“Not if I can help it. Come on.”
Meredith opened the dining room door. “Dad?” she said. “Is everything okay?”
Amelia stepped forward, put her arm around Meredith’s shoulders, and practically forced her out of the room.
“What’s going on?” Meredith asked her. “Has something happened to my father?”
Amelia said, “Please, Meredith. You mustn’t go in there.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Just don’t go in there. Your father’s dead. Lock the door and keep it locked. Harry and I have to go out now, urgently. You heard that thunder. But we’ll be back.”
“He’s dead? What’s happened? Was it his heart? Amelia—please let me past. I need to see him.”
But I stood in the doorway and I wouldn’t let her go back in. I didn’t have to say anything. I think she could tell by the expression on my face that if she insisted on seeing her father, she would have nightmares about it for the rest of her life. Not that the rest of her life would be very long, if Misquamacus had anything to do with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We battled our way back along the street to the main square. The wind was gusting so strongly that several times we had to stop and hold on to a picket fence, or a tree, or a lamppost, just to get our breath back. It was raining even harder, and the lightning and thunder were almost continuous.
“This Thunder Giant,” I shouted. “What the heck is that?”
“I always thought it was nothing but a legend,” Amelia shouted back. “Back in the days when many of the Plains Indians were fighting one another, some tribes were supposed to have called on the spirits of their dead wonder-workers to help them defeat their enemies.”
We crossed the litter-strewn street. We had nearly reached the main square now and we could see the Aspen Café. Its crowded interior was lit by dozens of candles, almost like a church.
Amelia shouted, “The wonder-workers would all join together in a human pyramid—you know, like acrobats in a circus. They would make themselves into one giant man, maybe seventy or eighty feet high. The stories say that it could cross the prairies faster than a horse could run, and it could tear up tepees and wikiups as if they were toys.”
“And Misquamacus is going to do that now?”
Amelia looked up at the sky. “Nihltak seemed to think so. And all of this thunder and lightning—that’s a pretty good indication. The Thunder Giants used to have so much magical power that they were followed by thunderstorms wherever they went.”
We reached the café and tumbled in through the door, soaking wet and panting. Tyler came up to us and said, “You made it back! We were starting to think that you’d gone for good!”
Auntie Ammy was rocking baby Peter in her arms. “Did you talk to the spirits?” she said.
The red-haired girl behind the counter handed Amelia a bar towel, and she roughly rubbed her hair dry. “Yes, Auntie Ammy. We talked to the spirits. A medicine man from the Hupa tribe, one of the Indians who was massacred here by General Lawrence and his men.”
“I see grief in your eyes,” said Auntie Ammy.
“Yes,” said Amelia. “During the séance, we lost a very dear old friend.”
“Somebody died?” asked Ranger Edison.
I nodded. “This is very heavy-duty magic, Jim. Life-and-death stuff.”
“I’m real sorry to hear that. Did you find out how to stop this Misquamacus?”
“I don’t know. We’re really not sure. There’s supposed to be one option: give him an orphan as a sacrifice. Not that we would. But at least we have a better idea of what we’re up against.”
Outside the café windows, the main square was lit up by a sheet of lightning so dazzling that it left a green afterimage in our eyes. But it didn’t only illuminate the buildings, the trees, and the parked cars. It illuminated a long straggling line of figures, more than a hundred of them, walking steadily toward us. They were still too far away to see them clearly, but most of them appeared to be wearing hats or headdresses of some kind. Some of them were dressed in coats and suits, but many of them had blankets draped around them.
“It’s the wonder-workers,” said Amelia.
Auntie Ammy handed Peter to Jasmine and stood up. She stared into the darkness with her nostrils flared. “Bad spirits," she said. “May Changó protect us.”
More lightning flashed, and now we could see the wonder-workers much more clearly. A few of them wore wide-brimmed hats; others wore beaver-pelt caps or antlers or elaborate woven headdresses that made them look like pirates. Behind them, as the lightning flickered yet again, more figures appeared, at least another hundred, with dead white faces.
One second these figures appeared to be quite far away, on the opposite side of the square. The next they looked as if they had almost reached us. They had boxlike bodies and stiffly jointed arms and legs, and they lurched as they walked like marionettes—an extraordinary combination of marching and dancing.
“Eye Killers,” said Amelia. “If their eyes start to flash, whatever you do, don’t look at them.”
The crowd of people in the café started to back away from the windows. Most of them stayed apprehensively silent, but two or three of the children started to whimper with fear, and one woman shouted out, “Do something! Somebody do something! Doesn’t anybody have a gun?”
Amelia turned around and said, “Guns won’t help! These things are Native American spirits! They’re all dead already!”
“What are you talking about, lady?” said the woman’s husband. “They’re not dead! Look at them! They’re all walking toward us, and it don’t look like they’re going to stop, either!”
But Auntie Ammy raised her hand and said, “It is true. The ones who look like humans—they are spirits who have been brought here from the other side. The ones who look like coffins are demons. They have come here to take away our eyes, and to make us their slaves, or to kill us if we try to resist them.
“My ancestors were in West Africa when other devils with white faces came and made us their slaves, or killed us if we tried to resist. I know how angry these spirits feel, how vengeful. And tonight, it is their turn to bring fear and destruction and death to you! Tonight it is their turn to tear down your whole civilization.”
One young man said, “You’re talking crap, lady! Indian spirits? Demons? What the hell is that all about? Somebody give me a gun. I’ll show you ‘dead already’!”
Now the lightning was flashing so rapidly that the main square was lit up as brightly as if it were day. The wonder-workers had crowded in the middle of the square, with the Eye Killers surrounding them. A half dozen of them gathered close together, facing one another, with their arms on one another’s shoulders. Another half dozen did the same, only twenty feet away.
“What are they up to?” asked Ranger Edison. “Having some kind of powwow or something?”
“They’re making a Thunder Giant,” said Amelia. “We’re probably the first white people who have ever seen one.”
“They’re making a what?”
Once the two groups of wonder-workers were firmly braced together, more wonder-workers began to climb onto their shoulders, and then more climbed onto their shoulders. With frightening speed, they formed two legs, and then a body, and then two arms. At last, five of them swarmed up the torso and entwined themselves together to give the giant figure a head. They raised their arms so that it looked as if it were wearing a headpiece made of horns.
The Thunder Giant was nearly a hundred feet tall. I could see the individual faces of each of the wonder-workers that made up its body and its head, but at the same time it had its own distinctive face, and there was no mistaking who it was. Misquamacus had returned at last. I couldn’t mistake those angular cheeks, that slab of a forehead, and that lipless slit of a mouth. Most of all, though, I recognized his eyes. They had been re-created by the faces of two wonder-workers, but somehow they were still filled with all the black fury that Misquam
acus could muster.
Lightning crackled around the Thunder Giant’s horns, and it started to walk toward us. Its first steps were ponderous, but gradually it began to develop a fluid, humanlike stride. My eyes saw it but my brain couldn’t take it in. Even when I had fought with Misquamacus before, I had never been numb with fright, but I have to admit that this time I just stood there with my mouth open, watching this apparition coming nearer and nearer, and I couldn’t even work out how to run.
The Eye Killers surrounded the Thunder Giant on all sides, walking toward us with an unnerving up-and-down motion like scores of sewing-machine bobbins. Their eyes began to glitter with blue and white light, and Amelia said, “Don’t look at them! Don’t look at them! If you don’t want to be blinded, look away!”
But looking away from the Eye Killers and the Thunder Giant was almost impossible. Especially when Tyler suddenly shouted, “Look! Look over there!”
He was pointing toward the right-hand corner of the square. When the lightning flashed again, I saw five people running diagonally across the square toward us, only a few yards in front of the advancing Eye Killers. For some reason they were holding hands.
“It’s my dad!” said Tyler. “It’s my dad and my mom and my sister!”
He wrenched open the café door and ran outside. I heard him screaming out, “Mom! Dad! Maggie! It’s Tyler!”
One of the five people stumbled, but the others pulled him to his feet and they kept on running. Tyler started to run toward them. The Eye Killers were less than fifty yards away now, and coming jerkily closer.
Tyler had almost reached his parents when the Thunder Giant took a long stride forward and bent down over the heads of the Eye Killers. With a huge hand that was made up of interlocked wonder-workers, it seized the five running people and hurled them upward, high into the windy sky. I heard them screaming as they were thrown over the tops of the trees that surrounded the square. They landed on the roadway close to Jasmine’s truck, and lay there broken and unmoving.
Tyler dodged to one side. He was obviously trying to outmaneuver the Thunder Giant so he could run across the square and help his family. But the Thunder Giant bent down again and tried to scoop him up. Tyler double-somer-saulted across the sidewalk, and dived back in through the café door. His eyes were wild and he was gasping with shock and exertion.
“It killed them!” he panted. “It killed them!”
He leaned up against the counter, his head bowed. Tina came up to him and put her arm around him.
“It killed them,” he repeated. He turned around and stared at me. “It’s going to kill all of us, isn’t it?”
I looked across at Amelia. Then I looked down at Peter, in Jasmine’s arms.
“We can’t,” said Amelia.
“I know. But what about all of these people—and all the people that Misquamacus has killed already?”
I looked out the café window. The Eye Killers were standing right outside, staring in at us with those expressionless white clay faces. Their eyes weren’t flashing yet, but I knew they would. It was my guess that Misquamacus wanted to frighten us as much as he could before he blinded us. He wanted to terrify us, and taste our terror on his tongue.
“I wish I could work out what Nihltak meant by using the Eye Killer’s weapons against them,” said Amelia.
“They don’t have any weapons,” I told her. “Only their eyes. How do you use somebody’s eyes against them?”
For almost a minute it seemed to be a standoff. We looked out the windows and the Eye Killers looked back in at us, and behind the Eye Killers the Thunder Giant stood motionless, as tall as a tree, with lightning dancing around its head. Little Peter suddenly woke up and looked blearily out the window and started to cry.
As he did so, we heard a sharp rattling sound from outside in the square somewhere. One of the Eye Killers staggered, and I saw that a large hole had been punched in the middle of its wooden body. Then another Eye Killer rocked backward, with a large semicircular chip blown away from its cheek. The rattling sound grew louder, more ferocious, and the Eye Killers were thrown into confusion.
“That’s rifle fire,” said Tyler. He stepped up to the window and looked across to the left-hand side of the square. “What the heck? Somebody’s shooting at them.”
Bullets flew into the Eye Killers like a swarm of hornets. None of the Eye Killers fell. They were demons, and you can’t kill demons with bullets. But the impact knocked them off balance, and for a few moments they were milling around as if they were drunk, clattering against one another and disjointedly waving their arms.
“There,” said Remo. “Look over there, by the trees.”
We looked. Underneath the trees, kneeling in a long ragged line, were more than seventy soldiers in slouch hats, with long-barreled rifles. Behind them was a contingent of cavalry, maybe twenty of them, their horses pacing impatiently from one end of the line to the other. The soldiers fired, reloaded, and fired again, and fragments of wood and clay flew from the Eye Killer’s bodies and faces and were scattered across the sidewalk.
“It’s the army,” I said. “But which army? It sure doesn’t look like the National Guard to me.”
“The same army that fought the Battle of Memory Valley the last time,” said Amelia.
“What?”
“General Lawrence’s men, from 1891. It’s just like I said. Misquamacus opened the portal so all his wonder-workers could come through. But General Lawrence and his men followed them.”
I watched with a growing feeling of unreality as the soldiers climbed to their feet. They fixed their bayonets, and then advanced toward the main square, with the cavalry trotting up close behind them. All of the Eye Killers were still on their feet, and as the soldiers came closer they started to flicker their eyes on them, faster and faster, until it looked as if the soldiers were being photographed by scores of paparazzi. The lights were so dazzling that I had to cup my hand over my eyes.
“They’re not being blinded!” I said. “Look at them—they’re not being affected at all!”
Auntie Ammy was standing close beside me. “They walk, they fire guns, they fight, but they are long-dead,” she said. “There ain’t nothin’ that can blind a man who is long-dead.”
But as the soldiers came closer, the Thunder Giant stepped in. He walked toward them, and reached them with only five long strides. The soldiers stopped, but they held their line and fired volley after volley at the Thunder Giant until the main square was whirling with windblown smoke. Behind the riflemen, the cavalrymen had brought up a packhorse with some kind of primitive-looking machine gun strapped onto its back, and two of the cavalrymen were struggling desperately to unload it.
The Thunder Giant raised both arms upward. As he did so, lightning forked out of the clouds above him and into his fingertips, so that thick showers of sparks fell to the ground below. The soldiers were firing so furiously now that pieces of the wonder-workers’ clothing were being blown like a blizzard into the air—blanket, fur, buffalo hide. But then I heard a noise that was so loud that it was almost beyond all hearing: a clap of thunder that made the earth shake and cracked all the café windows.
The Thunder Giant lowered his arms and pointed at the soldiers, and the lightning that he had drawn from the sky jagged out of his fingertips and blew them apart. They might have been spirits, but they still had substance, and that substance was blasted into skulls and ribs and bloody rags of ectoplasmic flesh. Even the horses’ legs were blown off, and they lay smoking and disemboweled on their backs, like burned-out canoes.
Now the Thunder Giant turned back toward us, and I knew that he was coming to finish what he had started. As pockmarked and bullet-ridden as they were, the Eye Killers reassembled outside the café windows. I took hold of Amelia’s hand and said, “This’ll teach us not to meddle with spirits, won’t it?”
She looked at me. Her hair was sticking up, and her eye makeup was blotchy, but I had never seen her look so beautiful.
&n
bsp; “I love you, Harry Erskine,” she said.
“And I love you, Amelia Carlsson.”
I looked around at all the people in the café. They all knew that they were going to be blinded—those who hadn’t been blinded already. But they stood facing the Eye Killers with their backs straight and their eyes open, holding hands together in the spirit of the pioneers. I felt proud of them. Even little Peter had stopped crying and was staring out at the Eye Killers and the Thunder Giant.
“A gah!” he said.
“Yes, honey,” Auntie Ammy told him. “A gah.”
As I looked from face to face, I saw myself in the mirrors on the back wall of the café. I could see the Eye Killers, too, outside on the sidewalk.
Their weapon is your weapon. That’s what Nihltak had said. And what was their weapon? Their eyes.
I turned back. The Eye Killers’ eyes were starting to glimmer. Blue and white light that no man could look at, as no man could look at the sun.
“Down!” I shouted. “Everybody get down on the floor! Shut your eyes and lie as flat as you can!”
For a moment nobody understood what I meant. But then I screamed it again. “Down! Do it now!” and everybody dropped to the floor as if they had been struck by simultaneous heart attacks.
Even with my eyes tight shut, I could see the intense light that flooded the café. It seemed to wax brighter and brighter, as if the Eye Killers were determined to pry their way into my brain by the power of light alone.
But then I heard a splintering explosion and a hideous scream. It sounded like a small child being thrown onto a blazing bonfire. Then I heard another explosion, and another scream, just as terrible—then another, and another. The bright light abruptly died away.
I opened my eyes and cautiously lifted my head. Amelia was looking up, too. The interior of the café was lit not only by candles, but by dancing flames. Gradually all of us climbed to our feet and looked out the window. The Eye Killers were alight, every one of them. Some of them were still standing, but their boxlike bodies were engulfed in fire. Most of them were lying on the sidewalk in pieces, their white masks shattered like broken plates. There were no skeletal babies in the coffins that had become their only means of walking through the world. The Eye Killers had been nothing more than dazzling light, and now that light had vanished forever.
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