Revenge of the Manitou (17 page)

Toby rose
slowly from the bed, and seemed to glide toward him. He stood only a few feet
away, and then he spoke in the voice of
Misquamacus
,
in that hollow distant voice that sounded as if it was inside Neil’s own head,
and yet which echoed with countless miles and eons of ancient time.

“You have
spoken to the white magician Erskine,” said
Misquamacus
.
Neil edged one foot out of bed, and then swung his leg to the floor. His
muscles were tensed, and he was ready to make a dive for Toby and bring him
down. He didn’t have any idea what
Misquamacus
might
try to do, or even how powerful he was, but he wanted to be ready for a fight.

Misquamacus
said, “It is good that you have spoken. He will
come, along with my treacherous blood brother, Singing Rock, and I shall show
them that my
manitou
is indestructible, and that my
vengeance spans fifty thousand moons.”

Neil said
steadily, “You must let Toby go. I want you to get out of my son.”

Toby
smiled,
a slow, laconic smile. “You are powerless to prevent
me from lodging here. I shall remain until I am ready. I am here at the
direction of my white spirit guide, your ancestor, and because I am here by
consent, no magic in the world can move me.”

“I’m going to
take Toby away from here,” said Neil. “I’m going to take him to Europe.

Anywhere.
Just so long as he’s out of your
reach.”

Toby shook his
head, still smiling. “You cannot take the boy. If you attempt to interfere in
the day of the dark stars, you will surely die more painfully than any other
white man.”

Neil climbed
out of bed, and stood over his son, feeling cold and frightened, but deeply
determined. If Harry Erskine and John Singing Rock had destroyed
Misquamacus
once, then somehow they must be able to do it
again. He said, “I’m warning you, get out of my son. If you don’t leave him
now, I promise you I’ll tear you to pieces.”

Toby half-turned his head toward the bed where Susan lay sleeping.
He regarded her for a while, and then he raised one arm and pointed to her.
Very softly, he incanted, “Spirit of snake, spirit of storm, spirit of cloud,
obey me.”

Abruptly, with
a deafening crash, the bedroom windows imploded, spraying stars of glass all
over the room. A shrieking wind blew into the room, a wind as bitterly cold as
dry ice, and Neil was knocked sideways, so that he stumbled against his bedside
table and jarred his shoulder on the edge of his wardrobe.

Toby remained
still, unmoved by the gale, and pointed again at the bed. In front of Neil’s
horrified eyes, the bed sheet rose and twisted like a rope, and entwined itself
around Susan’s body. Over the storm, he heard her scream, and then shriek
“Neil! Neil!” and he could see her struggling against the bedclothes. But the
dreadful wind seemed to have drained away all of his energy, and the distance
from the wall to the bed had become miles instead of feet.

Raising his arm
to protect his eyes, Neil saw Toby’s face fixed in a grotesque, wolfish grin,
with his lips drawn back across his teeth. There was an ear-shattering flash of
lightning, followed by a rumbling vibration which lifted the whole floor, and
sent Neil staggering off balance again.

Susan screamed
louder, a scream of pain and total fear. In the flickering, sizzling lightning,
Neil saw her arched back on the bed, her eyes wide, her hands struggling and
tearing at the sheets.

Then the
abrasive wind was tearing at her flowery cotton nightgown, ripping it in
tatters which whirled around the bedroom.

“Susan!” yelled
Neil, and tried to claw across to the bed. But the howling gale pressed him
back, and sparkling shards of glass blew up from the floor and cut at his hands
and his face.

The sheets had
taken on a bulky shape that pressed on Susan’s body, and twisted between her
bare thighs in a thick, animate rope. She was hysterical now, screaming an
endless scream which pierced the storm and the wind at an almost intolerable
pitch. But the sheets bound her to the bed, forcing her shoulders back against
the mattress, and her legs wide apart.

Neil howled to
Toby, “Toby! That’s your mother! That’s your mother!”

But the boy
simply turned and smiled at him, and lifted his arm again toward the bed.

“Toby!” roared
Neil.

The bedclothes
forced themselves onto Susan in a hideous, jerking motion, like the hindquarters
of a rutting dog. Neil felt himself blacking out for a moment; then he opened
his eyes again, and it was still happening, it was still real. His Susan, his
wife, was being raped in front of his eyes by her own sheets.

Susan shrieked.
He saw crimson blood staining the linen entwined between her legs. She began to
twitch and tremble as if she was suffering an epileptic fit, but the bedclothes
kept up their febrile shaking. There was another blinding burst of lightning,
and the shattered window frames flew into the room. Then, suddenly, there was
darkness, complete and seamless darkness, and the wind died away with a
shuddering whistle.

Neil lifted
himself from the floor. Gradually, through the broken window, the light of the
moon began to shine again, soft and white at first, but then with the same
strength and clarity as it had before. He stumbled over to the bed, where Susan
lay with the crumpled sheets on top of her, moaning and whispering under her
breath.

He clutched her
close, stroking her hair, kissing her cold forehead. He mumbled, “Susan, oh
God, I’m sorry. Susan, I’m sorry.”

She opened her
eyes and saw it was him, and then she began to sob uncontrollably. He held her
close, trying to soothe her, and he turned toward Toby, who was still standing
by the end of the bed, his eyes shining with hateful amusement.

“You bastard,”
Neil said, between his teeth. Toby’s expression remained unmoved. “It is no
worse than what the white pony soldiers did to our daughters in times gone by,”
he said in his distant voice. “It is far more forgiving than what they did to
Tall Bull at Summit Springs.”

“Damn you,
Susan wasn’t there at Summit Springs. She’s never met an Indian in her life,
apart from the few that come down here to help in the summer. You can’t punish
generation after generation for what was done in the past! It’s over, it’s too
late!”

Toby slowly
shook his head. “For those Indians whose territories were stolen and whose
people were killed, it will never be over. They live on the reservations now with
the memory of what was done, and they will never forget.”

Neil held Susan
tightly against him. “Some of them have forgotten already,” he retorted. “Some
of them can’t even remember what the day of the dark stars is supposed to be.”
“That doesn’t matter,” replied
Misquamacus
. “Their
life as outcasts in their own land is enough to remind them. And none of them
has ever forgotten
Misquamacus
. The name of
Misquamacus
is an Indian secret that has been held close to
their hearts for more than a hundred years. Now, it will be revealed to the
white man, and the white man will never regret knowing an Indian secret so
bitterly.”

Toby’s face
seemed to change, and the hostile glitter in his eyes began to dwindle, like
the burned-out wicks of kerosene lamps. He raised his small hands for a moment,
and then he collapsed onto the floor. Neil quickly but gently laid Susan back
on the
bed,
and crunched across the broken glass to
pick him up. Toby’s face was pallid, and he was breathing heavily, but
Misquamacus
didn’t appear to have hurt him.

“Toby,”
whispered Neil.
“Oh my God, you poor kid.”

He laid the boy
back in his bed, and drew the covers up to his neck. Then he went back to
Susan, who had stopped sobbing now, and was lying staring at him with a
shocked, glassy look in her eyes.

“What
happened?” she asked, in a haunted voice. “I don’t understand what happened.”

Neil looked
down at the bloodstained sheets, and in a fit of rage and frustration he
dragged them off the bed, and tried to rip them with his bare hands. He didn’t
do very well. They were pure cotton, with double hems. Finally, panting, he
tossed them across the room into a corner.

Susan said
shakily, “There was a man, Neil.
A tall man with necklaces
and feathers.
He didn’t have any clothes on.”

Neil sat down
beside her and held her. “It was nothing. It was just a nightmare.”

“But he seemed
so real. I could even smell him. He was covered in some kind of oil. He got on
top of me, Neil. I tried to stop him. He got on top of me.”

“Susan,” he
hushed her, “nothing happened. It was nothing more than a nightmare, that’s
all.”

Frowning, still
stunned, she reached her hand down between her thighs, and then raised her
fingers to her face. They were dark and sticky with blood. She looked at Neil
in total horror and desperation, her eyes pleading with him to explain it, to
make it safe, to say that whatever had happened was a freakish dream, and to
prove it, too.

“I’m hurt,” she
breathed. “I’m hurt inside.”

He pressed his
hand to his eyes in exhaustion. ‘I’ll get Doctor Crowder,” he told her. “Just
relax, honey. Stay where you are. It can’t be anything too bad.”

He crossed the
room, glancing only briefly at Toby.

His son was
fast asleep, breathing evenly and quietly, and the color was back in his
cheeks. Neil closed the bedroom door behind him, and went downstairs as quietly
as he could. He picked up the phone and dialed Doctor Crowder’s number.

At the kitchen
door Doctor Crowder belted up his overcoat and put on his hat. Neil handed him
his worn leather bag, as old and faithful as a pet spaniel, and gave him a
brief, tired smile.

“I want to
thank you for coming out,” Neil said. “I guess we’ve been keeping you awake
lately.”

Doctor Crowder
pulled a weary, resigned face. “Is it very serious?” asked Neil. “I mean, it’s
not going to spoil Susan’s chances of having any more children, is it?”

Doctor Crowder
shook his head. “The vaginal tissues are lacerated, that’s all. It’s an injury
we usually associate with cases of violent rape.” “Did Susan tell you what
happened?” Doctor Crowder looked away. “She didn’t seem too clear about it. She
seemed to think you must have had some kind of argument.”

Neil went cold.
“Argument?
What are you talking about? We didn’t have
any argument! What does she
mean,
argument?”

“Well, it’s not
for me to put words in her mouth,” said Doctor Crowder, “but you must admit
that the room was kind of busted up.”

Neil stared at
him. “Do you want to know what did that?
Lightning.
That’s what did it.”

The old doctor
wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I see,” he said heavily.

Neil seized his
shoulder. “Doctor-you don’t believe me, do you?”

Doctor Crowder
wouldn’t answer.

Neil said, “You
think I’m crazy. You think I set fire to my house last night, and tonight you
think I raped my own wife. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I’m a head case!”

Doctor Crowder
tried to pull away, but Neil took hold of both his arms and turned him around
to face him.

“You think I’m
going out of my mind, don’t you? You see my bedroom all busted up and
immediately assume I had a fight with Susan. You see blood on the sheets and
you think I’ve assaulted her. You don’t stop to think that I might actually be
telling the truth, do you?”

“The truth?”
asked Doctor Crowder, shakily. “What truth?”

“The truth that
Toby is possessed by the greatest Red Indian medicine man who ever lived.
The truth that he called down lightning to smash up the room, and a
wind that you couldn’t even stand up in.
The truth that he had Susan’s
own sheets and bedclothes rape her in revenge for the way the white men used to
rape Indian women.”

Doctor Crowder
could only stare at him. There was a long, awkward silence. The pine railroad
clock on the kitchen wall ticked away the hour of three and chimed.

Eventually, the
old doctor opened the kitchen door, and said, “Look out there, Neil. What do
you see?”

Neil wouldn’t
look at first, but then he glanced sideways and saw the dark, quiet night.

“I see my own
backyard,” he said huskily. “That’s right,” nodded Doctor Crowder. “And is it
raining out there?”

Neil shook his
head.

“Is it snowing
out there? Is there thunder? Is there lightning? Is there any wind at all?”

Neil said,
“It’s a warm night.”

“That’s right,”
Doctor Crowder told him. “It’s a warm, still night. No lightning, no wind. Not
even a breeze. And you’re trying to tell me that your bedroom was wrecked by an
electric storm?”

“No by magic.’
yelled Neil “It was done by magic”

Doctor Crowder
looked embarrassed. But he took Neil’s hand and shook it, and said, “I’ll come
around in the morning to see how Susan’s getting along. She’s sleeping now.
A mild sedative.
I think it might be wise if you got
yourself some sleep, too. I mean that, Neil. You could have been working too
hard.”

Neil was about
to burst out again, but then he checked himself and nodded, and said, “Okay,
doctor. I’ll try. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He closed the
kitchen door after Doctor Crowder had left, and drew up one of the kitchen
chairs. He sat at the table for almost ten minutes, with every nightmarish
incident of the whole night whirling around in his mind. Again and again, with
eerie vividness, he saw the jerking, sexual movements of Susan’s
sheets,
and the expression of malevolent triumph on Toby’s
face.