Neil shook his head. “Mr. Saperstein wants us to come down there right away. He took some photographs of Toby and the rest of the class last week, when they were dancing in the playground. He’s just had the pictures developed, and he says that something’s shown up on them that’s almost driven him mad.”

7

Mr. Saperstein met them in his office overlooking the back of the school. It was a cramped, converted storeroom, and it was heaped with music scores and books on composers and cellos with broken strings. Harry and Neil and Singing Rock could hardly crowd themselves inside, and Mr. Saperstein had to move a battered trumpet case and a bust of Beethoven with a chipped nose before Harry could sit down.

“I’m sorry I eavesdropped on your conversation with Mrs. Novato,” Mr. Saperstein said apologetically. “It was just that I was passing, and I really couldn’t help myself. I’m afraid I’ve always been a bit of a busybody.”

“Good thing you were,” said Singing Rock flatly. “This is a desperate time.”

Mr. Saperstein unlocked his desk drawer and took out a paper folder.

“I should explain that I’m pretty keen on photography,” he said. “I take my camera around most of the time. It was quite natural for me to shoot a picture of the children in the school yard. I had a little exhibition of school photographs at Sonoma last year, and it was really quite successful.”

Harry put in impatiently, “Do you think we could just take a look at the shots?”

Mr. Saperstein raised one hand. “What you have to realize is that I came into Mrs. Novato’s classroom, and she said she could see her children dancing in a strange way. I looked out of the window, too, and she was right. They were kind of shuffling around in a circle, with their arms on each other’s shoulders. I thought it could have been a Greek dance, you know, like in Zorba the Greek?”

Harry sighed. “The pictures, Mr. Saperstein?”

“Of course,” said the music teacher, opening the folder. “But before you look at them you must realize that all I saw in that school yard was children. Nothing else at all.”

One by one, Mr. Saperstein passed around the large black-and-white prints. There were five of them, each showing the school yard from Mrs. Novato’s classroom window, and the children shuffling around in a circle. In the first picture, Neil could pick out Toby and Andy and Daniel Soscol and Debbie Spurr. But there was something else besides. Out of the center of the circle of children, mostly obscured by their bodies, a sort of whitish haze seemed to be forming, like a twisting column of smoke.