“Sure,” said Harry. “The hard way.”

Singing Rock said, “These paintings themselves are very interesting. When you first look at them, you’d think they were painted by children.”

“Of course you would,” said Neil. “They were painted by children.”

Singing Rock shook his head. “This style is primitive in some respects, but it isn’t childish. Look at this one. You can find carvings and drawings in this style among the Wabanaki and the Etchemis. This one shows the Indians dressed in the costumes of Arapahos. And this one here looks distinctly Iroquois.”

Neil shuffled through the paintings with a frown. “You mean the medicine men inside the children created these paintings? Not the children themselves?”

“Not fully,” said Singing Rock. “These were done a few days ago, at a time when the medicine men wouldn’t have taken hold of the children’s minds completely. But their tribal characteristics have certainly shown through. I can identify Sioux, Micmac, Hopi, Apache, Shoshoni, and Modoc, as well as the ones you’ve got in your hand.”

“Does that help?” asked Neil.

“It helps a great deal. It means that I can tell who some of the medicine men are. Each tribe has its own mythical medicine heroes. The Wabanaki, for instance, had Neem, the bringer of thunder. The Apaches used to revere a medicine man called No Name, who was said to wear a live rattlesnake as a headdress. Misquamacus will almost certainly have called on the best medicine man from each tribe, and so it won’t be too difficult to make a list of the team we’re going to be up against.”

“Singing Rock sees the eternal struggle between red men and white men as a kind of occult football game,” remarked Harry.

Neil sat down. “What I don’t quite understand is, what are these demons like, these things they’re going to call down to destroy us? I mean, what are they actually like?”

At that moment, as if prompted by fate, the telephone in the front room began to ring. Neil said, “Excuse me,” and went to answer it.

Singing Rock and Harry waited while Neil talked. Harry crushed out his cigarette and swilled down the last of his beer. Then Neil came back into the room, and his face was flushed with anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harry. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It was Mr. Saperstein, from the school,” said Neil. “He heard you talking to Mrs. Novato in the school yard, and he guessed you’d want to know.”

“Know? Know what?”

Neil looked at him, and Harry could see that he was very close to collapse. Singing Rock advised, “You’d better sit down.”