Toby snuggled down in bed, and Neil tucked him in. He took the empty soup dish, and stood there for a while, looking down at his son’s mop of sun-bleached hair, at those eyes screwed up in a conscientious attempt at sleep, at those cheeks that were still soft and chubby.

He knelt down beside the bed and touched Toby’s forehead. Then he whispered, “If you do see that man again, you call me, you hear? You call me loud and I’ll come running.”

Toby opened one eye. “Yes, sir,” he said, in a husky voice, and then began the long dark slide into sleep.

*

He was awakened by the sound of the shed door banging. It was dark, very dark, and there was a rippling wind blowing from the sea. The drapes rose and fell like a huge beast breathing, and it sounded as if every loose floorboard and doorknob in the whole house was being rattled by cold, inquisitive drafts.

He lay there a while, listening. He wished very much he could go back to sleep again. He wished it was morning, and he wished his parents’ room wasn’t so far away, and more than anything he wished he was anyplace else but alone in this bed in the middle of this black breezy night, with the house stirring and shifting as if it had come to life.

He thought he heard a sound. A slow, deliberate creak, like a heavy foot pressing on a stair tread. He held his breath until he was almost bursting, listening, listening, but he didn’t hear the noise again. The drapes rustled and swished, and outside in the night the shed door banged and paused and banged again.

The voice whispered: “Allen…”

He didn’t want to hear it. He buried his head under the bedclothes, and lay there in hot darkness, his heart pounding, almost stifling under the blankets and quilted comforter. He lay there for almost five minutes, but then a terrible thought occurred to him. Supposing, while he was hiding under the bedclothes, the man in the long white duster had come into the room, and was standing over him?

Toby came struggling up from the blankets like a diver coming up for air. He raised a flushed face from the bed, ready to encounter any kind of terror. But the room was still empty, and the curtains were still rising and falling, and the only sounds were those winds that shook the sash windows and persistently tried the doors.

He was scared now. Really, desperately scared. In a tiny, inaudible voice, he called, “Daddy.”

There was no reply. The house was as dark and noisy as before. But he was sure he could hear footsteps somewhere. He was sure the tall man in the wide-brimmed hat and the long duster was coming up the stairs. He was trembling all over, but he didn’t know what to do.