Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton Page B

sound too good, does it?” he said. “It doesn’t
sound too good at all.”
    “I don’t know
what to do,” said Neil. “If it’s really medicine men, then they’ve chosen the
kids at my son’s school.”
    “They would, if
you’re a Fenner . They’d look for a spirit guide, you
see. Someone to help them reincarnate themselves. Out
there, out in what the Indians used to call the ‘outside,’ the spirits of those
medicine men would look for the ghost of someone who once helped them when they
were human. Bloody Fenner would be just their man.”
    “But what can I
do?” asked Neil. “Is there anything I can do about it? I mean, how can I stop
it?”
    Billy Ritchie
brushed cat hairs off his fingers. “I wouldn’t like to say,” he confessed.
“That old trapper never got as far as telling me what to do if the day of the
dark stars ever actually arrived.”
    “But what about all those children? What about my son?”
    “It’s going to
be worse than that,” said Billy Ritchie. “Well-I know there isn’t nothing worse than your own son being hurt. But the day of
the dark stars is when the Indians take an eye for an eye, and you just think
about the thousands and thousands of Indians who died because of what the white
man did to them. If these medicine men really do turn up, and if they really
call down their demons, then we’re going to see death and horror like you can’t
even imagine.”
    Neil was silent
for a few seconds, and then he squeezed Billy Ritchie’s hand again. “I’m going
to start fighting back,” he said determinedly. ‘Tm going straight to the cops,
to begin with, and we’re going to have those children, protected.”
    “Well,” said
Billy Ritchie, “I just hope yqu can. Maybe it takes a Fenner to wipe out a Fenner’s wrong deeds. Don’t think it’s going to be easy, though. And keep on your guard.
If your ancestor’s around, then you’ve got yourself some stiff competition.
Alien Fenner wasn’t called Bloody for nothing.”
    “Alien Fenner ? That was his name?”
“It sure was. Didn’t you know that?”
    Neil shook his
head. “Nobody ever told me before. Everybody just called him Bloody.”
    Billy Ritchie
tickled his black cat’s ears. “ Bloody’s good enough,”
he said simply. “ Bloody’s good
enough.”
    Sergeant Murray
sat behind his desk with the same patient expression he used for people who
complained about dogs fouling their front lawns or kids throwing stones at
their windows.
    Outside, a
breeze had sprung up from the ocean, and dust blew in gritty clouds across the
police station parking lot. It was nearly five o’clock, and Sergeant Murray was
due to go home at five.
    He was a big,
chubby man, with a face as large as a pig’s, and he was feeling hungry.
    Beside him, his
air-conditioning unit rattled and burbled and whined. From time to time, as
Neil talked to him, he took a paper clip out of the small plastic tray on his
desk, unbent it, and dropped it into his wastebasket
with an audible ping.
    Neil told him
about Toby’s nightmares, about the paintings at the school, about the wooden
demon, and about Billy Ritchie. Sergeant Murray listened, asking no questions,
and when Neil was finished he wedged his fat fingers together and had a deep,
silent think.
    Eventually, he
lifted his head and said, “Neil-we’ve known each other a good few years.”
    “What does that
have to do with it?”
    Sergeant Murray
pulled a face. “Everything, when it comes down to it, Neil. A cop who didn’t
know you too well might book you for wasting police time. As it is-”
    “Wasting police
time!” said Neil, astounded. “You think I’ve spent a whole day over at
Calistoga, and driven all the way back here, just to waste your time!”
    “Neil,” said
Sergeant Murray, raising one porky hand to restrain him, “I don’t mean that
you’ve done it with bad intent. I don’t mean that you’ve done it deliberately.”
    “Well, what the
hell do you mean? I know this