Revenge of the Manitou (19 page)

“Not exactly,”
replied Henry Beaver suspiciously. “Is it something to do with eye tests, or
what?”

“You’re
thinking of an oculist, Mr. Beaver,” said Harry, in a smooth, salesman-like
tone. “But you’re almost right. I investigate strange things that people have
seen, and I try to determine the truth of them. You got me?”

“You mean
ghosts, things like that?”

“Well, yes, if
that’s the way you want to put it’.

Henry Beaver
slowly shook his head and picked up his newspaper again. “I’m
sorry,
mister, but nobody
ain’t
seen no ghosts around here, except for Neil
Fenner
there.” He nodded toward Neil with an emotionless face. “The truth is, we don’t
believe that kind of garbage around these parts, and that’s the long and short
of it.”

Harry wasn’t at
all put off. He climbed the veranda steps and sat down on the end of Mr.

Beaver’s lawn chair.

“Mr. Beaver,”
he said, “I don’t want you to be too hasty. You see, the truth of the matter is
that some very reliable apparitions have been appearing to school-age children
all over California, particularly in these parts, and my people have been very
interested in hearing some firsthand reports.”

“Your people?” asked
Henry Beaver. He still looked massively unconvinced. “The people I work for.
The Occultist Investigation League of America.”

Henry Beaver
sniffed.
“Well, so?”

“Well, it’s
possible that your son Andy might have seen something and not told you about it,”
said Harry. “He could have easily glimpsed a ghost or some kind of a specter,
and not thought to tell you. Maybe he thought you’d laugh at him. Maybe he just
forgot to mention it.”

“Andy?”
squinted
Mr. Beaver. He was rapidly growing confused.

“That’s right,
Andy,” said Harry. “And the nice thing about the whole investigation is that we
pay a hundred dollars for every authenticated spectral sighting.”

He took out his
worn leather wallet, and produced a ten-dollar bill, which he waved in front of
Mr. Beaver’s face. It looked to Neil as if that was the only money he had left.

“See this
sawbuck?” smiled Harry. “You can have this and nine more like it if Andy comes
up with a ghost sighting that we can substantiate.”

Henry Beaver’s
eyes followed the bill backward and forward. Then, without taking his eyes off
it, he called out of the corner of his mouth, “Andy! Come on up here, boy!”

Andy Beaver,
gingery and disheveled from play, appeared round the corner with his toy
pistol.

He frowned at
Harry, and then at his father, but Henry Beaver waved him forward and said,

“This gentleman
here wants to ask you some questions, boy. You just go ahead and answer the
best way you can.”

Andy peered
over at the Pinto. “Hi, Mr.
Fenner
,” he called, and
he gave a quick wave to Toby.

Harry watched
him keenly for any indication of a special wave or a hand signal, but it didn’t
look like anything more than one schoolboy saying hi to another.

Harry put his
arm around Andy’s shoulders and led him along the veranda to a quiet corner. He
perched on the rail, and Andy stood looking at him, his hands in his jeans
pockets, his eyes screwed up against the sun.

“Toby tells me
you’ve been having some nightmares,” said Harry. “Something about
blood,
and killing.”

Andy looked
away, without answering.

“He says you’ve
been having nightmares about Alien, and the day the
Wappos
caught Dunbar and the rest of the settlers up at Conn Creek.”

Andy turned
back toward him again, but still said nothing.

Harry said,
“Toby tells me that you’re one of the twenty-two.”

Andy’s eyes
fixed themselves on Harry with a strangely luminous stare. They were pale blue,
but as he stared they seemed to widen and darken. It was hard to image that
these were the eyes of an eight- or nine-year-old boy. They seemed to be
infinitely wise, and knowing, and deeply self-contained in their malevolence.

“You are Harry
Erskine,” said Andy. “We have been waiting a long time for you.”

“You and
Misquamacus
?” asked Harry, trying to appear unruffled. A
chicken stalked up onto the veranda, lifted its head questioningly, and then
stalked away again.

“You will
discover nothing,” Andy growled. “I know why you have come, but you will
discover nothing. The day is fixed, and you cannot prevent it.”

“The day of the dark stars?”

“The day when the mouth comes from the sky.”

Harry took out
a cigarette, and lit it with the engraved Dunhill lighter that John Singing
Rock had sent him at Thanksgiving. He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth
and watched Andy closely, trying to size up what kind of Red Indian personality
was concealing itself inside this small boy’s brain. It certainly wasn’t as
dazzling as the mind of
Misquamacus
, judging from his
first encounters with the greatest of all the wonderworkers. But it was
dignified and powerful and proud, and he was quite sure that it would be quite
enough on its own to wipe out all of them-him and Neil
Fenner
and Singing Rock and half of Bodega.

Harry said,
“You’re going to call down
Ossadago-wah
?”

Andy didn’t
reply, but continued to stare at him fixedly.

“From what I’ve
heard, that would be kind of dangerous to everyone around, including Indians,”

Harry remarked.
“Isn’t
Ossadagowah
the great demon that nobody can
send back to the stars?

The demon that only returns outside of its own free will?”

Andy said huskily,
“You believe you know much, white man, but your knowledge is like one grain of
sand in the deserts. It will not help you, neither will your traitorous friend
Singing Rock.”

Harry shrugged.
“Who knows? We licked
Misquamacus
before.”

“You achieved
nothing. What you did served only to give him more strength than ever. This
time he will return whole and with his powers intact, and you shall understand
before you die the true meaning of strong medicine.”

Harry smoked
for while in silence. Then he said, “Okay. I get your warning. The day of the
dark stars is coming and you’re going to knock us all around the ball park. At
least, you think you are.”

Andy gave a
small, unpleasant smile. Then he turned his head slightly, so that he was
looking toward Harry’s rented Pinto, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He
repeated three times,

“An-hut-
ko
, an-hut-
ko
,
an-hut-
ko
.”

Harry turned
around. Smoke was beginning to rise from under the Pinto’s hood, and from out
of the rear-wheel arches. He yelled at the top of his voice, “Neil! Get Toby
out of that car!” Neil, shocked and surprised, immediately pushed forward the
folding front seat and lifted Toby out of the back.

“Now run!”
shouted Harry.

Henry Beaver
had hefted himself off his lawn chair and was looking at Harry in blank
amazement. But then there was a sharp crackling of fire, and flames started to
lick out of the Pinto’s radiator and air vents.

“Your goddamn
car’s
on fire!” said Mr. Beaver, in disbelief. “You can’t
burn your goddamn car in front of my house!”

There was a
soft, billowing explosion. Chunks of car tumbled lazily into the air, trailing
fire and smoke. Harry, standing on the veranda, was struck on the arm by a
flying upholstery spring, and a long piece of fender sailed across the yard and
landed on Mr. Beaver’s roof.

The five of
them stood there watching the remains of the car burn themselves out. A couple
of neighbors came from across the street and watched, too, and after a while a
man came with a garden hose and doused the last few flickers.

Neil, tightly
holding Toby’s hand, came along the veranda wide-eyed and shaken. Toby himself
seemed almost indifferent, and even when he came close to Andy he showed no
sign of boyish excitement or any urge to talk about the explosion. Neil said,
“What happened? What the hell was all that about?”

Harry rubbed
his eyes and then looked sardonically at Andy.

“Nothing,” he
said, with a wry grin. “It was just one of those little bugs that Ford
haven’t
quite sorted out yet.”

“But the whole
damn car-”

“Neil,” said
Harry earnestly. “Let’s just forget it, shall we? I think we need to go talk
about this someplace private.”

Andy, looking
slightly dazed, said, “Did that car just blow up? Boy-did that car just blow
up?”

Harry patted
Andy’s gingery hair. “Yes, kid,” he said. “It just blew up. It was only a
little trick I do to attract people’s attention.”

Henry Beaver,
scratching his undershirt, came up and said, “You
ain’t
going to leave that wreck there, I hope?
And what about my
hundred?”

Harry sighed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaver. What your son saw was very far from being an authentic
mystical vision. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he almost owes me money,
it was so far from being authentic.”

“He owes you
money?” said Mr. Beaver, uncertainly.

“Sure. But we
can get around that without any argument. Supposing you just have that wreck
cleared away for me, and we’ll forget the whole thing.” They stood, a tense,
silent group, and nobody was laughing. Andy raised his eyes and looked at
Harry, and behind his childish expression were depths upon depths of ancient
and arcane mysteries. Toby lifted his eyes, too, and they were even fiercer.
The eyes of
Misquamacus
, he who could
call down the demons who were in no human shape.

Harry said,
“Neil, I think we’d better get out of here.”

When they
arrived back, by taxi, at Neil’s house on the Pacific hills, there was a note
waiting on the kitchen table, propped between the salt and pepper shakers. Neil
read it quickly, and then crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can.

“She’s left you
for mother?” asked Harry gently, taking a cookie out of the pottery jar on the
sideboard, and biting into it.

“Something
like
that. She’s staying with Doctor Crowder and his
busybody wife.”

“After she
cooked us such a nice lunch, too,” remarked Harry.

Neil snapped,
“Aren’t you ever serious? My boy’s going crazy with some Red Indian spirit
inside him, and my wife’s walked out on me, and all you can do is crack
half-assed jokes.”

Harry pulled an
apologetic face. “Just tell me what else you can do when you’re faced with
almost certain extinction.”

“What’s that
supposed to mean?”

Harry took out
another cookie, and started to munch it. “It means that we don’t stand a
chance.

Did you see
that car blow up? Do you know what did that?”

“I don’t know.
Was it Toby?”

“Unh-
hunh
.
It was Andy. He just
folded his arms and said a few words and that whole damn car went up like a
torch.”

Neil said, “I
don’t understand it. He might have hurt Toby, and if Toby has
Misquamacus
inside of him...”

“I don’t
suppose it would have mattered if you’d left Toby sitting right where he was.

Misquamacus
has as much control over fire as he does over
wood and water. I didn’t want to take any
risks, that was
all.”

Neil let out a
long, dispirited sigh. “Maybe I should call Susan,” he suggested.

Harry shook his
head. “She’s probably safer where she is right now. It’s you and me and Singing
Rock who are going to have to face up to the brunt of this thing. As I said, I
don’t think we stand much of a chance.
Misquamacus
is
determined to get us this time, and a few hundred thousand more white folks,
and he’s not going to fail.”

There was a
long, silent pause. Then Neil said quietly, “Harry.” “What is it?”

“Well, it’s
something that occurred to me last night, when those sheets were attacking
Susan.”

Harry
deliberately didn’t look at him, but finished his cookies and then took out his
pack of Camel Lights.

Neil continued,
“I figured that one of the reasons why
Misquamacus
chose Toby and all the rest of those children
was
because he wanted to make his reappearance inside people that the community
normally goes out of its way to protect. I mean, if he’d chosen twenty-two
convicts at Folsom, it might have been an easier choice for us to get rid of
them.”

There was
another pause, and then Neil said, “Last night, I seriously considered going
for my shotgun and blowing Toby’s head off.”

Harry lit a
cigarette and eyed Neil narrowly through the rising smoke.

“Sure you
considered it,” he said.

“You’re not
shocked?”

“Why should I
be? Plenty of fathers have sent their sons off to die to protect their
countries.

Why should you
be any different?”

“He’s my only
son, Harry.”

Harry stood up
and went to the open kitchen door. The wind had dropped a little now, and the
sun was shining from a high, hazy sky. Four or five birds were taking a dust
bath just outside the cellar doors.

“As it turns
out,” said Harry, “the best thing you did was feel too sentimental to go get
your gun.

Any
artefact
, whether it’s a stone pot or a knife or a bow and
arrow or a twelve-gauge shotgun, has some kind of spirit inside it, some kind
of
manitou
. This table has a
manitou
,
this door has a
manitou
, although they’re obviously very lowly spirits,
nothing to get scared about. But the problems start when you try to turn a
weapon onto a powerful wonder-worker like
Misquamacus
.
He can actually control the
manitou
inside of your
gun, maybe even the
manitou
inside of the bullet you
fire, and turn your own gun against you.”