Revenge of the Manitou (30 page)

Singing Rock
took two or three steps forward, and then he began to whirl one of the axes
around and around until it was a blur.
Misquamacus
crouched down slightly in anticipation, but his eyes never left Singing Rock’s
face, and he looked confident and contemptuous. Harry, over by the fence, found
that he was digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand.

The magical axe
flashed from Singing Rock’s hand and flew toward
Misquamacus
,
turning end over end. But even before it was halfway there,
Misquamacus
gave a quick sweep of his arm, and the axe seemed to burst and turn into a
black owl, which screeched once and then flapped away on the wind.

Singing Rock
swung the second axe, faster and faster, and he threw it at
Misquamacus
with a hoarse cry of warlike vengeance. But
Misquamacus
was quicker, and stronger. His arm swept across his chest again, and the axe
turned in midair and flew back toward Singing Rock. Harry watched in horror as
Singing Rock tried to dodge it, but the speed and power of
Misquamacus
’
magic made it unstoppable and unavoidable. With a sharp chopping sound that
Harry could hear from seventy feet away, Singing Rock’s head was knocked from
his shoulders.

For an
agonizing second, Singing Rock’s decapitated body stood alone on the bridge,
with a fountain of blood spraying from his severed neck. But then he twisted
and collapsed beside his own head and lay still.

Harry turned
away, his stomach heaving. He felt totally stunned, totally shattered. Without
realizing it, he dropped to his knees, and stayed there while
Misquamacus
stalked back triumphant to his circle of
medicine men, and joined his strength once more to the summoning of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
.

Neil said,
“Harry-what the hell can we do now? Harry!”

Harry looked
up. His eyes were watering from retching. He said, “I’m damned if I know.
Singing Rock was the expert.”

“Harry-we’ve
got to do something! Look!” Behind him, the writhing cloud of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
was almost at the bridge itself, and its pale slimy tentacles were lashing out
at the foam-wracked shores of the lake. The whole grotesque god was trumpeting
now, trumpeting in evil and hungry delight, with a noise that sounded like
dozens of tortured whales. Across on the other side of the bridge, Harry saw
three National Guardsmen running as a tentacle lashed toward them. It caught
them all, and dragged them shrieking into the boiling lake.

“We’ve just got
to get out of here!” shouted Harry. “That thing’s going to kill us all!”

“But we can’t!”
Neil insisted. “What about the children? What about all the people who are
going to die?”

“I’m not a
goddamned martyr!” Harry yelled back. “I’m a goddamned mystic!” Already,
policemen and soldiers were running past them and scrambling up the loose dirt
and rocks of the hillside. A cold, foul wind was blowing-a wind that stank of
silvery fish skins and fetid flesh. Out of the mass of serpents, another
tentacle flailed toward the shore, and a policeman was crushed and pulled into
the water.

There was a
high-pitched screaming sound, and suddenly five Air Force jets, all flying in
tight formation, came streaking northward along the length of the lake. They
passed the cloudy bulk of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
, and Harry saw the hot scarlet-blue flames from their
tail pipes as they used reheat to climb and bank and circle away.

Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
screeched and groaned, and another roiling mass of tentacles appeared from the
upper clouds.

Harry and Neil
could hear what was happening over the abandoned transmitter.

The National
Guard had pulled back a half-mile, and their colonel was trying to direct the
air strike from Dyer Creek.

“Air strike to ground.
What do you want us to zap”?”

“The bridge there.
The Pope Creek
bridge
.
You see where that land of gray fog stuff is?”

“We’re coming
back for another run there. We don’t see the bridge too clearly.”

“Where that gray fog stuff is.
That stuff with all the
tentacles like a damned octopus.”

“An octopus?
What is this? We don’t see any octopus.”

Harry and Neil
could hear the jets rumbling behind the hills. Then they flashed into sight
again, still flying tightly together, and made a curving pass over the bridge
and off into the clouds to the south. They were followed by a sharp sonic bang.

“We see the
bridge and the cloud mass. You want the bridge knocked out!”

“That’s right.
Knock out the bridge, and see what you get when you fire a few rockets into
that fog.”

“Okay, ground.
We’re coming in for a trial run,
then
we’ll get at
it.”

Again, the
whistle of the jets came nearer. But as they appeared over the hills, there was
an abrupt garbling of sound over the transmitter, and a chilling, screaming
noise.

“What’s
happened? I can’t see! I can’t see
anythingl
”

“Oh, Christ, my
eyes are gone!
My eyes!”

The five jets
thundered overhead, but this time they were wildly out of formation. Two of
them collided almost over the creek side where Harry and Neil were crouched,
and there was a monstrous explosion and a rolling ball of fire that spun across
the valley and crashed onto the hillside opposite. The other three tumbled out
of sight, but Harry and Neil heard three dull thumps in the distance and saw
the flash of igniting fuel. Harry wiped sweat from his face and looked up at
the towering bulk of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
, white and heaving and infinitely evil, a mass of wriggling
tentacles and cloudy horror.

“Well, Neil, I
guess we’re on our own.”

Neil slowly
shook his head. “We’re not on our own. We never have been. These Indians have
called up all their old spirits and demons and ghosts to help them, why the
hell don’t we call up ours’

“What are you
talking about?” said Harry. “Are you crazy?”

“That’s exactly
what I’m not. I’ve been stupid, that’s all. Dunbar helped me once and he’ll do
it again. That’s what he was trying to tell me. The Indians may have massacred
those white settlers up here at Conn Creek, but they made a mistake when they
chose to use that massacre as a focusing point for all this. They disturbed the
spirits of the settlers, right? They disturbed Dunbar’s ghost. And what I said
about the white men licking the Red Indians is true. They licked them because
they were stronger, and better armed, and better organized, and in the end they
were more determined.”

“Greedier,
too,” said Harry.

“Sure they were
greedy. But their greed was what made their determination even stronger. And
they’re not only determined, they’re here. They must be. They’re just waiting
for us to call
them,
like that monster was waiting for
the Indians to call him.”

“You’re going
to call them?” said Harry. “Now I know you’re out of your mind.”

Neil stood up.
“You bet I’m going to call them. We’re going to win this time, Harry. We won in
the old days and we’re going to win again. My ancestor started all
this,
and it’s up to me to set it right.”

Harry tried to grab
his arm, but Neil ran off through the lines of deserted police cars, ducking
and weaving. The ravenous cloud of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
was almost over them
now, its tentacles blindly searching for human flesh. Harry saw one white
serpent slither across the ground and catch an unsuspecting jackrabbit,
instantly tearing it into a bloody rag with a crushed skull and bulging eyes.

Neil made it to
the bridge. The twenty-one Indians were still standing there in their magic
circle, using all their powers now to bring
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
out of the lake and
across the countryside, to devour and ravage and take revenge on the white man.
Misquamacus
was standing in the center of the circle,
his head back and his eyes closed, his fists pressed against his chest. Out of
his mouth came an endless howling ululation, a sound as ancient and timeless as
the first man who ever called on the elder gods to wreak death on his enemies.

Neil, alone,
shouted: “Dunbar! Dunbar! I need you!”

His voice
sounded pitifully small amid the screeching of the Indian medicine men and the
astral moaning of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
. But he called again and again: “Dunbar! Dunbar!
Dunbar!”

Harry yelled:
“Neil! It’s no damned good! Get out of there!” “Dunbar!” howled Neil. “Dunbar,
for God’s sake,
help
me!”

Harry rubbed dust
from his eyes. He wasn’t sure whether he was imagining things or not, but there
seemed to be more people on the bridge. Their figures were faint at first,
almost invisible, but as Neil shouted “Dunbar!” over and over
again,
their shades seem to gather substance and shape.

They didn’t
take on complete solidity. Harry could still see the shadowy railing of the
bridge through their bodies. But they were solid enough to recognize.
Twenty lean, rangy men in mackinaws and buckskin shirts and long
dusters, with beaten-up hats and drooping mustaches.

Twenty hard-bitten old-time settlers, with rifles and guns.
And a little way behind them, on the hillside, stood twenty women in bonnets
and capes, and a group of silent, unmoving children.

They were the
ghosts of the
Wappo
massacre at Las Posadas, the
spirits of 1830 returned. The people whom Bloody
Fenner
had led to their deaths, and whom his descendant was now calling to take their
revenge, the white man’s revenge on the Indians.

The medicine
men lowered their arms, and stood facing the ghostly white settlers in cautious
bewilderment. But the settlers didn’t step forward. They simply raised their
rifles, took aim at the medicine men, and fired. There was a flat, unreal
report, and smoke appeared to drift away on the wind. The medicine men
collapsed to the road.

At the same
time, as the incantations of the medicine men ceased, a deep, groaning sound
emerged from the shape of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
. The ground shook again, like a huge earthquake, and the
night sky was ripped with lightning and peal after peal of shattering thunder.

In a final
devastating burst of noise, the elder god rolled back into the lashing waters
of Lake
Berryessa
, and sank in
a
turmoil
of foam beneath its surface. It left behind that cold stench of
the deep and dark waters that lapped and splashed and lapped again, but the god
was gone.

Harry ran up to
the bridge. Neil was still standing there, exhausted and alone. The bodies of
the medicine men were strewn everywhere, their painted faces against the asphalt,
their costumes bloodied and torn. Harry circled around them gingerly, looking
for
Misquamacus
. Neil followed close behind.

Then Harry
heard a voice. He looked up through the drifting powder smoke, and there at the
end of the bridge stood
Misquamacus
, with Broken
Fire, the Paiute medicine man, beside him.

Both of the
wonderworkers had been wounded by the ghostly bullets of Dunbar’s settlers.

Misquamacus
’ right arm hung beside him, dripping with
blood, and there was a dark stain on Broken Fire’s breeches. But
Misquamacus
’ face was still deeply marked with anger and
revenge, and he fixed Harry with eyes that glittered and burned.

“You think you
have defeated me, white man, but I shall destroy you, too, just as I destroyed
your traitorous friend. First, though, Broken Fire will burn the man
Fenner
, so that you may see what I have in store for you.”

Broken Fire
raised his hand, just as Andy Beaver had done, and pointed it toward Neil.
Harry tried to take a step forward, but
Misquamacus
made a sweep of his left arm, and Harry felt as if he was paralyzed, unable to
move another step. Broken Fire chanted the ritual words to create fire, and
gave a low, penetrating cry. As he did so, however, there was a curious
vibration in the air between him and Neil. For a brief moment, Harry was sure
that he could see the outline of a young man, with one hand raised, protecting
Neil from the magic that projected from Broken Fire’s outstretched finger.

There was
a roaring
gout of flame from Broken Fire’s hand, but it
flared up against the ghostly outline of the young man, and enveloped Broken
Fire instead. The medicine man screamed in agony as the fire seared his face
and his bare chest, and he dropped to the road in a struggling, twisting mass
of flames. After a while, he lay still.

Misquamacus
turned to Harry.

“Your legacy
has always been one of death and destruction, white man. You have slain my
people and raped my women and destroyed my prairies and forests. Now you have
dismissed even my greatest gods. I sought revenge on you and the one called
Singing Rock, and on all white men and their running dogs, but revenge has
sought me instead. This is my last life on this earth and I must now go to the
great outside unfulfilled.

“I could kill
you now, but I shall not. I want you to remember me instead for the rest of
your moons, that you knew and fought against
Misquamacus
,
the greatest of the wonder-workers of ancient times. I want you to know, too,
that even on the great outside I shall seek a way to revenge myself for what
you have done, and that you will never be safe from my anger.”