Revenge of the Manitou

SIX

That afternoon, out on the wharf at Bodega Bay, while Neil was putting the finishing touches to the brasswork on the White Dove, Dave Conway came out from the fish market and called him.

“Neil-there’s a long-distance call. Sounds like someone called aspirin.”

“Thanks,” said Neil, and climbed onto the jetty. He walked quickly under a sky that was hazy but cloudless, and he wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

Inside the fish market, there was a sweet, salty smell of crabs and flounders and bass, and the telephone was sticky with scales. He picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“Neil Fenner? This is Harry Erskine. Listen, I have some news for you.”

“News? What kind of news?”

“Bad news, mainly. I talked this morning to John Singing Rock out in South Dakota.

He’s a medicine man, you know? But a modern one. I mean, he knows all the old spells but he tries to apply them in an up-to-date way.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he’d heard of the day of the dark stars, and he was sure that what you told me was genuine.” Neil switched the receiver from one ear to the other. “Is that all? He’s sure I’m genuine? Listen, I wouldn’t have called you if I hadn’t been genuine. I wouldn’t have known your name, even. There was no way I practically got myself killed because of an overworked imagination.”

“You sure didn’t,” said Harry. He sounded as if he were sucking cough drops. “The day of the dark stars is supposed to be mentioned in stories that were handed down by tribes from all over America. Most Indians have heard of it, apparently-either from their parents or their grandparents, but there aren’t many Indians today who can remember what it’s all supposed to signify. They’ve gotten themselves too integrated, you know? Even Singing Rock sells insurance on the side.”

“Did he say what I could do about it? The trouble I have here is that nobody believes me, not even my wife. Nobody else saw the wooden man but me, and they’re putting the children’s nightmares down to hysteria, or indigestion. Everybody thinks I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not. Singing Rock says that the Hopi have stories about the day of the dark stars, and so do the Oglala Sioux and the Modoc and the Cheyenne and the Wyandotte. The Paiute used to call it the day when the mouth would come out of the sky and devour the white devils, but they always were kind of wordy.”

“So what can I do?” asked Neil. “Can I exorcise these manitous, or what?”

“Not with a bell and a book and a candle. I learned from the last tune I met Misquamacus that you can’t dismiss Red Indian demons with white man’s religion.”

“But how did you destroy Misquamacus before?”

“It’s pretty hard to explain. But Singing Rock says we just don’t have the same kind of situation here at all, and he doesn’t think we could manage a repeat performance.

Last time, Misquamacus was weak and confused and on his own. This time, it sounds as if he’s strong, and on his own territory.”

“You don’t sound very optimistic, Harry.”

‘Tm supposed to sound optimistic? You call me up and tell me twenty-two Indian spirits are after my blood, and I’m supposed to sound optimistic?”

“I'm sorry,” Neil put in hastily. “What I meant was, it sounds like we don’t have an easy way out of this.”

“Listen,” said Harry, “I’m going to fly out to San Francisco on Sunday morning, which is the earliest I can get away. Singing Rock is coming out from South Dakota, and he says he should get to California by Monday morning at the latest.”

“You’re actually coming out to help? Well, that’s terrific.”

“Neil,” said Harry, “we’re coming out because we faced Misquamacus before. If we hadn’t, we would have put you down as a crank, just like everyone else has. But the last time we faced him we came about as close to the happy hunting grounds as I ever want to get, and I don’t want that to happen again. This time, I want to face him forewarned and forearmed, and I want to make sure that he doesn’t have a chance to conjure up any of those demons that jump out at you and bite your head off.”

“Are you joking?”

“Do I sound as if I’m joking?”

Neil stepped aside to let a fishmonger pass with a barrow of fresh blue-green lobsters.

“No,” he said. “You don’t sound as though you’re joking at all.”

“Okay,” replied Harry. “Now, this is what Singing Rock wants you to do. He wants you to keep a close watch on your son, and he wants you to make sure that he doesn’t go off on his own this weekend. Do whatever you have to do-take him bowling, or swimming, or whatever it is you people do out at Bodega Bay. Just don’t let him out of your sight. And one more thing. Make sure that he doesn’t get together with any of his classmates from school. If you can go, get bun out of school right now-so much the better. Singing Rock says that before the twenty-two wonderworkers can emerge, they have to go through some kind of performance with lizards or something, and they have to do it all together.”

“Lizards?” frowned Neil.

“Don’t ask me,” said Harry. “I know as much about Indian magic as I do about dancing the Highland fling. Apparently, the medicine men do something repulsive with lizards.”

“Okay,” said Neil. “I’ll do what I can.”

“There’s something else,” Harry put in. “If you think that Misquamacus is really starting to get a grip on your son-if your son starts talking like Misquamacus and looking as though his face is changing-then call me right away. If it gets really bad, then get the hell out of there.”

“But what about Toby? If it does get bad, what’s going to happen to him?”

“It’s pretty hard to say. He might have a chance of survival. But if you and your wife stay around too long, you’re going to find yourselves in much worse danger than he.”

“What kind of danger? What are you talking about? What do I have to look for?”

“You don’t have to look for anything,” said Harry dryly. “Whatever it is, it’s going to come looking for you.”

He met Doughty on the jetty. The old man was sitting on the front bumper of Nell’s pickup, smoking his pipe. Neil said hi.

Doughty stood up. He questioned, “Did you hear the news?”

Neil shook his head. “What news?”

“Billy Ritchie died this morning. I thought you might have heard.”

Neil felt cold with shock. “He died? How did it happen? He looked fit enough to me, apart from his legs.”

“His house was burned out,” said Doughty. “His neighbor said it was a freak stroke of lightning, sent the whole place up like a bonfire.”

“Lightning? We haven’t had an electric storm for weeks.”

“I know. But that’s what the neighbor said. The whole place was sent up like a bonfire. Poor old Billy, not having the use of his legs, was trapped in his living room.

Burned to death, black cat and all.”

Neil swallowed, and his throat was as dry as a nylon rug. The day seemed suddenly hot and oppressive, and the clank and clatter of boats’ rigging was like the tolling of toneless, funereal handbells.

Neil admitted, “I saw him only yesterday. I was talking to him, as close as we’re standing now.”

Doughty looked away, and puffed a couple of times at his pipe.

Neil said, “Did you find out anything else about it? Or was that all?”

Doughty turned around, and eyed him up and down. “All? What more do you want?

You know what they’ve always said in Napa County. Where there’s a Fenner, there’s a bad wind blowing.”

“What land of a saying is that?”

Doughty shrugged. “I’m not sure I know. But I guess it’s one of those sayings that’s based on experience.”

Neil stared at the blue-gray Pacific for a while, at the wavelets which lapped at the fishing boats and pleasure cruisers tied up at the jetty. Then he said, “Billy Ritchie talked about the old days, about the tunes when Bloody Fenner was still alive, and about the Indian massacres. He told me all about Ossadagowah, and some of the other Indian demons.”

Doughty took the stem of his pipe out of his mouth and spat a distance of ten feet into the water. “So what are you saying?” he asked. “You think he talked too much, and some of them Indian demons set ablaze to his house?”

Neil looked at him sharply. “It’s nothing to joke about, Doughty. Those demons are dangerous, just as much today as they were in the old days.”

“Neil,” growled Doughty, in his old sea-dog voice, “you’re letting yourself get out of hand.”

“You think so? What if I tell you I saw a ghost with my own eyes right out there on the bay? What if I tell you that one of the most powerful Red Indian medicine men who ever lived came alive in my house last night?”

Doughty thought about it, and then reached out and held Nell’s arm. “I know what you must be feeling, Neil. I know you’ve been working hard. Maybe you’re feeling even worse now, because of poor Billy going up in smoke. But you’re not going to make anything better if you keep on letting these ghoulies and ghosties scare you so much.”

Neil frowned. “Have you been talking to Susan?”

Doughty kept his eyes steady for a moment, then looked away.

“When did she come down here?” asked Neil.

Doughty shrugged. “Yesterday afternoon, while you was up in Calistoga.”

“And what did she say? That I was crazy?”

“Not at all,” insisted Doughty. “She said she was worried about you, that’s all, and she asked if you’d been working too hard on them boats. I told her no, you seemed fine to me. But she was still worried about some of the things you’d been saying, and some of the things you’d been thinking. She said you were acting like a man with something on his mind. She’s been thinking of getting you down to a shrink, I can tell you.”

Neil rubbed his face with the flat of his hand. “Do you think she’s right?” he asked Doughty. “Do you think I need analysis, too? Do you think I’m a head case?”

Doughty didn’t answer.

Neil said, “Well? Am I sane or insane? Am I dreaming or am I awake? Why don’t you tell me the way you feel?”

Doughty said uncomfortably, “It’s not for me to say, Neil.”

“But what the hell do you thinks’ going on here? Toby starts seeing ghosts in long white duster coats, the kids in his class start having nightmares about Indian massacres, and now Billy Ritchie gets himself killed in a freak fire, the day after he told me about redskin demons. None of this is normal, Doughty, but it’s happening for real, and it’s no use this town pretending it doesn’t exist.”

“Neil-” began Doughty. Then he changed his mind and shook his head.

“What were you going to say?

“Oh, dammit, Neil, you’ve got to realize you’re fighting yourself an uphill battle.

Everybody’s thinking you’ve lost your marbles. Don’t you think you’d be better off forgetting the whole business?”

Neil turned away in exasperation. But then, in a low, intent voice, he told Doughty,

“Listen-if I was like you, if I tried to pretend that nothing was happening, then this town would suffer the worst tragedy it’s ever known. It’s coming, Doughty, I warn you. It’s coming soon. I didn’t want to believe it myself, and even now I wish I'd never gotten myself mixed up in it. But it’s happening because of Bloody Fenner, my ancestor, and I don’t have any choice. If I don’t fight back, then you and me and Susan and Toby and thousands of people are going to die, and that’s all I know.”

“Neil-”

“That’s it, Doughty. No more advice. No more nothing. From now on, anybody who doesn’t believe me is against me, and that’s the way it has to be.”

He left Doughty sitting on the pickup’s bumper, and went down to the White Dove to collect his metal polish and cleaning rags.

In the middle of the night, with bluish moonlight irradiating the room, he woke up suddenly and lay silent, listening to Susan breathing beside him and Toby softly snoring in the cot across by the door. He must have stayed like that, unmoving and watchful, for almost ten minutes, for the brilliant edge of the moon slowly appeared in the corner of the window, and the light grew brighter and brighter.

A voice whispered, “Neil.”

He raised his head. There was nobody there. The moon glistened on the rails of the wide brass bed, and on the handles of the painted pine bureau, but even in the shadows behind the closet and in the alcove by the door, there were no apparitions, no ghosts in long white coats or clad in shiny wood.

The voice repeated, “Neil.”

He looked all around the room, straining his eyes, his heart beating quickly and irregularly. It was as still and silent as when he had first awakened.

“Where are you?” he whispered.

There was a pause, and then the voice said, “Beside you.”

He jerked his head around. Next to him, Susan was fast asleep, her blond hair spread on the pillow, her lips slightly parted.

“Where?” he asked. “I don’t see you.”

Susan’s lips moved almost imperceptibly, and a man’s voice spoke out of her throat.

“Here. Beside you. I can’t show myself because of Quamis.”

“Is Quamis here?”

“You bet. He’s inside your son. He’s like a moth inside of a chrysalis, and it won’t be long before he bursts out of there and spreads his wings.”

Neil breathed, “Who are you? What’s your name?” “You’ve seen me before. The name’s Dunbar. I was out of Sacramento in ‘31. I thought you was Alien at first, you looked so similar. The spitting image of Alien.”

“It was you in the beard and the long white duster?” “That’s right. In those days, there was me and nineteen others, and our wives, and all of our children. The Wappos took us by surprise up by Las Posadas, and killed us all. Alien was the scout on that trip, and went for help.”

Neil stared at Susan. She seemed to be more than asleep. Her breathing was slow and shallow, as if she was in a coma. The voice continued, “Alien went for help, but he didn’t get back in time. He said he was going to go for the Mexican camp down in the valley, make his way back up the creek. But he never came back. They cut us all down, the Wappos, women and children too, and I saw my dear little Margie with an arrow clean through her face.”

“Why are you here?” asked Neil. “What do you want from me?”

The voice sighed. “I’m here because I’m here. It’s not for any reason. It’s dark out here on the outside, Neil, and time doesn’t mean what it does to you. All times are the same time. Ifs ‘31 still, Neil, and the Wappos are still cutting us down, and always will. We’re still waiting for Alien to help us. We’re still dying, Neil.”

The voice began to falter, and grow faint Neil said, “Dunbar-don’t go. Dunbar!”

“I’m here, Neil.”

“Dunbar, what do you know of Quamis?”

There was a longer pause. Then Susan breathed, “Quamis is everywhere. Always has been and always will be. The Indians told us he never died and never would.

Maybe that was part story, but then maybe it was part truth, too. You could hear about Quamis from the woods of Massachusetts clear across to Denver, Colorado, and even beyond that. They said he lived in the wind that blew through the Georgia pines, and in the grass of the plains east of the Platte River. A great wonder-worker, they used to say, and still do.”

Dumbar’s last words were so faint in Susan’s mouth that Neil could hardly hear them.

He had to bend his ear close to her lips so that he might distinguish any syllables at all amid the hoarse breathing that came from her somnolent larynx, and he was sure that there was more, but it was inaudible. He thought he heard the word assistance, but he couldn’t be sure. It may have been nothing more than a sibilant whisper.

He sat up. The moon was now fully visible, and the light in the bedroom was almost unnaturally bright. He felt strangely calmed by Dunbar’s visitation, as if he had been reassured that he wasn’t alone in his fight against Misquamacus. Perhaps it was Dunbar who had destroyed the blazing wooden image last night. After all, he remembered seeing the faintest hint of a white coat, and a hand bolstering a gun.

He reached down the bed and adjusted the patchwork quilt so that it covered Susan’s bare feet. Then he glanced across at Toby to make sure that he was still asleep. Toby was less restless since they had moved him into their own bedroom, but he still mumbled as he slept, and had bouts of fierce tossing and turning.

Neil stiffened. Toby was sitting up in bed and was staring at him. His small face was white, white as the

silvered light from the moon, and his eyes were intense and glittering. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t frowning. His expression was calm and controlled, and because of that, it was even more frightening. Eight-year-old boys grin, or cry, or show some feeling, thought Neil. Why is Toby just staring at me like that?

“Toby,” he said in a hesitant whisper. Toby continued to stare. “Toby, are you okay?”

Toby’s eyes sparkled with malevolence. His features seemed to shift and change in the moonlight, one layer of features superimposing another, until he looked liked someone else altogether. Someone older, someone infinitely older, and someone infinitely more evil. “Toby,” insisted Neil.

Toby rose slowly from the bed, and seemed to glide toward him. He stood only a few feet away, and then he spoke in the voice of Misquamacus, in that hollow distant voice that sounded as if it was inside Neil’s own head, and yet which echoed with countless miles and eons of ancient time.

“You have spoken to the white magician Erskine,” said Misquamacus.

Neil edged one foot out of bed, and then swung his leg to the floor. His muscles were tensed, and he was ready to make a dive for Toby and bring him down. He didn’t have any idea what Misquamacus might try to do, or even how powerful he was, but he wanted to be ready for a fight.

Misquamacus said, “It is good that you have spoken. He will come, along with my treacherous blood brother, Singing Rock, and I shall show them that my manitou is indestructible, and that my vengeance spans fifty thousand moons.”

Neil said steadily, “You must let Toby go. I want you to get out of my son.”

Toby smiled, a slow, laconic smile. “You are powerless to prevent me from lodging here. I shall remain until I am ready. I am here at the direction of my white spirit guide, your ancestor, and because I am here by consent, no magic in the world can move me.”

“I’m going to take Toby away from here,” said Neil. “I’m going to take him to Europe.

Anywhere. Just so long as he’s out of your reach.”

Toby shook his head, still smiling. “You cannot take the boy. If you attempt to interfere in the day of the dark stars, you will surely die more painfully than any other white man.”

Neil climbed out of bed, and stood over his son, feeling cold and frightened, but deeply determined. If Harry Erskine and John Singing Rock had destroyed Misquamacus once, then somehow they must be able to do it again. He said, “I’m warning you, get out of my son. If you don’t leave him now, I promise you I’ll tear you to pieces.”

Toby half-turned his head toward the bed where Susan lay sleeping. He regarded her for a while, and then he raised one arm and pointed to her. Very softly, he incanted, “Spirit of snake, spirit of storm, spirit of cloud, obey me.”

Abruptly, with a deafening crash, the bedroom windows imploded, spraying stars of glass all over the room. A shrieking wind blew into the room, a wind as bitterly cold as dry ice, and Neil was knocked sideways, so that he stumbled against his bedside table and jarred his shoulder on the edge of his wardrobe.

Toby remained still, unmoved by the gale, and pointed again at the bed. In front of Neil’s horrified eyes, the bed sheet rose and twisted like a rope, and entwined itself around Susan’s body. Over the storm, he heard her scream, and then shriek “Neil!

Neil!” and he could see her struggling against the bedclothes. But the dreadful wind seemed to have drained away all of his energy, and the distance from the wall to the bed had become miles instead of feet.

Raising his arm to protect Ms eyes, Neil saw Toby’s face fixed in a grotesque, wolfish grin, with his lips drawn back across his teeth. There was an ear-shattering flash of lightning, followed by a rumbling vibration which lifted the whole floor, and sent Neil staggering off balance again.

Susan screamed louder, a scream of pain and total fear. In the flickering, sizzling lightning, Neil saw her arched back on the bed, her eyes wide, her hands struggling and tearing at the sheets. Then the abrasive wind was tearing at her flowery cotton nightgown, ripping it in tatters which whirled around the bedroom.

“Susan!” yelled Neil, and tried to claw across to the bed. But the howling gale pressed him back, and sparkling shards of glass blew up from the floor and cut at his hands and his face.

The sheets had taken on a bulky shape that pressed on Susan’s body, and twisted between her bare thighs in a thick, animate rope. She was hysterical now, screaming an endless scream which pierced the storm and the wind at an almost intolerable pitch. But the sheets bound her to the bed, forcing her shoulders back against the mattress, and her legs wide apart.

Neil howled to Toby, “Toby! That’s your mother! That’s your mother!”

But the boy simply turned and smiled at him, and lifted his arm again toward the bed.

“Toby!” roared Neil.

The bedclothes forced themselves onto Susan in a hideous, jerking motion, like the hindquarters of a rutting dog. Neil felt himself blacking out for a moment; then he opened his eyes again, and it was still happening, it was still real. His Susan, his wife, was being raped in front of his eyes by her own sheets.

Susan shrieked. He saw crimson blood staining the linen entwined between her legs.

She began to twitch and tremble as if she was suffering an epileptic fit, but the bedclothes kept up their febrile shaking. There was another blinding burst of lightning, and the shattered window frames flew into the room. Then, suddenly, there was darkness, complete and seamless darkness, and the wind died away with a shuddering whistle.

Neil lifted himself from the floor. Gradually, through the broken window, the light of the moon began to shine again, soft and white at first, but then with the same strength and clarity as it had before. He stumbled over to the bed, where Susan lay with the crumpled sheets on top of her, moaning and whispering under her breath.

He clutched her close, stroking her hair, kissing her cold forehead. He mumbled,

“Susan, oh God, I’m sorry. Susan, I’m sorry.”

She opened her eyes and saw it was him, and then she began to sob uncontrollably.

He held her close, trying to soothe her, and he turned toward Toby, who was still standing by the end of the bed, his eyes shining with hateful amusement.

“You bastard,” Neil said, between his teeth. Toby’s expression remained unmoved.

“It is no worse than what the white pony soldiers did to our daughters in times gone by,” he said in his distant voice. “It is far more forgiving than what they did to Tall Bull at Summit Springs.”

“Damn you, Susan wasn’t there at Summit Springs. She’s never met an Indian in her life, apart from the few that come down here to help in the summer. You can’t punish generation after generation for what was done in the past! It’s over, it’s too late!”

Toby slowly shook his head. “For those Indians whose territories were stolen and whose people were killed, it will never be over. They live on the reservations now with the memory of what was done, and they will never forget.”

Neil held Susan tightly against him. “Some of them have forgotten already,” he retorted. “Some of them can’t even remember what the day of the dark stars is supposed to be.”

“That doesn’t matter,” replied Misquamacus. “Their life as outcasts in their own land is enough to remind them. And none of them has ever forgotten Misquamacus. The name of Misquamacus is an Indian secret that has been held close to their hearts for more than a hundred years. Now, it will be revealed to the white man, and the white man will never regret knowing an Indian secret so bitterly.”

Toby’s face seemed to change, and the hostile glitter in his eyes began to dwindle, like the burned-out wicks of kerosene lamps. He raised his small hands for a moment, and then he collapsed onto the floor. Neil quickly but gently laid Susan back on the bed, and crunched across the broken glass to pick him up. Toby’s face was pallid, and he was breathing heavily, but Misquamacus didn’t appear to have hurt him.

“Toby,” whispered Neil. “Oh my God, you poor kid.”

He laid the boy back in his bed, and drew the covers up to his neck. Then he went back to Susan, who had stopped sobbing now, and was lying staring at him with a shocked, glassy look in her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked, in a haunted voice. “I don’t understand what happened.”

Neil looked down at the bloodstained sheets, and in a fit of rage and frustration he dragged them off the bed, and tried to rip them with his bare hands. He didn’t do very well. They were pure cotton, with double hems. Finally, panting, he tossed them across the room into a corner.

Susan said shakily, “There was a man, Neil. A tall man with necklaces and feathers.

He didn’t have any clothes on.”

Neil sat down beside her and held her. “It was nothing. It was just a nightmare.”

“But he seemed so real. I could even smell him. He was covered in some kind of oil.

He got on top of me, Neil. I tried to stop him. He got on top of me.”

“Susan,” he hushed her, “nothing happened. It was nothing more than a nightmare, that’s all.”

Frowning, still stunned, she reached her hand down between her thighs, and then raised her fingers to her face. They were dark and sticky with blood. She looked at Neil in total horror and desperation, her eyes pleading with him to explain it, to make it safe, to say that whatever had happened was a freakish dream, and to prove it, too.

“I’m hurt,” she breathed. “I’m hurt inside.”

He pressed his hand to his eyes in exhaustion. ‘Til get Doctor Crowder,” he told her.

“Just relax, honey. Stay where you are. It can’t be anything too bad.”

He crossed the room, glancing only briefly at Toby.

His son was fast asleep, breathing evenly and quietly, and the color was back in his cheeks. Neil closed the bedroom door behind him, and went downstairs as quietly as he could. He picked up the phone and dialed Doctor Crowder’s number.

At the kitchen door Doctor Crowder belted up his overcoat and put on his hat. Neil handed him his worn leather bag, as old and faithful as a pet spaniel, and gave him a brief, tired smile.

“I want to thank you for coming out,” Neil said. “I guess we’ve been keeping you awake lately.” Doctor Crowder pulled a weary, resigned face. “Is it very serious?”

asked Neil. “I mean, it’s not going to spoil Susan’s chances of having any more children, is it?”

Doctor Crowder shook his head. “The vaginal tissues are lacerated, that’s all. It’s an injury we usually associate with cases of violent rape.” “Did Susan tell you what happened?” Doctor Crowder looked away. “She didn’t seem too clear about it. She seemed to think you must have had some kind of argument.”

Neil went cold. “Argument? What are you talking about? We didn’t have any argument! What does she mean, argument?”

“Well, it’s not for me to put words in her mouth,” said Doctor Crowder, “but you must admit that the room was land of busted up.”

Neil stared at him. “Do you want to know what did that? Lightning. That’s what did it.”

The old doctor wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I see,” he said heavily.

Neil seized his shoulder. “Doctor-you don’t believe me, do you?”

Doctor Crowder wouldn’t answer.

Neil said, “You think I’m crazy. You think I set fire to my house last night, and tonight you think I raped my own wife. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I’m a head case!”

Doctor Crowder tried to pull away, but Neil to8k hold of both his arms and turned him around to face him.

“You think I’m going out of my mind, don’t you? You see my bedroom all busted up and immediately assume I had a fight with Susan. You see blood on the sheets and you think I’ve assaulted her. You don’t stop to think that I might actually be telling the truth, do you?”

“The truth?” asked Doctor Crowder, shakily. “What truth?”

“The truth that Toby is possessed by the greatest Red Indian medicine man who ever lived. The truth that he called down lightning to smash up the room, and a wind that you couldn’t even stand up hi. The truth that he had Susan’s own sheets and bedclothes rape her in revenge for the way the white men used to rape Indian women.”

Doctor Crowder could only stare at him. There was a long, awkward silence. The pine railroad clock on the kitchen wall ticked away the “hour of three and chimed.

Eventually, the old doctor opened the kitchen door, and said, “Look out there, Neil.

What do you see?”

Neil wouldn’t look at first, but then he glanced sideways and saw the dark, quiet night.

“I see my own backyard,” he said huskily.

“That’s right,” nodded Doctor Crowder. “And is it raining out there?”

Neil shook his head.

“Is it snowing out there? Is there thunder? Is there lightning? Is there any wind at all?”

Neil said, “It’s a warm night.”

“That’s right,” Doctor Crowder told him. “It’s a warm, still night. No lightning, no wind.

Not even a breeze. And you’re trying to tell me that your bedroom was wrecked by an electric storm?”

“It was magic!’ yelled Neil “It was done by magic’

Doctor Crowder looked embarrassed. But he took Neil’s hand and shook it, and said,

“I’ll come around in the morning to see how Susan’s getting along. She’s sleeping now. A mild sedative. I think it might be wise if you got yourself some sleep, too. I mean that, Neil. You could have been working too hard.”

Neil was about to burst out again, but then he checked himself and nodded, and said, “Okay, doctor. I’ll try. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He closed the kitchen door after Doctor Crowder had left, and drew up one of the kitchen chairs. He sat at the table for almost ten minutes, with every nightmarish incident of the whole night whirling around in his mind. Again and again, with eerie vividness, he saw the jerking, sexual movements of Susan’s sheets, and the expression of malevolent triumph on Toby’s face.

After a while, he got up to make himself a cup of coffee. He saw his face reflected in the dark window, and he thought how tired and washed-out he looked. He filled the electric hot pot, and went to the cupboard to find the instant coffee. The clock chimed the half-hour. He walked across to the sink to set his cup on the drainboard, and then, to his horror, he realized that somebody or something was staring at him. He turned, shocked, and saw a pallid face pressed against the glass of the kitchen window.

“I hope I didn’t scare you too much,” Harry Erskine said.

Neil, still fidgeting, gave him an uncertain grin. “I was just feeling edgy, that’s all. And I didn’t expect you till the morning.”

Harry stirred his coffee, and set the spoon down in the saucer. “I was through for the day, and my date came down with the chicken pox, so I took the first plane going.

There was me and fifty-five rabbis, so I figured the flight just had to arrive safe.”

“You rented a car at the airport?”

“It’s in back of your yard. A yellow Pinto with a slipping transmission. Still, what can you expect for four dollars a day?”

Harry was a round-shouldered thirty-five-year-old with an obvious penchant for permanent-press suits and shirts that could drip dry over the tub. He could have looked quite distinguished, except that his facial features didn’t seem comfortable with each other. His nose was a little too large, his eyes a little too deepset, his chin reasonably determined but too fleshy. His- mouse-brown hair was thinning, and his cheeks had the permanent pallor of Tenth Avenue.

Neil said, “Do you want something to eat? I could fix some eggs.”

“Unh-hunh. Leave it till the morning. You’ve done enough tonight without short-order cooking.”

Neil sat down at the table. “You say you’re a mystic?” he asked Harry. “I didn’t think anyone could make a living at being a mystic.”

“I don’t,” Harry told him. “I do free-lance work for my old advertising agency to make ends meet. But I prefer to be my own boss, you know, and I’m good at mysticism. I read old ladies’ fortunes with the tarot cards, and I hold young ladies’ hands and tell them what their palms foretell. Usually, they foretell a cheap Italian dinner with me, followed by a nightcap at my apartment.”

“You don’t seem to take it too seriously.”

Harry looked at him. “I take Misquamacus seriously. What I do for a living, that’s just fooling about. But Misquamacus, and the spirits that Misquamacus can raise up, now that’s a whole different ball game.”

Neil poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it. “What I don’t understand is, if you’ve already destroyed Misquamacus once, how he can possibly come back again.”

“You’ll have to ask John Singing Rock about the finer details of that,” said Harry. “But the way I understand it, a manitou is indestructible, like a spirit. It lives forever, and not even the greatest of the gods can destroy it. All you can hope to do when you’re fighting a reincarnated manitou like Misquamacus is break the spells that bind it to its physical form. When we first faced Misquamacus, he was reborn in the body of a girl I knew. Actually reborn, like a fetus. But we were able to use the electrical power of a computer to destroy him. Least, that’s the easiest way I can explain it.”

“What about now?” asked Neil. “What’s he going to do to Toby?”

Harry shook his head. “I just don’t know. I talked to Singing Rock about it, and he was going to consult some of the elder medicine men of his tribe. You see, whatever Misquamacus is doing, he seems to have learned some lessons from the last time.

Last time, he was reborn from the seventeenth century, and it must have been his first leap through time. He was alone, and he was caught off-balance, and once we worked out a way to get rid of him, then the struggle wasn’t too unequal. But this time-well, God only knows. He seems to have found himself a whole bunch of friends, and a way to reincarnate himself without having to grow like a fetus.”

Neil said, “He’s growing inside Toby’s mind. I can see it. I can look at Toby, and Toby isn’t Toby at all.”

“Misquamacus is a pretty powerful guy,” said Harry. “He’s also mean, and vengeful, and if I didn’t know he was going to come and find me anyway, I would have stayed as far away from what’s going on here as humanly possible. Nothing personal, of course.”

Neil finished his coffee, and went to stack their cups in the sink. He said, “I want to thank you for taking the trouble to fly out here, anyway. I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have bothered. Half this damn town, to begin with.”

“They’ve been giving you a hard time?”

“They think I’m crazy. And tonight, after that sheet business, they even believe I assaulted Susan. If I don’t do something soon, they’re going to commit me, or run me out. Even Susan doesn’t believe me.”

Harry took a pack of mint-flavored dental floss out of his coat pocket and broke off a piece.

“You want some?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“I think it helps to stop me smoking,” said Harry, sawing away at his teeth. “It’s also supposed to do wonders for the dental bills.”

“Do you want to see Toby?” asked Neil.

“Sure. He’s upstairs now?”

“He’s sleeping. I guess Misquamacus is conserving his strength right now.”

“How about your wife?”

“The doctor gave her a sedative. She won’t wake up.”

Harry put away his floss and stood up. “Well,” he said, with a pale grin. “I feel a little like Saint George about to size up the dragon for a rematch.”

Neil opened the door to the stairs and led the way up to the landing. It was dark and still up there, and the ticking of the grandfather clock was the only sound they could hear.

Harry whispered, “Will you show me the wardrobe first? The one the wooden man came out of?”

“Sure,” said Neil, crossing the landing. “It’s in here.”

He opened the door to Toby’s room. He had nailed a sheet of hardboard over the window, so it was gloomy, and still smelled of ash and smoke. Harry took a cautious peek around, and then stepped across to the walnut wardrobe.

“Is this it?”

Neil nodded.

Harry opened it and looked inside.

“We had something like this before, only not nearly so dramatic. Misquamacus manifested his head out of a solid cherrywood table, right in front of us. It was real frightening.”

He closed the wardrobe door. “He’s an Indian of the woods, you see, from Manhattan originally, and in other lives the Miskatonic River and some of the back forests of Massachusetts. He was an Algonquian, and a Wampanoag, and maybe a dozen other nationalities. Singing Rock knows more about him than I do. After we sent him back outside, Singing Rock made quite a study of Misquamacus.”

Neil ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell I would have done if I hadn’t found you,” he said.

“Don’t count chickens,” warned Harry. “From what I saw of Misquamacus the last time, hell could be a much more comfortable alternative.”

They left Toby’s room, and walked quietly along the landing until they came to the main bedroom. Neil raised his finger to his lips and then slowly opened the door, beckoning Harry to follow him.

Toby and Susan were both fast asleep. The moon had passed by now, and the room was thick with shadows. The luminous dial of the bedside clock, which chattered softly in the corner, said three-thirty.

“This is your boy?” said Harry, quietly hunkering himself down beside Toby’s bed. He touched the flushed, sleeping cheek, and stroked the untidy hair. Toby stirred slightly, and his small hand opened a little, but his breathing remained calm and even.

“The trouble is, this is a war,” Harry whispered. “It’s not just one evil character trying to get his own back.

It’s the red nation fighting to get their revenge on the white nation. A real war.”

He stood up, still looking down at Toby. “And the sad thing is that, in wars, it’s always the innocent people who get hurt the worst.”

Neil watched Harry tiredly.

“Do you want to get some sleep?” Neil asked. “There’s a big couch in the front room, and I can find you some blankets.”

Harry said, “Yes, for sure. Have you ever tried sleeping on a plane with fifty-five rabbis? They spent the whole flight chattering about how they were going to go see Carole Doda. I’m sometimes glad my mother was a Catholic.”

Stepping around the end of the bed, Neil went to make sure that Susan was warm and comfortable. He bent over her and listened to her steady breathing for a while, but he didn’t kiss her or touch her. He felt as if he had somehow failed her, as if he hadn’t protected her as a husband should. There didn’t seem to be any way to make up for what had happened except to destroy Misquamacus, and to free his house and his family from the terrible curse that seemed to have descended on them.

Harry was waiting for him by the door, darkly silhouetted by the light from the landing. He said, “Are you okay? You look as if you could use some sleep yourself.”

Neil took a last look at the bedroom and nodded. “I feel bushed, to tell you the truth.”

He was about to close the door when he heard Toby stirring in his bed. The boy whimpered and moaned, and seemed to struggle for a while with his sheets. Harry turned and raised a questioning eyebrow, but Neil said, “I think he’s all right. He’s been pretty restless ever since the dreams started.”

Harry gave a small, nervous grunt, and made sure that he kept his eye on Toby’s sleeping body until Neil had closed the door. It was only when they were halfway down the landing that both of them felt a strange cold surge in the ah-, as if an ocean wave had suddenly rippled under the rug. The grandfather clock at the end of the landing abruptly stopped ticking, and there was a sharp odor in the air, like burnt electricity.

Harry said, in a hollow voice, “He knows I’m here.”

“How can he?” asked Neil.

“He knows, that’s all. It’s what he’s been waiting for.”

Neil looked at Harry with a face lined with exhaustion and anxiety. “I just hope we’ve got the strength to fight this thing,” he said, hoarsely. “I just hope to God we’ve got the strength.”

On Sunday afternoon, a dry windy afternoon of dust-storms and tumbling newspapers, Harry and Neil and Toby drove around Bodega to visit Toby’s classmates at home. Toby had been quiet and pale all morning, but he hadn’t objected when Neil ushered him into the battered Pinto, and asked him to direct Harry to each of his friends’ houses. He was Toby today, with no sign of the malevolent personality of Misquamacus, although he was unusually listless and distracted. If Neil hadn’t known what was wrong with him, he might have guessed that he was coming down with flu.

“Singing Rock said it was very important to take a look at the opposition,” remarked Harry, smoking a Camel Light down to halfway and tossing the butt out of the window. “He said we need to know names, or signs, or anything which might tell us who these twenty-two medicine men are. Some medicine men, even the most famous, had weak spots we could use to break them up.”

“You think Toby’s classmates are really going to tell us that stuff?”

Harry shook his head. “Of course not. But we have to do our best. If we could find out just one name, that’d be something.”

Toby said flatly, “Here. This is Andy Beaver’s house, right here.”

They pulled up outside a small weatherboard house with an overgrown veranda and a yard full of rye grass and strutting chickens. Henry Beaver, in denims and suspenders, was sitting on the veranda reading the San Francisco^ Sunday-Examiner. Andy was jumping through the grass with a toy pistol, playing explorer.

Harry got out of the car and leaned against the roof.

“How do you do,” he called to Mr. Beaver.

Henry Beaver folded his paper, dropped it beside him, and then crossed his arms over his huge belly. “How do you do yourself,” he replied.

Neil climbed out of the car, too, more cautiously. “Hi, Henry,” he said, with an awkward smile.

Henry Beaver didn’t smile back. “Still chasing ghosts, Neil Fenner?” he asked.

“Caught one yet?”

Harry closed the door of the Pinto and walked across to Mr. Beaver’s veranda railing.

He leaned his arms on it, and then rested his chin on his arms, and regarded Mr.

Beaver very seriously. Mr. Beaver, uncertain and unsettled, glanced at Neil for some kind of explanation. Neil remained expressionless.

“Mr. Beaver,” said Harry benignly, “I flew in from New York City last night because I heard of the trouble that Mr. Fenner had been having here in Bodega.”

Henry Beaver looked him up and down. “You’re not FBI, are you?” he wanted to know.

Harry shook his head. “I’m a special investigator of matters pertaining to specters and apparitions. I’m an occultist, if you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly,” replied Henry Beaver suspiciously. “Is it something to do with eye tests, or what?”

“You’re thinking of an oculist, Mr. Beaver,” said Harry, in a smooth, salesmanlike tone. “But you’re almost right. I investigate strange things that people have seen, and I try to determine the truth of them. You got me?”

“You mean ghosts, things like that?” “Well, yes, if that’s the way you want to put it.”

Henry Beaver slowly shook his head and picked up his newspaper again. “I’m sorry, mister, but nobody ain’t seen no ghosts around here, except for Neil Fenner there.”

He nodded toward Neil with an emotionless face. “The truth is, we don’t believe that kind of garbage around these parts, and that’s the long and short of it.”

Harry wasn’t at all put off. He climbed the veranda steps and sat down on the end of Mr. Beaver’s lawn chair.

“Mr. Beaver,” he said, “I don’t want you to be too hasty. You see, the truth of the matter is that some very reliable apparitions have been appearing to school-age children all over California, particularly in these parts, and my people have been very interested in hearing some firsthand reports.”

“Your people?” asked Henry Beaver. He still looked massively unconvinced.

“The people I work for. The Occultist Investigation League of America.”

Henry Beaver sniffed. “Well, so?”

“Well, it’s possible that your son Andy might have seen something and not told you about it,” said Harry. “He could have easily glimpsed a ghost or some kind of a specter, and not thought to tell you. Maybe fie thought you’d laugh at him. Maybe he just forgot to mention it.”

“Andy?” squinted Mr. Beaver. He was rapidly growing confused.

“That’s right, Andy,” said Harry. “And the nice thing about the whole investigation is that we pay a hundred dollars for every authenticated spectral sighting.”

He took out his worn leather wallet, and produced a ten-dollar bill, which he waved in front of Mr. Beaver’s face. It looked to Neil as if that was the only money he had left.

“See this sawbuck?” smiled Harry. “You can have this and nine more like it if Andy comes up with a ghost sighting that we can substantiate.”

Henry Beaver’s eyes followed the bill backward and forward. Then, without taking his eyes off it, he called out of the corner of his mouth, “Andy! Come on up here, boy!”

Andy Beaver, gingery and disheveled from play, appeared round the corner with his toy pistol. He frowned at Harry, and then at his father, but Henry Beaver waved him forward and said, “This gentleman here wants to ask you some questions, boy. You just go ahead and answer the best way you can.”

Andy peered over at the Pinto. “Hi, Mr. Fenner,” he called, and he gave a quick wave to Toby. Harry watched him keenly for any indication of a special wave or a hand signal, but it didn’t look like anything more than one schoolboy saying in to another.

Harry put his arm around Andy’s shoulders and led him along the veranda to a quiet corner. He perched on the rail, and Andy stood looking at him, his hands in his jeans pockets, his eyes screwed up against the sun.

“Toby tells me you’ve been having some nightmares,” said Harry. “Something about blood, and killing.”

Andy looked away, without answering.

“He says you’ve been having nightmares about Alien, and the day the Wappos caught Dunbar and the rest of the settlers up at Conn Creek.”

Andy turned back toward him again, but still said nothing.

Harry said, “Toby tells me that you’re one of the twenty-two.”

Andy’s eyes fixed themselves on Harry with a strangely luminous stare. They were pale blue, but as he stared they seemed to widen and darken. It was hard to image that these were the eyes of an eight- or nine-year-old boy. They seemed to be infinitely wise, and knowing, and deeply self-contained in their malevolence.

“You are Harry Erskine,” said Andy. “We have been waiting a long time for you.”

“You and Misquamacus?” asked Harry, trying to appear unruffled. A chicken stalked up onto the veranda, lifted its head questioningly, and then stalked away again.

“You will discover nothing,” Andy growled. “I know why you have come, but you will discover nothing. The day is fixed, and you cannot prevent it.”

“The day of the dark stars?”

“The day when the mouth comes from the sky.”

Harry took out a cigarette, and lit it with the engraved Dunhill lighter that John Singing Rock had sent him at Thanksgiving. He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and watched Andy closely, trying to size up what kind of Red Indian personality was concealing itself inside this small boy’s brain. It certainly wasn’t as dazzling as the mind of Misquamacus, judging from his first encounters with the greatest of all the wonderworkers. But it was dignified and powerful and proud, and he was quite sure that it would be quite enough on its own to wipe out all of them-him and Neil Fenner and Singing Rock and half of Bodega.

Harry said, “You’re going to call down Ossadagowah?”

Andy didn’t reply, but continued to stare at him fixedly.

“From what I’ve heard, that would be kind of dangerous to everyone around, including Indians,” Harry remarked. “Isn’t Ossadagowah the great demon that nobody can send back to the stars? The demon that only returns outside of its own free will?”

Andy said huskily, “You believe you know much, white man, but your knowledge is like one grain of sand in the deserts. It will not help you, neither will your traitorous friend Singing Rock.”

Harry shrugged. “Who knows? We licked Misquamacus before.”

“You achieved nothing. What you did served only to give him more strength than ever. This time he will return whole and with his powers intact, and you shall understand before you die the true meaning of strong medicine.”

Harry smoked for while in silence. Then he said, “Okay. I get your warning. The day of the dark stars is coming and you’re going to knock us all around the ball park. At least, you think you are.”

Andy gave a small, unpleasant smile. Then he turned his head slightly, so that he was looking toward Harry’s rented Pinto, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He repeated three times, “An-hut-ko, an-hut-ko, an-hut-ko.”

Harry turned around. Smoke was beginning to rise from under the Pinto’s hood, and from out of the rear-wheel arches. He yelled at the top of his voice, “Neill Get Toby out of that car!”

Neil, shocked and surprised, immediately pushed forward the folding front seat and lifted Toby out of the back.

“Now run!” shouted Harry.

Henry Beaver had hefted himself off his lawn chair and was looking at Harry in blank amazement. But then there was a sharp crackling of fire, and flames started to lick out of the Pinto’s radiator and air vents.

“Your goddamn car’s on fire!” said Mr. Beaver, in disbelief. “You can’t burn your goddamn car in front of my house!”

There was a soft, billowing explosion. Chunks of car tumbled lazily into the air, trailing fire and smoke. Harry, standing on the veranda, was struck on the arm by a flying upholstery spring, and a long piece of fender sailed across the yard and landed on Mr. Beaver’s roof.

The five of them stood there watching the remains of the car burn themselves out. A couple of neighbors came from across the street and watched, too, and after a while a man came with a garden hose and doused the last few flickers.

Neil, tightly holding Toby’s hand, came along the veranda wide-eyed and shaken.

Toby himself seemed almost indifferent, and even when he came close to Andy he showed no sign of boyish excitement or any urge to talk about the explosion. Neil said, “What happened? What the hell was all that about?”

Harry rubbed his eyes and then looked sardonically at Andy.

“Nothing,” he said, with a wry grin. “It was just one of those little bugs that Ford haven’t quite sorted out yet.”

“But the whole damn car-”

“Neil,” said Harry earnestly. “Let’s just forget it, shall we? I think we need to go talk about this someplace private.”

Andy, looking slightly dazed, said, “Did that car just blow up? Boy-did that car just blow up?”

Harry patted Andy’s gingery hair. “Yes, kid,” he said. “It just blew up. It was only a little trick I do to attract people’s attention.”

Henry Beaver, scratching his undershirt, came up and said, “You ain’t going to leave that wreck there, I hope? And what about my hundred?”

Harry sighed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Beaver. What your son saw was very far from being an authentic mystical vision. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he almost owes me money, it was so far from being authentic.”

“He owes you money?” said Mr. Beaver, uncertainly.

“Sure. But we can get around that without any argument. Supposing you just have that wreck cleared away for me, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

They stood, a tense, silent group, and nobody was laughing. Andy raised his eyes and looked at Harry, and behind his childish expression were depths upon depths of ancient and arcane mysteries. Toby lifted his eyes, too, and they were even fiercer.

The eyes of Misquamacus, he who could call down the demons who were in no human shape.

Harry said, “Neil, I think we’d better get out of here.”

When they arrived back, by taxi, at Neil’s house on the Pacific hills, there was a note waiting on the kitchen table, propped between the salt and pepper shakers. Neil read it quickly, and then crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can.

“She’s left you for mother?” asked Harry gently, taking a cookie out of the pottery jar on the sideboard, and biting into it.

“Something like that. She’s staying with Doctor Crowder and his busybody wife.”

“After she cooked us such a nice lunch, too,” remarked Harry.

Neil snapped, “Aren’t you ever serious? My boy’s going crazy with some Red Indian spirit inside him, and my wife’s walked out on me, and all you can do is crack half-assed jokes.”

Harry pulled an apologetic face. “Just tell me what else you can do when you’re faced with almost certain extinction.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harry took out another cookie, and started to munch it. “It means that we don’t stand a chance. Did you see that car blow up? Do you know what did that?”

“I don’t know. Was it Toby?”

“Unh-hunh. It was Andy. He just folded his arms and said a few words and that whole damn car went up like a torch.”

Neil said, “I don’t understand it. He might have hurt Toby, and if Toby has Misquamacus inside of him …”

“I don’t suppose it would have mattered if you’d left Toby sitting right where he was.

Misquamacus has as much control over fire as he does over wood and water. I didn’t want to take any risks, that was all.”

Neil let out a long, dispirited sigh. “Maybe I should call Susan,” he suggested.

Harry shook his head. “She’s probably safer where she is right now. It’s you and me and Singing Rock who are going to have to face up to the brunt of this thing. As I said, I don’t think we stand much of a chance. Misquamacus is determined to get us this tune, and a few hundred thousand more white folks, and he’s not going to fail.”

There was a long, silent pause. Then Neil said quietly, “Harry.”

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s something that occurred to me last night, when those sheets were attacking Susan.”

Harry deliberately didn’t look at him, but finished his cookies and then took out his pack of Camel Lights.

Neil continued, “I figured that one of the reasons why Misquamacus chose Toby and all the rest of those children was because he wanted to make his reappearance inside people that the community normally goes out of its way to protect. I mean, if he’d chosen twenty-two convicts at Folsom, it might have been an easier choice for us to get rid of them.”

There was another pause, and then Neil said, “Last night, I seriously considered going for my shotgun and blowing Toby’s head off.”

Harry lit a cigarette and eyed Neil narrowly through the rising smoke.

“Sure you considered it,” he said. “You’re not shocked?”

“Why should I be? Plenty of fathers have sent their sons off to die to protect their countries. Why should you be any different?”

“He’s my only son, Harry.”

Harry stood up and went to the open kitchen door. The wind had dropped a little now, and the sun was shining from a high, hazy sky. Four or five birds were taking a dust bath just outside the cellar doors.

“As it turns out,” said Harry, “the best thing you did was feel too sentimental to go get your gun. Any artifact, whether it’s a stone pot or a knife or a bow and arrow or a twelve-gauge shotgun, has some kind of spirit inside it, some kind of manitou. This table has a manitou, this door has a manitou, although they’re obviously very lowly spirits, nothing to get scared about. But the problems start when you try to turn a weapon onto a powerful wonder-worker like Misquamacus. He can actually control the manitou inside of your gun, maybe even the manitou inside of the bullet you fire, and turn your own gun against you.”

“You’re kidding,” said Neil. “You mean we can’t use guns against these medicine men?”

“No way. Not unless we want to massacre ourselves in ten seconds flat with no break for commercials.”

“Jesus,” breathed Neil. “That never occurred to me.”

Harry turned away from the door. “It’s this way,” he said. “We’re basically a European culture, with European ideas of religion and spirituality. That makes us outsiders in this country, without any real understanding of the spirits that live in the soil and the rocks and the water. The Indians spent thousands of years getting to know them, getting to understand them. They know the ways of conjuring them up, and the ways of controlling them. We’re just floundering about here, Neil, with no spiritual help to call on, and with about every odd you can think of stacked against us. They’re going to-”

Just then Toby came into the kitchen with his catcher’s mitt and his baseball. Harry changed the subject in mid-sentence, and said glibly, “-bring me a new rental car up in the morning, as soon as their office opens.”

Toby ignored him and said to his father, “Can I go out to play in the yard, sir?”

“Sure, as long as you don’t go any further than that.”

“Is mommy coming back today?”

Neil shrugged. “Maybe. When we’ve sorted out all our problems.”

“Daddy-” began Toby.

Neil raised his eyes. For one fleeting moment, he had heard Toby as he used to be.

Toby the child. Even Harry turned around, and then glanced back at Neil and lifted one questioning eyebrow.

“What is it, Toby?” asked Neil, softly.

Toby blinked, as if he’d started to think of something, and then forgotten it. His eyes clouded again.

“Nothing, sir.”

He went out into the yard to play with his ball, and Harry sat with Neil at the table for a while, finishing his cigarette.

The day slowly began to darken.

The next morning, Harry invited himself along on Neil’s regular drive up to the school to drop off Toby. They sat side by side in the front of the pickup truck in silence. The weather was heavy and threatening again, with a sky the color of bruised fruit. Harry smoked too much, while Neil looked pale and tired, and drove badly.

Only Toby was composed, sitting with his hands held together in his lap, unsmiling and quiet.

The pickup truck circled the school yard in a cloud of lingering dust and stopped.

Harry climbed down and helped Toby jump after him.

The yellow school bus was already parked by the fence, waiting to take the children up to Lake Berryessa for the day. Neil had awakened early to make Toby some peanut-butter sandwiches, and they had stopped at the store on the way to school to buy him a Milky Way and a package of Fritos.

“Have a nice day,” said Harry. “Don’t fall in the lake.”

Toby looked at him gravely. Then he turned and walked across tf the corner of the yard, where the rest of his classmates were beginning to assemble. Harry recognized the carroty hair of Andy Beaver, and a couple of the other children that Toby had pointed out on their trip around Bodega the previous day. Harry gave Andy a cute little wave, but the boy simply turned and ignored him.

Mrs. Novato came out of the schoolhouse and started to count heads. Harry was about to climb back up into the pickup, but then he changed his mind and said to Neil, “Wait here a minute, will you?” and he walked across the yard to where Mrs.

Novato was standing.

“Good morning,” he said, in a friendly way.

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Novato distractedly.

Harry coughed. “I was wondering,” he said.

“Oh, yes?” said Mrs. Novato. “Daniel-keep still, will you? I’ve already counted you five times.”

“My name’s Harry Erskine and I’m a friend of Neil Fenner.”

“I see.”

Harry cleared his throat again. “What I was wondering was, ma’am, if you could do me a favor if anything weird starts happening in your classroom.”

Mrs. Novato stopped counting, her finger poised in midair. She turned to Harry and said in an offended tone, “Something weircfl What on earth are you trying to suggest?”

Harry gave her a defensive smile. “I’m really not trying to suggest anything. But Mr.

Fenner has been kind of worried about some of the nightmares your kids have been having, as well as some of the peculiar events that have been happening in his home, and, well …”

Mrs. Novato took a patient, schoolmarmly breath. “Mr. Erskine,” she said, “I have already given Mr. Fenner far more leeway to investigate his suspicions than I should.

Several of the children’s parents complained to the principal about that business of setting their nightmares down on paper, and as a result I came very close to losing my position. Apart from that, it does seem from what I hear that Mr. Fenner is suffering from-well, overwork.”

Mr. Saperstein walked past, and Mrs. Novato said, “Good morning, Mr. Saperstein.”

“Okay,” said Harry, “1 can guess how you feel. But you can still do me that favor.”

“Mr. Erskine, let me assure you that nothing weird has ever happened in this class or is ever likely to. Now, please. I have enough on my hands conducting the correct number of children off to Lake Berryessa and back again, without troubling myself with weirdness.”

“Sure, I’ve got you,” said Harry. “But I’m staying with Mr. Fenner if you do want to call me.”

“I don’t want to call you.”

“But you might.”

Mrs. Novato closed her eyes and sought strength and fortitude under her lids. Then she said, “Very well, Mr. Erskine. Should I ever wish to call you, which will be never, I will know where not to do so.”

“That’s fine,” smiled Harry. “Now have a good trip, okay?”

Harry walked back to the pickup truck and climbed in, slamming the door behind him.

“Well?” said Neil.

“I just asked her to let us know if there was any trouble,” Harry told him. “Not that she’s likely to. She’s hidebound by educational bureaucracy, and apart from that she’s married.” “What’s that got to do with it?” “Nothing much,” admitted Harry. “It’s just that I find it hard to work my charms on married women of Mrs. Novato’s age.

They’re too old to be oversexed and too young to have husbands who can’t raise it.”

Neil started the motor. Before he released the brake, though, he took a last look at Toby through the dust-filmed windshield. His son was standing clutching his lunchbox, his blond hair as untidy as ever, in a blue windbreaker and denim shorts.

The other children were gathered around him, and he was obviously talking to them about something lengthy and serious. “I’ve got a feeling about today,” said Neil. “You think today is the day?” asked Harry. “I don’t know. But there’s a tenseness around.

Don’t you feel it? Like there’s a storm brewing.” Harry shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. But in any case, there isn’t much we can do until Singing Rock arrives. He said he’d be here by lunchtime.”

“It’s just those kids going off alone, with all those spirits inside them, all of those manitous. That really scares me. What do you think I felt like this morning, giving Toby his lunch and wondering if he wasn’t even my son at all, but some kind of ghost out of the past? I’m just standing there doing something really normal, like making sandwiches, and for all I know he might go off on that trip and never come back.”

Harry laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stop feeling so guilty, will you? It’s not your fault this has happened, even if it was your ancestor who led Misquamacus here. I mean-what control could you have possibly had over that? There’s nothing we can do until the medicine men show themselves. We can’t kill the children; we can’t even take them away from here. Apart from the fact that Misquamacus would prevent us, the police would probably arrest us for kidnapping, and we wouldn’t do anybody any good sitting in the Sonoma County pokey.”

Neil released the brake, and drove the pickup out of the Bodega school yard without saying another word. He didn’t even look back in his rearview mirror to see Toby and his classmates being ushered by Mrs. Novato onto the bus. Harry turned around in his seat, and saw how solemn and unsmiling the children were, and a sensation of sick tension began to rise in his stomach. He knew just what Neil meant about a storm brewing. It could have been the unusual humidity, or the soft but uncomfortable wind. But it could have been the beginning of the day of the dark stars, too.

They met John Singing Rock at the bus station. He was fifty years old, his face creased with the soft crisscross wrinkles of a South Dakota Indian, but his eyes were sharp and bright, and he walked across the concrete parking lot to greet them with the tensile step of a man twenty years younger. The last time Harry had seen him, his hair had been short and swept back with brilliantine, and he had worn a creaseless mohair suit. But modern trends had obviously blown with the winds across the plains of mid-America, because his hair was longer now and kept in place with Gillette Dry Look, and he wore a camel-colored sport coat and bright red slacks.

He set down his suitcase on the concrete and held out his arms. Harry embraced him, saying nothing, and for a moment they stood there close, while the other bus passengers looked at them with curiosity.

Harry stood back, still holding Singing Rock’s hand. “You look like you’ve been shopping at Gucci,” he grinned. “And what’s this with the hair?”

Singing Rock touched his graying sidepieces. “I had to give up that greasy kid’s stuff,” he said. “It kept leaving marks on my tepee.”

Harry laughed, and gripped Singing Rock’s arm affectionately. “It’s good to see you,”

he said. “If I ever went past South Dakota, I’d drop by more damned often.”

Singing Rock said, “Is this Mr. Fenner?”

Harry nodded and introduced them. Neil shook hands a little hesitantly, but Singing Rock reached out and placed his hand on top of Neil’s, and said warmly, “You’re wondering why I don’t have bones through my nose and feathers in my cap?”

Neil was embarrassed. “I guess I never met a medicine man before. I didn’t really know what to expect.”

Harry picked up Singing Rock’s suitcase and the three of them walked across to Nell’s pickup.

Singing Rock said, “I’d prefer to wear traditional costume. What’s the point of being a medicine man if you don’t look like one? But the costumes are pretty rare these days. They take years to complete, and when they’re finished they’re works of art.

These days, you can’t really walk around in a work of art. You might spill catsup on it.”

Harry helped Singing Rock into the pickup, and then they drove off toward Neil’s house. The sky was still oddly dark, and there was a feeling that rain clouds were building up.

Harry said, “Neil has a hunch that the day of the dark stars might be today. Or soon, anyway.”

“Any particular reason?” asked Singing Rock.

“I don’t know,” Neil told him. “It’s a feeling like someone’s trying to warn me.”

“Like when Dunbar warned you of Misquamacus?”

“Harry told you about that?”

“Harry told me about everything. The slightest detail could be vital.”

Neil brought the pickup to a stop at a road junction, waited for a carload of women to pass, and then turned left.

He said, “It’s not exactly the same feeling. When Dunbar first showed up, I could hear his voice, appealing for help. Toby heard it, too. Both of us saw him, or his ghost. A tall man with a light-colored beard and a long white duster coat. But today, the feeling’s just a feeling. I haven’t heard Dunbar’s voice since last night. This is much more general.”

Singing Rock said, “You’re very unusual for a white man, Mr. Fenner, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“What do you mean?” asked Neil.

“You were prepared to believe in the supernatural before you started trying to think of rational explanations for what you saw. Most white men think of the rational explanations first, and only believe the supernatural when they have no other choice.

Even then, they frequently don’t believe it.”

“How could I ignore it?” said Neil. “I spoke to Dun-bar. I was only ten or twelve feet away from his ghost, and there isn’t anybody alive who can tell me I was dreaming.”

“And you saw Misquamacus, too, as a wooden man?”

“That’s right.”

Singing Rock glanced at Harry, and from his expression, Harry could see that he was deeply disturbed about what he was hearing.

Singing Rock continued, “I don’t want to alarm you too much, Mr. Fenner, but there’s something I believe you ought to know.”

“Call me Neil, please.”

“All right, Neil. What you have to know is that every manitou, according to Indian belief, is reincarnated seven times, and that each time it lives and dies and lives again, it gains strength and wisdom. After its seventh life on earth, it’s wise enough to join the gods outside, in what the Micmac used to call Wajok, the abode of the great ones.”

“I see,” said Neil, turning right and driving up the dusty roadway that wound over the hills toward his house. “So what does that have to do with Misquamacus?”

“Just about everything. The last time Harry and I encountered Misquamacus, he was into his fourth, or more likely his fifth, reincarnation. I could judge that because of the vast distance of time he had covered in one leap-from 1650 to the present day. It takes a powerful medicine man to do that. Now, from what you’ve told us about the things you found out in Calis-toga, Misquamacus lived again in the 1830s, and that would have been his sixth reincarnation.”

Neil wiped dust from his mouth with the back of his hand. The house was in sight now, and he was driving more slowly.

“You’re trying to tell me this is his last reincarnation?”

“I believe so,” nodded Singing Rock. “He’s almost ready to take his place in Wajok, and that means he’s immensely powerful, immensely strong, and almost unbeatable by any other medicine man. He had to go through a physical rebirth the last tune we met him, like a human fetus, but now he’s growing himself inside of your son’s mind.

Don’t ask me how he does it. It’s beyond my medicine. But he’s doing it and, even before he’s finished doing it, he’s demonstrated some magic that no present-day wonder-worker could even touch. Creating that wooden man, Neil, takes occult powers that could make earthquakes. And that’s before he’s emerged from your son’s mind, before he’s ready to zap us with everything he’s got. There isn’t any doubt at all that he’s going to call down Ossadagowah, and when he does that, we’re really up against it.”

Neil stopped the pickup outside his backyard and took out the keys.

“Are we going to die?” he asked Singing Rock quietly.

Singing Rock sighed. “That is one prediction I don’t care to make,” he replied. “But remember this is Misquamacus’s seventh and last reincarnation. After this, he won’t have any further opportunities to take his revenge on the white people, except if this manitou is summoned to earth by other medicine men. And when you consider the general condition of Indian magic in America today, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.”

They pulled up outside Neil’s weatherbeaten house and climbed out. Neil led the way across the yard and into the kitchen, and he showed Singing Rock to the bathroom to freshen up. Harry carried his suitcase into the parlor.

“Does Singing Rock drink?” asked Neil, taking a six-pack of Coors out of the icebox.

“I don’t think so. But he might appreciate a cup of coffee.”

Singing Rock returned, hung his sport coat on the back of his chair, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His arms were muscular and sinewy, and decorated with elaborate patterns of tattoos and scars. As he sat down at the pine table, Neil had the feeling that he had some experienced, professional help at last.

“I want to see everything,” said Singing Rock. “The children’s paintings, the wardrobe upstairs, the sheets that attacked your wife. I want you to tell me everything, too, all over again, in as much detail as you can remember it. If we’re going to win out against these medicine men at all, we have to know as much about them as possible.”

Neil reached up to one of the top cupboards and brought down the sheaf of paintings from Toby’s classmates. Singing Rock went through them all meticulously, peering at every figure, and comparing one nightmare picture closely with another.

As he examined the pictures, he asked Neil to tell him about the first appearance of the visitation they knew as “Dunbar,” and everything that Billy Ritchie had told him about Bloody Fenner and that grisly day up at Conn Creek.

Neil was nervous” at first, but as he drank and talked, he found he was able to confide in Singing Rock, and tell him everything about his days of fear and horror.

Singing Rock glanced at him from time to time, and the Indian’s eyes were understanding and wise in a way that Neil had never seen before in anyone. Harry, who had heard it all before, sat at the end of the table smoking and drinking his beer out of the can.

Eventually, when Neil had finished, Singing Rock laid out the paintings on the kitchen table, twenty-two garish illustrations of the same terrible incident

“I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened,” he told them. “The medicine men needed to draw on the strength of an Indian victory to help them in their reincarnation. It’s difficult to explain it exactly, but they’ve used the massacre at Las Posadas as a focal point for their rebirth, like a politician trying to make a comeback by reminding people of his past achievements. The massacre was what Misquamacus meant when he was referring to the gateway. He didn’t want you to disturb the historic vibrations that he had been setting up with Alien Fenner’s guidance. You-because you’re a Fenner yourself-would have been more likely to upset things than anyone.”

Neil asked, “But why did Dunbar appear? Misquamacus wouldn’t have wanted him around, surely?”

Singing Rock slowly shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain. The most likely explanation is that all this spirit activity connected with the incident in which Dun-bar died was enough to disturb his manitou, and he began to make ghostly appearances. You have to remember that this is the single most powerful psychic incident that has ever occurred in modern America, and it involves more upheaval of the ethos than you can possibly imagine. Why do you think you can feel all this tension? The spiritual planes are in chaos and crisis. No wonder a few shades from the past are turning over in their graves.”

Harry said, “What we really need are the ghosts of the entire Seventh Cavalry. Do you think you could manage to raise them up?”

Singing Rock smiled. “You’d be sorry if I did. The Seventh Cavalry was a great deal more vicious than the Indians most of the time.”

Neil looked over Singing Rock’s shoulder at the school paintings. “Do these words mean anything to you?” he asked. “I couldn’t make them out at all.”

Singing Rock picked up one or two. of the paintings. “They’re in different dialects,” he said, “but they all seem to refer to the day of the dark stars in one way or another.

Ta-La-Ha-Lu-Si was the name the Patwin Indians used for Napa Valley. It simply means ‘beautiful land.’ Kaimus was the Wappo name for the town of Yountville, which is halfway up the valley, as you obviously know. These words here, though, sokwet and oweaoo and pados are all Algonquian.”

“What’s a ‘sokwet’ when it’s at home?” asked Harry. “It sounds like the first requirement for double pneumonia.”

“Sokwet is the Alqonquian word for ‘eclipse.’ It seems to be tied in here with the word wata, which means ‘star.’ So I think we can safely assume that one of these children was talking about the day of the dark stars itself. The word oweaoo means ‘circle,’

and pados means ‘boat,’ but since they’re written here in isolation, they’re not particularly helpful. I suspect we’ll discover what they mean, though.”

“Sure,” said Harry. “The hard way.”

Singing Rock said, “These paintings themselves are very interesting. When you first look at them, you’d think they were painted by children.”

“Of course you would,” said Neil. “They were painted by children.”

Singing Rock shook his head. “This style is primitive in some respects, but it isn’t childish. Look at this one. You can find carvings and drawings in this style among the WabanaM and the Etchemis. This one shows the Indians dressed in the costumes of Arapahos. And this one here looks distinctly Iroquois.”

Neil shuffled through the paintings with a frown. “You mean the medicine men inside the children created these paintings? Not the children themselves?”

“Not fully,” said Singing Rock. “These were done a few days ago, at a time when the medicine men wouldn’t have taken hold of the children’s minds completely. But their tribal characterstics have certainly shown through. I can identify Sioux, Micmac, Hopi, Apache, Shoshoni, and Modoc, as well as the ones you’ve got in your hand.”

“Does that help?” asked Neil.

“It helps a great deal. It means that I can tell who some of the medicine men are.

Each tribe has its own mythical medicine heroes. The Wabanaki, for instance, had Neem, the bringer of thunder. The Apaches used to revere a medicine man called No Name, who was said to wear a live rattlesnake as a headdress. Misquamacus will almost certainly have called on the best medicine man from each tribe, and so it won’t be too difficult to make a list of the team we’re going to be up against.”

“Singing Rock sees the eternal struggle between red men and white men as a kind of occult football game,” remarked Harry.

Neil sat down. “What I don’t quite understand is, what are these demons like, these things they’re going to call down to destroy us? I mean, what are they actually likeT

At that moment, as if prompted by fate, the telephone in the front room began to ring.

Neil said, “Excuse me,” and went to answer it.

Singing Rock and Harry waited while Neil talked. Harry crushed out his cigarette and swilled down the last of his beer. Then Neil came back into the room, and his face was flushed with anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harry. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It was Mr. Saperstein, from the school,” said Neil. “He heard you talking to Mrs.

Novato in the school yard, and he guessed you’d want to know.”

“Know? Know what?”

Neil looked at him, and Harry could see that he was very close to collapse. Singing Rock advised, “You’d better sit down.”

Neil shook his head. “Mr. Saperstein wants us to come down there right away. He took some photographs of Toby and the rest of the class last week, when they were dancing in the playground. He’s just had the pictures developed, and he says that something’s shown up on them that’s almost driven him mad.”