Free Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton Page A

dreaming about girls.”
    Susan laughed,
and it seemed like the first laugh for a long time. Neil took her arm and
kissed her, and then reached out his hand to say good night to the doctor.
    “You can call
me any time,” said Doctor Crowder as they shook hands. “Don’t be shy. It’s
about time we got to know each other better.”
    They watched
him walk across the darkened yard to his dusty black Impala. He gave them a
wave, and then he drove off into the night, leaving the Fenners alone again with their fears, imagined or real. Neil scratched at his nose with
the back of his hand, and then said, “I could do with a drink.”
    Susan put her arm
around his waist. “I bought a bottle of Riesling at the store today. We were
going to have it with dinner.”
    He nuzzled her
hair. It smelled fresh and good. He suddenly realized how much he relied on
her, and how much he loved her. If there was any hypertension in his life, it
certainly didn’t have anything to do with Susan. He took a last look out at the
night, and then they went inside.
    In the morning,
after Neil had driven Toby to school, he came back to the house and went
upstairs. He crossed the landing to Toby’s room, and gingerly opened the door.
He was pretty sure there was nobody in there. After all, he’d taken Doc Crowder
up there last night, and showed him the wardrobe, and the room had been as
empty and ordinary as ever. But he still pushed the door back with caution, and
he still stepped in with his heart beating irregularly and fast.
    The room was
silent and empty. The wardrobe stood where it always had. It wasn’t even a
special wardrobe. Neil had picked it up for four bucks at a garage sale in Tomales , along with a bed and his rolltop desk.
    He stood for a
while looking at it and then approached it. He knew that it was stupid to feel
frightened, but he did. He turned the small brass key in the door and jerked it
open. Inside, there was nothing but Toby’s T-shirts, neatly folded, his shorts,
and his baseball outfit. No demons with wolflike faces. No men in white coats.
    It seemed
almost dumb to take the wardrobe out and smash it up. It was a perfectly good
piece of furniture, and where was he going to find another one like it for the
same price? New furniture was always so tacky.
    But then he
remembered the face again, and the terrible stumbling sound of the wooden man,
and he remembered Toby growling, “He says you mustn’t touch the gateway. He
says you will die if you touch it.”
    He took out
Toby’s clothes and laid them on the bed. Then he locked the wardrobe doors, and
began to shuffle and hump it across the bedroom. It was a heavy old piece, but
all he was going to do was slide it out of Toby’s bedroom window so that it
dropped into the yard below.
    Sweating and
straining, he shifted the wardrobe across to the window, and then he stood it
on its side while he opened the shutters. Outside it was a dull, warm day,
typical north Pacific coast weather, and he could hear Susan’s radio playing
pop music through the wide-open kitchen window.
    He was about to
turn back to the wardrobe when he caught a glimpse of something out of the
corner of his eye. He looked again across the dust-colored yard, and he saw the
man in the long white coat standing in the grass by the fence.
    A cold,
unnerving chill went down his back. He closed his eyes and then looked again,
and the man was still there. The man’s face was hidden under the shadow of his
broad-brimmed hat, but Neil could see that he had a tawny, light-colored beard,
and that he was wearing a gun belt outside his coat.
    The voice
breathed, “Alien, for God’s sake... Alien, help me...”
    And the figure
was beckoning. With wide sweeps of his arm, he was beckoning.
    Neil felt
stunned, as if he had been anesthetized with Novocain. He stood by the open
window for a long, paralyzed moment, and then he turned and ran down the stairs
as fast as he could, almost twisting his ankle on the bottom