Graham Masterton: Revenge of the Manitou

“Well, I guess so,” admitted Daniel. “I just think it’s funny all these kids having bad dreams.”

Andy Beaver, came up, burbling and warbling like R-2 D-2. Daniel didn’t bother to stick around. When Andy was in a playful mood, it usually meant that Daniel was going to get his hair twisted or his shorts pulled down. Daniel said so long to Toby, and ran away across the yard and into the classroom.

“Have you been talking to teacher’s pet?” asked Andy. He was blond and pugnacious, and would probably spend most of his adult life watching baseball and drinking Old Milwaukee.

Toby screwed up his eyes against the sun. “What if I have?”

“You just don’t talk to teacher’s pet, that’s all. He’s a sissy.”

“His mom just died. Maybe you’d be a sissy if your mom just died.”

“I wouldn’t be a sissy for nothing. What were you talking about?”

Toby finished his chocolate bar and screwed up the paper. “What’s it to you?”

Andy Beaver grabbed his hand and bent his fingers back. Toby yelped in pain, but Andy was much stronger, and he couldn’t get free. A couple of the other kids came over, yelling, “Fight! Fight!” Toby and Andy fell to the dusty ground and rolled over and over, kicking and grunting and punching.

At last, Andy held Toby down on the ground, his knees pressed against Toby’s arms.

Both of them were flushed and grubby, and there were tears in their eyes.

Andy said, “Okay-what were you talking about? I want to know!”

Toby coughed. “We were talking about those bad dreams, that’s all. Nothing that you’d understand.”

“Oh yeah?”

Toby pushed bun off and struggled to his feet. His shirt was hanging out at the back, and bis pants were ripped. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“You’re so smart, you think you’re the only person who ever had dreams,” Andy said.

“So when was the last time you had a bad dream?” demanded Toby. “The last time your mother cooked spaghetti, I’ll bet.”

“It was not!” said Andy, hotly. “I had bad dreams last night, and the night before.”

“You had bad dreams?” asked Toby.

“I did too. Nightmares.”

“You shouldn’t have gone to see Star Wars,” said Ben Nichelini. “You’re not man enough to take it.”

“Will you shut up?” said Andy. “I had bad dreams about people having all their hair torn off of their heads. Dozens of ‘em. All screaming and shouting, because somebody was tearing the hair right off of their heads.”

“Gee, that’s scary,” put in Debbie Spurr. She was a thin, mousy little girl in a brown gingham print-frock and her hair in bows. “That’s worse than my bad dream.”

“What is this?” asked Andy. “Just because Toby and Petra and me had bad dreams, that doesn’t mean everybody else has to say they had one too.”

“David had one,” said Toby. “That makes four.”

“I did have one,” insisted Debbie. “I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t. I heard someone calling out. It was terrifically scary. They kept on calling and calling, and I didn’t know what to do. It was a woman, and she sounded awful scared.”

Toby looked at Andy, and for the very first time in their lives they looked at each other as people, not as classmates or as children. Then- young faces were sober and expressionless, as if they had both recognized that what was happening was unusual and dangerous. Then Andy broke the spell by smirking a little, and saving,

“That was nothing compared to my dream. Some woman calling out? I’ll put a thumbtack on Mrs. Novato’s chair, then you’ll hear some woman calling out.”

Just then, Mrs. Novato came to the schoolhouse door and blew her whistle to signal the end of the lunch recess. The talk about bad dreams broke up as they drifted back to the classroom, and Andy Beaver started on his R-2 D-2 impressions again, colliding with the girls and making burbling sounds. Toby walked back to the school door alone, and he was the last to go in. At the door, some feeling made him pause, and he looked back at the schoolhouse fence.

Under the windy sun, a tall man was standing, only about three or four feet beyond the gate. His eyes were shaded by a wide, dusty hat, and he was dressed in worn, dusty clothes. His lips appeared to be moving, and Toby was sure that he could hear the whispered word ‘Alien …”

Right in front of his horrified eyes, the man began to fade in the afternoon heat, like a photograph. In a moment, he had vanished, and there was nothing to see but the rounded hills of Bodega, and the hot blacktop leading westward to the beach.

A scuffling noise right behind Toby made him jump. He looked up and it was Mrs.

Novato. She said, with patronizing patience, “Are you deigning to join us, Mr. Fenner, or are you going to spend the rest of the day admiring the landscape?”

Toby was pale, and his face was sweaty. Mrs. Novato, instantly regretful of her sarcasm, asked, “Toby-are you all right?”

Toby felt as if his face was being pressed into a pillow. There was a terrible lack of air, a terrible closeness. He felt his legs turning black, and the blackness rose up in him and engulfed his brain. Mrs. Novato caught him as he fell in a dead fault.

That evening, as he lay tucked up in bed, his mother came upstairs with a bowl of Philadelphia pepper pot soup and a plate of crackers. He was feeling much better already, but Doctor Crowder had insisted that he should rest. He had finished a jigsaw of the Monitor and the Merrimac, and snapped and unsnapped a snap-together model of a Cadillac Eldorado, arid how he was reading a Doctor Strange comic.

His mother sat down on the side of his bed, and set his soup and crackers on his bedside table. Outside, the sky was dusking up, and there was a smell of eucalyptus from the row of trees which separated their plot from the MacDeans next door.

Susan Fenner said, “How’s it going, tiger?”

Toby smiled. “I guess I’m okay now.”

“You want to talk about it? You didn’t want to talk to Doctor Crowder.”

Toby turned his head away. He knew just what everyone would say if he told them about the man by the school fence. They’d say he had heat stroke, or too many peanut-butter-and-jeHy sandwiches. It seemed like every weird thing that ever happened, adults attributed it to something you ate. His mommy waited patiently while he kept his head turned away, but he wished she wouldn’t, because he really didn’t want to tell her what had happened.

Eventually, his mommy took his hand. In a soft voice, she said, “Is it because you don’t think I’ll believe you? Is that it?”

He still didn’t turn back, but he swallowed and said, “A little bit.”

“Well,” she said gently, “you don’t have to. You’re entitled to keep anything private that you want to. But you were real sick at school today, and because I love you, and because I care about you, I’d like to know what it was.”

Toby bit his lip. Then he looked back at his mommy, and his face was so crumpled and so distressed that she felt the tears prickle her eyes. She held him close, and hugged him, and they both wept a little, until at last he felt better, and he sat up straight in bed and smiled at her with two trails of tears down his face.

“You’re a silly, wonderful boy,” she chided him. “You know you can tell me anything you want. Anything.”

Toby swallowed, and nodded. The he began, “I was going into school after lunch. I turned around, and I saw a man. He was standing over by the fence.” Susan frowned. “A man? What was he doing?” “He wasn’t doing anything. He was just standing there.”

She softly brushed back his tousled hair. “Are you sure?” she asked him. “I mean, he wasn’t-well, undressed or anything?”