The manitou by Graham Masterton Page A

in
the shape of a cross of Lorraine. There were ships standing offshore, and
canoes and jolly-boats paddling around in the foreground.
    The largest of
the ships were identical to Karen Tandy’s nightmare vessel and the picture’s
caption bore the connection out. It read: “Earliest known view of New
Amsterdam, 1651. The director-general of the Dutch West India Company lived in
this small but important settlement.”
    I passed the
book over to Amelia. “Look at this,” I said. “This is the exact ship that Karen
Tandy dreamed about – and look , there are half a dozen
Indians in that canoe. This is what New York was like, three hundred and twenty
years ago.”
    She studied the
picture carefully. “Harry,” she said, “this could be it. This could be just
what we’re looking for. Supposing there was an Indian medicine man in New York,
or New Amsterdam, all those centuries ago, and supposing that Karen actually
picked up his vibrations in the same place that he once used to live.”
    “That’s right,”
put in MacArthur, scratching his beard. “There musta been an Indian village on
East Eighty-second Street. Mind you, it sometimes looks as though there still
is.”
    I sat up and
stretched my aching back. “That whole business about ‘de boot’ would fit in
then. If this guy was a medicine man at the time the Dutch settled on
Manhattan, then the only words of European he’d be likely to know would be
Dutch. ‘De boot, mijnheer,’ would be his way of saying something about the
ship. And judging from Karen’s dream, he was afraid of the ship.
    She told me it
seemed to her like an alien ship – almost like something from Mars. And I guess
that’s just how it would appear to an Indian.”
    Amelia found a
cigarette in a crumpled pack and lit it. “But why is he so malignant?” she
asked.
    “And how does
that tie in with Karen’s tumor? I mean, what’s the tumor all about?”
    Unexpectedly,
MacArthur said: “I’ve found it.” He’d been looking through a large dusty
encyclopedia, and he marked the page and passed it over to me.
    “Medicine Men,”
I read aloud, “were often powerful magicians who were said to be capable of
extraordinary supernatural acts. They were believed to be immortal, and if
threatened, could destroy themselves by drinking blazing oil, and be reborn at
any time or place in the future or past by impregnating themselves into the
body of a man, woman or animal.”
    Amelia’s eyes
were wide. “Is that all it says?” she asked me.
    “That’s all,” I
told her. “After that, it goes on to rain dances again.”
    “Then that
means that Karen is...”
    “Pregnant,” I
said, shutting the book. “In a manner of speaking, she’s
about to give birth to a primitive savage.”
    “But Harry,”
said Amelia, “what the hell can we do?”
    MacArthur stood
up and went in search of some beer in the icebox. “All you can do,” he said,
    “ is wait until the medicine man hatches, then give him a dose
of blazing oil. That should get rid of him for you.”
    “That’s
impossible,” I told him. “By the time that medicine man is ready to be born,
Karen Tandy will be dead.”
    “I know,” said
MacArthur glumly, sipping beer. “But I don’t see what the hell else you could
do.”
    I went across
to the phone. “Well, the first thing I’m going to do is call the hospital.
Maybe Dr. Hughes will have some ideas. At least we have a theory about it now,
which is a damn sight more than we had a couple hours ago.”
    I dialed the
Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, and asked for Dr. Hughes. When he answered, he
sounded even more tired than ever. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning,
and he must have been on duty all day.
    “Dr. Hughes?
This is Harry Erskine.”
    “What do you
want, Mr. Erskine? Have you got some news of your ghost?”
    “I found a
medium, Dr. Hughes, and we held a seance tonight in Karen’s apartment. There
was some kind of manifestation – a face. All of us saw it.