Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

Nobody ever proved nothing, of course, so he never
came to trial, but the stories went around for years that Bloody Fenner was responsible for some of the worst of the Indian
massacres, and it took a good few years before the Fenner family wasn’t shunned no more.”
    Neil hefted the
ropes back to the White Dove, and heaved them onto the deck. “That’s something
I wasn’t told,” he said to Doughty. “I guess Bloody Fenner was someone my family preferred to forget.”
    Doughty stuck
his pinkie up inside his palate to dislodge a sticky lump of taffy. “If you
really want to know about the old days, you ought to take a trip across to
Calistoga and talk to Billy Ritchie – that’s if he’s still alive – but I
haven’t heard different. Billy Ritchie’s grandpa was a friend of Robert Louis
Stevenson, and a lot of folks say he was the model for Israel Hands in Treasure
Island. They were a tough lot, in those days, but they say that Bloody Fenner was the toughest of all.”
    Neil climbed
down onto the White Dove and started to uncoil one of the ropes. The day was
warming up now, out here on the bay, but the gray fog was even denser, and he
couldn’t even see as far as the harbor’s inlet. A fishing boat chugged past
like a gray ghost.
    “Here,” said
Neil. He reached in his pocket and handed Doughty a five-dollar bill. “Why
don’t you go set them up in the bar? As soon as I’m through here, I’ll come
join you.”
    It was a gentle
way of buying Doughty a free drink. The unwritten code of behavior on Bodega
wharf was that you let Doughty bend your ear for a while, and then you slipped
him a little money to make life a little easier for him.
    Doughty said,
“Don’t forget to come along, mind. I’ll set you up an old-fashioned.” Then he
tipped his nautical cap, and swayed off along the boardwalk as if he were on
the deck of an old-time clipper.
    Neil grinned to
himself and went back to his painting and tidying up. Although the White Dove
was superficially battered, it wouldn’t take much to bring back her glamour,
and she wasn’t going to need a major overhaul this year. Neil reckoned to have
finished her off by the end of the week. Then he could get back to his small
yard across the other side of the wharf and complete work on a fishing boat he
was refitting.
    It was almost
eleven o’clock in the morning, and the fog was at its densest. The sun was a
pale yellow disk, and the wind had stilled. Neil found that he was sweating as
he sorted and tied the new ropes, and he felt for a moment as if he could
scarcely breathe.
    He glanced out
toward the bay and frowned. He was sure he could see something out there in the
water. He screwed up his eyes against the yellowish haze of the fog; whatever
it was, it was too far away to distinguish clearly. It was tall and pale and
upright, like a drifting buoy, or the sail of a small weekend dinghy. It was
only when the fog stirred that he began to understand, with an overwhelming
sense of dread, that the shape wasn’t a sail at all, nor a buoy. It was a man. A man in a long white coat, standing silent and unsupported in the
middle of the bay.
    Biting his lip
with uncertainty, Neil rose to his feet. The fog passed in front of the figure
in veil after veil, but there was no question at all. It was a man, or the
ghost of a man. He wore a dark broad-brimmed hat and a duster, and he stood on
the water as if it was dry land. Neil shouted,
    “Hey! You!” but
his voice sounded flat and weak in the fog, and the man took no notice at all.
    Panicking, Neil
turned back to the wharf and called: “Doughty! Doughty! Come take a look at
this! For Christ’s sake! Come take a look at this!” A voice whispered,
“Alien... please, Alien . .
    .” “Doughty!”
yelled Neil.
    The door of the
cocktail bar opened, and Dave Conway from the fish stall came out, a tall
red-bearded man with a well-known line of sarcasm. “Anything wrong there,
Neil?” he called out.
    “Dave, do you
see