Manitou Blood (8 page)

I waited, and waited, and I really began to believe that Singing Rock was going to ignore me. Why should he help me, after all? If I hadn't meddled in Native American magic, he would probably still be alive today.

But just as I was about to twist my hands free from Ted's sweaty grip, I heard something, and it wasn't the traffic, or the air-conditioning unit, or the
binky-bonky
drums of the world music store across the street. It was a very high-pitched keening sound, like metal scraping on metal—so high that it was almost inaudible to the human ear, although it probably would have set the dogs howling.

“
Singing Rock
?” I peered slowly around the room. Nothing appeared to have changed, but there was no doubt about it, there was somebody else here. The balance of the room felt as if it had shifted. Things appeared to have moved, even though they hadn't. The books looked as if they had rearranged themselves, and the photograph of Karen and Lucy that hung on the wall in the corner had infinitesimally tilted.

“Singing Rock, are you here?”

The keening sound grew louder—so loud that it began to set my teeth on edge. Now I could hear another sound, too. A soft, insistent chanting, and the tapping of sticks. I thought I could smell smoke, too, and hear the wind rustling through slippery grass.

Singing Rock was here, or not very far away, anyhow. I was sure of it.

“Ted—” I told him. “I think my spirit guide has arrived.”

“What do you want me to do, man?”

“Think of your nightmare, as clearly as you can. See it in your mind's eye. Show him how claustrophobic you feel, trapped inside that box. Show him how the ocean's going up and down. Let him hear that young boy's voice.”

“I can see it, man. I can feel it. I can hear it.”

The tapping of sticks became quicker, and more staccato. I could definitely hear somebody chanting now. I didn't know what dialect it was, but it was definitely Native American, and I would have taken a guess that it was Sioux.

“Singing Rock, this young man is deeply troubled by his dream. He needs you to show him what it means, and who could be causing it, and why.”

Singing Rock didn't answer, but the black bead bracelet started to shake, as if it were a rattlesnake's tail.

“Show him how he can rid himself of this dream, and sleep peacefully again.”

The bracelet shook even more violently, and the candles began to splutter and to burn more fiercely.

“What's happening?” said Ted.

“Keep your eyes closed! Concentrate on your nightmare! He's here now! Show him what's been scaring you!”

“Oh, Jesus, man! This is worse than when I'm asleep!”

“
Concentrate!
He needs to see your nightmare as clearly as you do!”

Ted gritted his teeth, and perspiration was dripping from the end of his nose. The bracelet continued to rattle, and the candle flames burned so furiously now that they were crackling and spitting out sparks. I felt as if the whole room was rushing through time and space, completely out of my control. It was like being on a fairground ride when you're nauseated and desperate to get off but it just goes on and on and on.

“
Singing Rock!
”

At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blurred figure disappear into my bedroom door. It was tall, and it was dark, and strangely
stretched out
, but it disappeared so quickly and jerkily that I couldn't see who it was. What really scared me, though, was that the door was closed, and that the figure hadn't opened it.
It had vanished straight through the brown-stained wood.

I wrenched my hands away from Ted's, and awkwardly stood up, so that my chair fell back onto the floor with a sharp bang.

Ted opened his eyes and blinked, “What?”

“I think he's here,” I told him. Even I was excited. I circled around the table, straining my ears.

“You think
who's
here?”

“Whoever's been causing your nightmare. Singing Rock has managed to bring him here, so that you can see him for yourself.”

“I don't get it.”

“It's simple. Nightmares are always caused by spirit activity, of one kind or another. When you have a bad dream, that's always caused by a dead person, disturbing your
sleep. Most of the time they don't do it deliberately, but sometimes they really want to scare the shit out of you.”

I paused, still listening. Then I said, “The only way you can find out which spirit is giving you nightmares is by asking a spirit guide to show you who it is.”

“And that's who's here?”

“You got it.”

Ted looked warily from side to side. “So where is he? I don't see nobody.”

“He's in there,” I said, and pointed toward the bedroom.

“In
there?
How the hell did he get in there?”

The bracelet gave a sharp, impatient rattle. It had probably cost Singing Rock an exhausting amount of spiritual energy to find out who was responsible for Ted's nightmares, and to bring him here. It had probably been highly dangerous, too. A spirit who could create the illusion of a suffocating box, and a fully laden ship at sea, was obviously not to be messed with.

“Follow me,” I said, and beckoned Ted across to the bedroom door. I pressed my ear against one of the panels, and listened. At first the room seemed to be silent, but then I heard the softest of whispers, hundreds of whispers,
thousands
, like a whole cathedral filled with fervently whispering nuns.

“
Tatal nostru carele esti in ceruri, sfinteasca-se numele tau
—”

I reached for the old brown plastic doorknob. There was only one way to find out what this spirit looked like, and that was to face it. But I can tell you that my heart was thumping so hard against my ribs that it hurt.

“
Vie imparatia ta, faca-se voia ta
—”

“No!” said Ted, hysterically, in a just-broken voice like a teenager.

“Ted—he's here—but Singing Rock can't keep him here for very long.”

“I don't want to see him!” He was almost screaming. “Please, man, I can feel how evil he is!
I don't want to see him!
”

On the table, the beads gave another brisk rattle.

“This is your only chance, Ted! If you don't face up to him now, you could go on having this same nightmare for the rest of your life! Ted! Listen to me!
Ted!
”

But Ted was backing away from me, with both of his hands raised, shaking his head violently from side to side. “I can't do it, dude! I can't face him! I can feel how evil he is! I never felt anything so bad!”

“Ted, you
must!
You don't have any choice!”

I didn't want to open that bedroom door any more than Ted. It sounded as if the whisperers were growing ever more numerous—as if there were
millions
of ghostly spirits crowding against the other side of the paneling, praying hungrily for their release. And there was a
smell
, too—a really sickening smell, like cheap chicken meat with the first shadow of olive-green decay showing through the skin; and drains clogged with dripping gray hair; and lumpy milk.

All the same, I knew that we had to confront this spirit that Singing Rock had brought to show me. If we didn't, I might never be able to call on him again. A Sioux would give you everything he possessed, if you asked him, or even if you didn't. But he would never forgive ingratitude.

“I'm opening the door, Ted!” I told him. “You have to see this, no matter what!”

Ted dropped onto his knees. “I can't, man!
Please!
”

I heard a furious pattering against the other side of the door, like a shower of locusts. On the table, however, the bracelet gave a single desultory shake, and then lay silent; and the candles began to dip and gutter, as if they were starved of air. I knew that if I didn't look in the bedroom
now, I would never know who was giving Ted his nightmares, or why, and that he would probably end up gibbering mad, or suicidal, or both.

So I opened the door.

“Can we talk to her?” asked Lieutenant Roberts, nodding toward Susan Fireman's bed. His voice was extremely deep and resonant, as if he were hiding a double bass inside his suit, and Frank detected a Southern accent, South Carolina or Georgia.

“Not yet,” said Frank. “I don't think you'd get a whole lot of sense out of her, in any case.”

“She spoke to
you
, though?”

A pale and pimply young nun was hovering close by, trying hard to look as if she wasn't listening. Frank said, “I think you gentlemen had better come up to my office. You sent somebody around to her apartment, I presume?”

“Oh, you bet,” said Lieutenant Roberts. “They'll contact me, just as soon as they've checked it out.”

They went up to the twenty-seventh floor in silence. There was nobody else in the elevator except for a diminutive Korean nurse in huge white sneakers who kept yawning, which made Detective Mancini start yawning,
too. Frank ushered them inside his office and closed the door.

“You want to sit down?” he asked them.

“Not especially,” said Lieutenant Roberts. He was tall and grave, more like a preacher than a detective. He was not only wearing a black linen suit but a black silk shirt with a black silk necktie, and very shiny black patent shoes.

Frank said, “Ms. Fireman was partly delirious, so I can't vouch for the veracity of what she told me.”

“You're not on the witness stand, doc. Just tell me what she said.”

“She shares her apartment with a young woman called Prissy and a young man called Michael. She told me . . . well, she said that she cut their throats with a kitchen knife, and then drank their blood directly from their severed arteries.”

There was a very long silence—so long that Frank began to wonder if Lieutenant Roberts had heard what he had just said. But at last Lieutenant Roberts took out a very white handkerchief, unfolded it, and blew his nose—and, to his credit, didn't inspect it. “Is there any reason for you to suspect that she might be making it up?”

“As I say, I can't be one hundred percent sure. But the blood that she vomited was human, and it wasn't hers, and the amount she vomited is consistent with what she's been telling me.”

“There's no chance that either of her victims might have survived?”

“Very unlikely. The average person has about five-point-five liters of blood, and if they lose more than twenty percent of it. . . .”

Detective Mancini's cell phone warbled like a homing pigeon. “Ryker?” he said. “Okay—just a minute, I can't hear you, you're breaking up.” He turned to Lieutenant Roberts and said, “It's Ryker—I'll have to take it outside.” He left the
office and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind him, although Frank could still hear him shouting to make himself heard.

“You're in there? You're in there now? What do you mean nobody's answering? They're supposed to be dead, you moron!”

Lieutenant Roberts was silent for a moment, as if he were thinking about something completely different. Then he said, “What is actually wrong with Ms. Fireman?”

Frank shrugged. “Physically—several things. She's anemic. Her blood pressure is way down and she's also hyper-sensitive to light. That's why the blinds in her room are all pulled down.”

“So she's suffering from
what
, exactly? Does it have a name?”

“Quite frankly, we don't know. We're carrying out further tests, but until we get the results we're pretty much guessing. She's carrying some kind of unusual enzyme in her blood, but we haven't yet identified it.”

“Is there any known disease that makes people want to drink human blood?”

“No. But having said that, there might be some delusional psychoses which lead the sufferer to believe that they need to.”

“So Ms. Fireman is a nut job?”

“ ‘Nut job' isn't a term we generally use here at the Sisters of Jerusalem, Lieutenant. For one thing, it's not clinically specific. There are scores of different types of nut jobs, from bipolar depressives to full-blown sociopaths. And as I say, we haven't yet completed all of our tests.”

“Did she tell you
why
she drank the blood?”

“She said that the sunlight in her apartment made her feel as if she was burning, and she had to drink her friends' blood to save herself from being cremated alive. It's possible that the burning sensation was a genuine physical symptom, but her response to it was psychotic. It happens.
I once had a patient with stomach cancer who seriously believed that he was being eaten from the inside out by alien insects, and tried to swallow Raid to kill them. When people suffer unbearable pain . . . well, it can seriously distort their perception of reality.”

“Okay, accepted,” said Lieutenant Roberts. “But what I'm trying to ask you is, do you consider that she's mentally competent? Do you think she can tell the difference between right and wrong?”

The phone buzzed. Frank said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and picked up the receiver. He listened, and nodded, and then he slowly put the receiver down again, and kept his hand pressed on top of it, as if he were trying to make sure that it didn't ring again.

“We have a problem, Lieutenant.”

“A new problem, or the same problem got worse?”

“I don't know. Maybe both. About an hour ago, a young man was brought into the emergency room, vomiting blood like Ms. Fireman. He showed some signs of being sensitive to light, too—his skin was all covered in sun block. We analyzed the contents of his stomach and I've just been given the preliminary results.”

“And?”