“At once he took my blood pressure himself, though a nurse had done it before, and then he looked into both my pupils. He put his stethoscope to my head, listening for the longest time, as though my brain were talking to him. Then he felt my glands and he inspected the bruises on my arms. His touch was reverent.

“ ‘I know your head hurts,’ he said in a liquid voice, ‘but we can’t give you anything for the pain that might mask the symptoms of the head injury. As soon as they’ve finished with these lacerations, we’re taking you for a CAT scan.’

“ ‘I didn’t do this to myself,’ I said. ‘I’m not insane. You won’t find any lesions in my temporal lobe. Mark my word. I’m miserable right now, but I’m not crazy.’

“He looked at me intently and for a long moment, and then he said, ‘They told me you were eighteen, is that right?’

“ ‘Just about nineteen,’ I said. ‘Does eighteen and a half mean anything?’

“He smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ he said. ‘We won’t be looking for seizures or lesions now. We’re looking for bleeding from the wound that’s causing your headache. We’re going to be waking you up if you fall asleep. Now I’m going to get out of the way, and I’ll see you after the CAT scan.’

“ ‘You’re a neurosurgeon, right?’ I said. I wanted to hold on to him. ‘Well, I swear to you that what I saw didn’t come from my brain and I don’t want you to cut a piece out of it. I’d rather rave in a padded cell than have that happen.’

“Two orderlies, or at least that’s what I thought they were, had come to take me away, but he gestured for them to wait.

“ ‘Tell me yourself,’ he said, ‘what happened to you.’

“ ‘This stranger, this man who’d been trespassing on a swamp hermitage on our property—he got into my bedroom in spite of the guards around our house, and he dragged me out of bed, pulled me into the bathroom, banged my head against the wall and cursed at me and threatened me.’

“I stopped. I didn’t want to tell him about Goblin. Some deep instinct told me not to tell him about Goblin. But that instinct didn’t stop me from silently summoning Goblin, and, quite suddenly, Goblin stood at the foot of the gurney, still looking extremely solid and vividly colored, which was amazing after his ordeal, and he shook his head in a firm negation.

“ ‘There was broken glass,’ I said, ‘from the lavatory mirror and the shower door. I think I got a few scrapes, nothing more than that.’

“ ‘How did this intruder drag you from bed?’ Dr. Winn asked.

“ ‘By my arms.’