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right.”
    “Neil-”
    He turned back
toward her. “How’s Toby? He looks as though he’s getting his color back.”
    Toby had opened
his eyes now, and he smiled up at his daddy faintly. Susan stroked his
forehead, and said, “It’s all right, darling, you can sleep with us tonight, in
our room. You won’t have to sleep in that nasty room again.”
    Neil hunkered
down beside Toby and touched him affectionately on the nose. “How are you
doing, tiger?”
    “Okay,” said
Toby. “I was scared, that’s all.”
    “Can you
remember what happened?” asked Neil.
    “Neil-”
protested Susan. “He’s only just gotten over it.”
    Neil said,
“Honey, we have to know what happened in there. It was out of this world. If
we’re going to have to fight some ghost or other, then I think we have to know
what it is.”
    “I think we
ought to go downstairs, calm down, and call Doctor Crowder,” said Susan. “I’ll
put on the kettle and we can have some strong black coffee.”
    Neil said,
“Toby-all I want to know is, what happened?”
    Toby’s eyes
flickered for a moment, and then he said softly, “I was just playing with my
bulldozer. Then I heard that man talking again. He sounded real scared. I saw
his face in the wardrobe. Then it wasn’t his face anymore, it was Alien’s face.
Then it was Alien, and there was somebody else there. He was terrible. He was
very tall and he scared me, and he came right out of the wood.”
    “Do you know
what he was? Or who he was?” Susan said, “Neil, please, he’s almost
unconscious.” “Susan, we have to know,” insisted Neil. “If we don’t know, then
we can’t protect ourselves. Toby-who was it? Who was the man in the door?”
    Toby’s lower
lip started to turn down, and tears filled his eyes. He said, “I don’t know. I
don’t know,” and then he shook with uncontrollable sobs. Susan held him close,
and soothed him, and Neil slowly got to his feet. “I’m going to call Doc
Crowder,” said Neil. “This is one time I don’t believe we can help ourselves.”
He helped Susan and Toby downstairs to the kitchen and lit the gas under the
kettle to make coffee. Then he went into the living room and dialed the
doctor’s home number. He realized, as he dialed, how much his hands were
shaking and, as he leaned back against his rolltop desk, waiting for the doctor to answer, he could see his face reflected in the
glass of a desk-top photograph of Susan. He was white and haggard.
    The phone rang
for almost a minute before it was picked up.
    Mrs. Crowder
said, “Doctor’s Crowder’s residence. Who is this, please?”
    “Emma?” said
Neil. “It’s Neil Fenner . Is the doctor home?”
    “Why, Neil! How
are you? It’s been a long time since you came up this way. How’s Toby?”
    Neil rubbed his
eyes. “It’s-well, it’s Toby I wanted to talk to the doctor about. We’ve got
ourselves a problem here, Emma, and I was wondering if he could find the time
to come down here.”
    “Is it really
urgent? I know he’s got a lot to do tonight. The Baxter sisters just came down
with whooping cough.”
    “Emma-if it
wasn’t serious I wouldn’t ask. I know how hard he works.”
    Emma said
warmly, “Okay, Neil. I know that. He’s going to call home when he’s through at
the Baxters , so I’ll ask him to come on down to see
you. It’s nothing too bad, I hope?”
    Neil didn’t
answer for a moment. He didn’t know how to describe what had happened, or what
to say about it. In the end, he said thickly, “No, no. It’s nothing too bad. Nothing to get upset about.”
    He hung up and
then went back into the kitchen to brew coffee. Toby was looking calmer now,
but all three of them were still pale with shock. Neil went to the wooden door
that led to the stairs and closed it, turning the key in the lock.
    Susan said
nervously, “You don’t think it’s still-”
    Neil shook his
head. “I think it’s gone, or disappeared, whatever it was. But I’m not taking
any