“And you saw Misquamacus, too, as a wooden man?”

“That’s right.”

Singing Rock glanced at Harry, and from his expression, Harry could see that he was deeply disturbed about what he was hearing.

Singing Rock continued, “I don’t want to alarm you too much, Mr. Fenner, but there’s something I believe you ought to know.”

“Call me Neil, please.”

“All right, Neil. What you have to know is that every manitou, according to Indian belief, is reincarnated seven times, and that each time it lives and dies and lives again, it gains strength and wisdom. After its seventh life on earth, it’s wise enough to join the gods outside, in what the Micmac used to call Wajok, the abode of the great ones.”

“I see,” said Neil, turning right and driving up the dusty roadway that wound over the hills toward his house. “So what does that have to do with Misquamacus?”

“Just about everything. The last time Harry and I encountered Misquamacus, he was into his fourth, or more likely his fifth, reincarnation. I could judge that because of the vast distance of time he had covered in one leap—from 1650 to the present day. It takes a powerful medicine man to do that. Now, from what you’ve told us about the things you found out in Calistoga, Misquamacus lived again in the 1830s, and that would have been his sixth reincarnation.”

Neil wiped dust from his mouth with the back of his hand. The house was in sight now, and he was driving more slowly.

“You’re trying to tell me this is his last reincarnation?”

“I believe so,” nodded Singing Rock. “He’s almost ready to take his place in Wajok, and that means he’s immensely powerful, immensely strong, and almost unbeatable by any other medicine man. He had to go through a physical rebirth the last time we met him, like a human fetus, but now he’s growing himself inside of your son’s mind. Don’t ask me how he does it. It’s beyond my medicine. But he’s doing it and, even before he’s finished doing it, he’s demonstrated some magic that no present-day wonder-worker could even touch. Creating that wooden man, Neil, takes occult powers that could make earthquakes. And that’s before he’s emerged from your son’s mind, before he’s ready to zap us with everything he’s got. There isn’t any doubt at all that he’s going to call down Ossadagowah, and when he does that, we’re really up against it.”

Neil stopped the pickup outside his backyard and took out the keys.

“Are we going to die?” he asked Singing Rock quietly.