As if he could read the president’s thoughts, Misquamacus whispered, “I exist only in your darkness, my friend. You see me because I want you to see me. But you can see nothing else, and nobody can see what you see.”
“I want you to go away,” the president told him, turning his face away.
“Don’t you want us to call Dr. Henry?” asked Kaminsky.
“No, Kaminsky, I don’t. But I wasn’t talking to you.”
Johnson said, “Maybe we should call Dr. Cronin, too. With all due respect, sir, we don’t want you to suffer some kind of a breakdown.”
“I am not suffering from any kind of breakdown. I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. Now why don’t you leave me alone for a while? Thank you.”
There was another long pause, as if Johnson and Kaminsky were conferring with each other by pulling faces and making gestures.
“You deaf?” snapped the president. “I could have been suffering some kind of delusion or something, but now I’m okay. So leave me alone. And I don’t want to see any doctors. Comprendo?”
“Got it,” said Kaminsky. “But please don’t hesitate to call us if there’s anything else you need, Mr. President, sir.”
They left the room. The president remained where he was, sitting on the edge of his bed in his blue-and-white-striped pajamas. He looked up at Misquamacus and said, “You’re not a delusion, are you? You’re real. At least you’d better be real, or else I’m a loony.”
He could see Misquamacus in even sharper detail now, even though he was still a negative image. He could clearly see his face, even though his skin appeared black and his eye sockets appeared white, with white crow’s-feet around them. He could see the necklaces around his neck, and the bracelets around his wrists. He could see the black-and-white feathers hanging from his buffalo-horn headdress, and the black skulls of animals, too.
Misquamacus whispered, “The day is coming very soon for the final reckoning. Many thousands of your people have been blinded and they will be defenseless when we start to slaughter them, just as our people were defenseless all those years ago when you came from the east and started to slaughter us.”
“Please,” said the president. “I’m asking you not to do this. I can make your people an offer.”
“An offer? What manner of offer?”
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about this. For beginners, I can set up a federal commission to return some of the land your people lost. Then I can arrange for millions more dollars in federal and state funding for Native American education, and hospitals, and recreational facilities.”
Misquamacus let out a hiss of amusement, like a snake. “You think that you can bribe us with our own forests? You think that you can teach us our own legends, and our own religion, and for that we should be grateful? You think that you can treat us with your drugs and your chemicals instead of the sacred healing magic that we learned from the gods?”
He swept his skull-topped medicine stick from side to side to show his contempt. “This is our land, and your people stole it from us with lies and with cruelty and broken promises. We will take it back from you by fighting again all of those battles in which you defeated us. But this time you will be the losers. This time it will be your blood that soaks the ground at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, and up in the Infernal Caverns.
“We will start with Memory Valley, where you massacred so many Hupa, and then we will make our way eastward, turning back time, battle after battle, and we will reclaim every plateau and every forest and every lake that you stole from us.”
The president lowered his head. “I think I’m going mad," he said. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
Misquamacus came up close to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His fingers were so cold that the president gave an involuntary shiver.
“Tell your people that their time of supremacy is over," Misquamacus whispered. “Tell them, and I will spare as many as I can.”
“I can’t,” said the president. “This country was founded on freedom. Religious freedom. Political freedom. Maybe racial freedom came later than it should have, but now we have that, too.”
“You talk of freedom?” said Misquamacus. “What freedom did you grant to the Apaches you murdered at Salt River Canyon and Turret Butte? What freedom did you give to Chief Joseph when you pursued his entire community of Nez Percé for nearly two thousand miles? Where was your freedom when Dull Knife’s people escaped from Fort Robinson, and your soldiers went after them, and killed them—men, women, and little children? I spit on your freedom, and I will spit on your grave.”
“Well, if you really think that you can beat us, that’ll be your privilege,” said the president. “But I’m still not going to tell my people to give in to you. Americans—and that’s us—we never give in.”
Misquamacus lifted up his medicine stick and tapped it against the president’s forehead. “There will be much blood, then. And much darkness. And it will all be on your head.”
The president said nothing. In his heart, he found it impossible to believe that this was really happening, in spite of all the airplane crashes and the highway pileups and the hundreds of people who had drowned or fallen off buildings or stepped blindly into traffic.
Misquamacus said, “I will grant you one favor. I will restore your sight to you so you can witness the destruction of your society and the scattering of your people, just as I did, and Chief Joseph did, and Tecumseh and his brother Tensk-watawa, and Crazy Horse, and all of my brothers and sisters, and all of our children, too.”
He held out his right hand and said, “Close your eyes, my friend.”
The president hesitated, but then he did what he was told. Misquamacus touched him with a cold fingertip on each eyelid and said, “Wàbi, wàbi”
The president opened his eyes. Gradually the negative image of Misquamacus began to grow darker, until he was absorbed into the overwhelming blackness altogether and disappeared. There was a long moment when the president thought that Misquamacus must have been deceiving him, and that he was going to stay perm anently blind. But after a while, he realized that he could see a faint misty light, and then the blurry rectangle of a window, and a red armchair, and a bureau with a large vase of orange roses on it.
He looked around him. Now he could see the end of his bed and the doors of a pale oak closet, and a large framed print of the seashore with yachts.
His heart thumped with exhilaration. He blinked, and he blinked again, and with every blink his vision became clearer. He was just about to call out for Johnson and Kaminsky when he became aware that there was somebody standing close behind him. He turned and shouted out, “Ah!” in surprise.
There was an Indian there, in an old-fashioned frock coat, with leggings underneath. He had gray shoulder-length hair and a faded red bandanna decorated with animals’ claws. His face looked like crumpled brown leather, and it was obvious from the way that his lower lip protruded that he had no teeth.
Around his neck he was wearing at least seven necklaces, all made of bones and beads and painted clay.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the president demanded. “You’re not Marcus.”
The elderly Indian gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “You speak of Misquamacus, the One Who Went and Came Back.”
“That’s right. But who the hell are you?”
“I am Graywolf, but I am also Misquamacus. Look into my eyes. The memory of Misquamacus lives inside me.”
The president stood up. “Whoever you are, old man, I think you need to get out of here. Kaminsky! Johnson! Come in here, will you?”
Johnson and Kaminsky came into the room. Johnson was eating a bologna sandwich, but his mouth dropped open when he saw Graywolf standing right next to the president. Kaminsky immediately tugged out his gun.
“You want to tell me how this clown managed to get in here?” asked the president.
“You can see him?”
“I can damn well see him, all right. I
just got my sight back.”
“You mean, just like that?”
“That’s right. Just like that. And that’s when I saw—” He waved at Graywolf dismissively. “Get him out of here, will you? And lock him up. And have Gene Schneider interrogate him. And the FBI, too. I want to know how he managed to get past you two hotshots without you seeing him. And I urgently want to know what he knows about this blindness.”
Kaminsky said, “We should call in your doctors, too, Mr. President. Have you checked over.”
“Let’s leave that till later. I want you to deal with this guy first. You can call Doug Latterby, though. And John Rostoff. And General McNamara, too. I want them all here in twenty minutes flat. And call Mrs. Perry, as well.”
“That could be a problem, sir.”
The president had opened the closet and was taking out a clean white T-shirt and shorts. “Why? Where is she?”
“Not just the First Lady, sir. All of them. All of our communications are out. Telephones, cell phones, Internet. TV and radio are all out, too.”
Graywolf said quietly but very clearly, “To defeat your enemy, first you must take away his eyes, and then his ears.”
“Get him out of here!” snapped the president.
Kaminsky went up to Graywolf and tried to take hold of his arm, but as he did so Graywolf gave a sideways jerk of his head and Kaminsky shouted out, “Jesus! My wrist!”
Johnson tossed aside the crust of his sandwich and pulled out his gun, too, holding it with both hands and aiming it at Graywolf’s head.
“What’s the matter, Joe? Hey! Hey, buddy, don’t you move a muscle!”
“Felt like my wrist was being twisted. Hurts like hell.”
“Okay, wise guy,” said Johnson, edging around Graywolf, until he was standing close behind him. “Put your hands behind your head and walk toward the door, and don’t try anything clever.”
Graywolf turned to the president. “You and I will see each other again, my friend, when this is all finished, and the smoke has cleared. We will have the greatest scalp dance that this land has ever seen.”
“Just get the hell out of here, whoever you are,” the president retorted.
“I said hands behind your head!” Johnson barked out.
Graywolf unhurriedly raised both hands and put his fingers into his shoulder-length hair.
“Now move!” Kaminsky ordered him.
Graywolf started to walk toward the open door, with the two Secret Service men following him. As they neared the door, however, Johnson and Kaminsky turned to face each other and collided.
Both of them shouted, “Hey!” in surprise. But then—immediately afterward—they both let out screams of pain. Somehow they had not only collided, but stuck together, chest to chest, and they were staring at each other in horror. The front of their white shirts was suddenly flooded with dark red blood, and the cotton fabric ripped apart.
“Aaah!” cried Kaminsky. “Christ Almighty! Aaaah! Christ, that hurts!”
At first the president couldn’t work out what was happening. But then he saw the two agents’ skin tear open, so that their chest muscles were exposed, as scarlet as freshly butchered meat. Their breastbones audibly cracked apart, and their ribs splayed out of their chest cavities, wider and wider, like four skeletal hands opening up, and he could see their lungs swelling, and their frantically pumping hearts.
“Oh God!” screamed Johnson, and his voice was so high that it could have shattered glass.
Graywolf turned around. His dried-up face was expressionless, but he appeared to be muttering under his breath, and every now and then he closed his eyes and nodded his head, as if for emphasis.
“What are you doing, you bastard?” the president shouted at him. “Stop it! You’re killing them!”
But Graywolf didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, he took his hands away from the back of his head and held them up in front of his face, lacing his fingers together like a cat’s cradle.
Johnson’s ribs and Kaminsky’s ribs slid together just as Graywolf’s fingers did, and the two of them were drawn closer and tighter together, until they were screaming in each other’s faces, their noses less than three inches apart. Graywolf had turned them into conjoined twins, two men whose insides were now inextricably interlocked.
“Get them apart!” the president shouted at Graywolf. By now, several nurses and orderlies had heard the screaming and had gathered in the reception room outside the door. They all looked shocked, but it was clear that they couldn’t understand what they were looking at or what they could do.
“You heard me, you bastard! Get them apart!”
Graywolf unlaced his fingers, but Johnson and Kaminsky stayed fastened together, screaming until they were hoarse. They staggered from one side of the doorway to the other, their arms around each other as if drunken dancers trying to keep their balance.
Graywolf said something, but the president couldn’t hear it. Then he tilted his head back and let out a long, eerie howl.
Johnson lifted his right hand and tried to angle his automatic to point at his own forehead, but Kaminsky’s shoulder made it impossible for him to twist his hand around far enough. Gasping with pain, he said, “Shoot me! Shoot me! And I’ll shoot you!”
“No!” the president shouted, and tried to step forward, but Graywolf lifted one hand, with his palm facing toward him, and the president felt as if he had been pushed in the chest, hard.
Johnson pointed his automatic at Kaminsky’s ear, and Kaminsky managed to raise his gun so that the muzzle was pressed against Johnson’s left temple.
“Don’t do it!” the president pleaded. “Joe! Dennis! Don’t do it! We can find a way to help you!”
But Johnson hysterically shouted out, “One! Two! Three!” and the two of them fired together. The double bang of their guns was deafening, and blood was sprayed up the walls and halfway across the ceiling, in the shape of a monstrous red flower.
The president closed his eyes, took a single staggering step sideways, and sat on the bed. Johnson and Kaminsky collapsed together onto the floor, their arms and legs tangled. Outside, in the reception room, a hospital security guard shouted at Graywolf, “Stay there! Stay there! Keep your hands where I can see them!” One of the nurses was sobbing in shock and a doctor was shouting again and again for a paramedic, as if Johnson and Kaminsky were not far beyond human help.
“Stay there! Don’t you move!” shouted the security guard.
The president opened his eyes and saw that Graywolf was continuing to cross the reception room, heading for the opposite door. The security guard moved sideways to block his path, but Graywolf seemed undeterred. He carried on walking, and walked right through the security guard and vanished.
The security guard whirled around, as if he expected Graywolf to reappear behind him, but the medicine man was gone.
“Did you see that?” said the security guard. His eyes were bulging in disbelief. “Did you see that?”
The president stood up. “Listen to me!” he said in his clearest, presidential-address voice. “I want you all to stay calm, and clearheaded.”
“The guy just disappeared!” jabbered the security guard. “He was coming right for me, and then he walked right into me and disappeared!”
The president raised his hands for silence. “Please—let’s not panic! You need to know that there are some pretty strange influences at work here. I guess you can call them supernatural, if you want to. But everything that’s happened here in the clinic, and the blindness that so many people have been suffering all across America—they’re all part of the same phenomenon.”
The doctor came forward and hunkered down beside Johnson and Kaminsky. He was young and red-faced, with a sandy mustache. He examined the two Secret Service men quickly, and then he looked up at the president and said, “What could possibly cause anything like this? I see it. I see it with my own eyes, like I saw that old guy vanish just now. But I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.”
/> “We’ll have to believe it if we want any chance of surviving it,” said the president. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen things—visions, if you like. Ghosts. And there was one in particular, who told me what’s been happening to us, and why.”
The doctor slowly stood up. “Ghosts,” he repeated.
“What do you think that was? That guy who just disappeared?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of hologram?”
The president said, “Can somebody cover up these two poor bastards, and bring a gurney to take them away?”
“Shouldn’t we leave them here, sir, for the police to look at?”
“This isn’t a police matter, Doctor. This vision I saw, this ghost—he said he was a Wampanaug medicine man. He said that we had a choice. Either we tear down our buildings and dig up our roads and go back to living the way the Indians used to live, or else we’ll all be massacred.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President, that’s crazy.”
“That’s what I told him. But it seems like our past has caught up with us. What we did to the Indians, they’re going to do back to us, in spades.”
The doctor carefully negotiated his way around the two dead Secret Service agents and came up close to the president and looked him in the eyes. “Mr. President…this blinding, it isn’t being caused by ghosts. We haven’t yet been able to identify why so many people are losing their sight, but the most likely culprit is some type of virus, like the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.”
“So what are you saying? That I’ve been hallucinating?”
“No, sir, I’m not necessarily suggesting that. But the trauma of sudden blindness can play all kinds of strange tricks on your mind.”
The president waved his hand backward and forward in front of his face. “This Wampanaug medicine man said that he would give me my sight back so I could watch our whole society being taken apart. And he did—you can’t argue with that.”
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “You can see again, sir; that’s for sure. And I find that really encouraging. It indicates that this blindness is reversible, and maybe only temporary.”
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