Thump… drip… thump… drip… thump…
Suddenly there is a shriek of pain from just beyond the door.
Blake springs to his feet. He draws the bolt. He throws the barrier open.
Then he gasps and turns away — for what he has seen is far worse than he has imagined.
The fort is a five-sided structure with flanking bastions and a stockade twenty feet high. It stands high on a level bank one hundred feet above the Saskatchewan River. The gate is open. Through the gate. Blake can see the wigwam poles outside, can see a solitary horse far down in the river meadow. On both sides of the water, discolored by smoke and mud, stand rude and white crosses to mark the place of the dead.
It is snowing.
Large wet flakes tumble out of the sky and land on the windows of several buildings huddled within the stockade. Blake can see the frightened faces masked by these window panes.
Blake can see the Indians swarming into the fort.
The Indians are everywhere.
Now a Medicine Man materializes from out of the driving snow. He walks to the center of the yard and holds his hands up to the sky. This man is dressed in a deerskin shirt embroidered with porcupine quills and ornamented with hair locks from his enemies. His headdress is of ermine skins; his face has clawed-out eyes. Tears of blood are trickling down his wrinkled cheeks.
Thump… thump… thump,
The drumming is getting louder, filling the air with sound.
Thump… thump… thump…
Now all the whites are on the ground, crying, moaning, wailing, bleeding, all without a scalp. Then the Indians all stand up at once, erect and motionless — and in that instant Blake knows what has brought them here.
The Indians have come to bring the smallpox back.
He sees each face distorting and shriveling in decay, each one a leering travesty of the human form, each fetid apparition melting and flowing like tallow. What was once flesh is now putrid and dripping, now bone-revealing carrion slowly being eaten away. He sees the Indians, dying and disfigured, move to the doors of the houses. He watches as they spit on the handles and smear pus from their faces across the windows, each throat evoking a plaintive cry to take this demon back.
Then Wilfred Blake slams the door and rams the bolt into place.
Now the pounding has stopped. Blake sighs. Then the candle sputters and dies. Darkness, blackness. Drip… drip … The sound is across the room.
The first smash of a tomahawk cracks through the wood of the door.
Groping in his pocket, he finds a match and strikes it. Sulphur flashes yellow against the tinder box. Then with the match before him, he starts across the room — into that part he could not see by the candlelight.
Here the floor is strewn with broken bottles, and kegs, and overturned medicine chests. Glass is smashed; powders have spilled; tinctures seep from lead containers to stain everything in reach. Blisters, pills and fluids mix with whiskey, high wine and rum.
Crack! Crack! Crack!Tomahawks splinter the door.
The match dies. Find another! Again the yellow light. And this time he sees the bones and skulls upon the floor.
Now Blake has a sudden frantic wish to exclude this scene from his mind. He claws his eyes and begins to turn around and around and around. For he has seen the fang marks scratched upon each bone, has seen the skulls sawed open and picked clean of their contents, has seen how those skeletons still collocated show postures of frenzy and panic. The bone tangle stretches for yards in every direction.
Drip…
The second match frizzles and dies.
He strikes his last match. He crouches. His fingers examine the floor. Blood, a pool of sticky blood, soaks into the sawdust and planks.
Drip… drip… A drip from above lands on the back of his hand. For blood is raining in slow drips from the ceiling of the room. Blake wrenches his head up and shivers at what he sees.
Then the drumming starts up again.
The drumbeat comes now from up on the roof beyond a trapdoor in the ceiling, a relentless thumping echoes around in his head.
The body hangs upside down from the ceiling by nails driven through both feet. The head is missing, the neck severed to expose vein and muscle, artery and bone in a circle of raw flesh. What is left of the man is still dressed in the bright scarlet tunic of the Northwest Mounted Police. And Blake knows somehow that the tunic is his own. Good Lord, he thinks, why must I be so —
Clink
What was that?
Clink
There it is again!
The skeletons are all beginning to move. Each bone joins to another. Then another. Then another. Then each skull looks at Blake.
The Inspector rips open his holster and grasps at empty air: his Enfield is gone.
With a crash the door breaks open and the Indians enter the room.
"We've got him now, brothers," one skull shrieks in glee, its skeleton slowly creeping across the floor, its ivory cranium straining forward to reveal razor-sharp teeth.
A hand of bones grips Blake's leg as the final match goes out. Fangs sink into his thigh. Kicking, fighting, Blake lashes out, stumbling in the dark. His hand brushes against a ladder.
With a snarl he breaks free, and suddenly he's climbing.
A skeleton starts after him.
Reaching up with both hands, Blake pushes against the barrier. It begins to yield, squeaking up on rusted hinges. He swings it open. He gets his head and shoulders through — and then the pounding encircles him.
Thump… thump… thump… thump…
"Nae!" Blake screams aloud.
For sitting cross-legged in front of him is a naked Ashanti warrior. All he wears are bells and shells and a leopard tail tied around his waist. The black man is grinning through sharp, pointed teeth at the drum that sits before him, for on this drum is a severed head wearing a white pith helmet.
Blake gasps.
For the black man beats upon Blake's head with a massive buffalo bone.
Thump… thump… thump…A relentless, monotonous pounding.
Though a scream starts deep in the white man's throat, it never reaches his mouth. A hand now grabs the Inspector's hair and yanks his head around. Blake feels his chin caught in the crook of someone's naked arm, feels his head being jerked back and his jaw being raised. A sudden searing line of fire cuts across his throat, then with a gush a waterfall cascades down the front of his chest. Coughing and choking and gasping for air, Blake shrieks out inside his head, but the sound just echoes around and around unable to escape. His last view is a bloody knife in Almighty Voice's hand.
Thump… thump… thump… th-
The pounding came to a halt.
The echo finished; the nightmare gone.
And once more it was over.
The spell broken, Blake turned his eyes away from the sight of Iron-child's head. He began to take deep breaths counting up to fifty. When that was finished he felt better, and he looked out through the gap.