Blind Panic by Graham Masterton

steps forward and tripped over one of the logs on which they had been sitting to roast their wieners. He pitched forward into the fire, hands first, in a huge shower of hot sparks. He shouted and rolled over, hishands scorched and his hair alight. He sat up and banged at his head with both hands, and then furiously rubbed his scalp to make sure that his hair wasn’t still burning.
    Charlie said, “Okay, okay. We won’t tell anybody what you did to us. We promise. But please don’t hurt us, okay?”
    “I don’t want to be blind!” Cayley suddenly screamed. “I’d rather be dead than blind!”
    Wodziwob said, “We will do to you, child, only what your ancestors did to us.” With that, he knelt down next to Remo and beckoned to the totem figure he had called Tubbohwa’e. The totem figure bent down with a complicated series of jerks and clicks, and seized hold of Remo with jointed fingers that were so realistically carved out of oak that they almost looked human.
    “Let go of me, you bastard!” Remo swore at it. “Let go of me—you’re breaking my fucking wrists!” He struggled and kicked and twisted, but the totem figure was far too strong for him, and he remained pinned to the ground, grunting with pain and frustration.
    Wodziwob unbuttoned his coat. Wound around his waist was a long, thin rope that he loosened and dragged free, yard after yard of it, and wrapped around his right elbow. There was more than ten yards of it in all, with a loop in one end, like a lariat. While the totem figure held Remo’s wrists tightly together, Wodziwob tied a double knot around them and yanked it tight.
    “Shit, man!” Remo protested. “You’re cutting off my goddamned circulation!”
    Wodziwob said nothing, but stood up and walked over to Charlie, his open coat flapping in the smoky wind. He beckoned to the totem figure he had called Tudatzewunu, and the figure came looming up behind Charlie and gripped both of his forearms. In the meantime, Tubbohwa’e heaved Remo up from the ground and dragged him closer, so that he and Charlie were standing less than three feet apart.
    “They’re going to come looking for us, man,” said Remo, although now he was beginning to sound seriously frightened.“The park rangers, the cops. The FBI. If we don’t come back they’re going to come looking for us, and you guys are going to be toast.”
    Wodziwob tied Charlie’s wrists, and then Cayley’s, and Mickey’s last of all. The four of them now stood together as if they were a chain gang. Cayley was quietly weeping, but the other three were silent, their heads lowered, as if they had already accepted what was going to happen to them. Mickey had not been too seriously burned, although the front of his hair was short and prickly, and his forehead and his nose were reddened; but he was shivering with shock, and his teeth were chattering.
    “Now you must climb to the place where our people were forced to climb, and your people climbed after them, and murdered them all.”
    Cayley sobbed, “Why are you doing this? What did we ever do to you? I’ve never been here before! I don’t even know who your people are!”
    “Exactly,” said Wodziwob. “You do not know who our people are because our people’s bones are lying buried in the dirt and their names have all been carried away by the wind. Now we will start to climb.”
    The totem figure called Tubbohwa’e took hold of the rope and started to pull them past their Winnebago and up the slope toward the rimrock, which rose in front of them like a great dark wall. They kept staggering and stumbling and bumping into one another, but whenever they lost their footing, the totem figure called Tudatzewunu would forcibly wrench them upright again with those jointed wooden hands that gripped them as tight as a vise.
    “I can’t do this,” sobbed Cayley as the gradient grew steeper and steeper and the rough scrub prickled and tore at their legs. “I just can’t do this. Please