The Witch Doctor

Chapter One

What can you say about a friend who leaves town without telling you?

I mean, I left Matt sitting there in the coffee shop trying to translate that gobbledygook parchment of his, and when I came back after class, he was gone. I asked if anybody'd seen him go, but nobody had-just that, when they'd looked up, he'd been gone.

That was no big deal, of courser didn't own Matt, and he was a big boy. If he wanted to go take a hike, that was his business. But he'd left that damn parchment behind, and ever since he'd found it, he'd handled it as if it were the crown jewels-so he sure as hell wouldn't have just left it on the table in a busy coffee shop. Somebody could have thrown it in the wastebasket without looking. He was just lucky it was still there when I got back. So I picked it up and put it in my notebook. "Tell him I've got his parchment," I told Alice. She nodded without looking up from the coffee she was pouring.

"Sure thing, Saul. If you see him first, tell him he forgot to pay his bill this morning."

"Saul" is me. Matt claimed I'd been enlightened, so he called me "Paul." I went along - it was okay as an in-joke, and it was funny the first time. After that, I suffered through it-from Matt. Not from anyone else. "Saul" is me. I just keep a wary eye for teenagers with slingshots who also play harp.

"Will do," I said, and went out the door-but it nagged at me especially since I had never known Matt to forget to pay Alice before.

Forget to put on his socks, maybe, but not to pay his tab. When I got back to my apartment, I took out his mystical manuscript and looked at it. Matt thought it was parchment, but I didn't think he was any judge of sheepskins. He certainly hadn't gotten his.

Well, okay, he had two of them, but they hadn't given him the third degree yet-and wouldn't, the way he was hung up on that untranslatable bit of doggerel. Oh, sure, maybe he was right, maybe it was a long-lost document that would establish his reputation as a scholar and shoot him up to full professor overnight-but maybe the moon is made of calcified green cheese, too.

Me, I was working on my second M.A.-anything to justify staying around campus. Matt had gone on for his doctorate, but I couldn't stay interested in any one subject that long. They all began to seem kind of silly, the way the professors were so fanatical about the smallest details.

By that standard, Matt was a born professor, all right. He just spun his wheels, trying to translate a parchment that he thought was six hundred years old but was written in a language nobody had ever heard of. I looked it over, shook my head, and put it back in the notebook. He'd show up looking for it sooner or later. But he didn't. He didn't show up at all.

After a couple of days, I developed a gnawing uncertainty about his having left town - maybe he had just disappeared. I know, I know, I was letting my imagination run away with me, but I couldn't squelch the thought.

So what do you do when a friend disappears?

You have to find out whether or not to worry.

The first day, I was only a little concerned, especially after I went back to the coffee shop, and they said he hadn't been in looking for his damn parchment. The second day, I started getting worried - it was midnight and he hadn't shown up at the coffeehouse. Then I began to think maybe he'd forgotten to eat again and blacked out - so I went around to his apartment to tell him off.

He lived in one of those old one - family houses that had been converted into five apartments, if you want to call them that - a nine-by-twelve living room with a kitchenette wall, and a cubbyhole for a bedroom. I knocked, but he didn't answer. I knocked again, Then I waited a good long time before I knocked a third time. Still no answer. At three A.M when the neighbor came out and yelled at me to stop knocking so hard, I really got worried-and the next day, when nobody answered, I figured, Okay, third time's the charm-so I went outside, glanced around to make sure nobody was looking, and quietly crawled in the back window. Matt really ought to lock up at night; I've always told him so.

I had to crawl across the table-Matt liked to eat and write by natural light-and stepped into a mess.

Look, I've got a pretty strong stomach, and Matt was never big on housekeeping. A high stack of dishes with mold on them, I could have understood-but wall-to-wall spiderwebs? No way. How could he live like that? I mean, it wasn't just spiderwebs in the corners - it was spiderwebs choking the furniture! I couldn't have sat down without getting caught in dusty silk! And the proprietors were still there, too-little brown ones, medium-sized gray ones, and a huge malecater with a body the size of a quarter and red markings like a big wide grin on the underside of its abdomen, sitting in the middle of a web six feet wide that was stretched across the archway to the bed nook. Then the sun came out from behind a , loud, its light struck through the window for about half a minute-and I stood spellbound. Lit from the back and side like that, the huge web seemed to glow, every tendril bright. It was beautiful.

Then the sun went in, the light went away, and it was just a dusty piece of vermin-laden debris.

Speaking of vermin, what had attracted all these eight-legged wonders? It must have been a bumper year for flies. Or maybe, just maybe, they'd decided to declare war on the army of cockroaches that infested the place. If so, more power to them. I decided not to go spider hunting, after all. Besides, I didn't have time-I had to find Matt.

The strange thing was, I'd been in that apartment just three days before, and there hadn't been a single strand of spider silk in sight. Okay, so they're hard to see-but three days just isn't time enough for that much decoration.

I stepped up to the archway, nerving myself to sweep that web aside and swat its builder-but the sun came out again, and the golden cartwheel was so damned beautiful I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Besides, I didn't really need to - I could look through it, and the bedroom sure didn't have any place that was out of sight. Room enough for a bed, a dresser, a tin wardrobe, and scarcely an inch more. The bed was rumpled, but Matt wasn't in it. I turned around, frowning, and scanned the place again. I wouldn't say there was no sign of Matt - as I told you, he wasn't big on house keeping, and there were stacks of books everywhere, nicely webbed at the moment-but the pile of dirty dishes was no higher than it had been, and he himself sure wasn't there.

I stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind me, chewing it over. No matter how I sliced it, it came out the same - Matt had left town.

Why so suddenly?

Death in the family. Or close to it. What else could it be?

So I went back to my apartment and started research. One of the handy things about having some training in scholarship, is that you know how to find information. I knew what town Matt came from Separ City, New Jersey - and I knew how to call long-distance information.

"Mantrell," I told the operator.

"There are three, Sir. Which one did you want?" I racked my brains. Had Matt ever said anything about his parents' names? Then I remembered, once, that there had been a "junior" attached to him. "Matthew."

"We have a Mateo."

"Yeah, that's it." It was a good guess, anyway.

"One moment, please."

The vocodered voice gave me the number. I wrote it down, hung up, picked up, and punched in. Six rings, and I found myself hoping nobody would answer.

"'Alio?"

I hadn't known his parents were immigrants. His mother sounded nice.

"I'm calling for Matthew Mantrell," I said. "Junior." Mateo? Ees not 'ere."

"Just went out for a minute?" I was surprised at the surge of relief I felt.

"No, no! Ees away-college!"

My spirits took the express elevator down. "Okay. I'll try him there. Thanks, Mrs. Mantrell."

"Ees okay. You tell him call home, si?"

"Si," I agreed. "Good-bye." I hung up, hoping I would see him indeed.

So. He hadn't gone home.

Then where?

I know I should have forgotten about it, shoved it to the back of my mind, and just contented myself with being really mad at him. What was the big deal, anyway?

The big deal was that Matt was the only real friend I had, at the moment-maybe the only one I'd ever had, really. I mean, I hadn't known Matt all that long; but four years seems like a long time, to me. Four years, going on five-but who's counting?

It's not as if I'd ever had all that many friends. Let me see, there was jory in first grade, and Luke, and Ray-and all the rest of the boys in the class, I suppose. Then it was down to Luke and Ray in second grade, 'cause jory moved away-but the rest of the kids began to cool off. My wild stories, I guess. Then Ray moved, too, so it was just Luke and me in third grade-and Luke eased up, 'cause he wanted to play with the other kids. Me, I didn't want to play, I was clumsy-I just wanted to tell stories, but the other kids didn't want to hear about brave knights rescuing fair damsels. So from fourth grade on, I was on decent terms with the rest of the kids, but nothing more. Then, along about junior high, nobody wanted to be caught talking to me, because the "in" crowd decided I was weird.

What can I say? I was. I mean, a thirteen-year-old boy who doesn't like baseball and loves reading poetry-what can you say? By local standards, anyway. And in junior high, local standards are everything.

Made me miserable, but what could I do?

Find out what they thought made a good man, of course. I watched and found out real quick that the popular guys weren't afraid to fight, and they won more fights than they lost. That seemed to go with being good at sports. So I figured that if I could learn how to fight, I could be good at sports, too. A karate school had just opened up in town, so I heckled Mom until she finally took me, just to shut me up. I had to get a paper route to pay for it, though.

It only took six months before I stopped losing fights. When school started again in the fall, and the boys started working out their ranking system by the usual round of bouts, I started winning a few-and all of a sudden, the other guys got chummy. I warmed to it for a little while, but it revolted me, too. I knew them for what they were now, and I stopped caring about them.

It felt good. Besides, I'd connected with karate-and from it, I got interested in the Far East.

One of the teachers told me I should try not to sound so hostile and sarcastic all the time.

Sarcastic? Who, me?

So I learned to paste on the smile and sound cheerful. Didn't work. The other kids could tell. All I succeeded in doing was acting phony.

Why bother?

Of course, things picked up a little in high school, because there was a literary magazine, and a drama club, so I got back onto civil terms with some of the other kids. Not the "in" crowd, of course, but they bored me, so I didn't care. Much.

So all in all, I wasn't really prepared for college. Academically, sure-but socially? I mean, I hadn't had a real friend in ten years and all of a sudden, I had a dozen. Not close friends, of course, but people who smiled and sat down in my booth at the coffee shop.

Who can blame me if I didn't do any homework?

My profs, that's who. And the registrar, who sent me the little pink slip with the word probation worked in there. And my academic counselor, who pointed out that I was earning a quick exit visa from the Land of Friendship. So I declared an English major, where at least half of the homework was reading the books I'd already read for recreation-Twain, and Dickens, and Melville. I discovered Fielding, and Chaucer, and Joyce, and had more fun. Of course ' I had to take a grammar course and write term papers, so I learned how to sneak in a few hours at the library. I didn't take any honors, but I stayed in. Then I discovered philosophy, and found out that I actually wanted to go to the library. I started studying without realizing it-it was so much fun, such a colossal, idiotic, senseless puzzle. Nobody had any good answers to the big questions, but at least they were asking. My answers? I was looking for them. That was enough. So I studied for fun, and almost learned how to party. Never got very good at it, but I tried-and by my senior year, I even had a couple of friends who trusted me enough to tell me their troubles. Not that I ever told them mine, of course. I tried once or twice, but stopped when I saw the eyes glaze. I figured out that most people want to talk, but they don't want to listen. It followed from that, logically, that what they liked about me was that I listened, but didn't talk. So I didn't. I got a reputation for being the strong and silent type, just by keeping my mouth shut. I also found out, by overhearing at a party, that they thought I was the Angry Young Man. I thought that one over and decided they were right. I was angry about people. Even the ones I liked, mostly. They wanted to take, but they didn't want to give. They cared about fighting, but they didn't care about brains. They spent their time trying to get from one another, and they didn't care about why they were here. Oh, don't get me wrong-they were good people. But they didn't care about me, really. I was a convenience.

Except for Matt.

Matt was already working on his M.A. when I met him, and by the time I graduated, he was making good progress on his PhD. So what was I going to do when I got my degree? Leave town, and the one good friend I had? Not to mention the only three girls who'd ever thought I was human.

No way.

So I started work on my master's. Physics, of course. How come? From literature and philosophy?

Because I took "Intro to Asia" for a freshman distribution requirement, and found out about zen - and learned about Shredinger's Cat in "History of Science." Put the two together, and it made a lot of sense.

Don't ask. You had to be there.

Then Matt ran into a snag on his doctoral dissertation. Do you know what it's like to see a real friend deteriorating in front of your eyes? He found that scrap of parchment, the-i got hung up trying to translate it. Wasn't in any known language, so it had to be a prank. I mean, that's obvious, right? Not even logic-just common sense. Matt didn't have any.

Now, don't get me wrong. Matt's my friend, and I think the world of the guy, but I'm realistic about him, too. He was something of a compulsive, and something of an idealist, as well-to the point of ... Well, you know the difference between fantasy and reality? Matt didn't. Not always, anyway.

No, he was convinced that parchment was a real, authentic, historical document, and he wasted half his last year trying to decipher it.

I was getting real worried about him-losing weight, bags under his eyes, drawn and pale ... Matt, not me. I didn't have any spare weight to lose. Him, he was the credulous type-one of the kind that's born every minute. I'm one of the other kind, two born for every one of him. I mean, I wouldn't believe it was April if I didn't see the calendar. Forget about that robin pecking at the window, and the buds on the trees. If I don't see it in black and white, it's Nature pulling a fast one. Maybe a thaw.

So he had disappeared.

I thought about calling the police, but I remembered they couldn't do anything-Matt was a grown man, and there hadn't been any bloodstains in his apartment. Besides, I hadn't been on terribly good terms with the local constables ever since that year I was experimenting with recreational chemicals.

Still, I gave it a try. I actually went into the police station-me, with my long hair and beard. Nobody gave me more than a casual glance, but my back still prickled-probably from an early memory, a very early memory, of my father saying something about "the pigs" loving to beat on anybody who didn't have a crew cut. Of course, that was long ago, in 1968, and I was so little that all I remember of him was a big, tall pair of blue jeans with a tie-dyed T-shirt and a lot of hair at the top. I hated that memory for ten years, because it was all I knew of him until Mom decided to get in touch with him again, and I found out he wasn't really the ogre I figured he must have been, to have left Mom and me that way. Found out it wasn't all his idea, either. And I had a basis for understanding him-by that time, I had begun to know what it was like to have all the other kids put you down.

"I'm sorry, kid," he told me once. "I didn't know alienation was hereditary. " Of course, it wasn't-just the personality traits that led to it. I wouldn't say I ever loved him, but at least I warmed to him some. He had shaved and gotten a haircut, even a three-piece suit, by then, but it didn't fool anybody for very long. Especially me. Maybe that's why I wear chambray and blue jeans. And long hair, and a beard-like my early memories of him.

And early memories stay with you longest and deepest, so I really felt as if I were walking into the lion's den.

The cop at the desk looked up as I approached. "Can I help you?" About then, he could have helped me out of there, and I might have needed it-but I said, "I hope so. A friend of mine. He's disappeared. Right away, he looked grave. "Did he leave any message?" I thought of the parchment, but what good is writing you can't read? Besides, he wasn't the one who wrote it. "Not a word." He frowned. "But he was over twenty-one"' "Yeah," I admitted.

"Any reason to think there might have been foul play?" Now, that question sent the icicle skittering down my spine. Not that the idea hadn't been there, lurking at the back of my dread, mind you-but I had worked real hard not to put words to it. Now that the sergeant had, I couldn't ignore it any more. "Not really," I admitted.

"It's just not like him to pick up and pack out like that."

"It happens," the sergeant sighed. "People just get fed up with life and take off. We'll post his name and watch for him, and let you know if we find out anything-but that's all we can do." I'd been pretty sure of that. "Thanks," I said. "He's Matt Mantrell. Matthew. And I'm-"

"Saul Bremener." He kept his eyes on the form he was filling in.

"Three-ten North Thirteenth Street. We'll let you know if we hear anything. " My stomach went hollow, and my skin crawled. It doesn't always help your morale, finding out that the cops know you by name.

"Uh ... thanks," I croaked.

"Don't mention it." He looked up. "Have a good day, Mr. Bremener-and don't take any wooden cigarettes, okay?"

"Wooden," I agreed, and turned numbly about and drifted out of that den of doom. So they remembered my little experiments. It makes one wonder.

The sunlight and morning air braced me, in spite of the lack of sleep. I decided they were nice guys, after all-they'd left me alone until they could see if it was a passing fad, or something permanent. Passing, in my case. So it was smart-they'd saved taxpayers' money and my reputation. I wondered if there was anything written about me anywhere.

Probably. Somewhere. I mean, they had to have something to do during the slow season. I began to sympathize with Matt-maybe blowing town suddenly wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Get real, I told myself sternly. Where else would I find such sympathetic cops?

Back to the search. Maybe they couldn't do anything officially, but I wasn't official.

So I searched high and low, called the last girl Matt had been seen with-back when I was a junior-and started getting baggy eyes myself. Finally, I took a few slugs of Pepto-Bismol as a preventative, screwed my disgust to the nausea point, and went back into his apartment.

I scolded myself for not having moved that table; just lucky Matt hadn't left anything on it. I laid my notebook down on the desk next to the phone and gave a quick look at the table, the kitchenette counter, and the miniature sofa. Nothing there but dust and spider silk.

Then I went through that apartment inch by inch, clearing webs and squashing spiders. Or trying to, anyway-I must have been dealing with a new and mutant breed. Those little bug-eaters were fast!

Especially the big fat one-I took my eyes off it for a second to glance at the arachnid next door, and when I glanced back, it wasn't there any more.

it wasn't the only thing that wasn't there-neither was any sign of where Matt might be. I mean, nothing-until I turned and looked at the kitchenette table and saw the parchment.

I stared. Then I closed my eyes, shook my head, and stared again. it was still there. I could have sworn I'd put it back in my notebook-so I picked up the notebook and checked. Yep, the piece of sheepskin was still in it, all right.

That gave me pause. Practically a freeze, really, while I thought unprintable thoughts. Finally, slowly, I looked up and checked again. it was on the table.

I looked down at the notebook, real fast, but not fast enough-it was back between the lined sheets. I held my head still and flicked a glance over to the table, but it must have read my mind, 'cause it was there by the time I looked. Then I laid down the notebook, real carefully, and stepped back, so I could see both the notebook and the table at the same time.

They each had a parchment.

Well, that settled that. I gave up and brought the notebook over to the table. I set it down beside the parchment. Yep, they were both still there-Matt's parchment in my notebook, and a brand-new one where none had ever been before. At least, a few minutes before-I had checked the table as I crawled across it. I frowned, taking a closer look at the new parchment.

It was written in runes, and the "paper" was genuine sheepskin, all right.

How come runes?

Because runes are magical.

I tried to ignore the prickling at the base of my skull and told myself sternly that runes were just ordinary, everyday letters in somebody else's language. Okay, so it was an old language, and a lot of the items written in it had been ceremonial, which was why they had been preserved-but that didn't mean they were magical. I mean, the people who wrote them may have thought they could work magic but that was just superstition.

But it was also something that made the scholar in me sit up brightly and smack his lips. I mean, literature had been one of my undergraduate majors-justified an extra year on campus, right there and although it wasn't my main field any more, I was still interested. I'd learned at least a little bit about those old symbols-and I knew Matt had a book around here that explained the rest. I hunted around until I found it, blew the dust and webbing off, and sat down to study. I looked up each rune and wrote its Roman-letter equivalent just above it. I tried pencil first, but it just skittered off that slick surface, so I had to use a felt pen. After all, this couldn't really be anything old, could it?

After three letters, I leaned back to see if it made a word. H-e-y.

I recoiled and glared down at it. How dare it sound like English!

Just a coincidence. I went to work on the next word. P-a-u-l.

I sat very still, my glance riveted to those runes. "Hey, Paul"?

Who in the ninth century knew my name?

Then a thought skipped through, and I took a closer look at the parchment. I mean, the material itself. It was new, brand-new, fresh off the sheep, compared to Matt's parchment, which was brittle and yellow-several years old, at least. Something inside me whispered centuries, but I resolutely ignored it and went on to the next word. I wrote the Roman letters above the runes, refusing to be sidetracked, resisting the temptation to pronounce the words they formed, until I had all the symbols converted-though something inside me was adding them up as I went along, and whispering a very nasty suspicion to me. But as long as I had another rune to look up, I could ignore it-even after I'd already learned all the runes again and was looking each one up very deliberately, telling myself it was just to make sure I hadn't made a mistake.

Finally, though, I had written down all the letter equivalents and I couldn't put it off any longer. I stayed hunched over the parchment, my hands spread flat on the table, trying to grip into the plywood as I read the translated words.

H-e-y P-a-u-l g-e-t i-n t-o-u-c-h I-v-e I-o-s-t y-o-u-r address. Or, to give it the proper emphatic delivery: "Hey, Paul! Get in touch! I've lost your address!"

I could almost hear Matt's voice saying those words, and I swear my nails bit into the plywood. What kind of a lousy joke was this?

Friend? You call that a friend? First he leaves town without a word, and then he sends me this?

I was just realizing that he couldn't have sent it, when I felt the pain in the back of my hand.

"Damn!" I snatched it back, saw the little red dot in the center, then the big fat spider standing there with that big wide grin painted on its abdomen, and so help me, it was laughing at me. Anger churned up, but the room was already getting fuzzy. Still, I tried to hang on to that anger, tried to lift a hand to swat-the blasted thing had no right to ...

But before I could even finish the thought, the haze thickened, wrapped itself around me like a cool blanket, rolled itself up, and bore me away to someplace dim and distant, and I almost managed to stay conscious.