The drawings, although they varied in style and color, were strangely alike. They showed trees, mountains, and struggling figures. Some of them depicted twenty or thirty stick people, their arms all flung up in the air, with splashes of scribbled red all around. Others showed only one or two people, lying on their backs amid the greenery. There were arrows flying through the air in about a dozen drawings, and in others there were men holding rifles.

Only about eight or nine children had written names or words beside their pictures. Toby had written “Allen, help.” Daniel Soscol had written “Alun” and then crossed it out. Debbie Spurr had put down “Allen, Allen, didn’t come back.”

There were some odd names, too. “Ta-La-Ha-Lu-Si” was written in heavy green crayon on one picture. Another bore the legend “Kaimus.” Yet another said “Oweaoo” and “Sokwet.”

Susan and Neil spent twenty minutes going through the drawings, but in the end they laid them down on the desk and looked at each other in bewilderment.

“I don’t know what the hell it all means,” admitted Neil. “It just doesn’t seem to make any kind of sense at all.”

“It’s strange that they all have the same kind of picture in their minds, though,” said Susan. “I mean, how many other groups of twenty-one different people would all have the same nightmare? Look at this one—this is Toby’s. His drawing is almost the same as everyone else’s.”

Neil pushed back his chair and stood up. Outside, through the cheap net curtains, he could see Toby in the backyard, shoveling up dust with his Tonka bulldozer. Neil felt such a wave of protectiveness toward him that the tears prickled his eyes. What on God’s earth was Toby caught up in? Were these really just nightmares, or were they something arcane and dangerous?

Susan suggested, “Maybe we ought to talk to Doctor Crowder again. Perhaps it’s some kind of psychological sickness.”

Neil slowly shook his head. “Toby’s not sick, and neither are the rest of those kids. Nor am I, if it comes to that. I feel it’s more like something from outside, something trying to get through to us, you know?”

“You’re talking about something like a séance? Like a spirit, trying to get through?”

“That’s right, kind of. I just have the feeling that there’s pressure around, something’s pressing in from all around us. I don’t know what the hell it is, but I can feel it. It’s there all the time now, night and day.”

“Neil—” said Susan, guardedly.

He turned away from the window. “I know. It sounds nuts. Maybe it is nuts. But I feel just as sane as I did last week. And if I’m nuts, then all these school children are nuts, too, and I don’t believe they are.”