Revenge of the Manitou

FOUR

They talked until mid-afternoon. Billy Ritchie, as the Old Crow loosened his tongue, began to ramble about his childhood, and the old days in Calistoga and the hot springs country, and the girls he’d known and chased. Neil began to feel claustrophobic in the small, airless house, but he stayed because he wanted to know more about Bloody Fenner, and about the day of the dark stars.

He said to Billy Ritchie, “Do you think that Bloody Fenner could have done anything to irritate the Wappos, or any of the tribes? Something they might have wanted revenge for?”

Billy Ritchie shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. I never heard tell of him falling out with the Indians. The way I heard it, they was always the best of friends, and that’s what made him so treacherous to whites.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“Who does? All that happened one hundred and forty years ago, and there wasn’t more than a dozen men in the whole of the Napa Valley who could read or write, so they didn’t keep no diaries. They were dark days, for sure. Mighty dark days.”

Neil took out his handkerchief and wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “Well, tell me this,” he said. “If Bloody Fenner had done something to upset the Indians, way back in the 1830s, how would an Indian medicine man go about taking his revenge?”

“You mean today? Here and now?”

“That’s right”

Billy Ritchie puffed out his cheeks. “I can only tell you what I know from stories, and from what that trapper told me. A lot of those real mystical Indian rituals, well, they’re so secret that half the Indians don’t know them. But what you have to understand is that a medicine man’s spirit-what the Indians call bis manitou- that never dies. It’s reborn, lifetime after lifetime, for seven lifetimes in all, until the medicine man has performed enough magic on earth to earn himself a place up in the stars, alongside of the great spirits.

“The point is, the manitou can only take on flesh if it finds itself a suitable human being to lodge itself in. It can take on plenty of other shapes, sure. The Narragansets, for instance, used to have stories about medicine men who came back to life by using rocks for flesh, or water, or even wood. There’s some pretty hair-rising stories about the stone men of the Narragansets who used to walk at night. But a man made of rock or wood is just as vulnerable as rock or wood, and so the medicine man wouldn’t take on that kind of flesh unless he had nothing else.”

Neil, even though he was trying hard to control it, was shaking. He saw, as vividly as he had the night before, the wooden arm reaching out from the wardrobe, the fierce face glaring from the polished walnut. He said, hoarsely, “Go on.”

Billy Ritchie shrugged. “I don’t know much more about it. It’s not the kind of stuff a white man gets to hear about easily.”

Neil opened another can of Coors. His throat was dry, and he felt as if he’d been hung up all afternoon in a tobacco-curing barn. He swallowed lukewarm beer, and then he said, “What would happen on the day of the dark stars? Would the medicine men need to find human beings to lodge themselves in? Would they need to use ordinary people’s bodies to get themselves reborn?”

“Sure they would,” nodded Billy Ritchie. “They’d pick themselves a bunch of folks, probably the land of folks who wouldn’t put up too much of a mental fight, if you get what I mean, and they’d use their living bodies, their flesh and their blood and all, to come back to life.”

Neil whispered, “The children. My God, the children.”

Billy Ritchie said, “What did you say? You’ll have to speak up. I bust an eardrum when I fell off of that horse.”

Neil stood up. If what Billy Ritchie said about Indian medicine men was even half-true, it was the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard in his life. Everything fitted the random and scary events of the past few days, and made sense out of them. The day of the dark stars was going to happen soon, just the way Toby had said. Toby couldn’t have possibly known about it unless he was really being possessed for real.

And the wooden man from the wardrobe convinced him.

It seemed insane, but nothing else explained what was going on. The children of Mrs. Novato’s class were being gradually infiltrated, mind and body, by the most powerful gathering of Indian medicine men that had ever taken place, at any time in America’s history. Toby, his own son, was among them.

Toby, when he thought about it, may even have been the catalyst for the whole horrifying possession. Toby was a Fenner, a descendant of Bloody Fenner, and if Bloody Fenner had helped the Indians in the past against the white man, then maybe he was doing it again. The ghost or the spirit of Toby’s forefather was back in Sonoma County, after a hundred and forty years, and preparing for another massacre.

Neil thought about the man in the long white duster. The man who kept begging for help. Maybe he was a ghost, too-a kind of sad warning stirred up from the past.

From what he said, he may have been one of the twenty settlers who died up at Conn Creek. One of the innocent folks who had died at the hands of the Wappos while Bloody Fenner pretended to ride off for help.

Neil took Billy Ritchie’s hand and squeezed it

“You’ve been a lot of help,” he said softly.

“What did you say?” demanded Billy.

“I said, you’ve been a lot of help. I’m beginning to understand things that didn’t make any sense before.”

Billy Ritchie set down his bourbon glass. He stared up at Neil with a sharp, canny look in his eye.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” he said.

“A little,” admitted Neil.

“You think it’s coming-the day of the dark stars?”

“I’ve seen some signs.”

“What kind of signs?”

“I’ve seen a wooden man. Least, I think I have. And I’ve heard voices from the people who were killed up at Las Posadas.”

Billy Ritchie rubbed his chin. “It doesn’t sound too good, does it?” he said. “It doesn’t sound too good at all.”

“I don’t know what to do,” said Neil. “If it’s really medicine men, then they’ve chosen the kids at my son’s school.”

“They would, if you’re a Fenner. They’d look for a spirit guide, you see. Someone to help them reincarnate themselves. Out there, out in what the Indians used to call the

‘outside,’ the spirits of those medicine men would look for the ghost of someone who once helped them when they were human. Bloody Fenner would be just their man.”

“But what can I do?” asked Neil. “Is there anything I can do about it? I mean, how can I stop it?”

Billy Ritchie brushed cat hairs off his fingers. “I wouldn’t like to say,” he confessed.

“That old trapper never got as far as telling me what to do if the day of the dark stars ever actually arrived.”

“But what about all those children? What about my son?”

“It’s going to be worse than that,” said Billy Ritchie. “Well-I know there isn’t nothing worse than your own son being hurt. But the day of the dark stars is when the Indians take an eye for an eye, and you just think about the thousands and thousands of Indians who died because of what the white man did to them. If these medicine men really do turn up, and if they really call down their demons, then we’re going to see death and horror like you can’t even imagine.”

Neil was silent for a few seconds, and then he squeezed Billy Ritchie’s hand again.

“I’m going to start fighting back,” he said determinedly. ‘I'm going straight to the cops, to begin with, and we’re going to have those children, protected.”

“Well,” said Billy Ritchie, “I just hope yqu can. Maybe it takes a Fenner to wipe out a Fenner’s wrong deeds. Don’t think it’s going to be easy, though. And keep on your guard. If your ancestor’s around, then you’ve got yourself some stiff competition.

Alien Fenner wasn’t called Bloody for nothing.”

“A lien Fenner? That was his name?”

“It sure was. Didn’t you know that?”

Neil shook his head. “Nobody ever told me before. Everybody just called him Bloody.”

Billy Ritchie tickled his black cat’s ears. “Bloody’s good enough,” he said simply.

“Bloody’s good enough.”

Sergeant Murray sat behind his desk with the same patient expression he used for people who complained about dogs fouling then- front lawns* or kids throwing stones at their windows. Outside, a breeze had sprung up from the ocean, and dust blew in gritty clouds across the police station parking lot. It was nearly five o’clock, and Sergeant Murray was due to go home at five. He was a big, chubby man, with a face as large as a pig’s, and he was feeling hungry.

Beside him, his air-conditioning unit rattled and burbled and whined. From time to time, as Neil talked to him, he took a paper clip out of the small plastic tray on his desk, unbent it, and dropped it into his wastebasket with an audible ping.

Neil told him about Toby’s nightmares, about the paintings at the school, about the wooden demon, and about Billy Ritchie. Sergeant Murray listened, asking no questions, and when Neil was finished he wedged his fat fingers together and had a deep, silent think.

Eventually, he lifted his head and said, “Neil-we’ve known each other a good few years.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

Sergeant Murray pulled a face. “Everything, when it comes down to it, Neil. A cop who didn’t know you too well might book you for wasting police time. As it is-”

“Wasting police time!” said Neil, astounded. “You think I’ve spent a whole day over at Calistoga, and driven all the way back here, just to waste your time!”

“Neil,” said Sergeant Murray, raising one porky hand to restrain him, “I don’t mean that you’ve done it with bad intent. I don’t mean that you’ve done it deliberately.”

“Well, what the hell do you mean? I know this is weird stuff, George. I know it sounds crazy. But I’ve told you the facts as they are, and you can’t sit there and tell me that something pretty threatening isn’t going on here. You can’t ignore it.”

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. ‘I’m 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 Turnbull 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 mat 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, Til 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. ‘I'm 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 Cod’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.

He said, in a voice that was much more off-key than he had hoped, “Is there somebody there? Who is that?”

There was silence for a long time. He listened, but he couldn’t hear anyone breathing. There wasn’t any doubt, though, that what he could see was a human figure. It was sitting on the chair beside Toby’s wardrobe, and he could even see the glimmer of its eyes. It only occurred to Neil after several tense, hushed minutes that the wardrobe had been returned to its usual resting-place.

He said, “Is there someone there? I want to know who you are.”

The figure appeared to move, and as it moved, it creaked. It was a sound that terrified Neil beyond anything. It was the sound of wood, under stress. It was the sound of a man whose limbs were made out of varnished timber. It was the sound of a demon come to life in the form of a human, but in the substance of the forests.

“You are interfering in the schemes of the gods,” said the figure. “You are meddling with the past and with the future.”

Neil swallowed, although there was nothing in his throat to swallow except the dryness of his fear.

The faint phosphorescence wavered, and Neil saw the shine of a cheekbone of gleaming walnut The nicker of eyes that were wood, and yet saw. He glanced toward the door of the room, but he knew that even if he tried to make a run for it, the wooden man could get there first

“Who are you?” he said.

There was silence, and then that horrendous creaking sound as the figure rose to its feet It slowly stepped toward him, its wooden heels clattering on the floor, and then it stood over him, tall and dark and menacing.

“You want to know who I am?” it replied. Its voice sounded peculiarly distant, as if it was speaking from centuries away. “I am the wooden form of the greatest of those outside. I am not here, in this wood. I am not in your son, although your son speaks to yon in my voice, I am beyond the barrier, in the hunting grounds to which all manitous are consigned after their lives in the physical world have ended.”

“Why are you here?” asked Neil, in a shaky voice. “What do you want from us? Is Billy Ritchie right? Is it the day of the dark stars? Have you come to kill people?”

The wooden figure turned stiffly away. “It is not for you to know.”

Neil, scared, climbed slowly onto his feet. Even when he was standing up, the wooden figure loomed a good four or five inches over him. Neil stepped back across the room, reaching out behind him with his hands, trying to orient himself in the deep, cold darkness.

“You are a Fenner,” said the wooden man. “You will be spared because your ancestor helped my brothers. But only if you accept what is happening, and do not try to resist us. If you resist, I shall feed you as scraps of meat to the demons of the north wind.”

Neil answered breathlessly, “I have a right to know. I'm Toby’s father. You’re going to use Toby and I’m going to stop you.”

The wooden figure didn’t move. But it said, in its eerie, distant voice, “Before you talk about your rights, white man, before you talk about stopping me, remember the thousands of Indian families you slew, and of all those red men who died without rights. Not just fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters. Think of the women you raped and mutilated, of the braves you scalped. Then tell me that you have a right to know anything.”

Carefully stepping backward, sweating and trembling, Neil found the edge of Toby’s bed. He reached behind him and fumbled under the comforter for the sheet He heard the wooden man creak and those heels knock against the bedroom floor, and he froze. But then the wooden man stayed where he was, and Neil softly tugged the sheet out, and rolled it up into an untidy ball behind his back.

The wooden man said: “I am the greatest of those outside, the unquestioned master of the wonder-workers of ancient times. I am the chosen of Sadogowah, the instrument of Nashuna. I have scores to settle from times deeper than you can imagine, white man. I have a score with the Dutchmen, for the diseases they brought to Manhattan. I have a-score with the pilgrims, for the ways they taught the Wampanoags and the Nansets. I have a score with the settlers and the fanners and the railroad men, for the Cheyenne who died, and the Sioux who died, and the Apaches and Paiute. We were at one with the lands, white man, and all the forces and the influences of the lands, and all the gods and the spirits for whom trees grow and stones are thrust up from the earth’. We were the greatest of the nations of the earth, and you slew us with rifles and diseases and empty promises. We shall have our revenge, white man, in the way that is prophesied on the great stone redwood, and you shall all taste blood.”

Neil slid his hand in his pocket and felt for the box of matches. He could almost hear old Billy Ritchie now. “A man of rock or wood is just as vulnerable as rock or wood.”

The figure said, “The white man, Fenner, helped my Wappo brothers in years gone by. He helped them because he understood their struggle, and because he had Wappo blood in his own veins. That is why your son is chosen, white man. That is why we were led at last to bring down the spirits of the great Nashuna and Ossadagowah in this place, at this time.”

Neil managed to fumble a match from the box. He scratched it against the side and he smelled burnt phosphorus, but it didn’t catch. He was sweating, in spite of the bitter cold, and his teeth were clenched in tension. As it spoke, the wooden figure came closer and closer, until it was standing only two or three feet away, its dark wooden head towering over him.

“I have a personal score to settle, too,” the wooden man said, in that uncanny voice that was far away, and yet so close that Neil seemed to be hearing it inside his head.

“A personal score?’ asked Neil. He scratched again at the side of the matchbox.

“I have visited your time before, in the body of a young woman. I was reborn to wreak vengeance on those who had laid waste to the islands you now call New York.

I was born as a human, in my own flesh, but I was destroyed in that form by a white charlatan and a treacherous red man from the plains. That is the personal score I have to settle. I will find the white man called Erskine, and the red man called Singing Rock, and I will destroy them both.”

The figure’s body creaked again and it raised one of its arms.

“I am the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape. I am the Messenger of the Great Old One, the Chosen of Sadogowah. I am the Keeper of the Elder Seal, and the worker of wonders unknown in future times. My name is Quamis, known to the Wampanoag as Misquamacus. I have arrived for the day of the dark stars.” The wooden man raised both arms and stretched out for Neil’s throat Neil, with a high-pitched whine of fear, ducked sideways, and simultaneously struck at his match. It flared up, and caught at the crumpled sheet

In the sudden leaping light of orange flames, Neil glimpsed a wooden face that was contorted with anger. Fierce eyes glistened above a hooked Indian nose and a mouth drawn back on wooden teeth. It was Misquamacus, the same face he had seen in Billy Ritchie’s photographs, only this time it was vengeful and twisted with rage.

The sheet flared up even more violently, burning Nefl’s hand. With a sweep of his arm, he threw the fiery cloth over the wooden man’s head, so that the figure was enveloped in flames. Then he pushed his way toward the door, and struggled to open it

“Susan!” he yelled. “Susan! Open this door! It’s jammed! Susan!”

He frantically looked behind him. The wooden figure of Misquamacus was standing beside Toby’s bed, and already its head and shoulders were starting to blaze. There was a rank odor of burned cotton and wood.

“Susan!” he shouted, rattling the door knob. “Susan, for God’s sake!”

He thought for a terrible moment that Toby might have done something to Susan, might even have killed her, but then he heard her calling, “I’m here! I called the police!”

“Push the door!” called Neil “I can’t get out of here! Push the door!”

He turned around again, and to his terror, the fiery figure of Misquamacus was walking slowly toward him, arms outstretched to seize him. There were flames rippling up from the wonder-worker’s chest, and his head was a mass of fire, but he kept coming, and Neil could feel the heat from his burning body.

“You are as weak as the grass.against me,” said the blazing lips. “I shall devour yon if yon try to cross me, and I shall offer yon up to the most terrible of my gods.”

“Susan!” Neil screamed. He shook and tugged at the door, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“The door is fastened by my will alone,” said Misquamacus. “You will never open it in a hundred moons.”

The room was filling with blinding, choking smoke. Through its billows, impossibly tall and shuddering with flame, the wooden figure stalked nearer, until Nefl had to abandon the door and scramble toward the window. He glanced quickly out through the broken pane. It was a long drop onto hard ground, and even if he didn’t break his neck, “he’d probably wind up with a couple of fractured legs.

He turned back toward the medicine men. The breeze from the window was feeding the flames, and the wooden body burned with a soft, sinister, roaring sound.

“I have you now, white man,” whispered the charring mouth. “I have you now.”

Beside him, the linen cover of Toby’s bedroom chair began to smolder and burn, and one of the drapes caught afire.

Neil raised his arm to protect his face from the heat *The fiery fingers clawed closer, and one of them seized his sleeve, viciously strong and searingly hot. He kicked out against the wooden figure, but it slammed him against the window frame, and he heard his back crack. All he seemed to be able to see was fire, and the grotesque outline of a face wrought in blazing charcoal.

Suddenly, the flames burst out higher. The bedroom door was open, and even more oxygen was nourishing the wooden figure’s fire. Neil wrenched Ms arm free and dropped to his knees, scorched and agonized.

The next thing he knew there was a strange series of sounds. They were slow and ghostly, and they sounded like the surf on the ocean shelf, like something being played in slow motion. Above him, the wooden figure faltered, turned, and then abruptly began to burst into thousands of shattering, whirling fragments of blazing ashes.

The fire exploded over Neil as he lay crouched on the floor, raining all around him.

His neck and his hands were prickled with cinders. But then there was nothing but burned-out chunks of blackened walnut, and a fine dusting of gray ash. Neil blinked, and slowly raised his head.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the outline of a man’s feet, and the hem of a pale-colored coat. He thought he saw a hand move, the way a hand moves when a gun goes back to its holster. But then there was nothing but the landing, and Susan, pale-faced and frightened, under the harsh light from the lamp on the ceiling.

She came into the room and helped him up. He brushed ash and burned wood from his shirt and coughed. His hands and his forearm were blistered, and his hair was singed, but apart from that he was unhurt

“Neil’ Susan wept. “Oh, Neil.”

He held her close. He was trembling, and he felt shocked, but he had the feeling that he had been saved by some kind of spiritual intervention, that a ghostly force had recognized his danger and come to save him. It gave him, for the first time since Toby had started having nightmares, a feeling of strength and confidence. He gently stroked Susan’s hair and said, “Don’t cry. I think we’re going to make it. I think we’re going to be all right.”

She looked up at him, her face smudged with tears.

“But what did you do in here?” she asked him. “Why is everything burned?”

He stared at her. It occurred to him, with a feeling of awful coldness, that she still didn’t believe what was going on. She hadn’t seen the wooden figure, after all. She had heard nothing but noises. Now, he was standing amid cinders and ashes, with no way to prove what he had seen or heard.

He said, slowly, “The wooden man was here. That’s all that’s left of him.”

“The wooden man?” she frowned. “Neil, I-”

He pointed savagely toward the wardrobe. “The wooden man was here and he talked to me. He told me who he was, and he told me what was happening, and everything that old-timer told me up in Calistoga was right. The Indian medicine men are being reborn, in the bodies of our children, and they’re going to kill as many white men as they possibly can.”

“Neil, stop it! Neil, please, it’s just your imagination!”

“What about the way Toby spoke downstairs? You think that’s imagination?”

Susan held him tight. “Toby’s just unsettled, that’s all. He sees you behaving like this, and it scares him. He says things because he’s sensitive, because he doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

“He says things because he’s possessed by a Red Indian magician!” shouted Neil.

“He says things because Misquamacus makes him!”

“Oh, yes?” said a voice. “And who’s Misquamacus?”

Neil looked up. On the landing, in his neatly laundered police uniform, stood Officer Turnbull. He was a lean, punctilious cop with a blue chin and a sharply pointed nose, and Neil had never particularly liked him. He stepped into the room and surveyed the ashes and the burned furnishings with professional detachment.

Neil let Susan go, and stood watching Officer Turn-bull poke around without speaking. After a while, Officer Turnbull gave him a dry smile, and said, “You didn’t answer my question yet.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” mumbled Neil. “It wasn’t intended to be taken as the literal truth.”

Officer Turnbull eyed him for a few seconds. Then he said, “I see. And what’s the literal truth of what happened here? You decide to have a cookin instead of a cookout?”

Neil wiped soot from his face. “I was just breaking up that old wardrobe,” he said. “I guess I had an accident with the matches.”

Officer Turnbull sniffed. “Pretty disastrous accident, I’d say. You sure you weren’t bent on burning the place down?”

“Why the hell would I do that? I had an accident. I told you.”

“Well,” said Officer Turnbull, “some folks who find themselves short of cash think they can make a little extra from torching their houses. It’s the insurance money, you understand?”

Neil looked at rum, disgusted. “Get out of here,” he said sharply.

“I’ll go when I know what happened,” Officer Turnbull told him. “What was that you just said about Misky-something?”

“It’s a pet name,” said Neil. “It’s something we call Toby. Now, will you please get out of here and give me the chance to clean the place up?”

Officer Turnbull took out his pen and studiously wrote in his police notebook. Then he cast his eyes around the room again, and said, “Let’s make this the last fire we have in here, huh? Bodega’s a nice little community, and the last thing we want is to have it looking like the South Bronx.”

“Is there anything else?” asked Neil, with thinly disguised Impatience.

“I reckon that’s all. But IN have to file a report.”

“You can do what you like. Thanks for dropping round. It’s nice to know that you can count on the cops, as long as you’ve done something they can understand.”

Officer Turnbull tucked away his notebook, shrugged, and went downstairs. They heard the kitchen door close, and the sound of his patrol car leaving the yard. Neil sighed, and stepped over the ash and debris to the landing.

Susan said, “You didn’t have to speak to him like that. He was only doing his job.

You should be grateful he came.”

“Yes,” said Neil dully. “I suppose I should. Where’s Toby?”

“He’s downstairs in the kitchen. I think he’s all right now. After you went into his bedroom-well, he seemed to relax. He became his normal self again.”

“That was because Misquamacus left him, and took on the shape of a wooden man.”

Susan didn’t answer that. She said, “Let’s go downstairs. Maybe I should bathe those blisters. Those hands are going to be sore in the morning.”

Neil leaned against the wall. He felt suddenly exhausted, and his eyes hurt. It seemed almost too much to fight this frightening thing on his own. If only Susan believed him. If only one person believed him, apart from old Billy Ritchie.

He said, “I’m okay. I guess my arm could use a little ointment, but everything else is all right. Could you make me some coffee?”

She kissed his cheek solicitously. “Sure. Whatever you want. You just rest up tonight, and in the morning you’ll feel fine.”

He took her hand. “Susan,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Susan, I’m not going nuts. I saw that wooden man up there as close as I’m standing here now.”

She gave him a quick, noncommittal smile. “Yes, honey. I know. There was a wooden man.”

They went downstairs. Toby was back at the table, finishing his drawing, and when Neil came down he looked up at him with deep, serious eyes. Neil regarded his son for a long, silent moment, trying to see the spirit of the wonder-worker who might be lurking someplace inside him, but there didn’t seem to be any sign at all.

He came up close and hunkered down beside Toby’s chair. The boy gave him a cautious grin, and said, “What’s the matter, Daddy? Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” nodded Neil. “We just had a little accident with matches, that’s all. You should learn something from it. Don’t play with fire.”

“Yes, sir,” said Toby, politely.

For some reason, Toby’s manner seemed to discourage any further conversation, and Neil couldn’t think what else to say. He glanced at Toby’s drawing, and asked,

“How’s it going? You finished it yet?”

“Sure.”

“Can I see it?”

Toby nodded. “If you want.”

The boy took his crooked arm away from the paper, and Neil took it off the table and examined it. It was almost an abstract, colored mainly in blues and grays and dull greens. There seemed to be clouds, with twisting tentacles writhing in between them, and a suggestion of a face that wasn’t truly a face at all. It was crude, and drawn with Toby’s usual heavy-handedness, but there was something strangely subtle and disturbing about it as well.

“What is it?” asked Neil.

Toby gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know, sir. It isn’t a person.”

Neil ran his fingers lightly over the waxed surface of the drawing. In the back of his mind, he heard that strange, distant voice again, the voice of the wooden man. “I am the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape.”

He ruffled Toby’s hair, and laid the drawing back on the table. From across the kitchen, Susan was eyeing him closely.

“It’s a nice picture,” said Neil, for want of anything else to say. “It looks like some kind of octopus.”

Susan said, “Your coffee’s almost ready.”

Late that night, when Susan and Toby had gone to bed, Neil went silently downstairs and into the den. He sat at his desk in the darkness, and moved the telephone toward him. He looked at the dial for a while, as if he were thinking, and then he picked up the receiver and called information.

It took him a half-hour to locate the number he wanted. It was a Manhattan number, from an address on Tenth Avenue. He checked his watch. It was almost three o’clock in the morning in New York, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to wait any longer. He had to know now, before another day dawned, before the spirits gained even more time and even more strength.

The phone rang and rang for almost ten minutes. When there was no reply, he put down the receiver, dialed the number again, and let it ring some more.

Eventually, he heard the phone at the other end being picked up. A nasal, sleep-worn voice said, “Yes? Who the hell’s this?”

Neil coughed. I’m sorry to wake you. I wouldn’t have called at all, but it’s desperately urgent.”

“What’s happening? Is the world coming to an imminent end?”

“Something almost as bad,” said Neil.

“Don’t tell me. They’re banning hot dogs because they give you bowlegs.”

“Mr. Erskine,” said Neil, and he felt himself unexpectedly close to tears, “I’m calling you because there’s nobody else.”

“Well,” answered the voice, “if it’s that critical, you’d better tell me what you want.”

“This isn’t a joke, Mr. Erskine. I’m calling because of Misquamacus.”

There was silence. To begin with, Neil wondered if Mr. Erskine had put the phone down. But he could still hear the singing noise of the transcontinental telephone cables. The silence lasted almost half a minute. Then Mr. Erskine queried softly,

“Misquamacus? What about Misquamacus? Where did you ever hear about Misquamacus?”

“Mr. Erskine, I have met Misquamacus. Or a form that Misquamacus took. He came this evening, and it was only luck that I wasn’t killed.”

Again, there was silence.

“Are you there?” asked Neil.

“Sure I’m here,” said Mr. Erskine. ‘I'm just thinking, that’s all. I'm thinking that I’m hoping that you’re not telling me the truth, only I know that you are because nobody knows about Misquamacus except for the people who helped me get rid of him.”

“Then it’s true?” said Neil. “What Misquamacus said about you was actually true?”

“You say you’ve seen him,” Mr. Erskine retorted. “What do you think?”

Almost swamped with relief, Neil said, “It’s true. It must be true. My God, the whole damned thing is true.”

“That’s what makes it so frightening,” Mr. Erskine pointed out. “Did you say you saw him?”

“Only a form that he took. The form of a wooden man. And he’s been speaking through my son, Toby, who’s eight. He says that he’s coming back to take revenge on the white men. His spirit-his manitou-is going to take possession of Toby and get reborn.”

“Almost the same as it happened before.” said Mr. Erskine soberly. “Listen-will you hold on to the phone while I fix myself a seltzer?”

“Sure,” said Neil, and waited. After a few moments, the phone was picked up again, and Mr. Erskine said, “Do you know what he’s trying to do? Has he given you any kind of idea?”

Neil answered, “Not very clearly. It’s something to do with the day of the dark stars, which is a day when twenty-two of the most powerful medicine men from all ages in history and all different tribes are supposed to get themselves reborn and call down some of the Indian gods. It’s the day when they’re supposed to kill one white man for every Indian who ever died at white hands.”

“That sounds about Misquamacus’s style,” put in Mr. Erskine. “Did you say two of the most powerful medicine men?”

“No, no-twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“That’s the legend. And that’s what Misquamacus told me.”

There was more silence. Then Mr. Erskine said, “Listen, fellow, I’ve got to talk to someone about this. Why don’t you leave me your number, and your name, and 111

call you back.”

“Sure,” said Neil. “My name’s Neil Fenner, and I live in Bodega out in northern California. Not far from Sonoma, you know? My number’s 3467.”

“I got that,” Mr. Erskine told him. “Give me a couple of hours, and I promise I’ll come back to you.”

“Mr. Erskine-”

“Call me Harry, will you? We haven’t met yet, and we don’t know who the hell each other is, but if you’re talking seriously about Misquamacus, then I think we’d better get ourselves on first-name terms.”

“Okay, Harry, that’s fine. But what I wanted to say was that Misquamacus told me he had some kind of personal score to settle.”

“A personal score?”

“That’s right. With you, and with some Indian called Singing Rock. He said that you’d destroyed him when he tried to get himself reborn some time before, and that he was going to fix you for it.”

Harry Erskine sounded uncomfortable. “I see,” he said quietly. “Well, I guess that figures. Misquamacus is the revenge of a whole nation, all wrapped up into one. If he says he’s going to kill us all, then by God, Neil, he means it.”