Revenge of the Manitou (2 page)

He drove down
to Bodega Bay and parked the Chevy in the parking lot outside the Tides
Restaurant. Then he walked out along the gray wooden planks of the jetty to the
White Dove, a sailboat he was fixing up for a client. Gulls turned and
fluttered in the wind, and the tackle and rigging of all the boats tied up in
the bay clattered and clanked.

Bodega Bay was
a small, shallow bay, enclosed in a hook of land that came out from the Sonoma
coast
Like
a beckoning finger. The beaches all around
were gray and littered with burnt wood and beer cans, but beyond the beaches
were green, rounded hills and quiet farms. The tourists had all gone home now,
and the coastline was foggy and silent, except for the
meep-meep
of gulls, and the slopping of the sea on the piers of the jetty.

Neil clambered
down onto the White Dove’s salt-bleached deck and walked aft. The owner had
used the boat all summer, and it needed painting, varnishing, and cleaning.
Neil glanced up at the mast and saw that several of the lines were frayed and
loose.

He was just
about to go below and see what repairs were needed in the small cabin when he
thought he heard someone speak. He looked up, but there was nobody around,
except for old Doughty, Bodega Bay’s Ancient Mariner, who was sitting on a
lobster basket thirty or forty feet away.

Neil paused for
a couple of seconds, but then he decided he must have made a mistake, and he
bent his head to go below.

A voice
whispered; “Alien.”

Neil froze. For
no reason that he could possibly explain, he felt frightened in a way that he
had never felt before. He couldn’t move for a moment, as if the whispered voice
had drained him of all energy. Then he turned around, his eyes wide, his face
white.

There was
nothing there but the foggy bay, the dim, gray Pacific, the swooping gulls. No
other sound but the creak of the ropes and timbers as the White Dove rose and
dipped in the swell of Bodega Bay.

Neil took a
deep breath, and went down into the boat’s cabin. There were three narrow
berths, still covered with rumpled blankets and sheets. In the center of the
cabin was a varnished table, littered with Dixie cups and empty bottles of
bourbon, and burned by cigarette ends. It disgusted Neil to see people treat
boats this way. Even the simplest boat was a Grafted creation which protected
men from the sea, and he believed in treating every vessel, however humble,
with care and respect.

He took a look
around, and then turned to go back up the companionway. The voice whispered,

“Alien, help
me... Alien, please help me...”

Totally scared,
he turned around. For one ridiculous moment, he was sure that he saw someone looking
in at the forward porthole, but then the face instantly reassembled itself into
a pattern of coiled ropes and clips.

Shaken, he
climbed out of the cabin and stood back on the deck. He didn’t know what to
think or what to feel. Maybe Toby’s dream was just getting under the skin of
his imagination. Maybe he was overworked. He took a couple of steady breaths,
and then walked forward, back to the jetty, to collect his tools and his cans
of varnish.

In school, with
the sunshine sloping across the desks, Mrs. Novato, a young dark-baked woman
with a hairy mole on one cheek and a taste for billowing Indian dresses,
announced a class excursion in one week’s time. It would cost a
dollar-thirty-five, and every pupil would have to bring a packed lunch. They were
going to drive up to Lake
Berryessa
, in the
Vaca
Mountains, for nature study and maybe some swimming,
too.

Toby was
sitting next to Petra Delgada, a serious little girl who never spoke much and
always went to mass on Sundays. Mrs. Novato had placed him there because he
giggled and talked too much whenever he sat next to his best friend, the
coppery-haired Linus Hopland. Linus was in the front row now, his hair shining
in the sunshine like the Point Arena lighthouse. Toby whispered to Petra, “Are
you going up to the lake? Will your folks let you?”

Petra shrugged,
and pursed her lips demurely. “I don’t know. I’ve been sick for the past four
days. Mommy may not let me.”

“You’ve been
sick?
You mean, you’ve puked?”

“You mustn’t
say puke. It’s disgusting.”

Toby colored a
little. He didn’t like Petra to think that he wasn’t grown-up and
sophisticated.

Petra, after
all, was nearly nine, and next in line for class president. Toby said: “Well,
what do you mean? You got the measles?”

“As a matter of
fact, I have insomnia,” said Petra. “Is that catching?”

“Of course not,
stupid. Insomnia is when you can’t sleep. Can’t you see these rings around my
eyes? Mommy says it’s due to hypertension in
prepuberty
.”

Toby frowned.
He didn’t like to admit that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what Petra was
talking about. He’d kind of heard of “puberty,” and he knew it had something to
do with growing hairs on your
dooda
– which is what
his grandpa always used to call it-but that was about the extent of his
knowledge. Like most children to -whom the most important things in life are
skateboards, Charlie’s Angels, and Captain Cosmic, he’d been told, but had
quickly forgotten.

“What do you do
all night if you don’t sleep?” asked Toby. “Do you walk about, or what?”

“Oh, I sleep
some of the time,” explained Petra. “The trouble is
,
I
keep having bad dreams. They wake me up, and then it takes me a long tune to go
back to sleep.”

“Bad dreams?
I had a bad dream last night.”

“Well, I’m sure
your bad dream wasn’t as bad as my bad dreams,” said Petra. “My bad dreams are
simply awful.”

“I dreamed
there was somebody stuck in my wardrobe,” said Toby. In the sunlit classroom,
it sounded pretty lame. The cold terror of seeing that gray face in the walnut
door had been vaporized by the warmth of the day.

Petra tilted
her nose up. “That’s nothing. I keep dreaming about blood. I keep dreaming
about all these people covered with blood.”

Toby was
impressed. “That’s real frightening,” he admitted. “People covered with
blood-that’s real frightening.”

“Mommy says
it’s
prepuberty
fears,” said
Petra, airily. “She’s says it’s a woman’s fear of her natural function brought
about by men’s lack of understanding of what a woman is.”

Mrs. Novato
called; “Petra? Are you talking? I’m surprised at you.”

Petra gave Toby
a sharp look, and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Novato. I was trying to explain
something to Toby.”

The class of
twenty boys and girls, all between the ages of eight and ten, looked around at
them.

Mrs. Novato
said, “If there’s something you don’t understand, Toby, you can always ask me.

That’s what I’m
paid for. Apart from that, I’m a little better informed than Petra on most
subjects.”

Linus Hopland
was grinning at Toby and pulling faces. Toby couldn’t help smirking, and he had
to bite his tongue to prevent himself from laughing out loud.

Mrs. Novato
said; “Stand up, Toby. If you’ve got a question to ask, if there’s something
you don’t understand,
then
let’s share your problem.
That is what a class is for, to share.” Toby reluctantly stood. He kept his
eyes fixed on his desk.

“Well?” asked
Mrs. Novato. “What was it that you wished to know?”

Toby didn’t
answer.

“It was so
important that you had to discuss it with Petra in the middle of nature study,
and yet you can’t tell me what it was?”

Toby said, in a
small, husky voice, “It was Petra’s dreams, Mrs. Novato.”

“Speak up,”
insisted his teacher. “I didn’t hear you.”

“It was Petra’s
dreams. Petra’s been having bad dreams, and so have I.”

Mrs. Novato
blinked at him.
“Bad dreams?
What kind of bad dreams?”

“I’ve been
dreaming about a man stuck in my wardrobe calling for help, and Petra’s been
having dreams about people covered with blood.”

Mrs. Novato
walked slowly down the aisle toward them. She looked first at Toby and then at
Petra. On the blackboard behind her was the chalked message: “Trees in the
Petrified Forest were turned to stone by minerals.’“

Mrs. Novato
said, “Have you told your parents about these dreams?”

The children
nodded.

“Yes, Mrs.
Novato.”

Mrs. Novato
smiled. “In that case, I’m sure you’re both going to be fine. Maybe a little
less cheese at
bedtime,
and those dreams are sure to
disappear. Now, forget about what goes on in dreams and let’s have your
attention on something that’s real.
The trees in the
Petrified Forest.”

Toby sat down
again. Petra, annoyed at having been scolded by Mrs. Novato, pinched him hard
on the leg.

During lunch
recess, in the hot, dusty school yard with its chain-link fence, Toby sat on a
split-log bench and ate his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Today, despite
Ben
Nichelini’s
entreaties to trade a sandwich for a
live lizard on a piece of string, he felt hungry, and he ate everything his
mother had prepared for him. He carefully saved his Baby Ruth bar until last.

Andy Beaver,
who was the envy of the class because his uncle had taken him to see Star Wars,
was doing a passable imitation of R-2 D-2, while Karen Doughty was breathing in
and out very loudly and panting: “I’m Darth Vader! I’m Darth Vader!”

Daniel
Soscol
, one of the youngest boys in the class, came across
the school yard and sat down next to Toby, watching him eat with silent
interest. Daniel wasn’t very popular because he was so young and so quiet. He
had thin arms and legs, and big dark eyes. His father was a plumber in Valley
Ford, and his mother had died in May. Toby continued to eat. When he had
finished, he took out the square of kitchen towel that his mother had neatly
folded under his sandwiches, and wiped his mouth.

Daniel said, “I
heard you say about the dreams.”

Toby looked up.
“So?” he said, acting a little tough because Daniel was the class runt. He
wouldn’t have liked Andy Beaver to see him being too nice to Daniel, in case
Andy Beaver’s gang started to treat him the same way. Leaving thumbtacks on his
seat, hiding his books, things like that.

Daniel said, “I
had bad dreams, too.
Real scary ones.
I dreamed I was
walking through this forest and suddenly all these things came dropping out of
the trees.”

“What’s scary
about that?”

“What’s scary
about somebody stuck in a wardrobe?”

“Well, it was
scary at the time,” said Toby.

“So was mine.”

They sat in
silence for a moment. Toby
unwrapped
his Baby Ruth and
started to chew it. A
coolish
breeze from the west
raised dust on the yard, and in the distance a cock began to crow.

Daniel said,
“We’re not the only ones. Ben
Nichelini
had a bad
dream too. He dreamed he was running and running and all these fierce people
were trying to catch him.”

“Everybody has
dreams like that,” said Toby.

“Well, I guess
so,” admitted Daniel. “I just think
it’s
funny all
these kids having bad dreams.”

Andy
Beaver,
came up, burbling and warbling like R-2 D-2. Daniel
didn’t bother to stick around. When Andy was in a playful mood, it usually
meant that Daniel was going to get his hair twisted or his shorts pulled down.
Daniel said so long to Toby, and ran away across the yard and into the
classroom.

“Have you been
talking to teacher’s pet?” asked Andy. He was blond and pugnacious, and would
probably spend most of his adult life watching baseball and drinking Old
Milwaukee.

Toby screwed up
his eyes against the sun. “What if I have?”

“You just don’t
talk to teacher’s pet, that’s all. He’s a sissy.”

“His mom just
died. Maybe you’d be a sissy if your mom just died.”

“I wouldn’t be
a sissy for nothing. What were you talking about?”

Toby finished
his chocolate bar and screwed up the paper. “What’s it to you?”

Andy Beaver
grabbed his hand and bent his fingers back. Toby yelped in pain, but Andy was
much stronger, and he couldn’t get free. A couple of the other kids came over,
yelling, “Fight!
Fight!”
Toby and Andy fell to the
dusty ground and rolled over and over, kicking and grunting and punching.

At last, Andy
held Toby down on the ground, his knees pressed against Toby’s arms. Both of
them were flushed and grubby, and there were tears in their eyes.

Andy said,
“Okay-what were you talking about? I want to know!”

Toby coughed.
“We were talking
about those bad dreams, that’s
all.
Nothing that you’d understand.”

“Oh yeah?”

Toby pushed bun
off and struggled to his feet. His shirt was hanging out at the back, and his
pants were ripped. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“You’re so
smart, you think you’re the only person who ever had dreams,” Andy said.

“So when was
the last time you had a bad dream?” demanded Toby. “The last time your mother
cooked spaghetti, I’ll bet.”

“It was not!”
said Andy, hotly. “I had bad dreams last night, and the night before.”

“You had bad
dreams?” asked Toby.

“I did too.
Nightmares.”

“You shouldn’t
have gone to see Star Wars,” said Ben
Nichelini
. “You’re
not man enough to take it.”

“Will you shut
up?” said Andy. “I had bad dreams about people having all their hair torn off
of their heads.
Dozens of ‘
em
.
All screaming and shouting, because somebody was tearing the hair right off of
their heads.”