Free Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton

wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a whole school to have the same kind
of nightmare. Mind you, they could be pulling your leg. They may just have got
together and cooked up this whole thing to scare you witless.”
    Neil looked at
the doctor in disappointment. “You don’t really think that, do you?”
    “No, I don’t,”
Doctor Crowder told him. “But you have to investigate every possibility before you
start jumping off in all kinds of directions shouting about spirits and demons.
In my book, Neil Fenner , spirits and demons don’t
exist. They’re a figment of man’s imagination, and the only way they’ll ever
take hold of a man, or a boy, is if that man or that boy allows his imagination
to run away with him.”
    “What are you
trying to tell me, doctor? You’re trying to say that I’m getting hysterical,
too?”
    Doctor Crowder
raised his hand in a pacifying gesture and firmly shook his head. “I’m not
trying to tell you that at all. I wouldn’t presume. But what I am saying is
that if Toby’s suffering from this kind of mild frenzy, then it’s up to you to
stay as stable and as rational as you possibly can, because otherwise you’ll
only make him worse.”
    Neil stood up,
and took a few testy paces up and down the boardwalk. “Doctor,” he said, “I’m
as rational and stable as you are. I swear to you, deaf, dumb, and blind, that
I saw that wooden man come out of the wardrobe, and what’s more, Susan heard
him. We can’t both be wrong.”
    “You could have
heard anything. A window banging, maybe.”
    “It was a
wooden demon, dammit! That’s what it was, and nobody can persuade me otherwise.
I don’t know why it was there, or what it really was, or what the hell was
going on, but I saw it, and I heard it, and I was as scared as I’ve ever been
in my whole life.”
    Doctor Crowder
took his pipe out of his mouth and spent a long while staring out at the night
sky. It was partly cloudy, and only a few stars sparkled above the Bodega
valley. In the distance, the Pacific surf was as soft and persistent as
breathing.
    Eventually, the
doctor said, “I don’t know what else to say to you, Neil. You haven’t convinced
me that any of this is indisputable fact, and until you do, I can only treat it
like a medical or a psychological complaint. You see my problem, don’t you?”
    ‘I guess so.”
    “I’m glad,”
said Doctor Crowder. “And I’ll tell you this much. I don’t believe you’re going
crazy, or anything terrible like that I think you may be suffering from strain
or hypertension, and I think that you owe it to yourself to look at your work
situation and even your marriage situation to find out if that’s true. It could
be that you’re feeling some kind of delayed shock, some kind of psychological
ripple effect, from the death of your brother. It could be that you’re just
tired. But I’ll grant that you believe sincerely That what you saw was real,
and I’m even prepared to keep a little bit of my mind open-though not much,
I’ll tell you-just in case you can prove to me that wooden men really do step
out of solid wardrobe doors.”
    Neil nodded.
“Okay, doctor. I’m sorry if I sounded sore.”
    Doctor Crowder
laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to look forward, Neil. You’ve got to
think of the future, and what you can do to make your life better. Then I
guarantee that you won’t be bothered by the ghosts of the past.”
    Just then,
Susan came out of the kitchen door. She said, “Toby’s sleeping now. I tucked
him up in our bed. Do you think he’s going to be all right, doctor?”
    “There’s nothing
to worry yourself about at all,” Doctor Crowder told
her, reassuringly. “He’s a highly strung boy, and I think that things have
gotten a little out of hand, that’s all. It sometimes happens at this age, when
their imagination begins to develop. They see monsters, pirates, devils, all that kind of thing. But it’ll pass, and the next you
know he’ll be