The manitou (24 page)

“Singing
Rock...”

He pulled
himself away. He opened the door that led to the darkened stairway and said:
“Are you coming? Or are you staying behind?”

Echoing up the
stairwell, I heard the loathsome moaning of that windless wind, and the hairs
prickled on the back of my neck. The fetid stench of the Great Old One filled
the air, and I could hear noises from down below that reminded me of Dore’s
engravings of hell. Demons and beasts and nameless things that walked by night.
Things that drove men mad.
Things that hopped and crawled and
dragged themselves across the darkness of terrified imagination.

I swallowed
hard. No matter how frightened I felt, I couldn’t let Singing Rock go down
there
on his own
. I said: “I’m coming,” and pushed
past him on to the concrete landing. If I didn’t go now, I never would.

Once the door
swung closed behind us, we were plunged into suffocating gloom. We held on to
the handrail, and groped our way downward stair by stair. Each shadow filled me
with creeping fear, and every shuffle and echo made my heart tense up. I could
have sworn I heard footsteps descending the stairs just out of sight below us,
but there was no time to stop and listen.

“Singing Rock,”
I whispered. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m trying to
think,” said Singing Rock quietly. “But I can’t judge the situation until I see
it for myself. I just hope that I can invoke Unitrak’s spirit at the right
time, and in the right way. I just hope, too, that Unitrak isn’t as hostile to
us as it is to the Great Old One. There’s always that risk.”

I coughed.
“Supposing we simply surrender?
Wouldn’t that save more
lives? If we fight like this – God knows how many people are going to get
hurt.”

Singing Rock
shook his head. “This is not a fight in the sense you think it is. This is an
act of revenge by a Red Indian sorcerer in the name of all the pain and
treachery and slaughter that his people suffered at the hands of the white man.
You cannot surrender to someone who is seeking vengeance. Misquamacus will only
be satisfied when we are all dead, and as for the Great Old One...”

“What about the Great Old One?”

Singing Rock
shrugged. “I don’t know what bargain Misquamacus has made with him. But the
Great Old One is known in Pueblo culture as the Great Devourer. The Paiute had
another name –He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit. You can draw your own conclusions.”

As we descended
through the darkness, the mournful whining and moaning of the wind that wasn’t
wind became even louder and even more depressing. I began to develop a pounding
migraine, and I could hardly see straight. I felt itchy and uncomfortable, and
I had the feeling that my clothes were riddled with lice. If I’d had any
choice, I would have given up then, and let the Great Old One,
He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit, do his worst.

Singing Rock
said: “We’re getting nearer. That’s why you feel so bad. Here – take this bead
necklace. It isn’t much, but it should help to protect you against tricks and
illusions.”

Almost deafened
by the shrieking wind, we reached the tenth floor. Singing Rock produced the
piece of paper on which he had written the numbers from Unitrak, and peered at
them closely through the gloom. Then he gave me the thumbs-up, and gently
pushed open the door that led into the corridors where Misquamacus lurked, and
where now the Great Old One, the terrible malevolent manitou of centuries past,
was hideously coming to life.

The stench was
sickening. Even though the corridors were empty, there was a scuttling,
rat-like noise everywhere – a noise that even the moaning of the wind could not
drown. It was as if the whole place was alive with invisible rodents, swarming
and clustering around the decaying smell of the Great Old One. Singing Rock
turned around to reassure himself that I was still behind him, and then led the
way toward Karen Tandy’s room – the room where Misquamacus had first made his
obscene appearance.

The drone of
the Star Beast’s astral wind made me feel exhausted and irritable. As we came
nearer to Karen Tandy’s room, the noise grew louder and louder, until it sawed
through all my senses with the coarse pain of a rusty blade. All around us, as
we walked, there was the scuttling of ghostly rat creatures, as if we had a
loathsome escort of parasites wherever we went. Once, I felt as if one of them
had jumped on my back, and I found myself tugging at my shirt in disgust and
fear.

Singing Rock
had begun his incantations. He was calling on the spirits of the Sioux nation
to protect us from the devouring evil of the Great Old One; on the manitous of
the air, the rocks and the soil; on the demons of sickness and plague to strike
Misquamacus down. I could hardly hear what he was saying above the shrieking of
that unearthly wind, but I could feel that our rat escort was treating us with
a certain amount of impatient respect.

We turned a
corner – and suddenly, the corridor was laced with brilliant flashes of light,
which crackled and spat all around us. Singing Rock raised his hands, palm
outward, and the light poured against them and spent itself on the concrete
floor. It was the lightning-that-sees – the first indication that Misquamacus
knew we were here.

We reached the
stretch of corridor in which Karen Tandy’s room actually was. The
lightning-that-sees seemed to have dispersed most of the phantom rat creatures,
but the groaning wind continued, and now it was a real
wind,
that
blew against our faces like grit.

Singing Rock
beckoned me onwards, and we fought our way nearer and nearer to our inevitable
confrontation with Misquamacus and the Great Old One. The shrieking and howling
of the wind made it impossible for us to speak, and out of the door of Karen’s
room we saw sizzling flashes of astral light – the cold blue energy that had
created the gateway for the greatest and most terrible of all legendary beings.

Then – against
a tearing hurricane – we reached the door itself. Singing Rock looked in first,
and abruptly turned his head away in sheer terror, jerking his hand over his
face like a man in the spasms of electrocution. I looked too, and I was stunned
into such dread and fear that I felt as if I could never move from that doorway
again.

The room was
thick with evil – smelling smoke, pouring ceaselessly from two fires which
Misquamacus had lit in metal bowls, and placed on either side of his astral
gateway. On the floor was marked out the most sinister and bizarre circle of
figures that I had ever seen, all elaborately drawn and colored in what must
have been the gore of Lieutenant Marino’s police officers.

There were
strange goats and hideous creatures like enormous slugs, and naked women with
loathsome beasts emerging from their wombs. Presiding over this circle, hunched
and deformed, his dark body blurry through the
smoke,
was Misquamacus. But it was not Misquamacus himself that struck the greatest
terror in us – it was what we could dimly perceive through the densest clouds
of smoke – a boiling turmoil of sinister shadow that seemed to grow and grow
through the gloom like a squid or some raw and massive confusion of snakes and
beasts and monsters.

What was so
terrifying was that I recognized the Great Old One – I recognized how close he
had always been to me. He was the fright of strange shapes in wallpaper and
drapes; the terror of faces that appear in the grain of wooden wardrobes; the
fear of darkened stairs or curious and half-seen reflections in mirrors and
windows. Here, in the writhing shape of the Great Old One, I discovered where
all my long-buried fears and anxieties had come from. Every time you hear
disembodied breathing in your bedroom at night; every time the clothes you have
carelessly left on your chair seem to take the form of a sinister and monkish
figure; every time you think you hear footsteps behind you as you climb the
stairs – it is the evil presence of the Great Old One, straining malevolently
at the locks and seals which keep him on the other side! Misquamacus raised his
arms, and howled a chilling howl of triumph. His eyes seemed to be lighted from
within, goat-like and satanic, and his body, on its stunted legs, was
glistening with sweat. He had gloves of blood where he had torn bloodied bones
out of Lieutenant Marino’s men and used them to draw on the floor. Behind him,
almost invisible in the smoke, the hideously frightening shape of the Great Old
One twisted and squirmed.

“It’s now,
Harry!” screamed Singing Rock. “Help me now – it’s now! It’s now!”

He buried his
face in his hands, and began to recite numbers and words, endless invocations
to his own manitous and spirits, and the great spirit of white technology. I
clung on to him, holding him tight, concentrating my terrified mind on Unitrak
– Unitrak – Unitrak. The shrieking wind made it impossible for me to hear what
Singing Rock was saying, but I pressed my mind into supporting him – into
loving him – into keeping him safe while he tried to overwhelm Misquamacus and
the murky presence of He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit.

There was a
moment when I thought Singing Rock would make it. He was talking breathlessly
fast, reciting and chanting and nodding, faster and faster as if building up to
the great summoning of Unitrak’s technological manitou. All this time, though,
Misquamacus was chanting too, and sweeping his arm in our direction as if to
encourage the Great Old One to consume us. I saw things move through the smoke
that were frightening beyond belief – shapes more ghastly and dreadful than the
worst nightmares I had ever had – and octopus-like coils of mist that began to
unfold from the gloomy cloud of the Great Old One. I knew we only had seconds
in which to survive. I was tensed up so tightly that my muscles were locked and
I had bitten into my tongue.

Abruptly,
Singing Rock slumped. He sagged, and then fell to his knees. I knelt down
beside him, brushing my hurricane-blown hair from my eyes, and yelled at him to
carry on.

He looked up at
me, and there was nothing but fear on his face. “I can’t!” he shouted. “I can’t
summon Unitrak! I can’t do it! It’s a white man’s manitou! It won’t come! It
won’t obey me!”

I couldn’t
believe it. I looked over my shoulder and saw Misquamacus pointing toward us
with both hands, and the dark snakes of the Great Old One unrolling over his
head, and I knew that this was the end of it. I snatched the crumpled fragment
of paper from Singing Rock’s hand, and held it up to the flickering astral
light of the weird and horrifying gateway.

“Unitrak, save me!”
I shouted.
“Unitrak,
save me!”
And I screamed out the numbers, again and again and again.
“UNITRAAAKKK!
FOR GOD’S SAKE –
UNIIITRAAKKKK!!”

Singing Rock,
still clutched in my arms, moaned in fear. Misquamacus, his face stretched in a
wolfish grin, was actually floating in the air above me, his arms outstretched,
and his deformed legs curled up underneath him. All around, the shifting and
terrifying shapes of the Great Old One grew and grew.

I was silent
with fright for a moment. Then – because it was all I could think of to do – I
raised my own arms, just like Misquamacus had raised his, and cast my own idea
of a spell.

“Unitrak, send
your manitou to destroy this wonder-worker. Unitrak, protect me from harm. Unitrak,
seal off the gateway to the great beyond, and dismiss this hideous spirit.”

Misquamacus,
floating eerily close, began to invoke the Great Old One in retaliation. His
words sounded heavy and foggy, blurring through the howl of the hurricane like
a vengeful beast.

“Unitrak!”
I bellowed. “Come to me Unitrak! Come!”

It was then
that Misquamacus was almost upon me, and his devilish eyes glared luridly from
his dark, sweat-glossed face. His mouth was drawn back in a snarl of pain and
effort and revenge.

He drew circles
and invisible diagrams in the air around me, bringing down the evil tumult of
the Great Old One, arranging through his sorcery the most hideous of deaths
that he could devise.

“Unitrak,” I whispered,
unheard above the shriek of the gale.
“Oh, God, Unitrak.”

It was so
violent and sudden when it happened that I couldn’t understand it at first. I
thought that Misquamacus had struck me down with the lightning-that-sees, or
that the whole building had ripped apart around us. There was an ear-splitting
sound that overwhelmed even the moan of the hurricane – an electrical crackling
of millions upon millions of supercharged volts – a roar like a thousand short
circuits. The room was blotted out by a dazzling array of incandescent grid
shapes – tier after tier of brilliant circuitry – crawling with white and blue
sparks and shimmering with its own blinding symmetry.

Misquamacus
fell from the air, charred and blackened and bloody. He dropped to the floor
like a carcass of beef, his hands clutched up underneath him, his eyes tight
shut.

The grids,
pulsing and glowing, formed a fence between me and the murky shape of the Great
Old One. I could see the demonic being shrink and twist – as if confused and
frustrated. The voltage from the grid was so enormous that I could only look at
it with my eyes half-shut, and I could hardly see through it to the twitching,
shadowy form of the Great Old One.

There was no
question in my mind what this blinding apparition was. It was the manitou, the
spirit, the internal essence of the Unitrak computer. My spell – my white man’s
invocation – had brought the blinding retaliation of a white man’s demon.

The Great Old
One boiled and rolled in powerful coils of darkness. It let out a tortured
groan that became an enraged bellow, louder and louder until I felt I was being
swallowed by its deafening vibrant depths – a tunnel of screaming fury that
made the walls shake and the floor tremble.