Neil thought about the man in the long white duster. The man who kept begging for help. Maybe he was a ghost, too-a kind of sad warning stirred up from the past.
From what he said, he may have been one of the twenty settlers who died up at Conn Creek. One of the innocent folks who had died at the hands of the Wappos while Bloody Fenner pretended to ride off for help.
Neil took Billy Ritchie’s hand and squeezed it
“You’ve been a lot of help,” he said softly.
“What did you say?” demanded Billy.
“I said, you’ve been a lot of help. I’m beginning to understand things that didn’t make any sense before.”
Billy Ritchie set down his bourbon glass. He stared up at Neil with a sharp, canny look in his eye.
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” he said.
“A little,” admitted Neil.
“You think it’s coming-the day of the dark stars?”
“I’ve seen some signs.”
“What kind of signs?”
“I’ve seen a wooden man. Least, I think I have. And I’ve heard voices from the people who were killed up at Las Posadas.”
Billy Ritchie rubbed his chin. “It doesn’t sound too good, does it?” he said. “It doesn’t sound too good at all.”
“I don’t know what to do,” said Neil. “If it’s really medicine men, then they’ve chosen the kids at my son’s school.”
“They would, if you’re a Fenner. They’d look for a spirit guide, you see. Someone to help them reincarnate themselves. Out there, out in what the Indians used to call the
‘outside,’ the spirits of those medicine men would look for the ghost of someone who once helped them when they were human. Bloody Fenner would be just their man.”
“But what can I do?” asked Neil. “Is there anything I can do about it? I mean, how can I stop it?”
Billy Ritchie brushed cat hairs off his fingers. “I wouldn’t like to say,” he confessed.
“That old trapper never got as far as telling me what to do if the day of the dark stars ever actually arrived.”
“But what about all those children? What about my son?”
“It’s going to be worse than that,” said Billy Ritchie. “Well-I know there isn’t nothing worse than your own son being hurt. But the day of the dark stars is when the Indians take an eye for an eye, and you just think about the thousands and thousands of Indians who died because of what the white man did to them. If these medicine men really do turn up, and if they really call down their demons, then we’re going to see death and horror like you can’t even imagine.”
Neil was silent for a few seconds, and then he squeezed Billy Ritchie’s hand again.
“I’m going to start fighting back,” he said determinedly. ‘I'm going straight to the cops, to begin with, and we’re going to have those children, protected.”
“Well,” said Billy Ritchie, “I just hope yqu can. Maybe it takes a Fenner to wipe out a Fenner’s wrong deeds. Don’t think it’s going to be easy, though. And keep on your guard. If your ancestor’s around, then you’ve got yourself some stiff competition.
Alien Fenner wasn’t called Bloody for nothing.”
“A lien Fenner? That was his name?”
“It sure was. Didn’t you know that?”
Neil shook his head. “Nobody ever told me before. Everybody just called him Bloody.”
Billy Ritchie tickled his black cat’s ears. “Bloody’s good enough,” he said simply.
“Bloody’s good enough.”
Sergeant Murray sat behind his desk with the same patient expression he used for people who complained about dogs fouling then- front lawns* or kids throwing stones at their windows. Outside, a breeze had sprung up from the ocean, and dust blew in gritty clouds across the police station parking lot. It was nearly five o’clock, and Sergeant Murray was due to go home at five. He was a big, chubby man, with a face as large as a pig’s, and he was feeling hungry.
Beside him, his air-conditioning unit rattled and burbled and whined. From time to time, as Neil talked to him, he took a paper clip out of the small plastic tray on his desk, unbent it, and dropped it into his wastebasket with an audible ping.
Neil told him about Toby’s nightmares, about the paintings at the school, about the wooden demon, and about Billy Ritchie. Sergeant Murray listened, asking no questions, and when Neil was finished he wedged his fat fingers together and had a deep, silent think.
Eventually, he lifted his head and said, “Neil-we’ve known each other a good few years.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
Sergeant Murray pulled a face. “Everything, when it comes down to it, Neil. A cop who didn’t know you too well might book you for wasting police time. As it is-”
“Wasting police time!” said Neil, astounded. “You think I’ve spent a whole day over at Calistoga, and driven all the way back here, just to waste your time!”
“Neil,” said Sergeant Murray, raising one porky hand to restrain him, “I don’t mean that you’ve done it with bad intent. I don’t mean that you’ve done it deliberately.”
“Well, what the hell do you mean? I know this is weird stuff, George. I know it sounds crazy. But I’ve told you the facts as they are, and you can’t sit there and tell me that something pretty threatening isn’t going on here. You can’t ignore it.”
Sergeant Murray glanced at the clock and sighed. “Neil,” he said, with immense patience, “I’d like to believe that what you’ve been telling me is true. I’d really like to believe it. But the fact of it is, you’ve only got the word of some cranky old-timer to go by, and a couple of bad dreams that Toby’s been having, and that’s all you know.”
“What about the photograph? The picture of Misquamacus? George, there were three days between those pictures, and yet they were taken on opposite sides of the continent!”
There was a pause, and then Sergeant Murray continued, “Neil, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen those pictures. But they don’t constitute no proof. Anyone could have written any kind of date on the back of those prints, and you don’t even know if they were taken where the old-timer said they were.”
Neil sat back. “Then what are you trying to tell me?” he asked. “Are you trying to tell me you won’t help?”
Sergeant Murray looked a little abashed, but he said, as reasonably as he could manage, ‘I’ll help when there’s good cause to, Neil. You know that as well as I do.
But if I put a guard on those schoolchildren, that means that a whole lot of taxpayers’
money is going to be tied up for a long time, and a whole lot of people are going to be asking me why. Now, what am I going to say? That I’ve put a patrolman on school guard because Neil Fenner believes the children are being taken over by Red Indian ghosts? That I’ve risked the security on a whole score of homes, and I’ve had to halve the beach patrols, just because we’re being threatened by medicine men from a hundred years ago? Come on, Neil, you have to see my point of view.”
“You’re laughing at me,” said Neil.
Sergeant Murray slowly shook his head. ‘I’m not laughing at you, Neil. Sometimes, circumstantial evidence appears to be pretty convincing. It’s easy to make yourself believe that something’s true, just because it appears to fit the facts as you know them. But what you have to ask yourself is, do you know all the facts? Or enough of them to make a sound judgment?
“George, I’m only asking because of the children. They’re at risk, and I believe it’s up to us to protect them.”