Revenge of the Manitou (12 page)

Sergeant Murray
glanced at the clock and sighed. “Neil,” he said, with immense patience, “I’d
like to believe that what you’ve been telling me is true. I’d really like to
believe it. But the fact of it is
,
you’ve only got the
word of some cranky old-timer to go by, and a couple of bad dreams that Toby’s
been having, and that’s all you know.”

“What about the
photograph?
The picture of
Misquamacus
?
George, there were three days between those pictures, and yet they were taken
on opposite sides of the continent!”

There was a
pause, and then Sergeant Murray continued, “Neil, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen
those pictures. But they don’t constitute
no
proof.
Anyone could have written any kind of date on the back of those prints, and you
don’t even know if they were taken where the old-timer said they were.” Neil
sat back. “Then what are you trying to tell me?” he asked. “Are you trying to
tell me you won’t help?”

Sergeant Murray
looked a little abashed, but he said, as reasonably as he could manage, I’ll
help when there’s good cause to, Neil. You know
that as well
as I do
. But if I put a guard on those schoolchildren, that means that a
whole lot of taxpayers’ money is going to be tied up for a long time, and a
whole lot of people are going to be asking me why. Now, what am I going to say?

That I’ve put a
patrolman on school guard because Neil
Fenner
believes the children are being taken over by Red Indian ghosts? That I’ve
risked the security on a whole score of homes, and I’ve had to halve the beach
patrols, just because we’re being threatened by medicine men from a hundred
years ago? Come on, Neil, you have to see my point of view.”

“You’re
laughing at me,” said Neil.

Sergeant Murray
slowly shook his head.
“Tm not laughing at you, Neil.
Sometimes, circumstantial evidence appears to be pretty convincing. It’s easy
to make yourself believe that something’s true, just because it appears to fit
the facts as you know them. But what you have to ask yourself is
,
do you know all the facts?
Or enough of
them to make a sound judgment?

“George, I’m
only asking because of the children. They’re at risk, and I believe it’s up to
us to protect them.”

Sergeant Murray
stood up and hitched up his gun belt. Outside in the police station yard,
Officer Turn-bull was arriving to relieve him. He gave Neil an awkward,
embarrassed smile.

“Listen, Neil,”
he said, “I’ll give you this much. If you can prove to me that something funny
is probably going to happen here-if you can give me one piece of real
evidence-then I’ll do what I can to help. But as it is, the way things
stand,
I have to tell you that I’m powerless.”

Neil looked
unhappy. But he nodded and said, “Okay, George. I guess you’re right. It sounds
crazy, and maybe it is crazy.”

Sergeant Murray
fitted his cap onto his sweaty pink head. “They said that Thomas Alva Edison
was crazy, didn’t they? Just think about that.”

Neil said
quietly, “There’s a difference between being a genius inventor and a frightened
father, George.”

He went back
home. Susan and Toby were sitting at the kitchen table. Susan was finishing her
supper, corned beef hash and home fries, and Toby was drawing. As Neil came in
the back door, Susan looked up and said, “Well?”

He came over
and kissed her, and ruffled Toby’s hair. “What do you think? He said he was
sorry, but he couldn’t spare the manpower. The taxpayers wouldn’t stand for
it.”

“Even though the taxpayers’ children might get hurt?”

“Susan, he
didn’t believe me. Not one word.”

“Did he try to
believe you?” Neil shrugged. “I guess he made a token effort. But it’s pretty
farfetched stuff. I sat there and I listened to myself trying to convince him,
and the more I told him the stupider it all sounded.”

She put down
her fork and went to the stove. She dolloped
hash
onto
a plate for him, and set out a dish of crackers and cheese. They didn’t eat too
fancy these days, because of the way Neil’s business was going, but they managed.
Weekends, they sometimes ate steak, especially if he had a new order to refit a
yacht, but there wasn’t much demand for a one-man craftsman around Bodega Bay.

Neil washed his
hands at the kitchen faucet and sat down. He asked, “How are you doing, Toby?”

“I’m okay,”
said Toby, without looking up.

“What are you
drawing there? It looks like some kind of a spaceship.”

Toby crooked
his arm around his picture so that Neil couldn’t see. “It’s a secret,” he said.

Neil started to
eat. Susan sat next to him and watched him with concern and a little pain. She
touched his hand as it rested on the table, and gently stroked his suntanned
knuckles.

She said, “Did
you really believe that old man yourself? You don’t think he was pulling your
leg?”

“Why should
he?”

“For the sake
of a
drink,
and a joke with his friends after you’d
gone. I mean, you know what
Doughty’s
like with his
stories. Why should Billy Ritchie be any better?”

Neil set down
his fork. “I don’t know. I just believe him, that’s all. I can’t think of any other
reason for what’s been happening, except that I’m losing my marbles.”

Susan rubbed
her forehead tiredly and thoughtfully. “The trouble is,” she said, “the man in
the white coat is one thing, and the nightmares are one thing, but all this
business about twenty-two medicine men coming back to life to get their revenge
on the white man...”

“I know,” he
said, in a soft, hollow voice. “But you were here when Toby talked about the
day of the dark stars, and the gateway, and all that stuff. You heard him as
clear as I did.”

“Maybe Billy
Ritchie simply pretended he knew what they were. Think about it. He’s alone in
that house all day, with nobody to talk to. He’s quite likely to say anything,
just to keep you interested.”

Neil didn’t
answer. He finished his hash in silence, and then he pushed his plate away from
him and sat with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands.

Susan said,
“Honey, you mustn’t let it get you down. I know what you’re feeling, but
something’s bound to happen soon, and you’ll forget all about it.”

Neil looked
across at her. “The only something that’s going to happen, as far as I can make
out, is a damned great massacre.” She averted her eyes. “You shouldn’t speak
that way,” she said quietly.

“What way? Is
it the ‘damned’ you don’t like, or the ‘massacre’?”

“I don’t like
any of it,” she retorted. “I don’t like these nightmares and I don’t like all
this maddening talk of ghosts and
manitous
and men in
long white coats who vanish as soon as you look at them. If you want to know
what I really feel, I’ll tell you. I don’t believe a single word of it. I think
you’re probably tired and overworked, and maybe you’re worried about money, and
you’re letting this whole ridiculous business run away with you.”

She had tears
in her eyes as she spoke, and she was twisting her apron in her hands. She
looked up at him and said, “You’re not behaving like Neil anymore. You used to
be so solid, so down-to-earth. It’s not like you to think about devils and
demons. I don’t know what’s happened to you.”

Neil bit his
lip while she spoke. Then, with as much control as he could manage, he told
her, “I can tell you what’s happened. For the first time in the whole of my
life, I’ve seen a ghost for real.

For the first
time in my whole life, I’ve come across something spooky and supernatural that
I’ve had to believe in because it’s there in front of my eyes. Worse than that,
it’s threatening Toby and it’s threatening the rest of his class. I’ve seen it,
Susan, and I can’t stand by and let things get worse just because nobody else
happens to believe me.”

He got up from
the table and pushed in his chair. “Right now I’m going to go upstairs and
smash that wardrobe, and then I’m going to burn it. I don’t care if Mrs. Novato
thinks I’m crazy, and I don’t care if George Murray thinks I’m crazy, and I’m
sorry to say it, but I don’t care if you think I’m crazy, either. I’m going to
protect Toby the best way I know how, and that’s by making sure those spirits
don’t get hold of him.”

Toby had
stopped drawing and was staring at him. Neil, pocketing a box of matches from
the hutch, said, “How about a bonfire, Toby? We’ll break up that horrible old
wardrobe, and then we’ll take it out in the yard, and-”

Toby opened his
mouth and roared.

It wasn’t a
child’s roar. It wasn’t even a human roar. It came out of his wide-open mouth
like an avalanche of sound, like a terrifying locomotive blasting through a
black tunnel. It was the kind of sound that drowned, everything, that opened up
visions of endless spaces and impossible distances. Susan screamed, and Neil
found himself clutching for the pine hutch for support. The cups and plates
rattled with the rumbling vibration, and a vase dropped on to the quarry-tiled
floor and shattered.

Toby’s mouth
closed. He sat at the table, the same small mop-headed boy, but somehow
hideously changed. His eyes were bloodshot and congested, and they stared at
Neil with a terrible, knowing strength. His hand clutched at his wax crayon and
slowly crushed it, shedding fragments of red wax across his drawing.

Neil took a
step toward him. “It’s you again, isn’t it?” he whispered. “It’s you.”

Toby watched
him silently and emotionlessly, but as Neil moved around the room, his eyes
followed him all the way. “I want to know who you are,” said Neil. “I want you
to give me some kind of sign.”

Toby smiled,
without humor or human compassion. He said, in a hoarse, echoing voice, “There
will be no signs. You will not interfere. You will leave the gateway intact.”

Neil replied,
“No signs, huh? Well, in that case, I’m afraid the gateway goes. You can’t just
use my son that way and expect me to cooperate. I’m going to go upstairs right
this minute and turn your so-called gateway into cheap firewood.”

Toby growled,
“I shall kill you.”

Susan, across
the other side of the kitchen, whimpered. She could see now how malevolent and
red Toby’s eyes were, and how his hands clenched and unclenched with impatient
strength. She said, “Toby, for pity’s sake.”

Toby ignored
her. He kept his eyes on Neil. At that moment, Neil was in no doubt at all that
whatever was using Toby to speak this
way,
could and
would destroy him. He could already feel the temperature dropping in the
kitchen, and he could see the red line of the thermometer by the stove
gradually sliding downward.

“I’m going up
there,” said Neil. “If you want to stop me, then you’re going to have to fight
me.”

He turned and
opened the wooden door that led up to the stairs. In Toby’s room, across the
landing, he could already hear shuffling and bumping sounds, as if a heavy
piece of furniture were being shifted around. He turned and took a last look at
Toby, but Toby didn’t move. The boy simply sat at the table, his face calm and
smooth with intensely self-possessed hatred. Neil didn’t like to leave Susan,
but he guessed that Toby probably wouldn’t harm her-Toby or whatever demonic
thing was using Toby to speak to him.

“You are very
unwise,” said Toby dispassionately.

Neil climbed
the stairs as far as the landing. The bedroom door was closed, but now the
bumping noises were louder and more frantic. It sounded like chairs and tables
and beds being hurled from one side of the room to the other. He heard a lamp
smash, and then a window break.

“Alien,” begged
the voice, a persistent whisper beneath the clattering and thumping. “Please,
Alien...
help
...”

His heart was
beating in slow, painful pulses as he approached the room. From underneath the
door, strange, cold lights were flickering, like a blue neon sign that was
short-circuiting. There was an odor, too, a chilly smell of burned electricity,
mingled with an indescribable sourness.

His throat was
dry, and he felt so frightened that his legs hardly responded when he tried to
go nearer.

“
Fenner
,” said a coarse voice, and he turned abruptly
around. It was Toby, standing halfway up the stairs, his-reddened eyes fixed on
him in undisguised anger. I’m warning you,
Fenner
.
Leave that wardrobe alone.” “You just keep away,” said Neil. ‘Tm going to do
what I have to do, and nobody’s going to stop me.”

“You’re a fool,
Fenner
,” grated Toby. From behind him, framed in the
light from the kitchen, Susan pleaded uncomprehendingly, ‘Toby! Toby, what’s
the matter?
Toby!”

“Alien...” said
the haunted whisper. “Alien, for God’s sake...”

There was a
bursting, explosive sound from within Toby’s bedroom. Neil crossed the landing,
took hold of the doorknob, and forced the door open. Immediately, there was
another explosion, and he was sucked by a rush of freezing air into the
darkness of the room itself. He fell against the opposite wall, jarring his
back, and he lay with his hands protecting his head while the air screamed and
howled all around him with a hideous cacophony of sound. Behind him the door
slammed shut

He opened his
eyes. The room was quieter now, but still dark. The sounds died away to
whispers. He strained to see what was happening, but it seemed as if the moon
had died, as if the stars had gone out.

Then,
gradually, he became aware of
a faint
white
phosphorescence on the other side of the room. He couldn’t make out what it was
at first, but as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he could make
out the shape of a human head and human shoulders.