“Allen, for God’s sake…,” whispered the voice.

Toby whimpered no and tried not to look toward the foxy whorls of wood on the wardrobe door, but his fright was so compelling that he couldn’t look away. The whorls twisted, and that gray shadowy face began to materialize, that tired anguished face in its prison of polished wood.

“Allen,” pleaded the voice, monotonously. “Allen… help me… for God’s sake, Allen, help me…”

Toby sat up in bed, rigid and white. The face was looking his way, and yet it didn’t appear to see him. It was gaunt and bearded, and it had the silvery quality of a photograph. Yet its lips moved as it spoke, and its eyes opened and closed in slow, regular blinking movements.

“I’m not Allen,” said Toby, in a small voice. “I’m not Allen, I’m Toby. I can’t help you. I’m not Allen at all.”

“Allen, help me…” insisted the gray face.

“I can’t,” wept Toby. “I don’t know what you want. I can’t.”

“Allen…,” moaned the voice. “Allen, for the love of God… bring them up to the peak… bring them up, or we’re lost…”

Toby cried, “I can’t! I can’t! I don’t know what you mean!”

It seemed at that moment as if the face truly opened its eyes at last. It stared at Toby, and as it stared, Toby felt as if he was being blown by a wind that came from far away and long ago, as if he was standing somewhere out in the open, but under a sky that was a hundred years gone. He had the eerie, terrifying sensation that the face on the wardrobe was real, and that the wardrobe wasn’t a wardrobe at all. He could hear someone calling far off to his left, but for some reason he was incapable of turning his head. The gray, bearded face kept him transfixed.

“Allen,” said the face, in a voice that sounded normal and very close. “Allen, I can’t hold out much longer without you.”

Toby found himself slurring an answer. His own voice seemed to echo and reverberate inside his head, as if he was speaking to himself from another room.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said slowly. “Just you hold out the best way you know how, and I’ll do what I can.”

He turned and looked down to his left. He knew there was a valley down that way, and he knew that there was help if he could only make it in time. The sun was three hours above the far mountains, and he wasn’t sure that was going to give him long enough. He reckoned his best bet was to ride along the creek, but even then they might run into some nasty surprises.

He said, “Give me till sundown. I’ll do my level darndest.”

*