He took her hand. “Susan,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Susan, I’m not going nuts. I saw that wooden man up there as close as I’m standing here now.”

She gave him a quick, noncommittal smile. “Yes, honey. I know. There was a wooden man.”

They went downstairs. Toby was back at the table, finishing his drawing, and when Neil came down he looked up at him with deep, serious eyes. Neil regarded his son for a long, silent moment, trying to see the spirit of the wonder-worker who might be lurking someplace inside him, but there didn’t seem to be any sign at all.

He came up close and hunkered down beside Toby’s chair. The boy gave him a cautious grin, and said, “What’s the matter, Daddy? Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” nodded Neil. “We just had a little accident with matches, that’s all. You should learn something from it. Don’t play with fire.”

“Yes, sir,” said Toby, politely.

For some reason, Toby’s manner seemed to discourage any further conversation, and Neil couldn’t think what else to say. He glanced at Toby’s drawing, and asked, “How’s it going? You finished it yet?”

“Sure.”

“Can I see it?”

Toby nodded. “If you want.”

The boy took his crooked arm away from the paper, and Neil took it off the table and examined it. It was almost an abstract, colored mainly in blues and grays and dull greens. There seemed to be clouds, with twisting tentacles writhing in between them, and a suggestion of a face that wasn’t truly a face at all. It was crude, and drawn with Toby’s usual heavy-handedness, but there was something strangely subtle and disturbing about it as well.

“What is it?” asked Neil.

Toby gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know, sir. It isn’t a person.”

Neil ran his fingers lightly over the waxed surface of the drawing. In the back of his mind, he heard that strange, distant voice again, the voice of the wooden man. “I am the Guardian of the Ring which holds back those demons which are in no human shape.”

He ruffled Toby’s hair, and laid the drawing back on the table. From across the kitchen, Susan was eyeing him closely.

“It’s a nice picture,” said Neil, for want of anything else to say. “It looks like some kind of octopus.”

Susan said, “Your coffee’s almost ready.”

*

Late that night, when Susan and Toby had gone to bed, Neil went silently downstairs and into the den. He sat at his desk in the darkness, and moved the telephone toward him. He looked at the dial for a while, as if he were thinking, and then he picked up the receiver and called information.