“You want to know who I am?” it replied. Its voice sounded peculiarly distant, as if it was speaking from centuries away. “I am the wooden form of the greatest of those outside. I am not here, in this wood. I am not in your son, although your son speaks to you in my voice. I am beyond the barrier, in the hunting grounds to which all manitous are consigned after their lives in the physical world have ended.”

“Why are you here?” asked Neil, in a shaky voice. “What do you want from us? Is Billy Ritchie right? Is it the day of the dark stars? Have you come to kill people?”

The wooden figure turned stiffly away. “It is not for you to know.”

Neil, scared, climbed slowly onto his feet. Even when he was standing up, the wooden figure loomed a good four or five inches over him. Neil stepped back across the room, reaching out behind him with his hands, trying to orient himself in the deep, cold darkness.

“You are a Fenner,” said the wooden man. “You will be spared because your ancestor helped my brothers. But only if you accept what is happening, and do not try to resist us. If you resist, I shall feed you as scraps of meat to the demons of the north wind.”

Neil answered breathlessly, “I have a right to know. I’m Toby’s father. You’re going to use Toby and I’m going to stop you.”

The wooden figure didn’t move. But it said, in its eerie, distant voice, “Before you talk about your rights, white man, before you talk about stopping me, remember the thousands of Indian families you slew, and of all those red men who died without rights. Not just fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters. Think of the women you raped and mutilated, of the braves you scalped. Then tell me that you have a right to know anything.”

Carefully stepping backward, swearing and trembling, Neil found the edge of Toby’s bed. He reached behind him and fumbled under the comforter for the sheet. He heard the wooden man creak and those heels knock against the bedroom floor, and he froze. But then the wooden man stayed where he was, and Neil softly tugged the sheet out, and rolled it up into an untidy ball behind his back.