The manitou (18 page)

I lifted Dr.
Hughes up to a standing position, and wrapped his injured arm over my shoulder.

Then step by
step, I helped him down the corridor toward the elevators. He groaned in pain
at every move, and I could hear his blood dripping on to the floor, but I found
a new surge of strength to carry us on.

There was no
lightning, and no attempt to stop us. Perhaps this was what Misquamacus had
wanted – to get Singing Rock on his own. But as far as I was concerned there
was no choice. Dr. Hughes was too badly hurt to stay in the corridor, and that
was all there was to it.

We finally made
the elevator. Its small red light was still glowing through the darkness, and I
pressed the button for UP. After an unbearable pause, the elevator arrived, the
doors opened, and we flopped inside.

The light was
so bright after the gloom of the corridor that it hurt my eyes. I sat Dr.
Hughes down on the floor, with his bitten hand across his lap, and crouched
down beside him. We rose swiftly up to the eighteenth floor, and I helped him
out.

There was quite
a reception committee waiting for us in his office when I carried Jack Hughes
inside. Wolf was there, with a party of male nurses and medics, all equipped
with flashlights.

Two of them
carried guns, and the rest were armed with crowbars and knives. A red-faced
balding doctor, in a white coat and spectacles, was standing with them.

When I came in,
they gathered around and gently lifted Dr. Hughes off my shoulder, and laid him
down on a couch in the corner of the office. Wolf called for a first-aid pack
and antibiotics, and they gave Dr. Hughes a quick shot of novocaine to ease the
agony.

The red-faced
doctor came up to me and introduced himself.

“I’m Winsome.
We were just about to go down and help you out. What the devil’s going on down
there? From what Wolf says, you have an insane patient or something.”

I wiped the
thick sweat from my forehead. Up here, in the calm light of the early morning,
everything that had happened in the fetid darkness of the tenth floor seemed
totally unreal. But Singing Rock was still down there on his own, and I knew I
had to get back with help for him.

“Pleased you
could come, Dr. Winsome. I can’t explain it all now, but we do have a very
dangerous patient down there, yes. But you mustn’t come down with all these
people and these guns.”

“Why not?
If there’s an emergency, we need to protect
ourselves.”

“Believe me,
Dr. Winsome,” I said shakily. “If you come down with guns, lots of innocent
people are going to be hurt. All I need is that influenza virus.”

Dr. Winsome
sniffed. “This is ridiculous. You have a wild patient down there, injuring our
doctors, and you want an influenza virus?”

“That’s all,” I
said. “Please, Dr. Winsome.
As soon as you can.”

He stared at me
with bulging eyes. “I don’t seem to recall that you have any authority in this
hospital, sir. It appears to me that the best solution is for me and these
other gentlemen to go straight down there and catch this patient before he
tries to take bites out of any more of us.”

“You don’t
understand!” I shouted wearily.

“You’re right,”
said Dr. Winsome. “I don’t understand at all. Wolf, are you ready with those
flashlights?”

“Right away,
Dr. Winsome,” said Wolf.

“Wolf,” I
appealed. “You saw what happened down there. Tell them.”

The male nurse
shrugged. “All I know is
,
Dr. Hughes got hurt by that
patient. We ought to get down there and sort it out once and for all.”

I didn’t know
what to say. I turned around to see if there was anyone else who could help me,
but everybody in the office was ready for a vigilante raid on the tenth floor.

Then, from his
couch, Dr. Hughes spoke up.

“Dr. Winsome,”
he said hoarsely. “Dr. Winsome, you mustn’t go. Believe me, you mustn’t go.

Just give him
the virus. He knows what he’s doing. Whatever you do, don’t go down there.”

Dr. Winsome
walked over to Jack Hughes’ couch. “Are you sure, Dr. Hughes? I mean, we’re all
armed and ready to go.”

“Dr. Winsome,
you mustn’t. But please hurry. Give him the virus and let him do it in his own
way.”

Dr. Winsome
scratched his bald and crimson head,
then
he turned
and said to the rescue party:

“Dr. Hughes is
in charge of this patient. I have to bow to his better judgment. But we’ll
stand by just in case.”

He went over to
the desk, and produced a thin glass vial of liquid from a small wooden box. He
held it out to me.

“This solution
contains potent influenza virus. Handle it extremely carefully, or we’ll have
an epidemic on our hands.”

I took the vial
gently in my fingers. “Okay, Dr. Winsome. I understand that. Believe
me,
you’re doing the right thing.”

I was almost
tempted to take a gun back with me, even though I knew it would be foolhardy
and dangerous. But I did take a flashlight. I went swiftly back to the
elevator, punched the button for ten, and sank into the darkness again.

When the doors
opened, I peered cautiously out into the gloom.

“Singing Rock?”
I shouted. “It’s Harry Erskine! I’m back.”

There was no
reply. I kept my foot against the door of the elevator to prevent it from
closing.

“Singing Rock?”
I yelled again. “Are you there, Singing Rock?”

I switched on
my flashlight, and directed it down the corridor, but there was a corner in
between me and the door to Karen Tandy’s room, and I couldn’t see any further
than that. Perhaps Singing Rock couldn’t hear me, way around here. I would have
to go and investigate.

I knelt down
and took off my shoes, and wedged them in the elevator door to prevent them
from closing. The last thing I wanted was to be waiting for an elevator to
arrive from the foyer while one of Misquamacus’ grisly beasts came after me.

Then, keeping a
pool^ of flashlight in front of me, I padded down the corridor toward Karen
Tandy’s room, and the battle of the medicine men. It was very silent down there
– much too silent for comfort – and I didn’t feel like calling out to Singing
Rock again. I was almost afraid I might get a reply.

As I approached
the door to Karen Tandy’s room, the thick sickly odor of blood and death came
crowding into my nostrils again. I directed a long jet of light all the way
down the corridor into the distance, but there was no sign of Singing Rock.
Perhaps he was in the room, having a face-to-face conflict with Misquamacus.
Perhaps he wasn’t there at all.

I stepped
softly and gingerly over the last few yards, pointing the flashlight into the
gore-spattered doorway of Karen Tandy’s room. I could hear something stirring
and moving in there, but I dreaded to think what it was. I came closer and
closer, keeping to the far side of the corridor, and then I rushed forward and
shone the light full and square into the room.

It was Singing
Rock. He was on his hands and knees on the floor. At first I thought he was all
right, but when I shone the light toward him, he turned slowly in my
direction,
and I saw what Misquamacus had done to his face.

Crawling with
terror, I
flickered
the light around the whole room,
but there was no trace of Misquamacus at all. He had escaped, and was somewhere
in the pitch-black twisting corridors of the tenth floor. We would have to find
him, and try to destroy him, armed with nothing but a flashlight and a small
glass vial of infected fluid.

“Harry?”
whispered Singing Rock. I walked across and knelt beside him. He looked as if
someone had lashed him across the face with seven strands of barbed wire. His
cheek was ripped up and his lips were split, and there was a great deal of
blood, I took out my handkerchief and gingerly dabbed at it.

“Are you hurt
bad
?” I asked him. “What happened? Where’s Misquamacus?”

Singing Rock
wiped blood from his mouth. “I tried to stop him,” he said. “I did everything I
knew.”

“Did he hit
you?”

“He didn’t have
to. He gave me a faceful of surgical instruments. He would have killed me if he
could have.”

I rummaged in
the bedside cabinet and found Singing Rock some gauze and bandages. When the
blood was wiped away, his face didn’t look too bad. His own self-protective magic
had managed to divert most of the scalpels and probes that Misquamacus had sent
flying in his direction.

Several of them
were stuck in the wall, right up to the handles.

“Did you get
the virus?” asked Singing Rock. “Just let me stop this bleeding, and then we’ll
go after him.”

“It’s here,” I
said. “It doesn’t look like much, but Dr. Winsome says this little lot can do
the job a thousand times over.”

Singing Rock
held the vial up and squinted at it. “Let’s just pray it works. I don’t think
we have much time.”

I picked up the
flashlight, and we stepped quietly over to the door of the room and listened.

There was no
sound at all, except for our own suppressed breathing. The corridors were
deserted and dark, and there were more than a hundred rooms in which
Misquamacus could have hidden himself.

“Did you see
which way he went?” I asked Singing Rock.

“No,” said
Singing Rock. “Anyway, it’s been five minutes. He could be any place by now.”

“It’s very
silent. Does that mean anything?”

“I don’t know.
I don’t know what he plans to do next.”

I coughed.
“What would you do, if you were him? I mean – magically speaking?”

Singing Rock
thought for a while, still patting his ravaged cheek with a bloodstained pad of
gauze.

“I’m not sure,”
he said. “You have to look at it from Misquamacus’ point of view. In his own
mind, he left Manhattan in the 1600s only days ago. The white man, to him, is
still a strange and hostile invader from nowhere. Misquamacus is very powerful,
but he’s obviously frightened.

What’s more,
he’s suffering from physical disabilities, which isn’t going to help his morale
much.

I think he’s
going to call in all the reinforcements he can get.”

I flicked the
flashlight up and down the corridor.
“Reinforcements?
You mean more demons?”

“Certainly.
We’ve only seen the beginning of this.”

“So what can we
do?”

Singing Rock,
in the reflected light of the torch, could only shake his head.

“There’s only
one thing on our side,” he said. “If Misquamacus wants to bring demons out of
the great beyond, he’s going to have to prepare gateways to bring them
through.”

“Gateways?
What are you talking about?”

“Let me put it
simply. Imagine there’s a wall between the spirit world and the physical world.
If Misquamacus wants to call any demons through, he has to remove some bricks
from that wall, and prepare an entrance for the demons to come through. They
need to be coaxed, too.

Demons almost
always demand a price for their services. Like the Lizard-of-the-Trees and his
morsel of living flesh.”
“Morsel?”
I said. “Christ –
some morsel.”

Singing Rock
held my arm. “Harry,” he said quietly, “it’s going to be more than morsels
before we’re through with this.”

I turned around
and looked at him. For the first time, I realized what a trap we were in, and
how there was only one way out.

“All right,” I
said. I didn’t want to say “all right” at all, but it looked as if I didn’t
have any choice.

“Let’s go find
him.”

We stepped out
into the corridor, looking left and right. The silence was oppressive, and I
could hear the rush of air molecules bombarding my eardrums, and the pumping of
my own heart. The sustained fear of encountering Misquamacus or one of his
demons made us both sweat and shiver, and Singing Rock’s teeth were chattering
by the time we made it down the first corridor.

At each door,
we aimed the beam of the flashlight through the window, and checked to see if
the medicine man was hiding inside.

“These
gateways,” I whispered to Singing Rock as we turned the first corner, “what are
they like?”

Singing Rock
shrugged. “There are many different kinds. All it takes to bring a demon like
the Lizard-of-the-Trees through is a circle on the floor and the proper
promises and incantations.

But the
Lizard-of-the-Trees
is
not particularly powerful. He’s
just a minion in the hierarchy of Red Indian demons. If you want to summon a
demon like the Lodge-Pole Guardian or the Water Snake, you have to prepare the
kind of nexus that will make the physical world seem attractive to them.”

“Check that
door over there,” I said, interrupting him. I flashed the beam his way, and he
peered through the window into the hospital room. He shook his head.

“I just hope
he’s still on this floor,” said Singing Rock. “If he gets out of here, we’re in
big trouble.”

“
The stairway’s
guarded,” I pointed out.

Singing Rock
pulled a tight smile. “Against Misquamacus, nothing is guarded.”

We walked
carefully forward down the corridor, stopping every few yards to investigate
rooms, cupboards and odd corners. I was beginning to wonder if Misquamacus had
ever existed, or if he was just weird hallucination.

“Have you ever
summoned a demon yourself?” I asked Singing Rock. “I mean – can’t we pull a few
in on our side? If Misquamacus is going for reinforcements, why shouldn’t we?”

Singing Rock
smiled again. “Harry, I don’t think you know what you’re saying. These demons
are not jokes. They’re not men dressed up. The greatest of them, the upper
hierarchy of Red Indian demons, can take many forms. Some of them change their
shape and their whole essence continuously. One minute they’re like terrible
bison, and the next they’re like a pitful of snakes.