“It comes with practice-and iron discipline,” laughed Mrs. Novato.
Neil said, “Okay. If you could just keep an eye on Toby for me, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure thing.”
He had just turned to leave the porch when he heard one of the children calling above the hubbub of the classroom-calling something in a high, piping voice that penetrated the shouting and laughing and pseudo “gunfire.” It wasn’t Toby. It was one of the other children-a small dark-haired boy in a green T-shirt.
He was calling, “Where’s Alien gone? Where’s Alien gone? Did Alien go for help?"
Neil felt a chill, prickling sensation around his scalp and wrists as if all his nerves were shrinking. He turned back to Mrs. Novato and barked, “Mrs. Novato-Mrs.
Novato!”
The teacher blinked at him uncertainly. “Yes, Mr. Fenner? Was there something else?”
Neil could hardly find the words. He was breathing in tight, suffocated gasps, and there seemed to be something pressing on him. Too much gravity, too much air.
And all the time, over the noise of the classroom, the boy was calling: “Has anyone seen where Alien went? For the love of God, where’s Alien?”
“Mrs. Novato,” said Neil, “could I speak to your children for just a couple of minutes?”
Mrs. Novato’s helpful expression tightened a little. “I’m afraid we have to start class in just a moment, Mr. Fenner. I really can’t-”
“Mrs. Novato, I think it would help them. I think this, whatever it is, this hysteria-well, I think it’s a little more than hysteria. I think I should talk to them, just for a few minutes.”
Mrs. Novato’s smile had now faded altogether. She was standing in the classroom door with her hand on the doorknob and Neil could see that she was quite prepared to close it in his face if he became too insistent.
“You’ll really have to talk to Mr. Groh, the principal,” she told him. “I’m not authorized to let anyone speak to the class, unless they’re a qualified lecturer or teacher.”
“Alien!” shouted the boy. “Where did Alien go?” Neil’s hands were shaking, and there was sweat on his upper lip. He wiped his mouth against his sleeve, and he said to Mrs. Novato, “One minute, and that’s all. I promise you. And if I start to say something you don’t like, you can throw me out.”
Mrs. Novato looked more bewildered than anything else. Neil said, “Please,” and at last she sighed, as if she were really allowing this against her better judgment, and as if she couldn’t understand why all the complicated things in life had to happen to her.
She led him up to the front of the class, onto her small plinth, and she raised her hands for silence. Neil felt unexpectedly embarrassed in front of all these expectant childish faces. He looked for Toby, and spotted him at last near the back of the room, sitting next to a pale girl with dark hair. Toby was openly pleased to see his daddy standing up there, but puzzled too. The boy sitting in front of Toby was obviously asking him, behind his hand, what his pop was up to, standing nervously in front of the eight-year-olds at Bodega school-house, his mind crowded with fears and dreams, and Neil wished he could have answered that question himself.
Mrs. Novato rapped her ruler on the desk for silence, and said, “Class, I want your attention for a moment. Mr. Fenner here, Toby’s father, wants to speak a few important words to you. It’s about the bad dreams that some of you have been having, so I believe you ought to pay close attention.”
Neil coughed, and found himself blushing. “Thank you, Mrs. Novato. It’s kind of you to let me speak. All I want to say is, Toby’s been having some pretty unpleasant nightmares lately, and Mrs. Novato tells me that some of the rest of you have, too.
Would you be kind enough to put up your hand if you’ve been having nightmares?”
There was a silence. The children stared at Neil, expressionless. Mrs. Novato gave a twitchy little smile, and said, “Come on now, children. You know that one or two of you have. Petra, how about you?”
Petra, the little girl sitting next to Toby, raised her hand. So did Toby. Then, one by one, others raised their hands. Ben Nichelini, Andy Beaver, Debbie Spurr, Linus Hopland, Daniel Soscol. Every child in the class of twenty-one.
Mrs. Novato glanced worriedly at Neil, and said, “I had no idea that all of them-”
Neil looked around the class. Twenty-one young, serious faces. They may have been normal, well-adjusted, boisterous kids, but they weren’t putting him on. There was no sniggering or whispering. They were all sitting there with their hands raised, and not one of them smiled.
“Okay,” said Neil, hoarsely, “you can put your hands down now.”
Mrs. Novato said, “This is most upsetting, Mr. Fenner. I can’t imagine what’s going on.”
“That’s why I wanted to speak to them,” Neil told her. “I believe that something’s happening here that’s more than bad dreams.”
He turned to the children, and he tried to speak as reassuringly and quietly as he could. “I don’t want to take up too much of your tune,” he said, “but I’d like you to think about these dreams as a land of a class project. The more we find out about them, I think the better chance we have of discovering why you’ve been dreaming them, and what they are. I’d like you all to spend a few minutes.at home tonight, and write or draw what you saw in your dream. Think hard, and remember whatever you can. If you can think of any names you heard in your dreams, jot them down. What you write or draw doesn’t have to make any particular sense. Just put down whatever comes into your mind.”
Mrs. Novato said, “I’m not at all sure that Mr. Groh is going to approve of this, Mr. Fenner.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he doesn’t want to antagonize the parents. Some of them are pretty touchy about nonstandard projects, you know.”
Neil took in the class with a wide sweep of his arm. “Mrs. Novato, did you see how many hands went up?
Twenty-one out of twenty-one. Don’t you think we ought to make just a minimum effort to find out what this is all about?”
The classroom was quiet, except for sporadic coughs and the shuffling of sneakers.
Then Mrs. Novato said, “All right, Mr. Fenner. I’ll give it just one try. But I don’t think the children ought to do this at home. They can draw their dreams right here in the classroom, this afternoon, during their drawing lesson. It should improve the results, too. Not all of them have crayons and paper at home.”
She lifted her hands toward the class, and clapped them once, briskly. “Now then, children,” she said, “I want you all to say good morning to Mr. Fenner, and then I want you to open your geography books to the big color map of northern California, which is on page twenty-five.”
The children sang, “Good morning, Mr. Fenner,” and Neil said “Thanks” to Mrs.
Novato and left the classroom. On his way out, he gave Toby a quick, secret wink.
Outside in the school yard, it was growing hot. The weather was unusually warm for September, way up in the high seventies and the low eighties. Through the dusty glare, Neil glanced across at the fence where Toby had seen the man in the long white coat, but the scrubby grass wa” deserted. Neil could see why Mrs. Novato hadn’t believed anyone could have been standing there. The fields were wide open for hundreds of feet, and the first patch of cover Was a sparse group of thorn bushes, at least three minutes’ hard running away.
He walked over to the fence and examined the ground. It was hard clay, too rough to show any footprints. He believed that Mrs. Novato hadn’t seen anybody, but he also believed that Toby was telling the truth. Tough little boys didn’t go fainting for no reason at all-and come to that, unimpressionable fathers didn’t go imagining old men’s spectral faces for no reason at all, either.