Revenge of the Manitou (24 page)

Halfway across the bridge stood the yellow school bus.
It
was parked diagonally across the highway, so that only a motorcyclist could
have passed by on either side of it. It was still and
silent,
and its doors were closed. What was strangest of all, though, was that its
windows were all blank white, and it was impossible to see what was going on
inside it.

Neil said,
“What’s that stuff on the windows? I can’t see a damn thing.”

Singing Rock
shaded his eyes, and then nodded.
“As I thought.
It’s
ice.”

“Ice?
In this heat?”

“Almost certainly.
Within that bus, they have opened a
gateway to the outside, and the outside is colder than anything you could
possibly imagine.”

“If it’s colder
than my apartment on a February night, then it’s cold,” said Harry.

Neil shaded his
eyes, too, and examined the bus more carefully. Apart from the whorls of frost
and ice on the windows, the ventilators on the roof were encrusted with ice,
and even the highway itself sparkled with frozen crystals for ten or fifteen
feet around.

“They must be
dead,” he whispered. “No human being could survive in that kind of
temperature.”

“No, they’re
not dead,” Singing Rock told him. “They’re in a trance, of a kind, because
they’re preparing the gateway for the arrival of their gods and demons. If you
could look inside that bus now, you’d probably see them sitting quite still in
their seats, and the whole place would be totally dark and cold. You’d think
they were dead, but they’re not. This is what they have to do before
Nepauz
-had appears, in order to make it possible for
Nashuna
and Pa-la-
kai
and Ossa-
dagowah
to manifest themselves.”

Neil said,
“Hadn’t we better go talk to that officer in charge? Tell him what we know?”

Harry lit a
cigarette and shrugged. “I don’t suppose he’ll believe us for one minute. I
vote we do what we have to do without telling anybody.” “But how can we? They
may be planning to use weapons, and then what’s going to happen?”

Singing Rock
rested his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Neil’s right,” he said. “There could be
terrible consequences if the police decide to use their weapons. At the moment,
they don’t know what they’ve got on their hands.
A mysterious
busload of children with frozen windows, and a police car that’s blown up.
They’re going to tread wary. But when the medicine men start bringing down the
first of the demons, then it’s going to be all hell around here, and we could
just as easily get ourselves killed as anybody else. Bullets, as a New York
taxi driver once told me,
ain’t
got eyes.”

Harry blew out
smoke. It seemed to hang where he had exhaled it, a motionless cloud in the
still, humid air. Across the lake, it was now so dark that it was impossible to
distinguish the hills on the opposite shore, and the water itself seemed to be
heaving and foaming in unhealthy excitement.

“Okay,” he
agreed. “But if you can convince the Highway Patrol that there are twenty-two
medicine men in there, you’re a better man than I am, Singing Rock.”

The three of them
walked across the road to where a group of seven or eight policemen were
watching the bus and talking among themselves. One of them had a map spread out
on the roof of a patrol car, and he seemed to be discussing the possibility of
bringing skyhook helicopters in across the lake to lift the bus bodily off the
bridge.

“The trouble
is, we have a cold factor which is unknown,” he was saying, “and we also have
no idea what’s going on in that vehicle. The last thing we can afford is to
injure children unnecessarily.”

Neil introduced
himself. The police captain was an officer of the old school, with a uniform
that looked as if it had only just come back from the dry cleaner, and shoes
polished to the brilliance of fresh-poured tar. His face was ruddy and blemished
with liver spots, but his eyes were small and intense, like a polecat’s, and
his mustache was neat and prickly.

“I’m Captain
Myers, Highway Patrol,” he said, extending his hand. “Are these two gentlemen
parents, too?”

Harry said, “I
wish I was, but you know how it is. My date got the chicken pox.”

The captain
frowned. “We’re trying to keep unauthorized people away from this area. We have
a serious and delicate problem here, with a great many young lives at stake,
and we really don’t need civilian interference.”

In his
quietest, most dignified voice, Singing Rock said, “Captain Myers, we believe
we know what’s happening here, and we believe we may be able to prevent a
disaster, if you let us try.”

“Who are you?”
demanded Captain Myers.

“They call me
John Singing Rock. I am a medicine man from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota.
A Sioux.”

“You’re an
Indian medicine man?” asked Captain Myers, in disbelief. “That’s correct.”

“Well,” said
the captain, with a barely suppressed smile, “I’ve had some offers of help from
all kinds, of people. Firemen, wrestlers, circus people, you name it. But
you’re the first Indian, medicine man.”

“Captain
Myers,” said Harry, “he’s serious. What’s going on here is directly concerned
with Red Indian magic. If you’re going to get those children out of there
alive, then you’re going to have to listen to what he’s got to say.”

“Who are you,
his caddy?” asked Captain Myers.

“No, sir.
I just happen to be one of the only living people
who’s ever seen what the hell it is you’ve got in that bus there.”

“You’re one of
the only living people
who’s
ever seen children? What
are you trying to tell me?”

“Not children,”
put in Singing Rock. “Not children at all.
But the
reincarnated bodies of twenty-two ancient Indian medicine men.”

Captain Myers
paused for a moment, looking from Neil to Harry to Singing Rock and back again.

“Sergeant,” he
said coldly, “I want these men escorted away from here. I want them to get the hell
out. I also want you to take their names and their addresses, so that I can
bust all three of them for obstructing the police at a critical and dangerous
time.”

He looked back
at Singing Rock. “I don’t know who you people are, or what kind of a stunt this
is, but I warn you I’m going to find out, and then I’m going to put your ass in
a sling. Twenty-two ancient Indian medicine men! They don’t even talk that
crazy in the nuthouse.”

Singing Rock
said earnestly, “I know how you feel, captain. It does sound crazy when you
first hear it. But it’s the absolute truth. It’s happened before in New York,
and
its
happening again here. The spirits, the
manitous
of all those ancient wonder-workers have
infiltrated the minds of the children. Right now, they’re preparing to summon
down one of the greatest of their ancient gods.”

Captain Myers
fixed his eyes on Singing Rock for a long moment. Then, without a word, he
turned his back and continued to check over his map.

Harry shouted,
“Are you pigheaded or are you just pigheaded? Didn’t you hear what the man told
you?”

“Yes!” snapped
Captain Myers, jerking his head around. “And it makes me heave! Every time
there’s a murder, or a kidnapping, or an officer hurt in the course of his
duty, the goddamned sewers open and people like you come crawling out! People
who try to capitalize on human suffering and sensational crime! Now, get out of
here before I have you arrested and locked up!

You’re wasting
my time!”

Harry looked at
Singing Rock and gave a shrug that meant, well, we did try. Then the sergeant
came forward, a big man with furry red forearms and a belly as big as a baby
hippopotamus, and said, “Come on, you guys. Back in that truck and get moving.”

Under escort,
they walked back across the roadway to Neil’s pickup. It had grown so dark now
that Captain Myers was calling for spots and floods. From out of the west,
another police helicopter came fluttering, its lights flashing against the
oppressive clouds. There was a heavy metallic odor in the air, and lightning
was walking across the far peaks of the
Vaca
Mountains.

Every now and
then, they felt a deep, rumbling vibration through the ground, as if an
earthquake was threatened.

Suddenly, they
heard a voice shout out: “Sir! Captain Myers, sir! Look at the
busl
”

They had almost
reached the pickup, but they turned, and then they ran back to the crown of the
road. Beyond the police barriers, one hundred and fifty feet away in the middle
of the bridge, the bus was faintly shimmering with a green fluorescence. It had
the same kind of ghoulish glow as a painted skull on a ghost-train ride, dim
and pulsing. The wheels, the bodywork, the windows, were all outlined in light.

There was a
noise, too, a rising noise. It was so high-pitched that they could scarcely
hear it, but it had a whining, grating edge to it which set their teeth on edge
and made them feel as if their very bones were vibrating.

The noise grew
louder and louder and harsher and harsher until Neil and Harry both clamped
their hands over their ears. Only Singing Rock remained unmoved, staring at the
glowing bus with a stoic, concentrated expression. The police took cover behind
their cars and drew their guns, and Captain Myers called over his bullhorn for
a rifle marksman.

Soon, the noise
was an unending, tortured, screaming sound, all at the same high pitch, and it
seemed to blot out any sensible thought. Harry could vaguely hear shouting and
the running of feet, but even his vision seemed to be blurred by the noise.

Another
policeman called, “Look! The door’s opening!” and a spotlight was immediately
whipped across to light up the bus’s front entrance. With a hissing noise,
barely audible over the endless screeching, the doors jolted apart and slid
back. The policemen raised their guns, and trained them carefully on the darkened
exit.

One officer
called, “Hold your fire!” and then they saw who was there. Down the steps of
the bus, white-faced in the spotlights, stumbled Mrs. Novato.

Captain Myers
stood up with his bullhorn and shouted: “Mrs. Novato? Mrs. Novato? Walk this
way, please, Mrs. Novato. Keep walking and don’t look back. When you reach the
barrier, you’ll find officers there to protect you.”

He didn’t know
whether she’d heard him over the screaming noise, so he repeated the message
slowly and carefully. Mrs. Novato, in her white pleated skirt and her green
blouse and her sensible shoes, stood there swaying and didn’t acknowledge him
at all.

“Walk this way,
Mrs. Novato!” called Captain Myers. “Please, walk this way!”

When she
remained where she was, he turned and called: “I want two volunteers to go out
there and get her.
On the double!”
Two officers
scuttled across from behind the protection of their parked cars, and Captain
Myers rapidly briefed them. But as he was talking, he suddenly paused and
lifted his head. Mrs. Novato had taken an unsteady step toward them. Then she
took another.
Then another.
Then she pitched forward
and fell on her face.

“Get out
there!” ordered Captain Myers, and the two officers, guns drawn, skirted around
the police cars and sprinted out toward the bus. They weaved from side to side
as they ran, and kept their heads low. When they reached the teacher, they took
an arm each and ran back, trailing the heels of her sensible shoes along the
road surface. They made it back to the protection of the barriers without any
sign of interest or hostility from the cold, radiant bus.

They laid Mrs.
Novato down on a plaid rug. The police medic knelt down beside her and took her
pulse and blood pressure, and checked her eyes for response to light. It was
only a few moments more before he stood up and said quite simply, “She’s dead.”

“How did she
die?” asked Captain Myers.
“Any quick ideas?”

The medic, a
pale young officer with a six o’clock shadow and a pointed nose, said, “Feel
her for
yourself
.
The abdomen.”

Captain Myers
squatted down beside the body and gently touched the stomach with the flat of
his hand.

“It feels
pretty cold,” he said. “But that’s natural if that whole damn bus is frozen
up.”

“Feel harder,”
said the medic flatly. Captain Myers looked at him with a slightly aggrieved
frown. He didn’t like people who acted funny.

He tried to
squeeze the flesh of the stomach in his fingers, but he couldn’t. He looked up
at the medic again, and said, “She’s solid, like rock. She feels like a piece of
frozen beef.”

The medic bent
forward and stripped back Mrs. Novato’s white pleated skirt. From the knees
upward, her thighs were pale blue
,,
and they were as
rigid and hard as marble. Her pubic hair was frosted white, and her lower
stomach was solid but, worst of all, her vagina had been frozen so that it
gaped
obscenely wide, revealing blue-ribbed flesh inside.

Mrs. Novato’s
body, from the thighs to the breasts, had been subjected to such intense cold
that it was totally solidified.

Captain Myers,
horrified, couldn’t resist touching her again,
to feel
how flesh that should have been soft and yielding had turned into something as
cold and smooth as a stone pillar.

He stood up,
and then he said in a dry, shaken voice,” “We’re going to treat this as homicide.
I want you to get this body down to the autopsy people and I want you to tell
them that they have to find out how this was done if it takes them all night
and all day and all the next night. You got that?”