Burial

by Graham Masterton

  Shaking, sweating, swearing under my breath, I looked into my rearview mirror and saw that the highway was strewn from side to side with bodies. Not far away, a bus lay on its roof, its sides split open. It must have been travelling as fast as I was, if not faster, and overturned. I just prayed that all of those people were already dead when I ran over them.

  Through the blurry dust and the dim red light, I saw Papago Joe’s signboard up ahead. I was travelling at eighty-five now, and I had no idea of how I was going to pull up. I guessed that the only way was to drive straight into his lot, and hope for the best. I switched my headlights onto high-beam and pressed my hand hard on the horn and said, ‘Please God, don’t let me die just yet.’

  At the last second, just as I reached the entrance to Papago Joe’s lot, I saw a man lying in the road. I swerved, and missed the entrance, and crashed straight through his newly-repaired fencing. But that swerve probably saved my life. I pulled up yards and yards and yards of fencing, one fence-post after another was whipped up out of the ground, but it acted like an arrester-net on an aircraft-carrier. By the time I collided with the heaps of Buicks and Oldsmobiles which Papago Joe was still trying to clear from the last disaster, I was only going at about twenty miles per hour. All the same, a head-on collision at twenty miles per hour is no joke, and I was flung around like a puppet. I hit my head on the top of the steering-wheel, and knocked both of my knees against the underside of the instrument panel.

  I lifted my head and looked around me. Papago Joe’s lot was crowded — not just with second-hand automobiles but with sheds and signboards and boxes and trailers and all kinds of rubbish, including a sagging clapboard wall that looked like half of somebody’s house. I turned around and saw that the Sun Devil Bar had partially collapsed. Its roof was sagging on one side, and all of its outbuildings and garages had been dragged across the road and were shunted up against Papago Joe’s Airstream trailer.

  I forced open the door of my car and immediately the interior was filled with a blinding, swirling hurricane of dust. The wind was literally screaming, and the air shook with thunder.

  I was just about to climb out of the car when I saw Papago Joe struggling towards me, wrapped in a large grey wind-whipped blanket. He was waving to me and shouting something. I waited until he had reached me, and I was glad that I did.

  ‘Stay where you are until I’ve protected you!’ he shouted. ‘Otherwise you’ll get pulled right down into the ground and that my friend — that’ll be the end of you!’

  ‘What’s happening?’ I shouted back at him.

  ‘It’s opened up!’ he told me. He jabbed his finger in the direction of his workshop. ‘The place where those people were killed, it’s opened up. It’s pulling down everything — cars, people, cattle, you name it.’

  ‘The same thing’s happening in Phoenix,’ I said.

  He nodded. He was pulling a necklace out of his pocket, and making heavy weather of untwisting it. ‘Much worse in Phoenix,’ he said. ‘We saw it on TV, at least till the TV went dead. The airport, the State Capitol, the Art Museum, the Civic Plaza, everything’s gone. Not a building left standing on Van Buren Street. They called in the National Guard but the last we saw they’d lost two helicopters and thirty-eight men.’

  ‘Why’s it so bad in Phoenix?’ I asked him. At last he had succeeded in unravelling the necklace.

  He put the necklace over my head, and said, ‘Many more Indians died in Phoenix. Over a hundred and fifty Indians were massacred in 1887 when they tried to protest about the railroad running through their lands. Thirty-eight men, the rest were women and children. Nobody ever knew who killed them. In fact, nobody knew that they had died until a prospector found their bones scattered in a canyon up in the South Mountains.’

  ‘What’s this for?’ I said, lifting up the necklace so that I could take a closer look at it. It wasn’t exactly designer jewellery. It was a combination of coarse, tightly-plaited hair, dull red beads, and discoloured teeth.

  ‘It’s a medicine-necklace,’ said Papago Joe. ‘They used to be worn by Hohokam Indians when they had to walk through sacred burial-grounds, to ward off the power of shadow-spirits. It will protect you from being pulled down into the Great Outside.’

  ‘You’re not wearing one,’ I observed.

  He smiled. ‘I don’t have to. I’m an Indian. Only white people and white artefacts are being pulled down. Well, Mexican, too.’

  ‘I’ve seen Misquamacus,’ I told him. ‘The girl I’m looking for, Karen, she came to my motel during the night … Misquamacus was with her. Or kind of in her, I’m not too sure which.’

  Papago Joe took hold of my arm. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.’ We Papagos call it Two-Becomes-one.” Anyway,’ he said, ‘come on over to the trailer, I’ll tell you what I plan to do.’

  I eased myself out of the car. I was pretty bruised and shaken up, but I managed to walk with nothing much worse than a slow, heroic limp. Papago Joe took my arm but he didn’t really need to. The day was so dark now that I could hardly see from one side of the lot to the other. Grit lashed at our exposed faces, and tumbleweed tangled around our ankles. From the direction of the workshop, I heard a terrible groaning crash, and Papago Joe said, ‘More cars going. It’s the end of everything, as far as I’m concerned. My whole business — everything.’

  I still felt a slight tugging sensation as we walked across the lot. It was almost like somebody walking too close to you on the sidewalk, and continually nudging you into the gutter. But the medicine-necklace did its stuff. Its hair prickled with static, and by the time we reached Papago Joe’s trailer some of the loose ends were beginning to smoulder and burn, but Papago Joe simply patted it with his hand, and put the smouldering out. I sniffed in the smell of old, burnt hair, and it reminded me of something very old and very cremated and very dead.

  Inside the trailer, six or seven candles were burning. The light swivelled and dipped as we opened and closed the door. Extra Cool Dude was there, along with Laura from the Sun Devil, and her little boy Stanley.

  ‘Some driving,’ remarked E.C. Dude, appreciatively. ‘You came through that fence like shit off a shovel.’

  ‘I was lucky, that’s all.’

  Papago Joe didn’t waste any time. He went to the far end of the trailer and returned carrying a raggedy bundle of old, stained buffalo hide, decorated with beads and feathers. ‘I went to the reservation last night and their medicine-men lent me this bundle. Well, I’ve done them quite a few favours in the past. Fixing their automobiles, lending them bail-money when their kids get into trouble.’

  The trailer creaked on its wheels, and I heard something heavy bang up against the side, close to the door.

  ‘How come this trailer doesn’t get dragged away, too?’ I asked Papago Joe.

  Papago Joe glanced up at me with those black, coalmine eyes. ‘After the last time, I made sure that I protected it. I made a circle of blue sand and crows’ blood, and I asked Heammawihio to guard it, and to keep it in the land of light. It’s the same protection that we would have asked for our lodges, back in the days when we had such things. The fact that it’s an Airstream trailer instead of a buffalo-hide tipi is — in magical terms — neither here nor there.’

  ‘You see?’ said E.C. Dude. ‘No flies on Papago Joe.’

  Stanley turned round and stared solemnly at Papago Joe as if to make sure that he really had no flies on him. His mother bent over and whispered, ‘It means he’s smart. Like, he thinks of everything.’

  All the same, the wind rocked the trailer, and I heard glass breaking outside, and then a long screech of metal that set my teeth on edge, and I wasn’t at all convinced that blue sand and crows’ blood were going to keep us upright and out of that hole for very long.

  Papago Joe untied the bundle and laid out a collection of bones and sticks and leather pouches. Everything looked dried-up and stained and decayed, and was tied up with hanks of hair and dried-up shreds of rawhide. There was a strong smell of rot
ting leather and grease.

  ‘This is what we’ll need for visiting the Great Outside,’ said Papago Joe. ‘In this pouch here is the powder which will induce a state of hallucinatory death.’

  ‘Hallucinatory death?’ I asked him. ‘What the hell’s that?’

  ‘That means that — once we’ve taken this powder — we will be tricking our conscious brains into believing that we’re dead. Clinically, we will be dead. But we will continue to be conscious on a much lower level. We will still be able to function as human beings, we’ll still be able to walk and talk and think, and we’ll still be capable of coming back to life.’

  ‘What’s in it? The powder?’

  ‘I’m not sure of everything that’s in it. But I know it contains human ashes, and peyote, and macerated huajillo leaves, and bitter cactus, as well as one or two other berries and herbs.’

  ‘Yecch,’ put in E.C. Dude. ‘Think I’ll stick to the speedy Alka-Seltzer.’

  I felt my heart start to palpitate. ‘Papago Joe — when you say clinically dead, what exactly do you mean by that?’

  Papago Joe tapped his forehead. ‘No more brain activity. Not that a doctor could detect, anyway. But we shall still be see and hear and talk and think, but much, much deeper. Down there, in the Great Outside.’

  ‘Is it, uh, safe?’ I asked him.

  ‘Safe? he asked me. ‘It hasn’t been tested by the FDA, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, we won’t suffer any kind of brain damage, will we, or physical trauma, or anything like that?’

  Papago made a face. ‘How should I know? I’ve never done it before.’

  ‘Hey, encouraging, man, or what?’ said E.C. Dude.

  ‘You’ve never done it before?’ I asked him. My heart was palpitating even more furiously, and my tongue felt as if it were lined with saguaro cactus skin, crusty and dry.

  ‘Hardly anybody has, these days. The old ways of the wonder-workers are long since gone.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘We don’t have to do it. Nobody said that we’re obliged to save civilization as we know it; or even to save your girlfriend. It’s only Superman who has to do things like that.’

  I didn’t say anything. I was the only person in the world who had any kind of a chance of rescuing Karen, and Papago Joe was probably the only person in the world who could help me to do it Maybe I wasn’t Superman, but I knew what I had to do, even though it scared me.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Supposing we take this death-powder stuff, then what?’

  Papago Joe held up a handful of sticks, each of which was decorated with strands of hair, and tipped with a hooked bird’s beak.

  ‘Eagle-sticks,’ he said. ‘They will allow us to travel almost instantaneously anywhere we like — and without losing our way. Misquamacus used these. That’s how he managed to give the appearance of being in two different places at the same time. In fact he wasn’t — but he had travelled very swiftly through the Great Outside. It’s a little bit like having a shortcut through time and space. There’s nothing magical about it, nothing supernatural. Even Einstein knew all about it. The shortest distance between two points in the Universe is a curve; and that curve becomes even shorter when you are actually inside the Universe, rather than outside it.’

  I picked up one of the sticks, and turned it this way and that. ‘But these … these look kind of superstitious.’

  Papago Joe said, ‘Yes. In a way, they are. But each of them carries different markings, do you see? And those markings represent the landmarks that birds use to navigate themselves across North America. They may look like nothing but sticks to you … but in fact they constitute a complete set of highly-sophisticated natural compasses. You could fly a 747 with these.’

  ‘What else do we have?’ I asked him. I suppose I ought to have been much more sceptical; but I had seen too much Indian magic today to challenge Papago Joe’s medicinecred. He was educated, he was confident. In his dark, glittery way he was almost fatherly. And, as I said before, I didn’t have much in the way of choices.

  He sorted through the medicine-bundle. Outside, I heard a heavy collision, and then an extended rumbling roar, as if about three hundred trees were falling down, except that there were no trees, not for miles around.

  ‘Only two more things that are going to be of any use to us on the Great Outside,’ said Papago Joe. He held up another pouch of powder. ‘Sun-powder, which can cloak us in light, as a protection. Again, it’s scarcely supernatural. It simply uses the same chemistry that illuminates fireflies. And here, this is the powder which can restore us back to a normal level of consciousness, when we want to return. Not to be lost, this powder.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I sure hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Most of it, Harry, will be trial-and-error. I can’t promise you any better than that. I’m not a real wonder-worker. I’m nothing more than an enthusiastic amateur.’

  I gave him a humourless grin. ‘Thank you for being honest. I’m just about ready to crap myself as it is.’

  ‘But we won’t be alone,’ Papago Joe assured me. ‘I shall be using your dead friend Singing Rock to guide me. In fact, technically speaking, I shall be Singing Rock.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘It’s very simple. A person can only enter the Great Outside in one of two ways. Either they’re dead, or else they’ve been possessed by the spirit of somebody dead. That’s how your friend Karen was able to enter the Great Outside … how she came so quickly to Arizona. She’s been possessed by Misquamacus. The advantage to him of course, is that he can use Karen to do all of the living things, physical things that he can no longer do for himself, like counting coup.’

  ‘But I saw him. Not just Karen. I saw the actual Misquamacus. His face, his necklaces, everything. He had this totally gross-out headdress made out of bugs.’

  ‘Of course you saw him,’ said Papago Joe. ‘You’re quite psychically sensitive, that’s why — quite suggestible. And apart from that, you’d seen him before, and so you believed in him. Most people wouldn’t have seen him — couldn’t have seen him.’

  I thought for a moment about what Papago Joe was suggesting. ‘So when you go into the Great Outside, you’re going to call on Singing Rock to possess your body?’

  ‘That’s right. And that means I can borrow his wisdom and his magical experience, as well as his spirit.’

  ‘But if I’m going to be coming with you —’

  ‘Exactly. You’ll have to call on somebody to possess you, too.’

  ‘Jesus.’ The idea sounded pretty damned creepy.

  ‘It feels a little strange,’ smiled Papago Joe. ‘But I promise you it doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘Who can I use?’

  He shrugged. ‘Anybody you know who’s dead — preferably somebody you liked. It would help if they had some spiritual skills.’

  ‘Can it be anybody at all?’ I was thinking of David, my own drowned brother.

  Papago Joe looked at me narrowly; in the same way that Singing Rock used to look at me. ‘Don’t choose anybody too close to you. You might have to sacrifice them, for one reason or another, and if they’ve been close to you — well, they’ll be dead already, but you could easily hesitate, at a moment when it might be very dangerous to hesitate.’

  I suddenly thought of Martin Vaizey. I had liked Martin, in a peculiar way. I had found him fussy and Scoutmasterly, and a little old-fashioned. But I had admired his psychic skills and I had admired his manners. What more could I say? He was the kind of guy who kept his shoes polished and never belched in public, if he belched at all.

  I was sorry he was dead; so sorry that it hurt, because he wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t involved him in fighting with Misquamacus. If I could give him half a chance to get his revenge, then that was the very least I could do.

  ‘There’s a guy called Martin Vaizey,’ I told Papago Joe. ‘He died in New York just a couple of days ago.’

  P
apago Joe looked at me for a long time without blinking. ‘You want to tell me more?’

  ‘He was a psychic, and a good one. He contacted Singing Rock for me, showed me his face. I couldn’t choose anyone better.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Papago Joe. ‘Martin Vaizey — you want to spell that?’

  I spelled out Martin’s name for him and then I checked my watch. It was almost five, which of course was impossible. Even a Taiwanese watch would have been better than a Russian watch. ‘I think we’d better leave pronto,’ I said. ‘The longer we leave it, the worse it’s going to be. Misquamacus could have taken Karen for miles by now.’

  Papago Joe said, ‘Listen, don’t worry about it. He can travel so fast that it really makes no difference. He could be in Fairbanks, Alaska, by now.’

  E.C. Dude said, ‘Fairbanks, Alaska? What would he want in Fairbanks, Alaska?’

  ‘That’s just a for-instance,’ said Papago Joe. ‘What I mean is, it’s possible for dead people to cross the continent in literally seconds. They’re not restricted by the same reality as we are. They don’t have to contend with time and distance and kinetic energy and friction and all that nonsense. They set their course, and they cross, and that’s it.’

  ‘Rapid transit, hunh?’ asked E.C. Dude. ‘Beam me up, Geronimo.’

  Papago Joe said, ‘Did you ever shiver, like you thought somebody was stepping on your grave?’

  E.C. Dude said, ‘Sometimes I shiver when I really need a leak bad.’

  ‘I’m not talking about needing a leak, for Christ’s sake. I’m talking about shivering. Do you know why that happens, hunh? Did you ever stop to think about it, just for once? You’re standing on the sidewalk in downtown Phoenix waiting for the traffic signals to change, and all of a sudden, you don’t care whether they’ve changed or not, because something cold goes through you, something cold and dark that really makes you shake; but when you look around there’s nobody anyplace near you. Do you know what causes that? Have you any idea?’