The room was filling with blinding, choking smoke. Through its billows, impossibly tall and shuddering with flame, the wooden figure stalked nearer, until Neil had to abandon the door and scramble toward the window. He glanced quickly out through the broken pane. It was a long drop onto hard ground, and even if he didn’t break his neck, he’d probably wind up with a couple of fractured legs.

He turned back toward the medicine man. The breeze from the window was feeding the flames, and the wooden body burned with a soft, sinister, roaring sound.

“I have you now, white man,” whispered the charring mouth. “I have you now.” Beside him, the linen cover of Toby’s bedroom chair began to smolder and burn, and one of the drapes caught afire.

Neil raised his arm to protect his face from the heat. The fiery fingers clawed closer, and one of them seized his sleeve, viciously strong and searingly hot. He kicked out against the wooden figure, but it slammed him against the window frame, and he heard his back crack. All he seemed to be able to see was fire, and the grotesque outline of a face wrought in blazing charcoal.

Suddenly, the flames burst out higher. The bedroom door was open, and even more oxygen was nourishing the wooden figure’s fire. Neil wrenched his arm free and dropped to his knees, scorched and agonized.

The next thing he knew there was a strange series of sounds. They were slow and ghostly, and they sounded like the surf on the ocean shelf, like something being played in slow motion. Above him, the wooden figure faltered, turned, and then abruptly began to burst into thousands of shattering, whirling fragments of blazing ashes.

The fire exploded over Neil as he lay crouched on the floor, raining all around him. His neck and his hands were prickled with cinders. But then there was nothing but burned-out chunks of blackened walnut, and a fine dusting of gray ash. Neil blinked, and slowly raised his head.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the outline of a man’s feet, and the hem of a pale-colored coat. He thought he saw a hand move, the way a hand moves when a gun goes back to its holster. But then there was nothing but the landing, and Susan, pale-faced and frightened, under the harsh light from the lamp on the ceiling.

She came into the room and helped him up. He brushed ash and burned wood from his shirt and coughed. His hands and his forearm were blistered, and his hair was singed, but apart from that he was unhurt.

“Neil,” Susan wept. “Oh, Neil.”