Burial (61 page)

Mrs Keitelman studied the photograph for a long time. ‘I had a feeling that it might be something like that. But, of course, what could I say? Everybody told me the photograph was just a fake. In those days, they used to fake photographs of fairies and dinosaurs and nonsense like that, and people believed them.

‘If you happened to have a photograph showing that Custer had been killed by an Indian demon, instead of by Crazy Horse, think of the stir! You'd upset the church, the politicians, the Indians, the whites, the military, the historians, everybody!

‘But,' she said, and here she produced one more photograph. ‘He couldn't have been
completely
invincible. Because, look.'

She showed us a photograph taken from a different angle, further down the hill. How Mark Kellogg had managed to struggle down the coulee with all of that luggage and photographic equipment, I shall never know. Judging from the photographs, he had probably been far enough away from the first attack to realize what was happening, and to have run away — escaping both Aktunowihio and Crazy Horse's braves. But he had chosen to stay, and to record what had happened for posterity. It was a particularly bitter touch that, up until now, nearly 120 years later, posterity would choose to believe that Mark Kellogg had given his life for nothing, and that his photographs were no more authentic than pictures of Big Foot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or the Yeti.

But Aktunowihio wasn't any of those. Aktunowihio was the embodiment of darkness and death. Aktunowihio was the shadow that floats in your mind, when you're asleep, up and down, up and down, on the black currents of your unconscious — the ultimate predator, swallowing the private darkness on which your sanity subsists — and, in the end, your life, too. And here he was, running across the banks of
the Greasy Grass River, in the worst white massacre of the Indian wars.

This last photograph, though, told a different story. On the extreme left, a figure was standing — a thin, raggedy figure in a wide-brimmed leather hat. He was holding out something in his left hand. It was difficult to distinguish what it was, but it appeared to have smoke issuing out of it.

Or maybe not
out
of it, but
into
it.

I pointed him out to Papago Joe. ‘You see him? I didn't know he was there, at the little Big Horn. But I'll give you two hot tips at Belmont Park if that isn't William Hood, or Million Protein, or whatever his name was. The Shadow Boy-the vampire-hunter that the US Cavalry employed to fight the Santee Indians. And there — you see, he's holding a shadow-bottle. It looks like he's using it to trap a little bitty piece of Aktunowihio.'

Papago Joe nodded soberly. ‘I've heard of that. All that a shadow-catcher had to do was trap a small piece of shadow, and the main shadow would be hurt so much that it would have to retreat to the Great Outside. Otherwise light would bleed into it and it would die. It couldn't touch the shadow-catcher himself because a shadow can't survive in the real world unless it's complete … it would be just like somebody stealing your mouth, say, so that you couldn't eat and you couldn't breathe and you couldn't talk. And if you tried to get it back … all the shadow-catcher would have to do is to top up the bottle with sulfuric acid, and dissolve that little piece of shadow for good. Some shadow-catchers used to keep hundreds of shadow-bottles and sell them to people who wanted to raise up shadows against their enemies, or against unfaithful wives, or business-partners they wanted to get rid of.

‘They said that Billy the Kid was the victim of a shadow that Pat Garrett paid good money for. You know how the story always goes that Billy stepped into a darkened bedroom,
and Pat Garrett shot him? Well, think about
why
that bedroom was so dark. And think about
why
Billy's last words were “
Quien es
?” — “Who is it? ”'

We thanked Mrs Keitelman and I wished that there was more that we could have given her than thanks. I offered to read her tea-leaves but she didn't believe in fortune-telling. Strange, really, for a widow in Bismarck, North Dakota, who was prepared to believe that a shadow-squid from hell had massacred General George Custer and his men. But then the West is made up of incongruities like that, and full of superstition, and stories of demons and ghosts and soil that whispers.

You stand out there, like Papago Joe and I did, that summer night, after a day spent in magical darkness, and tell me that the West isn't haunted.

That evening we stayed at the Mandan Hotel, south-east of the city, an odd grey clapboard building that stood alone in its own scrubby lot, with the same proportions but less of the charm of an upended steamer-trunk. The owner was a grey-haired old lady with a disconcerting habit of suddenly twitching her head to one side when you least expected it. But in a floral-wallpapered dining room, home from home, she served us a good sturdy supper of pork'n'beans, and there was plenty of whisky to be had, and the convivial company of two travelling salesmen who had flown in that afternoon from Kansas City, Missouri, to interest a client in prefabricated warehousing space.

That night, we had two slim strokes of luck, and for the first time since Karen had arrived at my consulting-rooms I began to feel that I knew what I was doing, and why; and that we had a chance of fighting this thing, and maybe — well, maybe not destroying it, who could destroy the god of all darkness? — but maybe driving it back to the Great Outside, and keeping it there.

After Little Big Horn, after all, it looked as if William Hood had managed to beat Aktunowihio back and keep him trapped below ground for more than a century — and anything William Hood could do, I was sure we could do equally well, if not very much better. I mean, we were much more technologically advanced, right? We were much more sophisticated, when it came to science and natural phenomena. And we had just travelled all the way from Phoenix, Arizona, to Bismarck, North Dakota, over a thousand statute miles, with nothing more than human ashes, peyote, a bouquet garni of weird herbs, and a collection of dried-up sticks.

The time had come, however, to use the telephone. More than anything else, I was worried about Amelia. On TV we saw jerky live-action newsreels of the Woolworth Building vanishing into the bedrock, then the GM building and the Pierre, then the Guggenheim. It was all dust and chaos and flashing helicopter spotlights, and mountains of abandoned cars.

For the first hour of trying I got nothing but a busy tone. I was almost ready to give up, but Papago Joe, swallowing whisky out of the bottle, said, ‘Go on, you never know. Give it one more shot.' I punched out the number — and almost immediately I heard a crackly voice say, ‘Yes? Who's that?'

‘Amelia? Is that you, Amelia?'

‘Harry? You sound like you're calling from the moon!'

‘Amelia, what's happening? Are you okay?'

‘I'm fine. A little bruised. I wanted to leave the city but there's no way. The roads are all blocked and there's some kind of curfew. Harry — where
are
you? I tried to call Phoenix but all the lines are dead.'

‘I'm in Bismarck, North Dakota.'

‘Harry, listen, you know the forks that Martin Vaizey was trying to tell you about? The Celtic forks? The ones they used to trap evil spirits? Well, I went down to the precinct house and I got them!'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Good.'

There was a short pause. Then Amelia almost screamed, ‘“Good?” What the hell do you mean “
good
?” I almost got myself killed! The whole precinct building collapsed and I had to jump out of a window!'

‘I'm only saying “good” because I guess that they're important but I don't know what they do.'

‘You don't know what they
do
? I'm all bruises and cuts and I look like shit and you don't know what they
do
?'

‘Listen, Amelia,' I told her. ‘Stay where you are. We're trying to fix up a couple of things and then we're going to come and get you.'

‘Oh,
fine
. Do you want the forks or should I add them to my dinner service?'

‘Amelia … please. I'll have to ask Martin.'

‘Martin is dead, Harry, and you're not sensitive enough to ask him anything.'

‘Oh, yeah? As a matter of fact, Martin and I have gotten pretty close, and I don't think I'm going to have any trouble asking him a simple question like that.'

There was a very long silence. I heard crackling, and the high-pitched singing of long-distance wires. Then Amelia said, ‘I'm sorry, Harry. I'm scared, that's all. Buildings are coming down all over. There's no warning at all, they just come down, with everybody inside them, and there's nothing that anybody can do to stop them.'

‘I think there is,' I told her. ‘And in fact I think we're doing it right now.'

Another long silence. Then, ‘Any sign of Karen?'

‘Unh-hunh.'

‘I still worry about you, Harry.'

‘Listen — the feeling's mutual. Always will be.'

We swapped kisses over the phone. Papago Joe swallowed more whisky and rolled up his eyes and said, ‘Gitche Manitou, spare me.'

*

Papago Joe sat crosslegged on the end of the bed.

‘This is the way I've been thinking,' he said. ‘The last time that Aktunowihio was powerful enough to come out into the real world, that was Little Big Horn, when Doctor Hambone gave him enough black souls to allow him to walk on the real earth.

‘Now he's strong enough to be pulling all of these cities down, buildings, people, everything — and he's edging his way out into the real world again, little by little, the way he did with your friend Martin Vaizey. At the same time, we hear that Doctor Hambone's been prowling around. Him or his spirit. So it strikes me that Doctor Hambone has maybe made him a new deal, maybe through Misquamacus, so that black and red can rule this continent together, and be finally rid of the whites.'

‘What could Doctor Hambone have offered him?' I asked.

‘Well … souls, I guess, that's what Aktunowihio feeds on. Souls are his staple diet. The souls, that is, of anybody and everybody who's died unjustly. The souls who die justly die content; and they go to Heammawihio, the spirit of light, and Heammawihio takes them up to spend the rest of eternity as stars. Peaceful, content, twinkling.

‘Probably the first time — back at the Little Big Horn — Doctor Hambone gave Aktunowihio the spirits of dead slaves. But after nearly one hundred and twenty years, I'm sure he has plenty more discontented black spirits to offer. Millions more. And that's why Aktunowihio is now so
strong
. I mean he couldn't be nearly as strong as this, not with just Indian souls. But with blacks, think of it! Think of all the blacks who were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. Think of all the blacks who died through poverty, or hardship, or neglect. The blacks who died on the Civil Rights marches. All those spirits must be giving Aktunowihio tremendous power — power like you wouldn't believe possible. I'm sure
of it: it's the black souls that are helping him to pull down everything you arrogant white bastards built up.'

I thought about that, finished my can of beer and crumpled it up in my fist. ‘Do you think you're
right
?' I asked him. ‘I mean — you're making my head spin here.'

He tapped his forehead with his finger. ‘I
know
I'm right. Believe me. Papago intuition.'

‘So what are we going to do?'

‘The way I see it: three things. We go for Doctor Hambone, get him out of the way, and set all of his spirits free. That's going to leave Aktunowihio without the physical strength to drag any more buildings down. Then we catch his shadow, which will keep him trapped for as long as we want. Then we finish off Misquamacus, once and for all.'

‘Oh, yes, and how do we do that?'

He sniffed. ‘I don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.'

‘And how do we get Doctor Hambone out of the way?'

‘I don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.'

‘And Aktunowihio? Or haven't you thought about him, either?'

‘Oh, sure! I've thought of that. We get Aktunowihio by catching part of his shadow in a shadow-bottle, the same way that William Hood did — you know, the shadow-catcher.'

‘You said that shadow-catching was a specialized art … that hardly anybody knew how to do it.'

‘That's true. But we can get around that little difficulty. We call on William Hood's spirit.'

‘Well, that makes some kind of wacky sense, I suppose,' I conceded. ‘How do we go about finding him?'

‘The same way we found your old friend Singing Rock and Martin Vaizey, simply by going back to the Great Outside and summoning him. Then we can use the eagle-sticks to travel to New York and face up to Misquamacus and Aktunowihio.'

‘And Doctor Hambone? What about him?'

Papago Joe gave me a toothy grin. Time for
my
phone-call now. To Sissy LaBelle, in New Orleans, a very old friend of mine. I got to know Sissy through the wise guys. Sissy will know what to do.'

Like me, Joe had to punch out the number he wanted twenty or thirty times before he was finally connected. Chicago had collapsed, Las Vegas and Phoenix lay in ruins, and now New York was falling: it was hardly surprising that all of the communications systems all across the United States were jammed solid. If only we could have persuaded the Federal government that Papago Joe and I were probably the only two people who could salvage the rest of the nation — just we two with our death-powders and our eagle-sticks and our mumbo-jumbo chanting — they would have given us hot-line priority. But that's always the way. You don't get any help when you're trying to save the world; and you don't get any thanks if you do it.

Mind you, if
I
had been something big in the government,
I
wouldn't have believed me either. I still find it hard to believe myself now. It was more than a nightmare; more than a dark hallucination; and I guess it always will be.