Blind Panic (14 page)

“I’ll bet you anything you like that Petrovsky’s involved in this somehow. And a few other countries that want to see us brought to our knees.”

Marian Perry put aside the president’s chowder bowl and said, “You really look like you could use some sleep, darling. You should let Kenneth do more of the worrying. Concentrate on resting, and on getting yourself better.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he told her. “The trouble is, every time I sleep, I have nightmares. And when I wake up, I can’t even tell if it’s day or night. It’s so damned
dark
in here.”

All the same, Dr. Cronin gave him a shot of Zolpidem, and by one thirty A.M. he was sleeping. He scarcely seemed to be breathing, and his hair and his face were so white that he looked like his own death mask, cast out of alabaster. His bedside lamps were kept on, and the connecting door to the nurse’s station was left half-ajar, so that the nurse and the two Secret Service agents sitting outside could keep a constant eye on him throughout the night.

They talked to each other in low voices—about the nationwide cancellation of all major sporting events, and about the news that five prominent Hollywood actors had all been struck blind after the premiere of
Enchanted Hunters
, the new Rachel Keston picture, at Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

Public hysteria was growing, with countless families barricading themselves in their homes. Random shootings were rife, many by blind people who feared they were being attacked or robbed, firing wildly at imaginary assailants they couldn’t even see. Thousands more were trying to escape from city centers into the wilds, ignoring the blanket ban on all freeway driving to create glaciers of slow-moving traffic. But—proportionately—there were just as many incidents of sudden blindness in the remoter regions as there were in metropolitan areas. In northern Minnesota, seven hunters were killed or seriously injured by black bears as they stumbled blindly through the woods. In the most catastrophic
single incident, in Salt Lake City, the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir was struck blind during a concert, all three hundred and sixty of them. The
Salt Lake Tribune
reported that “in their white robes, arms extended, they tumbled screaming from the stage like angels falling out of heaven.”

As the nation descended into chaos and darkness, the president continued to sleep. Now and then one of the Secret Service agents looked in at him, but for three hours he remained utterly motionless.

“He’s not dead, is he?” asked one of the agents.

The nurse checked his monitor. “No, no. But he’s probably dreaming.”

At three forty-five A.M., however, the president was disturbed by a sharp tapping noise, like a faucet dripping. He lifted his head off the pillow and listened.

“Is anybody there?” he called out, but there was no reply.

The tapping grew louder and more insistent by the minute, and soon it was accompanied by a low hum and a rustling sound.

“Who’s there?” he repeated. There was still no reply, but then the president felt something run lightly across his hand, like a spider or a cockroach, and then he felt more insects scuttling over his neck and his face and into his pajamas. He was about to shout out for help, but as he opened his mouth, five or six hard-shelled beetles tried to penetrate his lips, and he ended up spitting and spluttering.

“Jackson! Kaminsky!” he managed to call out. “Jackson! Kaminsky! Get in here!”

But there was still no response from the Secret Service agents outside, nor from the nurse.

“Who’s there?” he demanded. “Where are Jackson and Kaminsky? Who the hell’s there?”

Frantically he brushed more beetles away from his lips. They seemed determined to wriggle their way into his mouth, and they tasted foul, like dark brown cough linctus. Some of them were scurrying down his arms, and he repeatedly
clutched at the sleeves of his pajamas in an attempt to crush them. Others ran down his back.

“Get these bugs off me!” he shouted. “Whoever you are, you’re in a whole heap of trouble—I can promise you that!
Get these goddamned bugs off me!
”

It was then that he realized that he could see a man standing in the far corner of the room. Actually
see
him, even though he still couldn’t see the surrounding room, which remained seamlessly dark. The man looked like a photographic negative, white on black. He was very tall, and he was wearing an elaborate headdress of bull’s horns, with strings of beads and feathers hanging from it, which made him appear even taller. He was carrying a stick with a bird’s skull on the end of it.

At first the president thought that the man might be only some kind of afterimage imprinted on his retina. He blinked, and blinked again, to see whether he would disappear. But the man not only remained there, right in front of him, but he took three or four steps nearer and raised his right hand, palm outward.

Because his face appeared as a negative, it was difficult for the president to make out exactly what he looked like. His eye sockets were two white smudges, and his teeth were black. But he appeared to have a strong, impassive face, with high cheekbones and a curved, hawklike nose.

As he stood there, the bugs began to scuttle off the president’s bed, and drop with a soft rattling sound onto the floor. The president could see them as a living torrent of white specks as they rushed over the man’s feet and up his legs and into his robes. Soon they had all disappeared from sight.

“I can
see
you,” the president said, hoarsely.

“Of course you can see me,” the man replied in a harsh, strangely accented whisper. “I am the one who painted your days black. What you see and what you cannot see, that is for me to decide.”

“Who the hell are you? Are you an actual person, or am I having a dream here?”

“You are asking a dream if he is a dream?” The man paused, and slowly raised his hand to touch his forehead, as if he were trying to visualize something that had happened very long ago.

He said, “We thought that
you
were a dream once, when you first appeared in your ships.”

“What?”

“We thought that you were gods, sent by Gitche Manitou to bring us prosperity and divine guidance and years of plenty. But you drove us off our hunting grounds and desecrated our sacred places. You slaughtered our women and children as if they were animals. Then we thought that you were a nightmare.

“In the end, though, we made the worst discovery of all. We discovered that you were real.”

“
Jackson! Kaminsky!
”

The man came closer still, and now the president could actually
smell
him as well as see him. A smell of uncured hides, smoky wood fires, and frosty mornings in the woods. A smell of America as it used to be, before the colonists came.

“They cannot hear you,” the man told him. “I can bring deafness as well as blindness. I can open and close time, like one of your holy books.”

“Who are you?” the president repeated. “What the hell do you want?”

“I have many names,” the man replied. “To some tribes, I am He Whose Face Appeared in the Sky. To you, I am the One Who Brings the Terror of Eternal Darkness. But when I was first born, I was given the name of Misquamacus.”

“
Misquamacus?
Is that supposed to mean something to me? I don’t speak any Native American.”

“It means what it means. It means He Who Went and Came Back. It means that I was the only one who refused
ever
to accept what your people did to us. So long as you walk over this land as if it belongs to you, I will not allow my bones
to lie in it, and I will not allow my memory to blow in its winds. I will take back every forest and every river and every mountain, and they will be ours again, and everything that you have built will be buried in absolute darkness forever.”

“You don’t exist,” said the president. “Either you’re a bad dream, or else you’re some kind of optical illusion.”

“You will soon find out how real I am,” Misquamacus replied, “when my ancestors rise up from the earth in their thousands and overwhelm you. When you see your great monuments collapse and your bridges fall. When your dams burst open and your cities are drowned. When the sky shakes with such devastating thunder that every window shatters from Ogunquit in the east to Tsurai in the west. Then you will know that I exist.”

“And you’re telling me this why?”

“Because I am Wampanaug, and because the Wampanaug have always been a people of great honor, unlike you. When you scattered us, and slew us, you showed us no mercy, even though you knew that we could not withstand you. Now it is
you
who cannot withstand us, yet I am prepared to spare the lives of many millions.”

The president narrowed his eyes, but the white figure remained blurry and out of focus.

The president said, “That’s very magnanimous of you. Pity about the thousands you’ve killed already.”

“I have killed many of your people, yes,” said Misquamacus. “But what did you do? You killed not only our people but our whole culture. You killed our traditions, and our religion, and stole out of our children’s minds the sacred stories that made us what we were, as if they had never been spoken.”

“But you say you’re prepared to be merciful? What’s the catch?”

Misquamacus came even closer. The president was sure that he could see beetles dropping off his headdress, and his robes moving as if they were alive.

“You are the chief of your people, are you not?”

“I am the elected president of these United States. That’s correct.”

“Then tell all of your people to tear down their houses, and dig up their roads, and learn to live the way that
we
used to live. Tell them that they can fly in the sky no more, nor travel by any means except for walking or riding on horses. Tell them that they must learn respect for the land, and its seasons, and that they must listen to the spirits of the trees, and of the grass, and of the winds that blow in winter.”

The president said, “You’re serious, aren’t you? Whoever you are—
whatever
you are—even if you’re nothing but a dream, you really mean it, don’t you?”

“You have experienced my power for yourself, my friend. You know what I can do. But I am giving you the chance to be the savior of your people. This soil on which we stand has soaked up too much blood already.”

The president shook his head. “What you’re asking for, fellow—it’s insanity! You can’t expect us to turn the clock back two hundred years. How would we feed ourselves?”

“In the same way that we did—off the land.”

“Are you out of your mind? You can’t sustain three hundred and five million people on buffalo and berries! Besides, the whole world has changed beyond any understanding. It’s high tech, and it’s overcrowded, and it’s hostile. How would we defend ourselves? With bows and arrows?”

“If you had to do that, perhaps you would then understand what it was like to be us.”

“This has got to be a nightmare. I’m going to wake up in a minute, and you’re going to be gone.”

“No, my friend. I won’t. Not until you promise me that you will give our land back to us, and that you will treat it with care and humility, as we once did.”

“Listen,” the president protested, “there’s no way we can go back to living like that, and I doubt if many of your people could do it, either. We’re still the most technologically advanced nation on earth. You think we could simply
forget
all
of that? You think we’d forget that we ever had airplanes, or automobiles, or computers?”

“You tried it with our people,” said Misquamacus dryly. “Mostly, you succeeded. You took thousands of Indian children away from their families, didn’t you?
Thousands
—and you forced them to forget their tribal stories and their ancient customs, and you brought them all up to be white. What did your great educator say? ‘Kill the Indian and save the man!’”

The president said, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m very sorry for what happened to your people. But it’s far too late. Time marches on, my friend, and there’s no going back, no matter what.”

Misquamacus was silent for nearly a quarter of a minute. As far as the president could make out, his face remained impassive. He had been waiting for centuries to take his revenge, and a few more hours would make no difference. As he had said, the Wampanaug were people of honor and dignity, and of infinite patience, too.

“I will allow you one day and one night,” he said. “I will return at this time tomorrow, and then you can tell me what you have decided.”

“I don’t need any more time. The answer is no. You’re crazy even to ask me.”

“Perhaps. Butyour own God will know that at least I gave you the chance.”

With that, his image started to tremble, then collapse, and he shrank smaller and smaller until he was nothing more than a faint dot of light, like a switched-off television.

“
Jackson!
" shouted the president. “
Kaminsky! Get in here!
”

His two Secret Service agents burst in. “Mr. President?”

“Did you see him?” the president demanded.

“Uh…
who
, exactly?” asked Kaminsky.

“There was somebody in here. An Indian.”

An embarrassed pause. Then, “An Indian, sir? What kind of an Indian?”

“A Native American kind of an Indian. He had some kind
of cockamamie headdress made out of bull’s horns, and he had bugs all over him.”

“Excuse me?”

“How in hell’s name did he get in here? That’s what I want to know!”

Jackson crossed the room and looked behind the drapes. He tested the window catches but they were all firmly locked. He opened the closet, but there was nothing inside except for the president’s dark gray suit. Kaminsky ducked down and checked under the bed, but came up and said, “
De nada.
”

Now the nurse came in. “Is everything all right, Mr. President?”

“No—everything is most assuredly not all right. There was some raving red Indian in here, and there were bugs swarming all over my bed.”

The nurse lifted his blankets. “No sign of any bugs now, sir.”

“You think I’m making this up? He was here—he was right here, standing where you’re standing now. I saw him!”