Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

something out there in the bay or am I crazy?” Neil shouted.
    Dave peered out
at the fog. It was now so thick that the man had almost disappeared. There was
just a fading trace of his white coat.
    Dave said,
“Sure, I see something. You’re not crazy after all.”
    “Tell me what
you see! What is it?”
    “Well,” said
Dave, “I wouldn’t like to stick my neck out, but I’d say that’s fog.” Neil,
tense, let out a sharp, exasperated breath.
    “Did I say
something wrong?” asked Dave. “It’s not fog? It’s gray lint? It’s cotton candy
maybe?”
    Neil shook his
head. “Forget it. It was just an optical illusion.”
    Dave strolled
up toward him. “You really thought you saw something out there? What did you
think it was?”
    “I don’t know,”
said Neil. “It looked so weird I just wanted a second opinion.”
    “You can tell
me,” Dave encouraged him. “I won’t laugh at you for longer than a half-hour.”
    Neil turned
away. “I guess it was just my imagination. Forget it.”
    “You didn’t
tell me what it was, so how can I forget it?”
    Neil put down
his ropework , “All right,” he said, “I thought I saw
somebody, a man, standing out there in the bay.”
    “Standing?”
    “That’s right.
Standing on the water, just the way you’re standing on that jetty.” Dave pulled
a face. “Well, you told me it was crazy, and you’re right. Are you sure you
haven’t been reading the Bible too heavily lately?”
    “Dave,” asked
Neil, “will you just forget it? It was a trick of the light.”
    “Maybe he was
surfing and you didn’t notice the surfboard in the fog,” suggested Dave. “Or
maybe he was standing on top of a submarine.”
    “Dave, please
forget I ever told you,” said Neil. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
    “Nor would I
be, if I’d seen a guy standing on the water in the middle of the bay,” said
Dave, with weighty mock seriousness. “Nor would I be.”
    That afternoon,
Toby brought home a large yellow Manila envelope from school, along with a note
from Mrs. Novato. While Toby went out to play with his toy bulldozer, Neil took
the package into the parlor and sat down at his old rolltop desk.
    Susan came in
from the kitchen in her apron and slippers, and said, “What’s that?” Neil
looked at her, and gave a wry little smile. “It’s an experiment, I guess.”
    Susan wiped her
floury hands on her apron. She’d been making apple cookies, and she smelled of
fresh cooking apples and butter. “An experiment?” she asked him. “You mean, something to do with school?”
    He nodded. “You
remember Toby kept on about Alien in his nightmares? Well, this morning, when I
took him to school, I heard one of the other kids talking about Alien, too, so
I asked Mrs. Novato to let me talk to the class for a couple of minutes. I
asked them if any one of them had dreamed dreams like Toby.”
    “Well? And had
they?”
    Neil opened the
envelope. “There are twenty-one kids in that class, honey, and every single one
of them put up a hand to say yes.”
    Susan looked
confused. “You mean-they’d all had the same nightmare? Surely they were just
pulling your leg, acting like kids.”
    “I don’t know
what nightmares they’d had. But I asked them to draw what they’d seen in their
dreams, and Mrs. Novato agreed to let them do it during their art lesson.
Here’s a note she sent along.”
    Susan took the
note and scanned it quickly.
    It read:
    Dear Mr. Fenner ,
    I am sending
you the drawings the children made this afternoon in the hope that they might
put your mind at rest. It seems to me that my first opinion of mild collective
hysteria is the correct one. I am sure that these nightmares will pass once a
new craze starts. There are already signs that Crackling Candy is talking hold!
By the way, if Toby wishes to join our little expedition to Lake Berryessa next Wednesday, please give him $1.35 to bring to
school tomorrow.
    Yours, Nora
Novato
    Neil rubbed his
cheek.