Burial (65 page)

‘But you finished off Doctor Hambone … you pulled the plug on Aktunowihio … what's happening?'

Papago Joe lifted his head, and listened. I could hear sirens, and helicopters flackering overhead, and the slow, chunky sound of falling masonry. But I heard something else, too. A deep-chested rumble; a low seismic reverberation through the brown Manhattan bedrock. And then lightning cracking; and glass breaking; and people screaming.

‘The last stand,' said Papago Joe.

‘The last stand? What do you mean?'

‘The last stand — just like Custer's Last Stand. And he's going to bring down everything he can!'

‘Listen,' I said. ‘Let me call Amelia … we need those forks right now.'

I don't know what made me think of that. Well, yes I do. It was Martin, inside of my mind, telling me what to do.

We hurried down the stairs, and I vaulted the hotel desk and found the phone. While Papago Joe and E.C. Dude waited impatiently, I punched out Amelia's number. After ten attempts, I finally got through.

‘Just give me one second!' I told Papago Joe.

We pushed open the doors and clattered down into the street. The destruction was much, much worse than I could have imagined. It had recently been raining, and the streets were heaped with wet rubble and wrecked automobiles and hotdog stands and stalls and rubbish and overturned trucks. We had to climb over a mountain of bricks to reach Washington Square, and the square itself looked like Berlin, after World War Two. Strewn with masonry, strewn with twisted ironwork, strewn with hideously broken and torn-apart bodies.

There were no vehicles anywhere around, apart from a firetruck which screamed uptown on Madison, its red lights flashing. But the ground continued to rumble and shake, and chunks of stonework dropped from buildings all around us, and shattered in the roadway, and so many windows fell that their jingling sounded like Christmas.

By the time we reached 29th Street and Fifth Avenue, we were gasping and sweaty and exhausted. But the quaking in the ground was so severe now that we knew we must be reaching the epicentre. The tarmac cracked open and thunderous showers of abandoned automobiles dropped into the subways, and the sewers, followed by dusty avalanches of bricks.

Fifth Avenue was deep in darkness, apart from the nervous twitching of lightning, over to the west. The three of us walked along the sidewalk side by side, like three gun-slingers in
High Noon
.

‘He's here,' said Papago Joe, packing away his eagle-sticks at last. ‘I thought he'd be here.'

As we approached the grey, megalithic spire of the Empire State Building, we saw him standing on the sidewalk. Standing two or three inches
above
the sidewalk, hovering in supernatural rage. It was Misquamacus, the greatest of all the Indian wonder-workers, his arms folded, his eyes glistening with fury, his headdress swarming with grave-beetles. The sidewalk literally shook beneath his feet, and we could hear windows cracking all the way up the building.

We approached him, and stood in front of him, and the three of us were not afraid, I can say that for certain; because we had died and come to life again; and our friends had died, and we had met them again. In fact, we had brought them with us, inside us, as witnesses to this final confrontation.

We knew now what Misquamacus had always known — that death is never the end, but just a different way of living. He had always drawn his power from our fear of him; and from our fear of being killed. But tonight was different.

He stared at us, and said, ‘You deceived the black man, didn't you?'

‘That's right,' said Papago Joe. ‘We deceived the black man.'

Misquamacus shook his head, and bugs rained from his
headdress onto the concrete. ‘You … Joseph … and you who hides inside Joseph … Singing Rock … I know you for what you are … rats and cowards and running-dogs, white men's pets.'

‘No,' said Papago Joe. ‘We're nobody's rats, and nobody's cowards, and nobody's pets. Tomorrow belongs to us, you'll see … the way it once belonged to you. But tearing down all of these cities and slaughtering all of these people … that isn't the way to do it. The old days are gone, Misquamacus. Nobody wants to live that way any more. You should let it stay what it always was …just one moment, do you understand me? Just one quick moment in the hand of time.'

‘I saw the buffalo running,' said Misquamacus, with a sweep of his hand. His arm remained outstretched; his eyes focused on something long ago and far away; and that was the only time that I ever felt sorry for him.

Papago Joe approached him, one cautious step at a time. ‘It's all over, Misquamacus. It's finished. The Great Outside is waiting for you. Dark, and peaceful, and running with buffalo.'

He stepped nearer and nearer, one hand lifted.

‘It's finished, Misquamacus. Can't you see? The days of magic are gone for good.'

It was a plea for forgetfulness, even if it wasn't a plea for forgiveness. The buffalo were dead; the tepees had all been struck; the lodge-fires had long since burned down to ashes.

For one tense, stretched-out moment, I nearly believed that Misquamacus was going to surrender. But then he stretched his mouth wide, and let out a deafening roar, and as he did so the sidewalk suddenly split open, right beneath our feet. Huge lumps of concrete were thrown up into the air, and thundered all around us. Utility pipes and electricity cables were ripped out of the soil and flung haywire, as if Manhattan had been gutted.

Papago Joe fell back, and was buried up to his waist in
sand and shattered concrete. As more sand sifted down, he lifted up his hand to shield his face.

‘Joe!' I shouted, and ran toward him. But he turned and screamed at me, ‘
No, Harry! Save yourself! Look
!'

With a deafening rumble, a dark shape rose out of the hole that had been blown in the sidewalk. First, a waving tentacle of black smoke, then another. Then something heaved itself out of the sidewalk, something huge and black
ye Bigness of many Ground-Hogs
.

‘Oh, shit,' said E.C. Dude, and dropped to his raggedy knees.

The black shape grew larger and larger, until it seemed to blot out even the night. It was difficult to see what it was really like, but I could make out glistening tentacles that coiled around and around like snakes, and paler parts that could have been faces. It smelled of cremation fires, and blood, and the nauseating sweetness of death.

Finally, out of the hole, I saw hands grasping at the sidewalk, disembodied hands. The whole hideous creature, smoke and tentacles and all, was supported by a maimed and creeping mat of human beings. They jerked and moaned and shuddered as they tried to heave the creature into the living world, so that its grisly serpentine bulk swayed unevenly from side to side, like an emperor being carried in a palanquin by lepers.

Many of the humans were already dead: summoned back to heaven or hell by the demise of Doctor Hambone. Their arms dragged brokenly on the street, and their intestines hung in putrefying loops, so that Aktunowihio left behind him a grisly glistening trail of rotting flesh and reeking fluids.

God knows how powerful he would have been if all of Doctor Hambone's souls had still been able to support him. There must have been thousands of arms and legs underneath him; thousands of vengeful souls.

‘E.C.!'I yelled.

‘For God's sake! The shadow-bottle!'

E.C. frantically looked around. ‘There's no bottles, Harry! There's no bottles!'

Papago Joe shouted in terror. Then he started screaming.

I saw plenty of smashed bottles, littered across Fifth Avenue. But then the lightning flickered again, and I glimpsed a ketchup bottle, standing on the table of a hamburger bar opposite us.

‘There!' I shouted.

E.C. Dude loped across the street. The hamburger bar was locked. I heard him rattling the doorhandles.

‘Oh, fuck this,' I heard him say; and he picked up a massive chunk of concrete, and hurled it through the plate-glass window. He came loping back, furiously shaking ketchup out of the bottle as he ran.

But for Papago Joe it was too late. Misquamacus wanted Papago Joe, the same way that he had wanted Singing Rock. They were traitors, as far as Misquamacus was concerned, betraying the Red man, betraying his gods, betraying his heritage. Misquamacus shrieked out ‘
Nepauz-had! Nepauz-had
!' and a spindly black twitching claw came out of the smoke and dug its nails into Papago Joe's face.

‘No!' I shouted. I turned in desperation to E.C. Dude; but E.C. Dude was still wildly shaking out ketchup.

With sickening elegance, the claw probed into Papago Joe's nostrils. I saw the black chitinous skin disappearing into his nose. I saw his eyes go bright with pain and panic.

There was a frantically optimistic moment when I thought I might have saved him. But then the claw dragged itself upward, and the whole of his face was ripped off, with a sound like tearing linen, and Papago Joe was screaming out of a bloody eyeless skull.

The claw dropped Papago Joe's face like a bloody latex mask, and then relentlessly came back again, and probed down into his screaming mouth. I saw yard after jointed
yard of insect-like claw disappearing down Papago Joe's throat, and it was then that I turned around and sicked up bile and drink and badly-chewed breakfast.

But now E.C. Dude dodged around me, and he was holding up the empty ketchup bottle. He was shouting out something, but I couldn't understand what it was. He shouted again and again. ‘
U'lwau! U'lwau! Almaui! Almena
!'

The black cloud shuddered a little, and boiled, and beneath it, I saw the twisted mass of human limbs rippling like centipedes' legs.

In a last vicious gesture, it dragged its claw out of Papago Joe's throat, bringing out bulging lungs and bloodied heart and sofdy-collapsing stomach and everything else, heaps of intestines, liver and pancreas and kidneys, all slithering onto the sand and grit, and pulsing with Papago Joe's last few seconds of life.

But E.C. Dude continued to stalk it without any apparent fear, waving that ketchup bottle at it and shouting, ‘Almaui! Almaui!'

‘E.C.!' I shouted. ‘For God's sake be careful!'

He ducked and weaved nearer; but as he did so, three or four of those shadowy tentacles snaked swiftly toward him, and poured around his ankles. He tried to kick himself free, but one of them twined itself around his left leg, and slid up into his open shirt.

‘Almaui!' he cried out. ‘Almaui!'

‘E.C.!' I screamed at him. I remembered what happened to old man Rheiner, back at the Belford Hotel, and I was cold with panic. ‘Get yourself out of there! E.C.!'

E.C. was still trying to catch some of Aktunowihio's smoky substance in his bottle; but now another tentacle had wound around him, and was dragging the shirt from his back. He struggled and thrashed, but I saw blood spraying from his fingertips, and I could see that the tentacles were tearing at his skin.

I looked around, frantically trying to find some kind of weapon. I saw a scaffolding-pole, but it was partly wedged under a wrecked automobile, and I couldn't lift it.

It was then, however, that I saw a pale flickering above Papago Joe's grisly ripped-apart body. I stared at it more intently, and I realized that it was the faint faltering outline of Singing Rock.

A voice inside of my head — Martin Vaizey's voice — said, ‘
Sun-powder … he's telling you to use the sun-powder. Aktunowihio is a thing of shadow … he hates the light
.'

Lying scattered on the sidewalk next to Papago Joe's bloody hand were all of his eagle-sticks and death-powders and flasks and bones. I turned back to E.C. Dude and he was struggling and yelling, almost completely entangled in shadow-tentacles.

‘Get the fuck off me, you goddamned octopus! Almaui! Almaui!'

I scrabbled around until I found the small rawhide pouch filled with sun-powder. I wrenched open the hempen string that was tied around its neck. Inside was a handful of blueish-looking salt, and that was all.

I turned back to the flickering outline of Singing Rock. ‘What do I do with it?' I asked, in panic.

‘
Throw
…'I thought I heard him whisper, but I couldn't have been sure. All the same, I rushed up to E.C. Dude and threw the powder at the darkest part of Aktunowihio's boiling body.

Instantly, there was a spitting, crackling sound, and I was totally dazzled by a brilliant white light.

It formed an incandescent, totem-like shape, but it was so bright that it was impossible to look at it directly. It kept on popping and spitting, like a Fourth of July firework crammed with magnesium, and with every second it burned it seemed to flare brighter.

Aktunowihio made a noise that was unlike anything I had
ever heard before — or ever want to hear again. It was an insect-like screeching, as if it had been torn out of a throat that was lined with bristly black hairs. The shadowy tentacles recoiled from the light, and slithered away, running back down E.C. Dude's legs and retreating from his feet.

As they did so, I saw murky flashes of light within Aktunowihio's bulk. I saw things that looked like red, glowering eyes; and I saw something that looked like a humped, grotesque buffalo. For a moment, as the sun-powder flared its last flare, I saw the Shadow Buffalo more clearly; and I don't want to say what it looked like, because I don't want to remember what it looked like. It was everything that hides in every shadow. It was everything that makes the night terrifying.

Misquamacus had frightened me many times; but he had never shaken me right down to the roots of my sanity, the way that the Shadow Buffalo did.

It was black and it writhed and the only way that you could look at it was through the chinks of your fingers, so that only your eyes looked out.

E.C. Dude circled and backed away. But then he saw one shrinking tentacle, close to his feet, and he stamped on it with his boot-heel, and caught it. He ducked right down with his ketchup bottle, and prodded the tip of the tentacle until it coiled itself around the neck of the bottle, and then probed inside.