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the Little Big Horn."
"There's no river, though, is there?" Susan pointed out. "The Little Big Horn
didn't take place up in the mountains, and all these drawings have mountains.
I'd say this looks like someplace up in the Sonoma or the Vaca Mountains,
wouldn't you?"
"Could be," admitted Nell.
He took a last shuffle through the drawings and was about to slide them back
into their envelope when something caught his attention. He peered closer at
Ben Nichelini's drawing, and right at the back of a crowd of blood-splattered
white men, he saw what looked distinctly like a childish rendering of a man in
a white duster coat, with a beard and a wide-brimmed hat. There was a large
arrow sticking out of the man's back.
He went across to the parlor window and opened it. He called: "Toby - c'mere a
minute, will you?"
Susan asked, "What is it? Have you seen something?"
"I'm just guessing," Neil told her. "Wait and see what Toby says."
Toby came running in through the kitchen, still clutching his bulldozer. "What
is it, sir?"
Neil held up the drawings. "You know what these are, Toby?"
"Sure do. They were all the dreams you asked us to draw. That's Ben
Nichelini's, isn't it?"
"That's right. Did you look at it before?"
"No, sir. Mrs. Novato said we weren't to. She said we had to draw the pictures
all by ourselves, without copying or anything."
Neil handed the drawing over. Very softly, he said, "I want you to look at
that picture really closely, Toby, and I want you to tell me if you see
anything that you're familiar with. Is there anything there that reminds you
of someone or something you've seen before?"
Toby scrutinized the drawing with an intent frown. While he did so, Neil
glanced across at Susan, and raised a finger to tell her that he would explain
everything later. Susan watched her son worriedly, her flour-white hands
clasped together in the lap of her apron.
Eventually, Toby handed the drawing back. He said in a small voice, "There's a
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man who looks like the man I saw by the school fence-."
"Is that him?" asked Neil, pointing.
Toby replied, "Yes. But there's something wrong with that picture."
"Something wrong?" asked Susan. "What do you mean, honey?"
Toby said, "Alien's not there. He should be there, but he's not."
"Alien? Then this man in the white coat-he's not Alien?"
"No, sir. Alien's this one."
Toby looked through the drawings until he found the picture of the smiling
cowboy with the pistol, the one who was standing up looking happy while all
the other cowboys fell to the ground around him, pierced by Indian arrows.
"That's Alien?" asked Neil. "How do you know?"
"I just do. That's what he looks like."
"But have you ever met him? Ever seen him before?"
Toby shook his head. "No, sir."
"Did you dream about him?"
"No, sir."
"Then what makes him Alien? How do you know this man isn't Alien, or the man
in the white coat isn't Alien?"
"The man in the white coat is always asking Alien for help," said Toby,
straight-faced. "So he couldn't be Alien. And anyway, Alien is just Alien.
None of these other men are Alien."
Susan and Neil looked at each other for a while, and then Susan said, "It
looks like a dead end, doesn't it? Where do we go from here?"
"I don't know," answered Neil. "The whole damned thing is so meaningless."
Susan waited a while longer, but outside it was beginning to grow dusky. After
a few minutes she touched Neil's hand and went back to her baking in the
kitchen. Toby took his bulldozer upstairs to his bedroom, and Neil could hear
him making motor noises all around the floor. The sweet aroma of apple cookies
soon began to remind him that he hadn't eaten yet, and that he was hungry.
Maybe tonight would be a night without bad dreams. Maybe the man in the long
white coat would vanish and never appear again. But somehow, depressingly, it
seemed to Neil as if they were all caught up in a strange and mysterious event
over which they had no control. He had a feeling of impending trouble, and it
wouldn't leave him alone. He tapped his fingers on his rolltop desk and tried
to think what all these signs and drawings and dreams could mean.
He wondered if it might be worthwhile taking Doughty's advice, and driving
over to Calistoga to see Billy Ritchie. If Billy Ritchie knew about the old
days in Napa and Sonoma, then maybe the name Alien would mean something to
him. Maybe he'd heard tales of a notorious man in a white duster, and perhaps
he could tell him what "Ta-La-Ha-Lu-Si" and "Kaimus" meant, too.
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Susan called from the kitchen: "Do you want to try one of these cookies while
they're still hot?"
"Sure thing," said Neil. He got out of his chair, but just as he closed the
door behind him he heard a shriek
from upstairs that made him jump in nervous shock. It was a high-pitched,
terrified shriek. It was Toby.
Neil ran up the stairs three at a time, bounded across the landing and hurled
Toby's door wide open. The boy was standing in the middle of the room, still
clutching his bulldozer, but staring in paralyzed terror at his wardrobe.
There was an oddly nauseating chill in the room, a chill that reminded Neil of
a butcher's cold storage. It must have been an illusion but the floor seemed
to be swaying, too, as if there were slow, glutinous waves flowing under the
carpet.
"Toby," Neil said shakily. "Toby, what's wrong?"
Toby turned to him with slow, spastic movements. There seemed to be something
wrong with the boy's face. The outlines of it were blurred, almost
phosphorescent and, even though his lips were closed, he appeared to be
speaking. It was his eyes that frightened Neil the most, though. They weren't
the eyes of a child at all. They were old, flat, and as dead as iron.
A deep, turgid groaning noise shook the room. It was a groan like a ship's
timbers being crushed by pack ice. A groan like Jim had given when the Buick
collapsed onto his chest, hugely amplified. Neil reached out his hand for
Toby, but his son seemed to have shrunk miles and miles beyond reach, and
there was a cold wind blowing that stiffened the father's limbs and slowed him
down.
Neil turned and looked toward the wardrobe. What he saw then almost convinced
him that he was going crazy, that his mind had finally let go. In the wood
itself he could see a fierce, feral face, like a face under the surface of a
polished pond. It stared at him with such viciousness and malevolence that he
couldn't take his
eyes away from it. But far more uncanny and terrifying was that a hand was
reaching out of the flat walnut veneer, a hand that was made of shiny wood,
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