Manitou Blood (15 page)

Sirens were echoing from every direction, and every now and then I heard masses of people running. Thick brown smoke was rising from the garment district and helicopters were circling around Times Square with crisscrossing floodlights.

Even though I knew that Singing Rock wouldn't let me
down, I was becoming increasingly worried and edgy, and I kept getting out of my chair and pacing around the room. I had switched the television off. By 9:15 it was reported that 347 people had died from the “vampire plague” and 511 had been found with their throats cut. More people had been murdered in New York City in a single day than were usually murdered in a year.

Mayor Brandisi had admitted that it might take “days, weeks, or even longer” to isolate the cause of the epidemic. Manhattan was now completely sealed off, with roadblocks at every bridge and every tunnel entrance. From Washington, D.C., the president had promised that the federal government would give New York City “every conceivable assistance.” He also swore that if the epidemic were found to have been caused by terrorists, retribution would be “swift and terrible.”

I was tired, and hot, and I was debating with myself whether I ought to go to bed, when I heard a scrabbling noise at my door. I leaned into my cramped little hallway and listened. There was another scrabble, and I called out, “Who's there? Is there anybody there?”

There was no reply, but I was sure that there was somebody out there. I tried to peer through the spyhole, but some joker had stuck something over it—chewing-gum, probably. I waited for a short while, and then I said, “Who is it?”

Still no response. It could have been Mrs. Zolbrod's dog, the one that looked like Harpo Marx's wig. Or maybe it was a rat. But for some reason I was certain that it was a person. I could feel his tension, even through two inches of door. I could almost hear him sweating.

I pressed my ear against the door, and held my breath. It was then that he hammered loudly on the door with his fist, and almost deafened me.

“
Jesus!
” I shouted, and opened the door.

I didn't recognize him at first, because his face was streaked with something thick and black and greasy, and so were his arms. But when he coughed and said, “Help me, dude. I really need some serious help,” I realized it was Ted Busch. He looked even more disheveled than he had before. His
Molten Iris
T-shirt had a dark sweat-stain down the front of it, and his hair was sticking up as if he had been electrocuted.

“You'd better come in,” I told him. I didn't really
want
him to come in, but what else could I do? Supposing something gruesome happened to him because I had turned him away?

He stumbled into the living room, and collapsed into my Alexander Woollcott chair.

“I'm burning up, dude,” he told me.

“How about a glass of water?”

“No, no, not water. I can't touch water. Water's going to make it worse.”

“What's wrong with you? You're sweating buckets. And what's all that black on your face? Jesus, Ted, you look like Al Jolson.”

“I'm burning up, dude. It's like my skin's on fire.”

“You need to go to a hospital, you really do. I can't help you here.”

“I tried . . . I went to the Sisters of Jerusalem, but you can't get anywhere near. The whole place was like hundreds of people, all crying and screaming. The doors were shut and they had cops on the doors to stop people getting in.”

“Ted, I'm a fortune-teller, not a doctor. There's nothing I can do for you, except give you a drink.”

Ted stared at me, his eyes so wide that he looked as if he were mad. “You don't get it, do you? My skin's on fire. After I left you I tried to walk home but the sun was burning me and all I could find was motor oil to cover my face and my
arms but I'm burning even worse. You have to help me, dude, or else I'm going to die.”

I didn't know what to say to him. It was obvious from the way that he was trembling and clutching himself that he was in agony, but what can you do for somebody who's been infected by spiritual malevolence? Calamine lotion might be good for poison ivy rash, but it doesn't have much effect on cruel and ferocious things from beyond.

“I can run you a cold bath,” I suggested. “And how about a couple of Anacin? That might help to bring your temperature down.”

He twitched and sniffed and kept on shuddering like a junkie.

I picked up the phone. “I could try calling a doctor but I don't think there's any point. If you can't even get into a hospital—”

Unexpectedly, he let out a high, coyote-like howl, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “
I'm burning!
” he screamed. He held up his hands to show me, as if they were actually on fire. “
Look at me, I'm burning!
”

“Listen!” I shouted back at him. “You have to calm down! You might feel like you're burning, but you're not! It's all in your mind, or your autonomic nervous system, or wherever! Just sit tight and sweat it out, that's all you can do!”

“But my skin's on fire! I'm
shriveling
, dude! I'm getting cremated!”

I decided to run him a cold bath. It might not work, but I couldn't think of anything else to do, apart from hitting him over the head, very hard, with my heaviest skillet. I'm good at saving the world, but I don't have a whole lot of patience when it comes to individuals.

I went through to the bathroom and turned on the big old cold-water faucet. The bath was vast, and it had a strange blood-colored stain down one side, as if a young bride had recently been murdered in it. I had been trying to bleach the stain out with Clorox, but it only seemed to
make it look more bloodlike. The water was brown, and not particularly cold, but it would have to do.

I was leaning over the bath, checking that the plug was in properly, when somebody wrapped his arm around my neck. I saw something flash in the corner of my eye, and I instinctively ducked my head down, just as a craft knife slashed across my face, cutting my left cheek almost down to the bone.

Blood sprayed everywhere. It spattered up the side of the bath and blossomed in the water like roses. I twisted myself around, grunting and struggling, and I felt the craft knife cut cold across my knuckles.

I was never any good at fighting, but I was shit-scared and I was angry, and I lashed out with everything I had, like a demented windmill. Ted fell backward, jarring his shoulder against the edge of the door, and then I seized his sweaty T-shirt and hurled him against the towel rack, and then against the basin, and then I heaved him over the side of the bath so that he splashed into the water. He still had the craft knife but I grabbed hold of his wrist and bent it so far back that he dropped it.

I managed to hold him down on the bottom of the bath even though he was screaming and kicking and trying to bite me. I picked up the full half-gallon bottle of Clorox from under the back of the bath and hit him with it,
boff, boff
, again and again. He was stunned for a moment, but then he gripped the sides of the bath with both hands and tried to pull himself out. I hit him again, and he fell backward. Then I unscrewed the cap from the Clorox and emptied it into his face.

I will never be able to forget that shriek of agony as long as I live. He jumped blindly out of the bath—nobody could have stopped him—not me on my own—not even me and six other men. He collided with the door again, and then he staggered across the living room, scattering my
Jeu Noir
cards, knocking over my framed photograph of Karen and
me and little Lucy, breaking the blue-glass vase that I had won in Atlantic City. He managed to open the front door and crash his way out of it, hitting the door on the other side of the corridor so hard that he split one of the panels. A muffled voice from inside shouted, “
Hey!
”

I was already feeling a surge of guilt, because I knew that I could have blinded him. I shouted, “Ted! Come back!” and went after him. But by the time I got to the door he was already lurching toward the top of the stairs.

“
Ted!
” I yelled at him.

He turned, and raised his head. His face was red and blistered, and smoke was actually rising from his hair. Both eyes were closed, and his lips were puffed up like two giant maggots. He opened his mouth and said, “
Tatal—tatal nostru
—”

“Ted, for Christ's sake, get back here, and let me splash some water on you!”

I don't know if the bleach had poured into his ears and deafened him, or if he simply didn't want to hear me, but he turned back toward the stairs and it was then that he lost his footing and disappeared, like a magic trick. One moment he was standing there, the next moment he was gone.

“
Ted
—
!
”

I could hear him tumbling down the stairs and I was sure that I could even hear his bones cracking, although it was probably the banisters. By the time I reached him he was lying on the dirty green linoleum on the landing, his neck twisted one way and his body twisted the other. One leg was crooked back, in a position that even a contortionist couldn't have managed.

I came slowly down the stairs and hunkered down next to him. His eyes were open but the pupils were sightless and milky white. I know that he had tried to cut my throat, but I still felt overwhelmingly guilty. It wasn't
his
fault that he had been infected by a malevolent spirit.

I stood up. The left side of my face was sticky, and blood was running from my knuckles.

“Singing Rock!” I shouted. “If you're going to give me a sign, then you'd better get your ass in gear, because I'm running out of time here! You hear me? Singing Rock?”

Laticia from the room opposite called out, “Harry? Harry, is that you? What the hell is going on down there?”

There was no point in asking her to call 911. “It's okay,” I called back. “Somebody fell, that's all.”

I stood up, nursing my dripping hand. It was then that I caught sight of a label that had been stuck onto the apartment door right next to me, Mrs. St. John's. She had been handwritten in large red letters, St. John, but most of it had been ripped off, so that all that remained was “St.”

Don't ask me how I knew that this was the first part of Singing Rock's message. There are times when you just
know
things—like one of your friends is in trouble, or somebody's died, or the weather's going to change for the worse.

“Okay, Singing Rock,” I told him. “An ‘s' and a ‘t.' But you'd better give me the rest of it real damn quick.”

Laticia was standing at the top of the stairs with her hair piled high and decked out with purple ribbons. She was wearing a purple satin robe and she was smoking a small cigar.

“Harry?” she said, hoarsely.

“It's the end of the world, Laticia,” I told her. “Next time you get down on your knees, you'd better start praying, too.”

Frank Winter opened one eye but all he could see was blackness.

I've been sleeping
, he thought.
But I don't remember going to bed. The last thing I remember is
—

He tried to sit up, but his head hit something solid. He tried to move his arms, but they were pinned tightly to his sides. He struggled to turn himself around, but there wasn't enough room.

He felt a dark wave of pure panic. He was shut up in a narrow box, with no light, and no air, and with the lid fastened down. Oh my God, he thought. I'm in a coffin. Somebody must have found me sleeping and thought that I was dead. Oh God, don't tell me that they've buried me already.

“
Help!
” he shouted. “
Help! Somebody get me out of here!
”

There was no answer. He managed to wrestle his right arm free, and hammer on the lid with his fist. “
Help! Help me! There's been a mistake!
”

Still no answer. He started to hyperventilate, his chest rising
up and down as if he had been running upstairs. But then he told himself: Calm down, Frank. This isn't going to help. You're going to use up all of the air that's left to you, and all you're going to do is distress yourself. Keep calm. Think. Try to think what happened to you.

The trouble was, his memories seemed to be all broken up. He could distinctly remember that he had been hiding in a very dark place, very high up. Somewhere in the rafters of a barn, maybe. He had heard men shouting, and dogs barking, and he had seen torches dancing behind the trees. He had crept back farther into the darkness, but he couldn't recall what had happened after that.

“
Help!
” he called out, beating on the lid of his coffin. “I'm not dead! You have to get me out of here!”

It was then that his coffin suddenly lurched sideways, and knocked against something else wooden. Another coffin, maybe. Frank listened, wide-eyed in the blackness, trying to hear what was happening outside. His coffin lurched again, and then he felt a dipping motion, almost as if he were floating.

“
You have to get me out of here!
” he screamed. “
I can't breathe! For God's sake get me out of here before I suffocate!
”

He managed to twist his left arm free, too, and set up a furious, crippled banging on his coffin lid. But nobody answered, and the dipping motion became more pronounced, until he felt his coffin rising, and then hesitating, and then falling.

He heard a deep creaking noise, and then a windy rumble, which could have been sails. He realized that his coffin was on a ship, and that the ship was maneuvering out to sea. He thought he could hear seagulls crying, or it could have been the desperate screams of other people, trapped in other coffins, just like he was.

He was about to scream again, but then he thought:
relax
. Nobody's going to let you out. All you can do is lie
here, and wait, and conserve your energy. They might have shut you up in a coffin, but they haven't killed you, and they're taking you someplace, for whatever reason they have in mind.