through upholstery, metal and laminate. The noise was ear-splitting, and it didn’t stop. It felt to Jim as if a bomb had detonated in slow-motion. The foam seating over his head was torn apart; the flooring was ripped up; glasses smashed; furniture was wrenched limb-from-limb. The air was filled with a blizzard of broken china and shreds of upholstery, and with every blow the Changing Bear Maiden ripped her way through the sides of the trailer, so that sunlight came criss-crossing in from every direction.

  The trailer’s framework began to give way. The walls were all battered and dented, and even ripped open, in places. The entire structure tilted, and suddenly its wheels collapsed, which threw Dog Brother back onto the floor, hitting his head against the television stand. John Three Names had been struggling to reach the door, and had to cling onto the drapes to prevent himself from tumbling backward. Jim – under the couch – was forced into an awkward corner, his legs doubled-up. He managed to push his back against the side of the trailer and force himself free, just as the Changing Bear Maiden’s claw detonated through the cushions on top of him and slammed through the wall with all the force of a fork-lift truck.

  Jim knew that he had to make a run for it. He might not survive, but anything was better than waiting here to have his head torn off, the way that Susan had. He took a deep breath, counted to three, and then he jack-knifed out from under the couch, rolled across the floor, and grabbed hold of the first support that he could find – which turned out to be John Three Names’ ankle. John Three Names, panicking, screamed, “Let go of me! Let go of me!” He tried to kick Jim
’s hand away, but Jim wouldn’t let go. He dragged himself forward until he and John Three Names were lying side by side.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Jim yelled at him. “You’ve killed two innocent people, just because you were too frightened to stand up to some sly, treacherous, out-of-date demon! Did you really think that I was going to allow you to kill any more?”

  John Three Names struggled to get himself free. “What do you white men know? This whole country is Navajo country and always will be! We’re waiting for the time, that’s all! We’re taking care of our spirits, we’re bringing them all back out of hiding, one by one, we’re reviving the old beliefs, and we’re waiting for the time! Let me tell you something, Mr Rook – it won’t be long now before every white community between here and Los Angeles is populated by nothing but corpses. Blowfly heaven, that’s what it’ll be.”

  The floor shook beneath them. Jim glanced up. The Changing Bear Maiden was looming over them, cold and dark. Its stiff fur bristled and its eyes burned red and it uttered a sound in its throat like men being strangled. It lashed out at Jim, ripping his shirt and tearing his shoulder open. He felt blood springing wet down his back. John Three Names struggled with him and kicked him and tried to lift him up from the floor, so that the beast’s next blow would hit him in the head. Jim tipped himself backward and rolled John Three Names over on top of him. John Three Names gripped his wrists and tried to wrestle him over again. Jim felt his sweat dripping on his face and the smell of stale coffee on his breath.

  “We were supposed to forget, were we?” he roared. “We were supposed to forget about what you did to us? All those women and children who died here at Fort Defiance?” His anger was so intense that he seemed to have forgotten all about the spirit-beast that was shaking the trailer all around them.

  Over his shoulder Jim saw a paw lifted – a shaggy black paw with claws that caught the criss-cross sunlight. Even though John Three Names was shouting at him and struggling with him, he tried to push him sideways, out of the way. But there was a whakkk! and a sharp gristly noise like somebody twisting the leg off a raw chicken, and Jim was suddenly spattered with warm blood. John Three Names fell off him, clutching the side of his head. “My ear! It’s taken my ear off!”