Revenge of the Manitou tm-2

by Graham Masterton

  Harry blew out smoke. It seemed to hang where he had exhaled it, a motionless cloud in the still, humid air. Across the lake, it was now so dark that it was impossible to distinguish the hills on the opposite shore, and the water itself seemed to be heaving and foaming in unhealthy excitement.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “But if you can convince the Highway Patrol that there are twenty-two medicine men in there, you’re a better man than I am, Singing Rock.”

  The three of them walked across the road to where a group of seven or eight policemen were watching the bus and talking among themselves. One of them had a map spread out on the roof of a patrol car, and he seemed to be discussing the possibility of bringing skyhook helicopters in across the lake to lift the bus bodily off the bridge.

  “The trouble is, we have a cold factor which is unknown,” he was saying, “and we also have no idea what’s going on in that vehicle. The last thing we can afford is to injure children unnecessarily.”

  Neil introduced himself. The police captain was an officer of the old school, with a uniform that looked as if it had only just come back from the dry cleaner, and shoes polished to the brilliance of fresh-poured tar. His face was ruddy and blemished with liver spots, but his eyes were small and intense, like a polecat’s, and his mustache was neat and prickly.

  “I’m Captain Myers, Highway Patrol,” he said, extending his hand. “Are these two gentlemen parents, too?”

  Harry said, “I wish I was, but you know how it is. My date got the chicken pox.”

  The captain frowned. “We’re trying to keep unauthorized people away from this area.

  We have a serious and delicate problem here, with a great many young lives at stake, and we really don’t need civilian interference.”

  In his quietest, most dignified voice, Singing Rock said, “Captain Myers, we believe we know what’s happening here, and we believe we may be able to prevent a disaster, if you let us try.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Captain Myers.

  “They call me John Singing Rock. I am a medicine man from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. A Sioux.”

  “You’re an Indian medicine man?” asked Captain Myers, in disbelief.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well,” said the captain, with a barely suppressed smile, “I’ve had some offers of help from all kinds, of people. Firemen, wrestlers, circus people, you name it. But you’re the first Indian, medicine man.”

  “Captain Myers,” said Harry, “he’s serious. What’s going on here is directly concerned with Red Indian magic. If you’re going to get those children out of there alive, then you’re going to have to listen to what he’s got to say.”

  “Who are you, his caddy?” asked Captain Myers.

  “No, sir. I just happen to be one of the only living people who’s ever seen what the hell it is you’ve got in that bus there.”

  “You’re one of the only living people who’s ever seen children? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Not children,” put in Singing Rock. “Not children at all. But the reincarnated bodies of twenty-two ancient Indian medicine men.”

  Captain Myers paused for a moment, looking from Neil to Harry to Singing Rock and back again.

  “Sergeant,” he said coldly, “I want these men escorted away from here. I want them to get the hell out. I also want you to take their names and their addresses, so that I can bust all three of them for obstructing the police at a critical and dangerous time.”

  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.

  Novato’s body with a red blanket

  “They gave her to Sak,” he said. “The ancient keeper of the gateway. That smoky demon you saw in Mr. Sap-erstein’s photographs. I suppose a human woman was one of the rewards he wanted. He raped her, as you probably saw. The only difference between that and any other rape was that she would have suffered incredible mental horrors while it was happening, and the gaseous form of Sak is probably three thousand degrees below freezing.”

  EIGHT

  Gradually, the police officers and medics returned to their posts, and the sergeant, although he was looking colorless and shaken, turned around to usher Harry and Singing Rook and Neil back to their pickup.

  “What did you think of that, sergeant?” asked Harry. “Did you ever see anything like that before?”

  The sergeant opened the door of the pickup for him and indicated that he should climb up.

  “I’ve seen hundreds of stiffs in this job,” he said harshly. “One more doesn’t make no odds.”

  Singing Rock looked at him carefully. Then he said: “I know how easy it is to become blase’, sergeant, but let me give you one good word of caution. Tonight, just for once, don’t be blas6. Look out for unexpected attacks. Take a lot of care.”

  The sergeant wiped sweat from his forehead with his furry arm. “You talk like you know what’s going on here,” he said.

  “I do,” said Singing Rock.

  “Well, that proves you’re nuts,” replied the sergeant. “Anybody who thinks they know how a bus gets to shine like a dead mackerel, and how a woman gets herself frozen solid in the middle of September, they have to be going bananas.”

  Neil said angrily, “Why the hell don’t you-”

  “Neill” interrupted Harry. Then, more quietly, “It won’t do any good.”

  Neil took a look back at the bus, still standing on the bridge with its windows frosted up. He could hardly believe that Toby was inside there, taking part in some unspeakable and unimaginable ritual. He could hardly believe that Toby had summoned down the squid-like Sak, and had actually sacrificed Mrs. Novato to him.

  But he was here, on this gloomy and fearful night, sitting in his pickup at Lake Berryessa with an Indian and a sarcastic mystic from New York, and he knew that it had to be true.

  He started the motor, and they drove off back down the highway.

  Singing Rock fingered the amulets around his neck. *I think we’re going to have to bide our time until it gets dark,” he said. “Then we’ll come back and see what we can do to lay down a medicine circle.”

  “How are you going to lay down a circle when the bus is on the bridge like that?”

  “It’s going to be very difficult. That’s the reason Misquamacus chose to stop there.

  Nobody can come near without his knowing, and nobody can surround the bus with all the magical paraphernalia that you’d need to keep him permanently imprisoned there.”

  “So what’s going to happen now?” asked Neil.

  Singing Rock rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure. I think we’re going to have to play this the way it comes.”

  They drove in silence for a while along the darkening road. But after a few minutes, Harry said, “There’s one small thing that’s been bothering me. Something we never checked out. I thought about it last night, but then it slipped my mind again. I think if we’ve got ourselves a couple of hours to kill, we ought to go look for it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Singing Rock.

  “It’s something that Toby mentioned to Neil real early on, when Misquamacus was first making himself known. He said something about the prophecy that is still buried on the stone redwood. Now, we never took the trouble to check out what that prophecy was, or where it was, or anything.”

  Neil reached the steep junction with Route 128, and turned right toward Chiles Valley. “It was my guess Misquamacus was talking about one of the trees up at the Petrified Forest in Calistoga,” he remarked. “I never went there, but I heard there’s a huge stone redwood that’s still half-buried in the hillside.”

  Harry turned to Singing Rock. “You want to go take a look? I think we ought to. If there’s something on that tree that we don’t know about, and Misquamacus springs a nasty surprise on us, then we’re going to regret it for the rest of our lives, which might be for five or ten minutes or so, if we’re lucky.”

  “How are you doing for gas?” Singing Rock asked Neil.

  “I’m fine. Let’s head on up there. Even if we don’t find anything, it’s something to keep my mind off Toby.”

  The Petrified Forest was closed when they arrived. Although it was only a little after five, the sky was thunderously dark, and the rumblings and shakings of an approaching storm were growing steadily louder. They parked the pickup outside the gates, and then Harry walked around to the office and gift shop, where a single light was still burning. He rapped on the window, and mouthed, “Let — me-in.�
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  A pretty brunette in a brown overall came to the door and unlocked it. She said, “I’m sorry, mister, we’re all closed up. But we’re open again tomorrow if you want to drop by. The place is really worth a visit.”

  “Look,” said Harry, “is the manager in?”

  The girl shook her head. “Not this evening, he isn’t.”

  “Is there anybody here who knows something about this place, apart from you?”

  She shook her head. “There’s only Professor Thoren. But he’s not really a tree professor. I should drop by in the morning if I were you.”

  “Who’s Professor Thoren? What does he do?”

  She frowned. “I’m not too sure. I’m only looking after the place while the manager’s out. He’s up at the Tunnel Tree right now.”

  “The Tunnel Tree? What’s that?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know why you don’t come see for yourself when we’re open. It’s real impressive. There’s this stone redwood and it’s more than three hundred feet long, lying on its side, if you understand me. It was buried deep in the rocks, and ever since about the turn of the century they’ve been tunneling alongside of it so that people can walk down the tunnel and take a look. It’s real neat.”

  “And that’s where Professor Thoren is right now?”

  The girl nodded. “He’s been here a year or so, trying to work out the Indian writing.”

  Harry stared at her. “I don’t believe it. There’s Indian writing on that tree? You mean that?”