All twenty-one medicine men on the bridge had now raised their arms in obeisance to the elder god, and were singing a low, warbling incantation. They stood in their oweaoo, their circle, and they drew the overwhelming fog cloud nearer.
Singing Rock reached the end of the bridge and stood there alone for a moment, swinging a war ax in each hand. Then he whooped out a long challenging call, a mocking call that ridiculed Misquamacus and every other medicine man, a call that any Indian with any pride could not ignore.
Harry could see Misquamacus waver with indecision. But then the wonder-worker turned and left the other twenty medicine men to continue their call to Ka-tua-la-hu, who now loomed over them all in an immense boiling bank of evil clouds, and he faced Singing Rock with an expression of burned-out patience and deep revenge.
Singing Rock took two or three steps forward, and then he began to whirl one of the axes around and around until it was a blur. Misquamacus crouched down slightly in anticipation, but his eyes never left Singing Rock’s face, and he looked confident and contemptuous. Harry, over by the fence, found that he was digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand.
The magical ax flashed from Singing Rock’s hand and flew toward Misquamacus, turning end over end. But even before it was halfway there, Misquamacus gave a quick sweep of his arm, and the ax seemed to burst and turn into a black owl, which screeched once and then flapped away on the wind.
Singing Rock swung the second ax, faster and faster, and he threw it at Misquamacus with a hoarse cry of warlike vengeance. But Misquamacus was quicker, and stronger. His arm swept across his chest again, and the ax turned in midair and flew back toward Singing Rock. Harry watched in horror as Singing Rock tried to dodge it, but the speed and power of Misquamacus’ magic made it unstoppable and unavoidable. With a sharp chopping sound that Harry could hear from seventy feet away, Singing Rock’s head was knocked from his shoulders.
For an agonizing second, Singing Rock’s decapitated body stood alone on the bridge, with a fountain of blood spraying from his severed neck. But then he twisted and collapsed beside his own head and lay still.
Harry turned away, his stomach heaving. He felt totally stunned, totally shattered.
Without realizing it, he dropped to his knees, and stayed there while Misquamacus stalked back triumphant to his circle of medicine men, and joined his strength once more to the summoning of Ka-tua-la-hu.
Neil said, “Harry-what the hell can we do now? Harry!”
Harry looked up. His eyes were watering from retching. He said, “I’m damned if I know. Singing Rock was the expert.”
“Harry-we’ve got to do something! Look!” Behind him, the writhing cloud of Ka-tua-la-hu was almost at the bridge itself, and its pale slimy tentacles were lashing out at the foam-wracked shores of the lake. The whole grotesque god was trumpeting now, trumpeting in evil and hungry delight, with a noise that sounded like dozens of tortured whales. Across on the other side of the bridge, Harry saw three National Guardsmen running as a tentacle lashed toward them. It caught them all, and dragged them shrieking into the boiling lake.
“We’ve just got to get out of here!” shouted Harry. “That thing’s going to kill us all!”
“But we can’t!” Neil insisted. “What about the children? What about all the people who are going to die?”
“I’m not a goddamned martyr!” Harry yelled back. “I’m a goddamned mystic!”
Already, policemen and soldiers were running past them and scrambling up the loose dirt and rocks of the hillside. A cold, foul wind was blowing-a wind that stank of silvery fish skins and fetid flesh. Out of the mass of serpents, another tentacle flailed toward the shore, and a policeman was crushed and pulled into the water.
There was a high-pitched screaming sound, and suddenly five Air Force jets, all flying in tight formation, came streaking northward along the length of the lake. They passed the cloudy bulk of Ka-tua-la-hu, and Harry saw the hot scarlet-blue flames from their tail pipes as they used reheat to climb and bank and circle away.
Ka-tua-la-hu screeched and groaned, and another roiling mass of tentacles appeared from the upper clouds.
Harry and Neil could hear what was happening over the abandoned transmitter. The National Guard had pulled back a half-mile, and their colonel was trying to direct the air strike from Dyer Creek.
“Air strike to ground. What do you want us to sap”?”
“The bridge there. The Pope Creek bridge. You see where that land of gray fog stuff is?”
“We’re coming back for another run there. We don’t see the bridge too clearly.”
“Where that gray fog stuff is. That stuff with all the tentacles like a damned octopus.”
“An octopus? What is this? We don’t see any octopus.”
Harry and Neil could hear the jets rumbling behind the hills. Then they flashed into sight again, still flying tightly together, and made a curving pass over the bridge and off into the clouds to the south. They were followed by a sharp sonic bang.
“We see the bridge and the cloud mass. You want the bridge knocked out!”
“That’s right. Knock out the bridge, and see what you get when you fire a few rockets into that fog.”
“Okay, ground. We’re coming in for a trial run, then we’ll get at it.”
Again, the whistle of the jets came nearer. But as they appeared over the hills, there was an abrupt garbling of sound over the transmitter, and a chilling, screaming noise.
“What’s happened? I can’t seel I can’t see any-thingl”
“Oh, Christ, my eyes are gone! My eyes]”
The five jets thundered overhead, but this time they were wildly out of formation. Two of them collided almost over the creek side where Harry and Neil were crouched, and there was a monstrous explosion and a rolling ball of fire that spun across the valley and crashed onto the hillside opposite. The other three tumbled out of sight, but Harry and Neil heard three dull thumps in the distance and saw the flash of igniting fuel.
Harry wiped sweat from his face and looked up at the towering bulk of Ka-tua-la-hu, white and heaving and infinitely evil, a mass of wriggling tentacles and cloudy horror.
“Well, Neil, I guess we’re on our own.”
Neil slowly shook his head. “We’re not on our own. We never have been. These Indians have called up all their old spirits and demons and ghosts to help them, why the hell don’t we call up oursT’
“What are you talking about?” said Harry. “Are you crazy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m not. I’ve been stupid, that’s all. Dunbar helped me once and he’ll do it again. That’s what he was trying to tell me. The Indians may have massacred those white settlers up here at Conn Creek, but they made a mistake when they chose to use that massacre as a focusing point for all this. They disturbed the spirits of the settlers, right? They disturbed Dun-bar’s ghost. And what I said about the white men licking the Red Indians is true. They licked them because they were stronger, and better armed, and better organized, and in the end they were more determined.”
“Greedier, too,” said Harry.
“Sure they were greedy. But their greed was what made their determination even stronger. And they’re not only determined, they’re here. They must be. They’re just waiting for us to call them, like that monster was waiting for the Indians to call him.”
“You’re going to call them?” said Harry. “Now I know you’re out of your mind.”