Blind Panic

by Graham Masterton

  “Misquamacus!” Amelia repeated. “Let him go!”

  “You are white, and you are a woman,” said the man in black, without looking at her. “Who are you to command me?”

  “I may be a woman,” Amelia replied defiantly, although her voice was trembling with strain. “But at least I’m a real woman, who lives in the world of touching flesh. What are you, Misquamacus? You’re nothing but an echo in empty space. You’re nothing but a shout in the forest that nobody can hear. You can’t exist except in the spirits of others—like Wovoka, or those other wonder-workers whose souls you’ve been dressing yourself up in.”

  “You have no idea of my strength,” said the man in black. As he spoke, he gradually forced Singing Rock’s arms downward, and at the same time he pried his wrists apart. Singing Rock may be have been made of nothing more than ectoplasm, but he grimaced in pain and effort. Even though, technically, he was a ghost, he was substantial enough for the man in black to hurt him.

  “Okay, that’s enough!” I said. I came away from the door, crossed the room, and took hold of the man in black’s sleeve. He turned his head and spat at me.

  He didn’t punch me, or give me a head butt. He didn’t even take his hands off Singing Rock. But I had never been hit so hard, ever. I was flung back across the room so violently that I hit one of the armchairs and two of its legs collapsed. I rolled sideways onto the floor, twisting my shoulder.

  “All right, that’s it!” I told the man in black. I climbed back onto my feet and approached him again, my knees slightly bent and my hands raised in what I hoped was a convincing karate posture. Maybe I had never taken lessons, but I had seen Enter The Dragon four times.

  But Amelia caught at my arm and warned, “Harry—don’t even think about it. He could easily kill you! It’s your bracelet! Get your bracelet!”

  “What?”

  “Your bracelet, Harry! Blow out the candle and get your bracelet back! Singing Rock’s trapped here until you do!”

  I didn’t really understand what she was trying to say to me, but I stepped away from Singing Rock and the man in black, my hands still raised, and backed over to the dining table, where the cinnamon-smelling candle was still burning, with my black-pebble bracelet shining around its base.

  When I reached out for it, however, the man in black spat at me again—and I was given a hefty shove on the shoulder that sent me sprawling onto the rug.

  “You will stay where you are, white fool!” he cautioned me. “It is not your place to interfere.”

  “Oh, you think? I’m calling the desk. Let’s see how a three-hundred-year-old echo deals with hotel security.”

  The man in black stared at me balefully, and even though he looked like the Paiute wonder-worker Wovoka, I could see in his eyes who he really was. Misquamacus, the One Who Went and Came Back.

  “Bring it on, why don’t you?” I challenged him. “You want your revenge so bad, why don’t you have a go at me!”

  “I will—you can be sure of that,” the man in black whispered. “But before I do, I want you to witness your people laid low, as mine were. You are a fool and a blusterer, and you have no magic. But your meddling has thwarted me from taking my revenge—until now.”

  “Oh, I thwarted you, did I?” I retorted. “Well, let me tell you something, Misquamacus, I’m going to thwart you again. You’re going to be so goddamned thwarted, you won’t know what hit you. I’m going to be the very thwart of you, dude!”

  The man in black didn’t take his eyes off me, but now Singing Rock suddenly cried out—an echoing, hair-raising wail that sounded as if he were screaming in a tunnel. I heard a crackling noise, and a wide part appeared in Singing Rock’s hair, revealing his red-raw scalp. There was a momentary pause, and then his scalp started to peel away from the top of his head, like a red tulip slowly opening its petals.

  He screamed again in unbearable agony, but his skin continued to unroll from the top of his head downward, exposing his eyeballs and his cheek muscles and his nose. His lips were turned inside out, exposing his tongue and his grinning, tobacco-stained teeth.

  I launched myself at the man in black a second time, but again he jerked his head and spat at me, and I was thrown back so hard that I felt as if I been hit by a car. The back of my head was knocked against the wall and I fell awkwardly onto the floor, and a framed print dropped on top of me. Winded and bruised, I tried to get up again, but Amelia knelt down beside me and said, “Harry, no—there’s nothing you can do!”

  Singing Rock screamed again, as shrill as a tortured cat. His skin was now peeling down his neck, revealing his carotid artery and his Adam’s apple, bloody and glistening I could actually see his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he cried out in pain.

  “For Christ’s sake!” I said. “I can’t let him do this! Misquamacus! Misqua-goddamned-macus!”

  The man in black was still gripping Singing Rock’s wrists as Singing Rock’s skin unrolled from his shoulders, unrolling his coat and his shirt along with it. His chest muscles and his tendons and his veins were exposed, and all the bubbly connective tissue that held his body together. He looked now like one of those anatomical models, with all of its insides showing, except that his muscles and his tendons were twitching with pain, and his lipless mouth was dragged down in a silent howl of despair.

  “Harry—don’t!” Amelia insisted. “Singing Rock is dead already! Misquamacus is making him suffer, but he can’t kill his spirit!”

  “That’s not the goddamned point! Singing Rock saved our lives! I’m not going to let that bastard hurt him—even if he is dead!”

  I pulled myself onto my feet and lunged toward the dining table. Immediately I was struck again by something or somebody that I couldn’t see. The blow caught me right on the side of the head, so that my ears sang. But I managed to fall forward, and sprawl across the top of the table, and reach out for the candle and the black-pebble bracelet.

  “Ecúnsniyo!” barked the man in black, and the candle flame roared up into a white-hot jet of fire that reached right up to the ceiling and set fire to the lampshade. The heat scorched my face, and I smelled my hair burning. I had no choice but to back away, shielding my face with my hand, and as I did so I was hit yet again, across the shoulders, with a crack that felt as if it almost broke my spine.

  I fell down onto my knees, coughing. But it was then that I saw the broken chair legs, easily within reach. I picked it up and gripped it as tight as I could.

  I looked up. Singing Rock had stopped screaming now, but he was shuddering violently. By now the man in black had unrolled both Singing Rock’s clothes and his skin almost down to his knees, baring his stomach muscles and his thigh muscles. All of the skin had been peeled off his penis so that it was only a thin, bloody string.

  Amelia was standing in the corner with her hand clasped over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.

  I stood up and lurched toward the dining table again. The candle flame roared even higher, and even hotter, but I swung the chair leg and knocked it onto the floor. It fell onto the rug, where it kept on burning, its white flame playing against the wall as fiercely as an oxyacetylene torch. But I wasn’t worried about that; I reached across the dining table and snatched the black-pebble bracelet and slipped it back onto my wrist.

  I held my fist up and shouted out, “John Singing Rock! John! Here!”

  The man in black spat at me, again and again, and I was thrown from one wall to another. But I kept on staggering back onto my feet, and brandishing Singing Rock’s bracelet, and I could see that Singing Rock’s skin and clothes were rolling back up again to cover him. The man in black let go of his wrists and stalked toward me, tossing an armchair out of his way, his face contorted with anger. But Singing Rock, released from his grasp, immediately began to fade. His color was leached away until he was translucent, and he looked like the ghost he really was. Silently, his ectoplasm twisted around, like a long white chiffon scarf, rose up into the air, and floated away. It flew out the
open door that led to the balcony, and upward into the sunshine, out of sight.

  All that was left was smoke, and that began to shudder, and curl, and blow away, too. As it vanished, I felt the bracelet tighten and tingle, and I knew that Singing Rock’s spirit was back inside the black pebbles that he had carefully picked from the bed of the Okabojo when he was only a young man and first learning the art of Native American shamanism.

  The man in black stormed right up to me and stood over me like a angry bull, his chin tilted aggressively upward.

  “You want Singing Rock?” I asked him. He was so close that I could feel his chilly breath on the back of my upraised fist. “He’s here now, where you can’t hurt him anymore. His spirit’s inside this bracelet, Misqua-smartass-macus, and you can’t go after him because you don’t happen to have a spirit any longer, now do you?”

  “I could destroy you where you stand,” whispered the man in black. “I could turn your heart into a stone or boil your brain. I could fill your stomach with venomous snakes and your lungs with fire ants. I could flay you alive, like your treacherous friend.”

  I didn’t answer him. To be totally truthful, I was too scared to open my mouth. Amelia was looking at me from the other side of the room, and from the expression on her face I could see that she was just as frightened as I was. The candle flame had gone out now, but the rug was still smoldering and fragments of glowing ash were still floating down from the skeletal remains of the lampshade.

  The man in black stayed in front of me, breathing hard, for what seemed like an hour, even though it was probably no longer than twenty seconds. Then he said very softly, “I promised you that I would show you your people scattered and blown to the winds, and I shall keep my promise. But when the sun sets on that day of destruction, you will pay for what you have done to me, both you and this woman, and the pain that I inflicted on your treacherous friend will be as nothing compared with the pain that I will inflict on you.”

  I still couldn’t find the words to answer him. The last thing I wanted to do was provoke him into changing his mind, so that he peeled my skin off, as if some kind of gory banana. I couldn’t even work out how to nod.

  At last he turned away from me, and as he turned away he vanished, as if he had never been there. I felt something, like a door opening and closing, and a momentary draft, but that was all. Wovoka had more substance than Misquamacus. At least he could make himself visible. But he was still no more than a spirit, and every spirit has to return to the other side sooner or later.

  “Has he really gone?” I asked Amelia.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and raised one finger, as if she were trying to feel which way the wind was blowing. Then she opened her eyes again and said, “Yes…he’s gone.”

  I came over and stamped on the smoldering carpet until I had extinguished the last of the glowing orange sparks. The smell of burned wool made me sneeze three times, which my grandmother always told me was bad luck. Sneeze once, you wake up the devil. Sneeze twice, he realizes where you are. Sneeze three times and he comes to get you.

  “What Singing Rock said about Misquamacus was right, then?” I said. “He’s borrowing the spirits of other medicine men so he can come back into the real world and get his revenge.”

  “It looks like it,” said Amelia. She was looking nervy and shaken, and she kept folding and unfolding her arms and touching her cheek, like somebody who badly needs a cigarette. “And of course there used to be hundreds of medicine men and wonder-workers, all across the country, so he has plenty to choose from.”

  “Well, Singing Rock told us a few of them, didn’t he? Infernal John and Chief Hot Dog or whatever his name was.”

  Amelia said, “Every tribe had at least one medicine man. Sometimes more than one. They all had their different ways of making magic, but their powers were pretty similar. Healing people or making their enemies sick. Making it rain or making it stop raining. Filling up lakes with plenty of fish. Shape-shifting into coyotes. Turning into eagles and flying.”

  “What about making people go blind?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know about that. And of course Singing Rock didn’t get the chance to tell us.”

  “Can we bring him back?”

  “If we do, that will probably bring Misquamacus back, too, to finish what he started. Do you really want to risk it?”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t want Singing Rock to get skinned again. And I don’t want us to get skinned, either. I don’t much care for the raw look.”

  “I suppose I could try to communicate with him by thought-dowsing,” said Amelia.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s like dowsing for water, only you’re trying to find thoughts instead of hidden springs. Actually it’s more like tuning in to radio signals than dowsing, but you use a hazel twig, just the same. You can pick up thoughts right out of the air. You can hear them.”

  She went over to her woven bag, rummaged inside it, and eventually produced a dry, Y-shaped twig, only about six inches long, and showed it to me.

  “It’s not always successful,” she said, “especially when somebody’s been dead for quite a long time. It works best when the subject has only just passed away, and their thoughts are still in the room. But Singing Rock’s spirit was here, so I might have an outside chance of getting in touch.”

  I took the twig from her and turned it this way and that. I even sniffed it, but it didn’t smell of anything except Amelia’s musky perfume. I have to admit that I was skeptical, but there was no harm in giving this thought-dowsing a shot. Until we found out how Misquamacus was striking people blind, we would be groping around in the dark, just as they were.

  At that moment we heard a loud bang on the street outside—then shouting and a woman calling out for help. We went onto the balcony and saw that a Shogun had collided into the back of a trolley car, and that a man had been pinned against the trolley’s rear bumper. He wasn’t yet dead, but I wouldn’t have put serious money on his chances of surviving.

  A crowd had gathered, and three or four men were trying to open the Shogun’s doors. The woman driver didn’t seem to be making any attempt to get out, even though one of the men was hammering with his fist on her window.

  “You have to back up!” he shouted at her. “Come on, lady, you have to back up!”

  Amelia and I stood on our balcony watching this scene for a few minutes. A police car arrived, and two cops got out and tried to get the woman to back up, too.

  “She’s blind,” said Amelia. “Look at her, the way she’s pressing her hand against the window.”

  An ambulance drew up, and after the paramedics had examined the man who was crushed against the back of the trolley car, they talked to the cops, and one of the cops smashed the Shogun’s passenger-side window with the butt of his gun. The cops and the paramedics opened the driver’s-side door and helped the woman out. From the way she was holding her head, it was plain that she couldn’t see.

  “We have to do something,” said Amelia. “Misquamacus is going to make us all go blind if we don’t.”

  We watched the street scene for a few moments more, but then Amelia said, “I feel like a rubbernecker. Let’s go back inside.”

  “So you’re going to try this thought-dowsing thing?” I asked her.

  She nodded. She crossed over to the couch, and without any hesitation she crossed her arms and pulled off her pale gray sweater. She was wearing a white lacy bra with rosebuds embroidered on it. She was very big breasted, and the bra didn’t leave a whole lot to my imagination. Next she unbuttoned her jeans, sat down on the couch, and took those off, too, revealing a white lacy thong that matched her bra. I had guessed the thong correctly, but not the color. White, not black. Saintly rather than satanic.

  “Hey—you have to do this in your underwear?” I asked her, trying to sound jovial and offhand.

  She reached behind her back and unfastened the catch of her bra and slipped it off. Her nipples were v
ery pale pink, and they crinkled in the warm breeze that was blowing in from the open balcony door. I tilted my head away and half covered my eyes with my hand. When I looked back she had taken her thong off, too, and was sitting on the couch completely naked except for her short white socks.

  “You have to do this in the nude?”

  Amelia nodded. “The hazel twig acts as the antenna, but my skin will actually be the receiver. If I wore clothes, any thoughts that I picked up would be so muffled that I probably wouldn’t be able to understand them.”

  She paused, and then she said, “If you’re embarrassed, Harry, you can always go out on the balcony, or shut yourself in the bedroom.”

  “Embarrassed? Moi? Of course not. You go ahead.”

  She peeled off her socks and then sat cross-legged in the center of the couch, with her back very straight, almost as if she were practicing yoga, except that she held up the hazel twig in front of her at eye level.

  I straddled one of the dining chairs and watched her and thought how much I liked everything about her. Her face, her body, her aura. The way the heel of her right foot was tucked up between her legs. In fact, I was in love with her, and I wished more than anything that she had never married Bertie.

  She looked at me, her forehead furrowed in a mock frown. “I love Bertil,” she said. “He’s a wonderful husband. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, too.”

  “You heard what I was thinking,” I said. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Of course I did. I wouldn’t waste my time doing this if I couldn’t.”

  “Jesus, I’m embarrassed.”

  Amelia smiled. “Don’t be. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I might feel the same way about you?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She slowly waved the hazel twig from side to side. “Hazels used to be called wishing sticks,” she said.

  “Oh, really?” To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really concentrating on the twig.