Burial

by Graham Masterton

  Papago Joe made a dryly amused face. ‘Remember that you now possess all of Martin Vaizey’s sensitivities, apart from your own.’

  ‘You felt it, too?’

  ‘Very faintly. I’m not as sensitive as Martin Vaizey. But even if I couldn’t feel it very clearly, I know exactly what it is. It’s a voodoo charm. It’s a way of passing magical powers from one person to another, so if a witch-doctor was dying he could give the charm to his son or his friend or whoever and, as soon as they put it on, that person would immediately inherit all of his greatest strengths. Presumably that’s why this Jonas DuPaul gave it to Wanda — so that she would inherit his magical strength, and be able to survive in the Great Outside.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’ I said.

  ‘Search me,’ said Papago Joe. ‘Maybe he simply took a shine to her. Whatever the reason, this is real genuine voodoo.’

  ‘Voodoo, hunh?’ I asked him. ‘I never had anything to do with voodoo. I saw The Evil Dead on late-night TV. I guess I thought that I’d be safe enough if I stayed away from shopping-malls.’

  ‘I said real voodoo,’ said Papago Joe. He picked up the pendant again, and turned it over and over. ‘Jonas DuPaul was one of the most feared of all voodoo witch-doctors ever. I mean he still enjoys a reputation very much like the reputation that Misquamacus enjoys amongst native Americans. In New Orleans, mothers still scare their kids by warning them that Jonas DuPaul will come get them, if they misbehave. Jonas DuPaul is supposed to have teeth that are filed to a point, and like crunching up new-born babies’ heads.’

  Wanda said, ‘That’s not true. I saw Jonas DuPaul’s teeth and he has regular teeth. They’re all yellow but they’re not pointed.’

  ‘Wait a minute …’ I said. ‘Jonas DuPaul … that name rings a bell for some reason.’

  I racked my brains; and then I suddenly remembered Dr Snow, quoting from Bishop Whipple’s diary. ‘Later Colonel Sibley also recruited a negro man from somewhere in Louisiana. This person was always dressed as if for the opera … sometimes he called himself Sawtooth and sometimes he called himself Jonas DuPaul; but most of the time he referred to himself as Doctor Hambone … Colonel Sibley said that he could make the dead speak, and took him to question all of the corpses of murdered settlers, in order that they could identify their assailants’.

  ‘Doctor Hambone,’ I said. ‘That’s who it was. He was a voodoo witch-doctor brought in to help the US Cavalry fight against Indian magic. I can’t remember when it was, eigh-teen-hundred-fifty-something.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Papago Joe. ‘Hey, you know more about this than I gave you credit for. The only puzzle is, where does Doctor Hambone fit into all of this Indian magic? Or is he just stalking around, scavenging, collecting up the dead, the way he was always supposed to — finding new bodies for his army of zombies?’

  ‘When I first saw him, he said he was just passing,’ put in Wanda.

  ‘Did he say why he was giving you the amulet, in particular?’

  ‘No, except that I was praying so hard; and he thought that it was good to have so much faith. The way he talked to me, I think he just felt sorry for me.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I guess that even the scariest people can have their soft side.’ I glanced across at Papago Joe. ‘If we’re going to Chicago, we’d better think about making a move, hunh, kemo sabay?’

  But Papago Joe was still frowning. ‘This has thrown me off,’ he said. ‘What the hell is a voodoo witch-doctor doing here, now, in the middle of all this? I mean, he might have been recruited to fight against Indian magic in the past, but he doesn’t seem to be fighting against it now. I mean, what’s his angle?’

  I tried to remember what else Dr Snow had told us about Doctor Hambone. ‘There was some story of him being captured by the Santee, and how some Santee shaman showed him this kind of dream of the future, when all the white settlers would be killed by shadows.’

  ‘I see. Is that all?’

  ‘I guess so. After he was rescued, Doctor Hambone split for New Orleans, as far as anybody knew, and that was the last that anybody saw of him.’

  Papago Joe said, ‘Okay, I guess we’d think of splitting, too. What are we going to do with young Wanda here?’

  ‘Do you have any relatives you could go to?’ I asked her.

  ‘I guess my uncle and aunt in Denver.’

  ‘Okay, then …’ said Papago Joe, sorting out his eagle-sticks. ‘If you don’t mind the fastest trip of your life, we can take you there.’

  I took hold of Wanda’s hand and squeezed it tight. ‘Believe me, this is just as much fun as a roller-coaster.’

  But the second I squeezed her hand, I recoiled. It didn’t feel like a girl’s hand at all. It was a man’s hand, calloused and muscular. I looked down at her in shock and saw that she didn’t look like Wanda at all. Her face was grey and her scalp was bloody, and she wore a bloodied, drooping mustache.

  ‘Daniel McIntosh, sir, first-lieutenant, Company G, Seventh Cavalry.’

  ‘What?’ I shuddered. ‘What do you want?’

  Papago Joe looked across at me in bewilderment. Obviously, he couldn’t see the face that I could see. ‘Harry?’ he said. Then — more concerned — ‘Harry!’

  ‘This is my great-great-granddaughter, sir. The negro saved her because of me. I saw the negro at the Greasy Grass River, sir. He was there, with Gall first and then with Crazy Horse, I saw him with my own eyes. When we were running, and the Sioux were catching us and scalping us and cutting off our privates, he said, enough, but Crazy Horse wouldn’t listen. The negro hates white men, sir, but he felt sorry for the men who died at the Greasy Grass River, he felt sorry for the way they died. That’s why he saved my great-great-granddaughter, sir, and my great-great-grandson, too.’

  I opened my mouth, hoping to ask Daniel McIntosh a question, but his face had faded before I could speak. In one dissolving moment, I was back to holding Wanda’s hand again, and looking at her face, instead of that bloody horror who had died at the Little Big Horn.

  ‘Did you feel that?’ I asked her. ‘Were you aware of what happened to you then?’

  She rubbed her upper lip as if she half-expected to find that she still had a moustache. Then she looked up at me, bright-eyed. ‘I felt it. I really felt it! And Joey’s safe, isn’t he? I know it. I don’t know how. But he’s safe, isn’t he? He’s truly safe?’

  Papago Joe took hold of Wanda’s other hand. ‘Denver?’

  ‘Denver,’ I nodded. ‘Then Bismarck.’

  ‘Bismarck?’

  ‘We’re going to get ourselves out of this death-hallucination and visit the Bismarck Tribune. There’s some photographs we have to find. And we have to find them now.’

  Eighteen

  I never knew that when you woke up from the dead, you had a hangover. But by the time we reached the offices of the Bismarck Tribune on that warm, still afternoon, the membranes of my brain were throbbing and my mouth felt like a gopher had slept in it.

  There isn’t much you can say about Bismarck except that it’s there, in the middle of North Dakota, on the Missouri River, on the line between Mountain and Central Time, a collection of warehouses and insurance buildings and featureless streets. Rooftops, hardware stores, telephone lines and hamburger restaurants with rows of dusty pickups parked outside. If there hadn’t been a river and a railroad, Bismarck wouldn’t have been there at all — there would have been nothing but rustling grasslands, and distant horizons, and a haze of summer heat.

  Papago Joe and I had risen from the dry soil only a half-mile out of town, like two resurrected corpses. A buck rabbit had seen us and bounded away, zig-zagging through the grass in terror but, fortunately for us, he was our only witness.

  We brushed ourselves off and squinted around. The bright sunlight was explosive after the blackness of the Great Outside and the heat was almost unbearable. We could see downtown Bismarck and the sparkling curve of the Missouri, and the skyline of Mandan beyond. We started to walk.
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  We had left Wanda in Denver, as near to her uncle and aunt’s house as possible. We could only enter or leave the Great Outside through the nexuses created by spilled Indian blood, but there were plenty in Denver and it hadn’t been too difficult to locate one close to the Mountain View district where Wanda’s uncle and aunt lived.

  Wanda stood in the darkened grass for a moment and looked around, and then said, Thank you. I hope I see you again some day.’

  ‘We do, too,’ I told her.

  Without a word, she took off the voodoo amulet and handed it to Papago Joe. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Maybe this will help to keep you safe.’

  Papago Joe took it in his hand, although I noticed that he didn’t hang it around his neck. Then he shook Wanda’s hand, and I kissed her; and she slipped down through the grass as if she were diving into a rushy, overgrown lake. I saw her hands uplifted for the briefest of moments, and then she was gone.

  ‘Nice girl,’ I remarked, and Papago Joe nodded.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wear that amulet?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. One of Wanda’s greatest strengths was her youthfulness. If I put this amulet on now, that’s what I’m in danger of inheriting from her.’

  ‘What’s wrong with being youthful?’

  ‘Harry, I may regret growing old, but I have no burning desire to be fourteen again, thank you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, although I wasn’t at all sure that I understood what he was trying to tell me.

  It was leaving the Great Outside near Bismarck that caused Papago Joe some problems. We had walked backwards and forwards underneath the city, searching for a way out. But at last his eagle-sticks had twitched like dowsers’ rods at the place where three Indian women, straggling behind their tribe, had been overtaken, raped and shot by US Cavalry scouts.

  Their blood had been spilled over an area just wide enough for Papago Joe and I to force our way up through the surface and into the sunlight.

  Saying goodbye to Singing Rock and Martin Vaizey had been the strangest experience. I felt as if my whole insides had taken a step back from the rest of me; and when I turned around in the darkness, Martin had been standing there, sad, smiling, pale as ash; and Singing Rock had been standing next to Papago Joe.

  ‘We’ll catch you guys later,’ was all that I could think of to say.

  Singing Rock had raised his hand in the Sioux sign that means ‘my heart was empty when you came, but now it is full to overflowing.’

  My heart felt just the same way.

  The Tribune office was closed for lunch when we arrived, and the iron-haired woman behind the reception desk wouldn’t open the door for us for anything — not even when I pressed my hands together in mock-prayer, and then squashed my face against the glass and blew my mouth out, Bart Simpson-style.

  We went across the road to The Crossing Restaurant, and sat at a small corner table with a red checked cloth and ordered steaks and onion-rings and beer.

  Our waitress had bouffant black hair and scarlet lipstick and a beauty-spot on her upper lip with a black hair growing out of it. She kept winking at me and she gave me extra onion-rings, ‘On the house, honey, because you look like you could use them.’

  Papago Joe looked at me with those deep-set eyes, chewing. ‘You know something,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing so useful when you’re fighting a bloodthirsty wonder-worker as extra onion-rings, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I’ll be able to waste him just by breathing on him,’ I agreed.

  When the Tribune reopened, we found our way to the photograph archive, a stuffy little room lined wall-to-wall with grey filing-cabinets. A short bald man with jazzy braces directed us to the files for 1876.

  ‘We’re looking in particular for photographs that were taken at the battle of the Little Big Horn,’ I told the archivist.

  He blinked at me. He reminded me of Mickey Rooney back in his Andy Hardy days. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe that any photographs were taken at the battle of the Little Big Horn. If there were, I’ve never seen any. They would be famous, wouldn’t they? Actual photographs of the Little Big Horn, my goodness!’

  ‘The Tribune sent a reporter to the Little Big Horn along with General Custer. The reporter’s name was Mark Kellogg. I understand that Mark Kellogg was quite a photography buff, and took his own cameras with him. He took pictures at the Little Big Horn and even though Mark Kellogg was killed, the negatives survived.’

  ‘I never heard that story,’ said the archivist, shaking his head. ‘You can look if you like, but I’ve catalogued all of these photographs — especially the historical collection — and I’ve never seen any pictures from the Little Big Horn.’

  We searched through scores of large brown envelopes. We found photographs that had been taken by Mark Kellogg — even a portrait of General Custer by Mark Kellogg, lounging outside a tent with his Indian scout Bloody Knife and two mangy-looking mongrels. But after two hours we had to admit that there were no photographs of the Little Big Horn.

  The archivist came back. ‘There’s one thing you might try,’ he suggested, ‘and that’s the Kellogg family home. They still live in Bismarck, on Edwinton Avenue East. According to the special edition we printed back in 1876, Mark Kellogg was killed by the Sioux but he wasn’t mutilated, and his clothes and possessions were eventually returned to his mother and father.’

  ‘All right, thanks,’ we told him, wearily, and left the building.

  On our way to Edwinton Avenue East, we walked past a TV store. I stopped to comb my hair in my own reflection. But as I did so, I noticed news pictures of crumbling buildings and crushed automobiles and bodies being dragged along cluttered sidewalks.

  ‘Look —’ I told Papago Joe. ‘It’s happening again.’

  A passing old-timer paused for a moment to stand beside us and watch the news pictures, too.

  ‘New York,’ he remarked, and spat.

  ‘That’s New York?’ I asked him, in horror.

  He nodded. ‘Serve ‘em right for building so high and stooping so low.’

  Mrs Keitelman sat in her tapestry-covered armchair with the yellow blinds drawn, so that the afternoon sun wouldn’t fade the furnishings. The sitting room was crowded with hefty, ugly furniture, most of it darkly varnished oak, in the gargantuan style favored by Sears, Roebuck catalogues of years gone by. Next to me, on a pedestal table, a glass dome covered a bevy of stuffed songbirds, faded and moulting and dull-eyed; while just above a huge rolltop bureau the size of a Wurlitzer organ, a morose carp swam in a garishly-painted lake.

  Mrs Keitelman said, ‘We were always a family for keeping things, yes. My whole attic is crammed with clothes and books and toys and ornaments and goodness-alone knows what! But Mark—great-uncle Mark—well, his things were always our special pride. We even have his pocket telescope you know!’

  ‘It’s just the photographs we were interested in,’ I told her. ‘For the time being, anyway. I mean, we’d love to come back sometime, and look through the rest of the stuff.’

  She smiled. She was a well-preserved woman of seventy-five going on eighty. Her skin was very pale, almost transparent, and her hair was white and fastened with an Alice-band. She wore a loose-flowing cotton dress in hyacinth blue, which matched her eyes. For some reason I felt she looked exactly like the grandmother I had never known.

  ‘Well, I only saw those photographs once,’ she said. ‘They were supposed to have been brought back to Bismarck from the battlefield, along with poor Mark’s clothes, and his valise, and his pocket-watch, and all of those bits and pieces. They didn’t bring his body back. The paper said he wasn’t mutilated but my grandfather wrote in his diary that he probably was; the same as all the rest. That was why they didn’t send the body home.’

  ‘The photographs … are they prints or are they negatives?’ I asked Mrs Keitelman.

  ‘Oh, we have both. The original glass negatives were sent to the Tribune and they made three copies of each print — one for the paper, one f
or the Army and one as a record. But the paper never published any of the pictures — or any engravings based on the pictures, as they would have done in those days — and the Army said they had lost their copies, and in any case they didn’t believe that great-uncle Mark had really made a true record, or some such nonsense. There was even some suggestion that he might have faked them. But we still have a set of prints here, as well as all the negatives.’

  She left us alone for three or four minutes, while the clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the afternoon, and large cups of weak creamy coffee grew colder and colder beside us. I said, ‘I can’t believe that The Army actually refused to believe that Kellogg’s photographs were authentic.’

  Papago Joe tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You don’t expect anybody to believe what we’ve done, do you? Sniffed up death-powder, visited the Happy Hunting Ground? They’d send us straight to the funny farm.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘I still can’t believe how people can be so sceptical about spirits when they’re there … right in front of our noses. Talking to us, guiding us. Mingling with us, you know, just like any crowd of people. The only difference is that some of us are dead and some of us are still alive.’

  Papago Joe grunted in amusement He sat back and crossed his legs, and exposed an expanse of bare leg and a red-checked sock and a worn-down cowboy boot. ‘I never thought I’d ever hear a white man say that.’

  ‘And I never thought I’d ever see a native American in Argyle socks.’

  Mrs Keitelman came back with a photograph in a brass frame and a large, well-worn envelope. First of all she showed us the photograph. It showed a podgy, serious-faced young man with his hair parted in the middle and a wing collar.

  ‘That’s poor great-uncle Mark, taken at Fort Yates, Dakota Territory, on September 17, 1875, the year before he was killed at the Little Big Horn. Fort Yates is where they buried Sitting Bull, you know. You can still see his grave today.’

  She brought over a small card-table, set it down in front of us, and unfolded its green baize top. Then she carefully opened up the envelope and drew out six large sepia photographs, which she laid out in two rows of three.