Revenge of the Manitou (15 page)

Mrs. Novato
looked at him quickly and smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just fascinated by what
my class is doing.”

Mr. Saperstein
raised his spectacles and squinted out into the dull sunlight.

“They’re
dancing, aren’t they?” he said. “What’s so strange about that?”

“It might not
have been strange in the days of square dances and folk festivals,” said Mrs.

Novato, “but
these children have never danced like that before in their whole lives. They
don’t know how.”

Mr. Saperstein
shrugged. “They obviously do, or they wouldn’t be doing it. It’s interesting,
though. It looks like a Greek folk dance. The way they’re all holding on to
each other’s shoulders and jogging around like that.”

He took his
camera off his shoulder, made some fussy adjustments for the distance and the
light, and then took three pictures of the children as they hopped and danced
around.

“I have some
reference books on folk dancing at home,” he said. “When I have these
developed, I’ll see if that dance looks anything like one of the old-time Greek
or Mexican dances. Maybe the children inherited some kind of folk memory. You
never know.”

Mrs. Novato
nodded absentmindedly. “Thank you, Mr. Saperstein. I’d be interested to find
out”

The dance broke
up almost as quickly as it had begun, and for a while, the children wandered
around the school yard, talking quietly or playing games. Today, they kept apart
from children from other classes, and if a teacher appeared in the yard, they
seemed to turn away and shun her.

Over by the
wall of the kindergarten annex, under the shade of a maple, Toby was talking to
his best friend, Linus Hopland, while Andy Beaver and Ben
Nichelini
were squatting beside them drawing patterns in the dust with pointed sticks.

“My daddy
almost burned the house down last night,” said Toby. “He was trying to break up
this old wardrobe in my room, and he burned it right on the rug. You should
have seen my room.”

“Is your old
man crazy?” asked Linus, scratching his bright red hair.

“My pa says he
is,” put in Andy. “My pa says your pa’s gone bananas. He says your pa was up at
police headquarters yesterday, trying to talk George Murray into chasing after
ghosts.”

“I don’t think
my daddy’s crazy,” said Toby, simply. He spoke with unusual seriousness, and
his eyes seemed glazed, as if he were thinking about something else altogether.
“I think he’s kind of nosy, that’s all. He should learn to keep out of things
that don’t concern him.” “All parents are like that,” said Debbie
Spurr
, coming across the yard with her yo-yo. “My mom said
that if I had any more dreams, she was going to take me to see a psychiatrist.
So all I do now is tell her I don’t dream anymore. Parents are real dumb when
you think about it.”

“I think the
dreams are good,” said Ben
Nichelini
. “I had a dream
about this man cutting up these women, cutting them into pieces. He cut them
right open, tummies and everything, and they were still alive.”

Debbie sat down
beside Toby and laid her hand on his shoulder. She was pale today, and
distracted, and she looked waiflike in her thin blue gingham dress. “The dreams
are important,” she said. “If we didn’t have the dreams, we wouldn’t know how
important we are. We’re important.”

“It’s the blood
I like,” said Andy. “Sometimes there’s nothing but blood, and you know it’s
their blood, and not yours, and you can practically feel it, it’s all sticky
and warm. We were strong on the day that happened. We felt how strong we were.
We knew we could kill them if we tried. I can’t wait for it to happen again.”

Toby said, “We
mustn’t speak of it. The time is close. We must join ourselves by the spell of
the tree demons before we can act together. Where are the lizards?”

“Daniel and
John are bringing them,” said Andy.

“They were out
last night collecting them, too. They’ve got a whole boxful.”

Toby looked up
at the school clock. “They must hurry. We don’t have much time. I had the dream
last night of the final days. I had a dream of revenge against all those who
hurt me. This is long, long overdue.”

Linus said, “I
dreamed we fell out of the trees on their backs, and we pulled them down so
that they were trampled by their horses. I dreamed we dragged a man across
seven miles of bush and forest and stony ground, until his body was raw meat
and he was screaming to die. The elder ones can do better, though.”

Andy put in,
“What did you think of Mrs. Novato this morning? She looked pretty upset to
me.”

“She sure did,”
agreed Debbie. “Anybody would have thought we weren’t behaving ourselves or
something. And she’s been staring out of that window for the whole recess.”

“She’s okay,”
said Ben. “At least she told Toby’s dad where to get off.”

“She didn’t
so,” argued Toby. “She said we were okay, that’s all. She said the dreams
didn’t mean anything.”

Through the
stirred-up dust of playtime, Daniel
Soscol
and John
Coretta came across the yard, carefully carrying a large brown cardboard box.
They looked from right to left to make sure they weren’t being watched by the
teacher in charge, and then they came up to the annex and laid the box down
beside the trunk of the maple.

“How many did
you get?” asked Toby. His voice was serious again. His childishness seemed to
ebb and flow, like someone trying to shout a message across a windy strait. He
stood up and watched Daniel take the lid off the box. Inside, clawing and
climbing all over each
other,
were lizards from the
roadside and the rocks.

“I got the ten,
like you wanted,” said Daniel.

Toby poked the
lizards with his finger. “Good. You’d better get everybody together.”

Daniel and John
walked off, and went around the playground assembling all the children from
Mrs. Novato’s class. They gradually gathered in the corner by the annex, out of
sight of the main schoolhouse, and Toby stood up on a root of the maple tree so
that he could talk to them.

The children
stood quite silent, as if they were dazed. They ignored the stares of children
from other classes, and the noise of cops and robbers and tag.

Toby said,
“This is the ritual of joining ourselves by the spirits of the tree demons, as
it was ordained by the gods of the desert lands and the plains. It joins
together the brothers from the hills and the forests and the brothers from the
waste places. It binds them so that they can work their wonders together, so
that their powers are one. We have little time, so let us begin it now.”

The children
stood in two parallel lines, eleven children on each line. Daniel
Soscol
brought the cardboard box, and Toby took out the
first lizard. He held it up by its tail, writhing and jerking, while the first
four children drew closer together.

Toby whispered,
“
Ossadagowah
, son of
Sadogowah
,
we bow ourselves before you. We call upon your powers, feared of elder times,
in the days before the white man touched the sacred lands, and we call upon you
Nashuna
, and you Pa-la-
kai
,
and upon the demons of the lakes and the forests and the crawling beasts upon
the earth. We call upon those from beyond the darkest stars, those who have no
human shape, and we beg their aid.”

Each of the
first four children, Toby and Daniel and Debbie and Petra, took a wriggling leg
of the lizard between their lips. Then, at a slight nod from Toby, they each bit
into their leg, and the lizard’s limbless body dropped to the dust.

Then Debbie and
Petra turned around to the next two children, Andy and John. Toby brought
another lizard out of the box and held it dangling between them while he spoke
the words of the incantation again. Again, the four children brought their
faces together and took one of the reptile’s legs in their mouths. Again, they
bit, with a slight crunching sound, and the lizard’s body dropped to the yard.

Andy and John,
in their turn, faced the two children behind them, and Toby produced yet
another lizard. The ritual was repeated ten times, all the way down the line,
until the schoolyard was littered with the writhing bloody bodies of ten
lizards. Daniel
Soscol
, his face serious, collected
them, and put them back in the cardboard box.

Toby continued,
“We are joined by the strength of the demons of the trees, and nothing can set
us apart. The day is almost here. Let us be heard by the gods of elder times,
from beyond the rings which guard the entrances of time and distance. Let us
seek their power in taking our revenge.”

From the
classroom window, Mrs. Novato could see the children gathered around Toby,
listening to what he was saying with intent faces. She watched them for a
while, and then she went across the porch into the next classroom, where Miss
Martinez was chalking up the names of trees in preparation for her next lesson.
Mrs. Novato said, “Joan-look out of the window for a moment. Over there, by the
annex.”

Miss Martinez
put down her chalk and walked to the window. She said, “What am I supposed to
be looking at?”

“My children.
Look at them. What do you think they could be
doing?”

“I don’t know,”
shrugged Miss Martinez. “Playing, perhaps?”

“Yes, but
playing what? They all look so serious. And you never find the whole class
playing together like that, not usually.”

Miss Martinez
looked for a few moments more, and then went back to her blackboard. “Don’t ask
me,” she told Mrs. Novato. “Children are always plotting something or other.”

That afternoon,
out on the wharf at Bodega Bay, while Neil was putting the finishing touches to
the
brasswork
on the White Dove, Dave Conway came out
from the fish market and called him.

“Neil-there’s a long-distance call.
Sounds like someone
called aspirin.”

“Thanks,” said
Neil, and climbed onto the jetty. He walked quickly under a sky that was hazy
but cloudless, and he wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

Inside the fish
market, there was a sweet, salty smell of crabs and flounders and bass, and the
telephone was sticky with scales. He picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“Neil
Fenner
? This is Harry Erskine. Listen, I have some news for
you.”

“News?
What kind of news?”

“Bad news, mainly.
I talked this morning to John Singing
Rock out in South Dakota. He’s a medicine man, you know?
But
a modern one.
I mean, he knows all the old spells but he tries to apply
them in an up-to-date way.”

“What did he
say?”

“He said that
he’d heard of the day of the dark stars, and he was sure that what you told me
was genuine.” Neil switched the receiver from one ear to the other. “Is that
all? He’s sure I’m genuine? Listen, I wouldn’t have called you if I hadn’t been
genuine. I wouldn’t have known your name, even. There was no way I practically
got myself killed because of an overworked
imagination.
”

“You sure
didn’t,” said Harry. He sounded as if he were sucking cough drops. “The day of
the dark stars is supposed to be mentioned in stories that were handed down by
tribes from all over America. Most Indians have heard of it, apparently-either
from their parents or their grandparents, but there aren’t many Indians today
who can remember what it’s all supposed to signify. They’ve gotten themselves
too integrated, you know? Even Singing Rock sells insurance on the side.” “Did he
say what I could do about it? The trouble I have here is that nobody believes
me, not even my wife. Nobody else saw the wooden man but me, and they’re
putting the children’s nightmares down to hysteria, or indigestion. Everybody
thinks I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not.
Singing Rock says that the Hopi have stories about the day of the dark stars,
and so do the Oglala Sioux and the Modoc and the Cheyenne and the Wyandotte.
The Paiute used to call it the day when the mouth would come out of the sky and
devour the white devils, but they always were kind of wordy.”

“So what can I
do?” asked Neil. “Can I exorcise these
manitous
, or
what?”

“Not with a
bell and a book and a candle. I learned from the last time I met
Misquamacus
that you can’t dismiss Red Indian demons with
white man’s religion.”

“But how did
you destroy
Misquamacus
before?”

“It’s pretty
hard to explain. But Singing Rock says we just don’t have the same kind of
situation here at all, and he doesn’t think we could manage a repeat
performance. Last time,
Misquamacus
was weak and
confused and on his own. This time, it sounds as if he’s strong, and on his own
territory.”

“You don’t
sound very optimistic, Harry.”

‘I’m supposed
to sound optimistic? You call me up and tell me twenty-two Indian spirits are
after my blood, and I’m supposed to sound optimistic?”

“I’m sorry,”
Neil put in hastily. “What I meant was
,
it sounds like
we don’t have an easy way out of this.”

“Listen,” said
Harry, “I’m going to fly out to San Francisco on Sunday morning, which is the earliest
I can get away. Singing Rock is coming out from South Dakota, and he says he
should get to California by Monday morning at the latest.”

“You’re
actually coming out to help? Well, that’s terrific.”

“Neil,” said
Harry, “we’re coming out because we faced
Misquamacus
before. If we hadn’t, we would have put you down as a crank, just like everyone
else has. But the last time we faced him we came about as close to the happy
hunting grounds as I ever want to get, and I don’t want that to happen again.
This time, I want to face him forewarned and forearmed, and I want to make sure
that he doesn’t have a chance to conjure up any of those demons that jump out
at you and bite your head off.”