Revenge of the Manitou tm-2

by Graham Masterton

  Neil said, “I don’t really understand. You mean that Misquamacus is going to raise this god?”

  Singing Rock nodded. “That was the second reason he chose this region for the day of the dark stars, apart from the strength he could draw from the old Wappo victory over the white settlers. Lake Berryessa is deep and wide, and an ideal place to call for a manifestation of Ka-tua-la-hu. You see, when Misquamacus banished him under the waters, he banished him under all waters, not in any particular spot, so he can raise him from any lake or reservoir or estuary or whatever he wants. It just has to be a big enough stretch of water to re-create the greatest and most horrible demon that ever was.”

  Harry sniffed. There was something in these dark woods to which he was allergic.

  He said, “What about Nashuna and Osso-bucco and all the rest of the demons?”

  Singing Rock told him, “Demons and gods have to be summoned according to a hierarchy. First they summoned Sak, the guardian of the gateway, and with Sak’s help they’re going to summon the lesser demons. Then they’re going to call Ossadagowah. For any kind of revenge, I would have thought Ossadagowah would have been quite terrible enough. But Misquamacus is obviously hell-bent on using Ossadagowah to call on Ka-tua-la-hu, and that’s going to be devastation time.”

  Neil said, “We’d better get back there, huh? Back to the bus? I know this stuff is really important, and all that, but Toby-”

  Harry put his arm around Neil’s shoulders. “We’re going to do the best we can, Neil, and a little bit more besides.”

  They made their way down the gloomy path of the Petrified Forest, down a flight of rough, log steps, until they reached the turnstile and the gift shop again. The girl was waiting for them anxiously, and she was obviously relieved that they weren’t trying to bust their way out with a petrified tree under their arms.

  “Did you see the professor?” she asked.

  “Sure,” said Harry. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Did you enjoy the forest?” she asked.

  Harry shook his head. “No. I was petrified.”

  They drove cautiously back along the highway to Lake Berryessa, but they needn’t have worried about being intercepted by the Highway Patrol. The bridge across Pope Creek and its immediate surroundings were in chaos. Floodlights now illuminated the bridge from all sides, and there were police cars and press cars and armored half-tracks from the National Guard parked all over the road. Helicopters clattered in and out, bringing television teams and police officials, and there was a constant echoing blare of amplified comments from a loudspeaker system.

  The night was still warm, but it was unusually dark already, and the air still trembled with the vibrations of a coming electric storm. Along the hills on the opposite shore of Lake Berryessa, across the deep, troubled waters, lightning forked like the fangs of a poisonous snake.

  A cop held his hand up as Harry and Neil and Singing Rock slowly approached the bridge area in their pickup.

  “I’m a parent of one of the children,” said Neil, and produced his driver’s license again.

  “Okay, okay,” said the cop. “Just pull over there and keep your head down. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  Neil parked, and they climbed out of the truck. This time, Singing Rock took his suitcase with him, and they walked along by the side of the road until they reached the edge of the creek. There they stood against the railr ings and tried to see what had happened since the Highway Patrol had sent them away.

  The school bus was still parked across the middle of the bridge, but now, even brighter than the arc lamps from either side of the creek, it was shimmering with a white, unearthly light of its own, and producing a constant high-pitched whine that set Harry’s teeth on edge.

  Neil said, “What’s happening?”

  Singing Rock set down his suitcase. “They are almost finished preparing the gateway. As soon as the moon goddess appears, they will emerge in their real form.”

  “What’s the time?” asked Harry. “I think my watch died of claustrophobia in that tunnel.”

  “There’s about a half-hour to go,” said Neil.

  Singing Rock opened his case and took out a small spherical cage made of curved bones bound together with human hair. He set it carefully on top of one of the uprights of the fence, and then hung strings of beads and ribbons around it.

  “Is it rude to ask what that is?” said Neil.

  “Not at all,” smiled Singing Rock. “It’s a caged spirit that’s particularly sensitive to the presence of other spirits. Rather like a canary that miners take down the mine shaft to detect the presence of methane. When that cage starts rattling, we’ll know that the first demons are drawing near to the bridge.”

  Neil peered at the cage worriedly. “A spirit? What kind of a spirit? A human spirit?”

  Singing Rock laughed. “No/ It’s the spirit of a wolf. I borrowed it from one of the elders.”

  Harry said, “What about a medicine circle? Can you do something to hold those medicine men inside that bus? The way you did the first time Misquamacus appeared?”

  “I don’t think there’s a chance,” said Singing Rock. “Apart from the fact that it’s physically difficult to get out there and draw one, your policemen will try to stop me, and so will Misquamacus. I think I prefer to conserve my energy for the battle itself.”

  There were now only ten minutes to moonrise. A little way away, just beyond a cluster of NBC television reporters and cameramen, Captain Myers of the Highway Patrol had set up a radio link post. He had obviously been outranked by the arrival of two police inspectors and a colonel from the National Guard, but he was tenaciously keeping in touch with the siege, and sending his men here and there to bring him news of what the military and the FBI were doing.

  In the tense, warm night, under the unnatural brilliance of the floodlights, a burble of military voices came over the radio as the National Guardsmen were deployed along the hills overlooking the bridge, punctuated with occasional terse comments about the state of the school bus.

  “She’s still glowing. No brighter now. But still glowing.”

  “I don’t know why the goddamn gas tank doesn’t blow, the way that’s shining.”

  “It doesn’t blow because it’s cold out there. Do you know how cold it is out there?

  That’s ice on the handrail. You see it? That’s ice.”

  “Crosby and Margolies in position, sir. We got a good view of the bus door.”

  “Where’s that half-track? I want that half-track across the road. I don’t want anybody entering or leaving unless we say so.”

  “Do you think the children are dead?”

  “Who knows? Who knows what the hell’s going on?”

  Singing Rock lifted his eyes to the thunderous sky. “We won’t see Nepauz-had when she appears,” he said quietly. “How long is it now?”

  “Two minutes,” said Neil.

  A Marine helicopter appeared from the southwest, and hovered around the bus for a while, taking reconnaissance photographs and trying to see into the iced-up windows. The draft from the helicopter’s rotors washed fiercely around them, and Singing Rock’s ribbons and beads flapped from the fence like the wings of ominous birds. Clouds of dry dust rose from the creek bed, and then gradually settled again as the helicopter sloped away southwest again, and disappeared.

  “About a minute,” said Neil.

  “Then it’s now,” whispered Singing Rock. “Now is the moment.”

  The keening whine from the bus suddenly died away. The police and the troops didn’t notice at first, but then gradually the hubbub from both sides of the creek diminished and sank into silence. Everybody turned and stared at the bus. There was total quiet under the floodlights, as if they were all waiting for the first take of a movie sequence.

  Over the radio transmitter, a voice said, “What’s happening now? All of a sudden, it’s like a graveyard around here.”

  The school bus, in absolute silence, explod
ed. An intense ball of fire rolled right out of the middle of it, and pieces of debris flew into the darkness and littered the roadway.

  “They’ve killed them! They’ve killed all the children!” yerbed an NEC reporter. “The bus just exploded right in front of our eyes, and it must have killed everyone in it!”

  A circle of fire still blazed on the roadway, and billows of smoke obscured their view.

  But then Singing Rock touched Harry’s arm and said, “Look.”

  In the flames themselves, standing in a circle, were the tall figures of the twenty-two greatest Red Indian medicine men who had ever lived. They were dressed in their full ceremonial robes of buckskin and buffalo hide and elaborately woven robes, and their headdresses were decorated with horns and feathers and the tails of cougars.

  Among them, in a robe of black and red that shimmered with gold and silver threads, with, a headdress of outspread eagle’s wings and carrying a mystical, carved staff, was the greatest of the greatest, the wonderworker whose name was still whispered by the grasses and the trees of the wide American continent. His high cheekbones were.painted with blue and yellow and white, in the war decorations of the Iroquois, and his deepset eyes burned with pride and with a desire for righteous vengeance.

  Neil, with a feeling of breathlessness and fear, knew that this was the being who had possessed and overwhelmed his son; who had come to life as a man of wood and tried to destroy him. It was Misquamacus.

  Singing Rock said, “Gitche Manitou, protect us. Gitche Manitou, aid us. Gitche Manitou, see that our desire for peace is good, and guide our hands.”

  He was about to cast the powders in front of them for protection, when Harry tugged at his sleeve. “Singing Rock-for Christ’s sake! Look what they’re doing!”

  Through the barricade of police cars and armored trucks came a squad of ten National Guardsmen, young and fresh-faced under their khaki helmets. They formed a line across the road, and then knelt down, aiming their rifles at the medicine jnen.

  Singing Rock, almost desperate, shouted: “They mustn’t! Don’t let them shoot! They mustn’t]”

  But over the transmitter the order snapped: “Aim- fire!”

  NINE

  There was a sharp rattle of gunfire. But it was only because they knew what was going to happen that Harry and Neil and Singing Rock could follow the fatal action of the next split second. Misquamacus swept his arm across in front of him, dismissing the manitous of each bullet, and returning them to where they came from.

  Unprepared, unprotected, the ten young guardsmen were shot down where they were kneeling-killed by their own bullets. They died on the road in dark stains of blood, twisted and crumpled like sleeping children. There was a stunned silence over the bridge and its surroundings, and even the news reporters stared without speaking. A brief sharp odor of gunpowder drifted away on the unsettled wind. The echoes died away.

  Singing Rock bowed his head. “They never listen,” he said softly. “They never, ever listen. O ancient gods, protect us.”

  It was too late now. A further detachment of National Guardsmen was running forward with rifles and rocket launchers, and making their way through the fallen bodies of their comrades. They knelt on the roadway and aimed their weapons, while corpsmen ran out with stretchers to collect the bodies.

  In the middle of the bridge, Misquamacus was spreading his arms, and he was beginning to recite the words of the summoning of Nashuna and Pa-la-kai and Coyote. His voice was deep, and it rumbled with the same timbre as the wind, and the vibrations that shook from the storm across the lake. The other medicine men turned inward to face each other, and spread their arms too, ignoring the intense line of guardsmen who were aiming their weapons at them.

  “Pick a target carefully,” instructed the National Guard colonel. “Then shoot at will until you’ve brought it down.”

  There was a nervous pause. Then: “Fire!”

  The second holocaust was worse than the first. Both Neil and Harry dropped down to the dusty roadside as a shrieking, sparkling hail of automatic rifle fire burst over them in all directions. The NBC news reporter beside them was hit in the face, and keeled over backward in a spray of blood. Police and soldiers and spectators twisted and fell, and bullets shattered automobile windows and pierced gas tanks. Four Highway Patrol cars exploded and burst into flames, and the night was lurid with orange fire and the rank odor of blazing gasoline.

  The National Guard colonel still couldn’t comprehend that the guardsmen’s own bullets were being turned against them, and he ordered another detachment of sharpshooters forward. Harry, crouched on the ground, said/”For God’s sake, Singing Rock, you’ve got to tell them!”

  Singing Rock said, “There’s only one thing I can do. I have seen it done by a great elder of my tribe, and I have heard it said that Crazy Horse could do it.”

  Harry said, “Don’t take any stupid risks! Just go tell the National Guard that they’re decimating us!”

  They heard another order to fire, and there was another sharp crackle of rifles.

  Instantly, Singing Rock flung back his head and stretched wide his arms.

  It happened so fast that Harry couldn’t really see what was going on. But the entire salvo of rifle fire flashed in a wide curve away from Misquamacus and headed for Singing Rock. Singing Rock spread his fingers, and the bullets sprayed off his hands in a screeching, whining burst of fire and hot lead. Then there were nothing but echoes, and they were gone.

  Harry stood up. Singing Rock was silent and pale, and there were beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead.

  “You deliberately attracted those bullets,” said Harry, hoarsely. “You dumb Indian, you. What would have happened if Crazy Horse’s spell hadn’t worked? They would have blown you away. Straight to the happy hunting grounds with no stop for lunch.”

  Singing Rock wouldn’t look at him. “I have to trust my spells,” he replied quietly. “If I lose my faith in my magic, what do I have left?”

  Harry let out a long breath. “Okay. But next time, why not just duck when the bullets start flying? All right?”

  Singing Rock nodded. There wasn’t tune for any more banter. The night was crisscrossed with flashing spotlights, and hideous with the whooping of sirens, but over it all they could still hear Misquamacus as he completed the incantation for calling down the first of the Indian demons. They could feel the rumble of thunder through their feet, and the lightning that had stalked the distant hills was now flickering closer.

  “Listen,” said Singing Rock. “Between them, those medicine men are calling down Nashuna and Pa-la-kai and Coyote. The demons won’t be able to resist their summons, because they’re too powerful, all together like that.”

  Neil, wiping a smudge of dirt from his face, said, “What are we going to do if they do call the demons down? How can we possibly fight them?”

  Singing Rock took a look at the spirit cage he had left on the fence. So far it was quiet, and showed no signs of activity. He rearranged the ribbons and beads, and finished casting the powders he had brought with him.

  Then he said, “What you have to remember is that almost every demon can be appeased. Some demons want blood, others want manitous. If you can offer a demon what he needs to survive and maintain his strength on the great outside, then you can usually succeed in dismissing him.”

  “Usually?” asked Harry. “How often is usually?”

  “More often than never,” replied Singing Rock. “And right now, we’re clinging on to every straw we’ve got.”

  There was an ear-splitting burst of thunder, and they looked in fear up at the sky. All the way down the dark length of the lake, huge trees of forked lightning sizzled and crackled, and the air reeked of electricity. Then darkness swamped them again, and the heavy clouds rolled over the mountains and blotted out the stars and the moon and the night sky.

  Misquamacus was calling now, at the top of his voice. “Nashuna, we summon you!

  Nashuna, we command you
! Nashuna, god of darkness, we summon you!”

  Above the circle of medicine men, a hundred feet in the air, a roiling knot of darkness appeared, darker than the clouds. Out of its threatening, amorphous midst, Harry could make out scores of what looked like red glittering eyes, evil and ravenous, and from beneath its cloudy bulk, dark smoky tentacles trailed toward the ground. The spirit cage on the fence began to rattle and shake as if it were being’worried by a mad dog. ‘

  There were heavy bursts of gunfire from police and soldiers on both sides of the bridge, and again both Highway Patrolmen and onlookers were cut down by slicing bullets. Over the transmitter, Harry and Neil could hear the National Guard colonel insisting on a cease-fire, and phoning Travis Air-Force Base for an air strike.

  Singing Rock, though, was totally preoccupied by Misquamacus, and by the huge bulk of Nashuna the demon of darkness. He stepped forward now, through the lines of police cars, and walked to the end of the bridge. Harry, from where he was crouching, was sure that he could see Misquamacus bare his teeth and smile.

  Singing Rock was caught in the floodlight, one man alone against twenty-two, and against all the terrible powers of the elder gods, and Misquamacus was at last going to get his revenge.

  Misquamacus raised one arm. Singing Rock stopped, only thirty or forty feet away from the circle of wonderworkers.

  In his distant, strange, echoing voice, Misquamacus called: “Why do you fight me, little brother? Why do you defy me?”

  Singing Rock didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his medicine bones and beat them together over his head in a complicated rhythm. Then he pointed one bone up to the sky, up toward the dark bulk of Nashuna, and spun the other bone in his free hand.

  Misquamacus suddenly understood what Singing Rock was doing, and raised his own arm toward Nashuna. But he was moments too late. Singing Rock’s incantation was completed, and he abruptly pointed his second bone toward Neem, the bringer of thunder, one of the most celebrated wonder-workers of all time.