‘I can try to give a warning to “my people”, as you call them,’ I told Matchitehew. ‘But I don’t honestly think that they’ll listen. The likelihood is that they’ll mark me down as a screwball.’
‘You must tell them what is going to happen to them, and why. It is important for those who are about to be punished to understand the reason for their punishment.’
‘Yes, I get that. But if I go to a local TV station and tell them that the United States is about to be attacked by the spirits of two long-dead Algonquin wonder-workers do you know what they will do?’
‘They will run to their homes to gather their families, and they will prepare to leave.’
‘No, they won’t do that. They’ll laugh in my face, or else they’ll call for a nut doctor. Either way they won’t believe me.’
‘Your people are not frightened of spirits?’
‘Yes, they are. Well, they are and they’re not. They get scared if they see a movie with a ghost in it, or if they think that their house is haunted, like Amityville. But they don’t get so scared that they’ll pack everything up and leave the country.’
It was obvious that Matchitehew hadn’t understood a single word of that. Although he was speaking English, and speaking it clearly, I was beginning to suspect that he was actually talking to me in his native Algonquin language, and that he had the ability to communicate with me telepathically, so that his words were translated inside of my mind. His father Misquamacus had been able to speak in English to me, even though it was highly unlikely that he had ever learned it.
My late-lamented Algonquin friend Singing Rock had told me that this was called ‘nondam pawe-wa’ – literally ‘hearing a dream’. The word ‘pawe-wa’ means ‘having a vision’, and co-incidentally it also happens to mean ‘shaman’ or ‘wonder-worker’. It’s where the word ‘pow-wow’ comes from – sharing the things that are going on inside of your head.
‘You will warn your people,’ Matchitehew insisted. ‘You will warn them that they will be stricken by disease against which they will have no immunity.’
‘All I can say is, I’ll try. But I can’t guarantee that anybody is going to take me seriously.’
‘If you fail, you will suffer.’
‘I thought you said you couldn’t hurt me.’
‘Not you, but we can hurt those closest to you. The ones you love, and your friends.’
‘Hey – don’t even think about it!’
‘Then make sure that you warn your people. Warn them that a great sickness is spreading across the country, from one ocean to the other, and that the day has come for them to leave or die. That is the same choice that your people gave to our people.’
Now I was starting to feel really panicky. Matchitehew’s three-hundred-year-old concept of America was obviously vastly different from the way it was today. He couldn’t have any idea that the population was now more than three hundred million, and that whatever you threatened them with, three hundred million people weren’t just going to pack their bags and go back to wherever they came from.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll do whatever I can. But like I say, I can’t promise anything. This country is full of weirdos saying that the world is coming to an end. It won’t be easy for me to make myself heard.’
‘You will warn your people that they must go!’
I was about to protest to him again when the tapping started up again, but I also heard something else. A voice outside in the yard called out ‘Harry! Harr-ee! Harry, can you switch on the light? I can’t see a darned thing out here!’
It was Sandy. She must have finished early at the Stars-and-Bars. I looked at Matchitehew and Megedagik and the nun and desperately said, ‘OK. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it! I’ll go out early tomorrow and start telling everybody. I promise.’
They stayed where they were, the three of them, and they were all faceless – Matchitehew and Megedagik because all I could see of them were silhouettes, and the nun because she had her black cloth draped over her head.
I thought: What happens now? Are they going to vanish, in the same way that the first nun had vanished?
‘Sandy!’ I shouted out. ‘Don’t touch the door-handle!’
‘What?’
‘I said, don’t touch the door-handle! Just hold on a second, stay there, the lights are all out!’
It was too late. Sandy burst in through the front door, carrying her usual cluster of shopping bags and a bag that clinked as if it had bottles in it.
‘Why is it so dark?’ she said. ‘I brought you some of that steam beer you like, and I nearly dropped it!’
‘Don’t come in here!’ I said. Frantic, I turned around to see what Matchitehew and Megedagik and the nun were doing, but the bedroom door slammed shut with such violence that I heard the frame crack, and the key dropped out of it and tinkled to the floor. Now Sandy and I were left in almost total darkness.
‘What – what was that?’ she said. ‘Who did that? Harry – do you have somebody in your bedroom?’
I groped around and managed to find the table lamp. I switched it on, and to my relief it worked. Sandy was standing there with her long hair all scraped back into a ponytail, her eyes even wider than usual. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and jeans so tight it looked as if her legs had been painted dark blue.
‘What’s going on, Harry?’ she asked me. She looked toward the bedroom door and said, ‘There’s somebody in there, isn’t there?’
‘There is and there isn’t. It’s hard to explain. I think we need to get out of here.’
‘What do you mean, “it’s hard to explain”? Is that why you told me you’re leaving – because you’ve got yourself another woman?’
‘No, Sandy, I don’t.’
‘Then who slammed the door just then? Don’t tell me it was a man. My boss Larry said that priest thing was kind of suspicious.’
‘Listen – trust me – I don’t have another woman, and I’m not gay either. We need to get out of here, that’s all.’
But Sandy dropped all of her shopping bags on to the floor, including the bag with the beer bottles in it. I tried to stop her, but she pushed past me and opened the bedroom door.
A cold draft rushed into the hallway, with a soft whistling sound like the wind blowing through trees. Several dark shadows danced across the walls, and then they were gone.
‘What was that?’ said Sandy. She switched on the bedroom light and looked around, and then she turned back to me and said, ‘Did you feel that?’
There was nobody in the bedroom. No Matchitehew, no Megedagik, no nun. Sandy circled around the bed and even lifted the quilt and looked underneath it.
‘So who slammed the door?’ she asked me.
I shrugged and said, ‘Maybe an earth tremor. I don’t know. Maybe a ghost. These old buildings, you know.’
‘Harry – you always told me you were a seller, not a buyer.’
‘Just because I’m a seller doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in what I sell.’
Sandy crossed her arms tightly across her breasts. ‘You’re making me scared now.’
‘Hey,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’ I went across and gave her a squeeze and two or three kisses. All the same, while I was holding her close, I was looking around the bedroom myself to make sure that my three dark visitors had really disappeared.
Later, in bed, Sandy smoothed her hand up and down my chest and my stomach, going a little further down with every stroke.
‘I’ve decided,’ she said.
I had left the blinds open, so that the witches and the monkeys were flickering across the ceiling. ‘What have you decided?’
‘I’ve decided to come with you. I don’t care if you don’t have much money or anyplace to stay. I have some money saved up.’
‘Sandy – I can’t offer you any kind of a future.’
‘I thought futures was what you were good at.’
‘Yeah, but imaginary futures, not real futures
. You’re a very pretty girl, and I really like you, but what kind of a life can I give you? You’re twelve years younger than me; you should be thinking about a husband and a family and a house with a basketball hoop fixed to the garage.’
She took hold of my penis and started to squeeze it. ‘Don’t you want to make love to me tonight? What’s wrong?’
I kissed her bare shoulder. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m just kind of stressed out, that’s all.’
‘Something’s wrong, Harry. I can tell.’
I looked down to the end of the bed, and the nun was standing there. Silent, as she had been before. Not moving. Because her head was covered I had no idea if she was watching us or not.
Sandy gave me one last tug and then she said, ‘OK. But I’ll rape you in the morning.’
She turned over, and after a while I could hear by her steady breathing that she was asleep. Meanwhile, I lay there staring at the nun.
We are warnings.
The sky began to lighten, and as it did so the nun gradually faded. Soon she was nothing but a shadowy outline, and then she had vanished altogether.
Now we have your spirits on our side. Your spirits know your ways. They know your magic.
They know what makes you sick.
FOURTEEN
A shield-shaped signboard by the side of the highway announced that this was ‘The Grandier Funeral Chapel’. It had a painting of a spray of pink roses underneath it, the same as Robert Machin’s business card. Anna turned into the red asphalt driveway and parked next to a gleaming black Lincoln hearse. As she climbed out of her car there was a distant growl of heat-thunder from the west, over toward Sunset Hills. It had thundered like that on the evening David had died, and she was beginning to feel that she was being followed everywhere by threatening weather.
The funeral chapel was built of dark-brown brick, with a fascia like a country church, except that on its right-hand side it featured a high covered portico for hearses to draw into, so caskets could be rolled out of them in privacy. Anna walked up to the wide glass doors, and they silently slid open for her.
She found herself inside a gloomy reception area, with two potted parlor palms and two black-leather couches. It had a musty closed-in smell of oak and floor-polish. There was a desk on the right-hand side, but it was unattended. The only light came from a narrow stained-glass window, which cast a blue-and-yellow pattern across the faux-marble tiles. She could faintly hear piped organ music, although it was turned down so low that it was almost inaudible.
On the left-hand side of the reception area there was a door marked ‘Brian U. Grandier, Director’, and as the double glass doors slid shut behind her, this door was abruptly flung open. To Anna’s surprise, out stepped the gray-haired, gray-bearded man who she had seen in the hospital when John Patrick Bridges had been brought in. He was wearing the same gray double-breasted suit, and a matching bow tie which looked like a giant gray moth perched on his throat.
‘Professor Grey,’ he said, walking across to her with his hand held out. He looked shorter than he had in the hospital, and stockier.
Anna said sharply, ‘You were at SLU. You were staring at me in the corridor, and then you peeked into my laboratory.’
Brian Grandier smiled and shrugged, as if to say: And – so what? ‘I did, my dear, yes. I was just finding my way around. You’ll probably be seeing me quite often from now on. In hospitals, people pass away, and it’s my business to be there when they do.’
Although she didn’t exactly know why, Anna found Brian Grandier both irritating and unpleasant. She was half-inclined to tell him that she had changed her mind about using Grandier Funeral Chapel for David’s cremation, but then she had already gone to the trouble of making an early morning appointment with Brian Grandier’s secretary and driving all the way out here to Gravois Road, and it seemed irrational to walk out now, just because she didn’t like his fastidiously trimmed beard and his supercilious smile and the way he had called her ‘my dear’.
‘Would you care to come into my office?’ he asked her. ‘I can show you our brochure, and then we can run through all of your specific requirements – number of guests, number of vehicles, music, floral tributes, all that kind of thing – and I can give you a preliminary estimate.’
As he spoke, Anna picked up the subtlest hint of an accent – probably French, considering his name. She hesitated, and then made her way directly across to his office. He followed close behind her, too close for her liking, with one hand raised behind her back as if he were about to lay it on her shoulder.
He pulled out a red leather armchair for her, and then sat down behind a wide mahogany desk. The wall behind him was lined with glass-fronted bookshelves, but most of them were empty. All he had on his desk was an open binder, a glossy brochure with ‘Grandier Funeral Chapel’ on the cover and a vase with a dozen pink roses in it. The roses were tinged with brown, and some of the petals had dropped off them.
‘You’ll find that our prices are highly competitive, compared with other funeral parlors,’ he told her. ‘In fact, because you’re on the staff at SLU, and we’re trying to make a good impression there, I can offer you this funeral at half what our nearest competitor would ask.’
‘I see,’ said Anna. ‘In return for a discount, you expect me to recommend you to the relatives of any of our patients who die?’
Brian Grandier laced his fingers together and smiled. ‘Here at Grandier, we prefer not to use the “d” word. Let’s just say that if any of SLU’s patients failed to respond to treatment, we could give their family a very discreet and sympathetic service for a very reasonable outlay.’
Outlay, thought Anna. That’s a good choice of words for a man whose profession is laying out bodies. But then she thought: I’m being cynical here, and it’s only because I’m being self-protective and trying not to think about the pain of losing David. Only a week ago the two of us were driving across the river to Chesterfield for David’s favorite barbecue, laughing together like a couple of college kids, and here I am arranging his funeral.
Brian Grandier passed her the brochure and showed her the various caskets she could choose, from traditional mahogany with gold-plated handles to eco-friendly coffins woven out of wicker, banana leaves or water hyacinths. She chose one of the simplest: pine, with pale oak veneer.
Although she instinctively disliked him, Anna couldn’t fault Brian Grandier for efficiency. Quietly and quickly he noted down everything that she wanted for David’s funeral service, from the single hymn that he had always liked, to the readings and the tributes and the music that would play when the drapes were drawn and David disappeared from her life forever.
When he had finished adding up the figures, he passed her his estimate without a word, although he kept his eyes on her intently, like a schoolboy submitting his homework to his teacher.
Anna read through it and nodded. ‘That does seem very reasonable, Mr Grandier.’
‘Good. In that case I’ll get in touch with SLU and make all the necessary arrangements. Do you need any other assistance? You said that your late partner’s parents were coming to St Louis from Boise. I could sort out their travel arrangements if you would like me to, and those of any other guests.’
‘No – no, that will be fine, thank you,’ Anna told him. As she stood up, she realized that he had taken it for granted that he would be handling the funeral, although she hadn’t actually said yes, that she would accept his estimate.
Brian Grandier accompanied her through the sliding glass doors to the portico outside. The sky was charcoal gray now, and spots of rain were beginning to measle the red asphalt driveway.
‘Looks like we’re in for a storm,’ he said, and he smiled, almost as if would relish it. As the wind rose, the trees around the parking lot started to rustle and sway, and the neatly clipped hedge that separated the chapel from the highway kept giving quick, spasmodic shivers. Brian Grandier took Anna’s hand between both of his and said, ‘I’ll email you a PDF of t
he estimate later today, professor, if you would be so good as to sign it and email it back to me. I will also mail you a hard copy, of course. Please be assured of my very best attention.’
‘You’re French?’ she asked him.
‘Originally from France, yes,’ he said. He sounded slightly irritated that she had been so direct. ‘But, you know, that was a very long time ago, and some things we prefer to forget. Dieu nous donne l’espoir pour l’avenir, mais le diable ne nous donne rien mais les souvenirs de nos malheurs passés.’
Anna frowned, trying to translate what he had said. ‘God gives us hope, is that it? But the devil only gives us souvenirs?’
Brian Grandier smiled that self-satisfied smile. ‘God gives us hope for the future, but the devil gives us nothing but memories of our past misfortunes.’
Anna said nothing, but turned and walked back to her car. The hearse had gone now, and she could think only that somebody else had passed away, another soul had vanished, like David’s had vanished, and the hearse had left to pick up their lifeless body. She had seen scores of dead people in her time at SLU, but most of them had arrived at the hospital hoping to be saved. Here, at the Grandier Funeral Chapel, they arrived already dead, and they came here only for their remains to be disposed of. This morning, as she hurried through the rain toward her car, she found that indescribably depressing.
She managed to open the door and sit behind the wheel just as there was an explosive burst of thunder right overhead, and the rain came hammering down hard on the roof of her car. She pulled down the sun visor and opened the mirror so that she could quickly comb her hair.
When she had finished, she lifted her hand to push the sun visor back into place, but as she did so she saw a flicker of lightning off to her left, and she looked out through the windshield to see if there was any sign of the storm passing over.
It was difficult to make out anything distinctly through the ribs of rain that were streaming down the glass, but she could just make out the gray-suited figure of Brian Grandier standing under the portico. She thought at first that he must be standing there to see her off, but then she realized he had his back turned toward her.
Plague of the Manitou Page 15