Burial (30 page)

‘Now, what do you propose to do about this damage?' he demanded. ‘Because sure as eggs you're going to make it good. That's nearly two thousand bucks' worth of damage, believe you me. Maybe more, new rug and all.'

Amelia said, ‘Mr Rheiner — step this way. Very gently. Don't worry about why. Just step this way.'

Mr Rheiner frowned at her. ‘What the devil are you talking about, young lady?'

‘Just step this way, Mr Rheiner, there's something dangerous behind you! Something-!'

For a moment, Mr Rheiner just stared at her — unable to understand what she was saying. But then the coin dropped and he slowly turned his head and looked behind him.

His head turned
and continued to turn
. It went round the full 360 degrees like Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
but it didn't turn smoothly and it didn't stop there. It turned with a hideous crackling and tearing noise; the skin of Mr Rheiner's neck was twisted around like yellowish-pink rope. His face came around for a second time and he was still staring at us in disbelief. Technically, he was already dead, but his eyes were still showing pain and terror and surprise.

The shadow curled and fumed around his legs as if it were the slithering tentacles of a giant squid. Quickly, with
obscene haste, two tentacles probed the front of his shirt, tearing aside buttons and sliding inside. His whole body shuddered and shook as the tentacles dragged apart skin and muscle and layers of whitish belly-fat, ripping him open as easily as a sodden paper shopping-sack — and then continued relentlessly to pour inside him.

‘
Harry
!' screamed Karen. ‘
Harry, it's killing him
!'

But of course it was already too late for me to help him — even if I'd had the courage to try. His head nodded wildly from side to side, an epileptic puppet. Then thick black shadow gushed out of his mouth, and wound itself around his face, like a suffocating scarf. Karen screamed again and again as Mr Rheiner danced in front of us, much nimbler in death than he had ever been in life. His artificial leg collapsed inside the leg of his pants, clattered to the floor. But still he danced.

‘
Out of here
!' I shouted at Karen and Amelia.

For a split-second Karen stood paralysed, but then, with her arms stretched out defensively in front of her, she made a sudden and frenzied run for the open door. She was too late. A shadow whiplashed across the door and slammed it furiously shut.

Karen tugged at the handle and screamed out, ‘Harry! Help me!' I came up and yanked at it too, so hard that I almost pulled off the handle. But whatever was holding it shut was much more powerful than both of us.

‘
I command you open
!' cried Amelia. ‘
By salt, by fire, by mirror, by key!'

I wrenched at the door again, but it stayed adamantly shut.

‘
Open once! Open twice
!' Amelia screamed at it, ‘
Open, demon! Open ghost! Nail this devil to the post
!'

Behind me, I heard an appalling rumbling noise, as if the entire building were collapsing. I looked around to see the monstrous shadow
ripping Mr Rheiner's scalp off
, blood
and hair and ragged skin. Then, almost as an afterthought, with all the casualness of true cruelty, it twisted off his arms and legs.

There was a moment's lull, and then we were scourged by a fierce, cold wind, full of blood and grit and pungent, eye-stinging smoke. Karen and Amelia were both screaming. Blood streaked Karen's cheek and poured from her chin. Blood dripped from Amelia's hair.

‘
Open once! Open twice
!' Amelia was shrieking.

Amelia may have been able to lock doors, but she sure as hell couldn't open them: not when she was up against a spiritual force as violent as this. I kicked at the door and kicked again, and at last one of the lower panels began to split.

‘Harry, for God's sake!' Amelia urged me.

I quickly looked over my shoulder. As I did so, I caught sight of my face in the mirror on the bedroom wall. I had seen Karen and Amelia smothered in Mr Rheiner's blood, but I hadn't realized that
my
face, too, had been turned into a scarlet and grisly mask. I shouted out loud in horror and surprise, and Amelia demanded, ‘What? What?'

‘Jesus,' I started to say. ‘I thought I was — ' But behind us the shadow was filling the room, darker and colder, looming over us like cruelty and menace made visible. I didn't have time to think. I had to kick.

I slammed my foot into the door again and again. The left-hand lower panel splintered and burst. Then I managed to kick out the centre rail. I could hear Karen screaming almost continuously, but there was nothing I could do but give the door two more kicks until it cracked into pieces.

‘
Out
!' I shouted, catching hold of Amelia's arm. Bloody-faced, dazed, Amelia stepped over the broken framework and scrambled into the corridor.

I turned round to help Karen. But Karen had suddenly stopped screaming. She was standing with her arms by her sides, blood-smeared and bedraggled and rigid, staring at
me with a peculiar expression — not so much an expression of alarm, but something much more frightening — an expression of
hopelessness
, as if she had already given up.

‘
Karen
? I said.

The shadow was all around her. It seemed to pass across her face like a cloud passing over the sun. I looked up at it, swallowing in fear, and I swear I could see the shape of a huge distorted
head
, nodding slightly, as if it were too heavy and over-calcified for its owner to carry. I heard a low groaning sound, too, a vibration so low that it made my teeth buzz.

‘Karen, are you okay?'

Karen didn't answer. I wasn't sure if she could hear me or not.

‘Karen, all you have to do is walk towards me. One step at a time.'

Beside the bed, Mr Rheiner's bloodied torso rolled without warning, and disappeared into the empty hole. There was a slight flicker of light that reminded me of summer lightning out on the plains. Mr Rheiner's scalp slithered into the hole, too, like an obedient rat, leaving a glistening maroon trail. Then part of his stomach twitched after it, some terrible scarlet part that I couldn't even identify. Then his artificial leg. Another slight flicker of light.

Karen stood beneath the shadow and her eyes were wide.

‘Karen,' I said, reaching out my hand. ‘Just take it real easy, everything's going to be fine.'

Still she said nothing. I didn't even know whether she could see me or not. Her eyes didn't appear to be properly focused.

‘Karen, I want you to take hold of my hand. Everything's fine. It's only a shadow, right? It's nothing. If it has any power to hurt you, that power comes from
you
, from inside your own head.' I tapped my forehead, in case she didn't understand. ‘All you have to do is say, “It can't hurt me, it's
only a shadow,” and then take hold of my hand.'

Karen's eyes turned glazed and dreamy. One second she had been screaming-hysterical. Now she looked as if she were high on magic mushrooms. Slow, strange, otherworldly.

‘
You took her away from me before
…' she whispered. ‘
This time you will not be so lucky
.'

‘What?' I said. ‘What are you talking about? Karen — come on!' I reached out and tried to snatch her hand from her side.

But the hand I touched wasn't Karen's hand. It surely didn't feel like Karen's hand. It felt cold and dry and wrinkled, like a man's hand, a man with rings and beads around his fingers. I felt something else, too. The spidery tickling of something hairy that must have been invisibly dangling round this man's wrist.

I jerked my hand away and stared at Karen, bewildered.

‘
You can do nothing, white devil — nothing at all. You have no power over me now. I have learned my warcraft well
.'

‘Harry!' called Amelia, from the corridor outside. ‘Are you all right in there? Where's Karen?'

‘Just wait up!' I called back. ‘Please, Amelia — stay where you are! I'll be out in a minute!'

I tried to sound confident. I tried to sound as if I was in control. But in actual fact my heart was thumping slowly and painfully, and my mouth was filled with the sharp penny-dreadful taste of fear.

Karen said,'
Once I travelled like the shadow of the eagle over many thousands of moons to reclaim what truly belonged to my people
.' Her voice was extraordinary, as if five or six people were all speaking at once, in chorus. Her face was still veiled in shadow. ‘
I was reborn, and I sought my just revenge. But I did not understand how much you had changed our world. I did not understand that you had destroyed not only our lodges and our hunting-grounds, but our sacred places, too. The lakes and rivers
in which our water-spirits once thrived are now as dead as your souls. The air in which our wind-spirits once flew is poisoned as your hearts are poisoned. Even the grasses and the trees have been suffocated, like unwanted children
.'

Karen paused, and then she said, ‘
In such a world, I had no power. So I called on more of my kind; and more of my spirits; but still we had no power. You had done more than murder my people; you had murdered a cosmos. You had murdered spirits which will never walk this earth again — fragile spirits, subtle spirits — spirits which can tell a hunter where a deer is concealed, or how a stream will flow. You had murdered spirits of lightning and rain
.

‘
The sadness is that you destroyed all of these things before you ever had a chance to encounter them. You laid waste an entire world — and you were not even aware that it was there
.'

I looked Karen directly in the eyes. Her pupils were darkly dilated, and I knew that he was there. He was using her to speak in the way that he had used her to speak before. Those without substance have to speak through those who have.

‘Misquamacus,' I said, my voice shaking with emotion and rage. ‘Misquamacus the greatest of all Algonquin wonder-workers. Misquamacus to whom time and space mean absolutely zilch. Misquamacus who kills innocent people without any guilt whatsoever; and who hides himself like a jackrabbit in the souls of children and defenceless women.'

Karen's eyes flared. ‘
Do you want me to take this woman's scalp, right in front of your eyes
?'

‘Are you brave enough?' I challenged him. Thinking — please God, don't let him be brave enough. Please God, make him proud and arrogant, rather than cruel.

And please God, shoehorn him out of her, would You, please, and then connect him up to all of the lightning-bolts in heaven above, and cremate him for good and all.

‘Harry!' called Amelia, in high anxiety. ‘What's happening?'

I held out my hand yet again. ‘Misquamacus, this woman has no quarrel with you. None of us do. Please, let her go.'

Karen raised both hands, and covered her face so that only her eyes looked out. ‘
I have need of her. She was once my host and my protector. She will be so again. She will speak for me; and she will be my hostage, too, until my work among the shadows is all done, and the sacred lands are sacred again, and my people can ride in the wind
.'

‘
Misquamacus
!' I shouted at him. ‘You can't take Karen, not again! It'll kill her!'

‘
When you speak of one woman's death, think of Sand Creek. Think of Wounded Knee
.'

‘Don't take her, please,' I begged him. Thinking: come on, God, come on, God. For Christ's sake, come on, God. Lightning-bolts, earthquakes, anything!' Listen — don't take her, take me.' Shades of Father Karras!

But Misquamacus had lived and died and travelled through long shadowy centuries to avenge and protect his people. He had suffered agonies of body and agonies of spirit. Even if there was anything left in him that was still human, there was nothing left in him that was at all forgiving. Not towards the white devils, who sat in automobiles all across his hunting-grounds, polluting the air so that the wind-spirits fell out of the sky like suffocated doves. Not towards the white devils, who had poisoned the very last ghost in his sacred lakes, and turned water into his enemy rather than his friend.

I almost wished I could sympathize with him. But I was me and he was him, and tepees and buffalo-hunting were a little behind the times as far as world economics went. We couldn't fight the Japanese electronics industry with wind-spirits and ethnic sentiment and a few hundred Navajo blankets.

Karen kept her hands over her face. Her eyes glittered like other eyes. ‘
I have learned much, white devil. Now it is your turn to learn. You have your Day of Judgment — we have ours. Soon you will discover what it
is
like to live, as we have, in the Great
Outside, without light or hope
.'

‘Misquamacus, let her go.'

I tried to grab her. I caught the sleeve of her blouse. But then the shadow collapsed on top of me like five sackfuls of coal, and I was buried in blackness. I heard Karen cry out. Not so much a scream, but a heart-rending cry for help.
Not again, not again, not that hideous nightmare again
!

I managed to raise my head just in time to see the shadow funneling back into the empty hole in the floor, and Karen sliding in with it.

‘
Karen
!' I snatched her hand, and for a long, strained moment I managed to keep a tenuous, three-fingered hold on her. ‘
Karen, fight back
!'

I tried to adjust my grip, get a better hold. Karen was being dragged away from me with almost irresistible force, as if she were being sucked into a giant vacuum-cleaner. She wasn't crying; she wasn't screaming. She was concentrating every last ounce of strength on holding onto my hand.