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?”

Toby shook his head. There was a long silence while Susan stroked his hair, and tried to think what it was that could have scared Toby so much. Eventually, she said, “What was he like, this man? Did he looked frightening?”

Toby screwed up his eyes as he thought. Then he told her, slowly and very carefully, “He wasn’t frightening like a monster or anything. He wasn’t going to chase me. But he wanted me to help. He wanted me to help, and I didn’t know how to.”

Susan said, “I don’t understand. What sort of help did he want?”

Toby looked up at her anxiously. “I couldn’t help him,” he said, in a small voice. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“But Toby,” asked Susan, “what sort of help did he want? What did he want you to do?”

Toby was silent for a moment, and then he said, very quietly, “I don’t know.”

Susan squeezed his hand. Maybe Toby was just going through some kind of imaginative stage in his life. Maybe it was all that ridiculous stuff he saw on television and read in his comic books. She knew that some mothers censored what their children read and watched, but Neil had always insisted that a childhood of Superman and Captain Marvel had never done him any harm, and so they had always allowed Toby to see any trash that he wanted to. As it had turned out, he usually preferred quality programs and good books anyway, but maybe Doctor Strange and the Incredible Hulk had gotten his eight-year-old mind out of gear…

Toby said, “He wasn’t alive.”

Susan, astray with her own thoughts, murmured, “What?”

“The man I saw. He wasn’t alive.”

“But Toby, you said he was standing up by the fence. How could he stand up if he wasn’t alive?”

Toby lowered his eyes. “I don’t know. But he wasn’t alive.”