Neil looked across the porch toward the classroom. The children all looked normal enough. They were giggling and playing around just like ordinary kids, and they certainly didn’t seem to be suffering from any kind of collective breakdown.
“Have you talked to the school doctor about them?” he asked Mrs. Novato. “I mean, as far as Toby’s concerned, I wouldn’t like things to get any worse.”
“I can call the doctor it you like,” agreed Mrs. Novato. “But I think he’ll simply confirm my opinion that this is some kind of passing fad.”
Inside the classroom, the children were playing cowboys and Indians, and pretending to shoot at each other with their fingers. Neil grinned, and said, “I shouldn’t bother, Mrs. Novato. It looks as though they’re pretty healthy to me. Mind you, I don’t know how you manage to keep control.”
“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 gras
s 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.
He went slowly back to Ms pickup truck, and sat behind the wheel for a while, thinking. He had a feeling that something wasn’t right-the same feeling you get on a warm day, when a storm’s beginning to build. He looked in his rearview mirror a couple of times, half-expecting to see the man in the white duster standing by the fence, but nothing appeared. After a few minutes, he turned the key in the ignition and drove off toward the bay, and another day’s work.
Although it was warm and clear in the valleys, there was a foggy chill out on Bodega Bay, and Neil wore his windbreaker while he finished off varnishing the White Dove’s afterdeck and cabin doors. Old Doughty wasn’t far off, smoking his pipe and watching the coast-guard cutters from under his peaked nautical cap, and over by the gift shop a party of Japanese tourists were proudly having their picture taken in front of Bodega Bay’s well-worn collection of whales’ jaws and sharks’ teeth. As Neil put the last licks of varnish on the doors, Doughty got up off his perch and came strolling along the jetty. He paused by the White Dove’s berth, and stood watching Neil for a while, puffing and gurgling at his pipe.
“I reckon you’ve got yourself a few good hours’ work in that beaten-up tub,” he remarked. “I never saw anyone handle a craft so badly, the way that Mr. Collings knocked her about. I was damned surprised he never drowned himself.”
Neil shrugged. “It’s his funeral,” he said, noncommittally.
Doughty grunted. He was nearly eighty, with a big, wrinkled face that was weatherbeaten to a dull red color. He wore the same navy-blue reefer jacket that he had worn the first time Neil’s father had brought him down to the jetty twenty years ago and hefty fisherman’s rubbers. There was a time when he had operated a fishing fleet of his own, but that was long before most people could remember.
“I don’t know why you bother fancying that boat up so nice,” Doughty said. “You know that he’s going to knock her about just as bad next summer.”
“I do it because he pays me,” replied Neil.
Doughty sighed. “You’re not like your father. Nor your grandfather, for that matter.”
“I never said I was. And from what I’ve been told about my grandfather, he drank a bottle of rum a day, and smoked five cigars before breakfast.”
“What’s wrong in that?” Doughty wanted to know.
Neil laughed. He slicked varnish across the bottom of the cabin door and set down his brush.
“They always used to tell stories about the Fenner family on the wharf here,” said Doughty. “I remember when I was round about ten years old, my pa pointed out your great-grandfather Jack Fenner to me, and told me not to displease him, on account of he’d thrown three fishermen into the bay for offering him undersize lobsters.”
“I’ve heard all the stories,” said Neil, tidying up his paint cans. “I freely admit that I’m the most colorless Fenner that ever lived.”
“You’re not the worst, though,” said Doughty, tapping out the dottle of his pipe against a wooden upright.
“So I suppose you’ve got something to be thankful for.” “Oh, yes? And who do you reckon was the worst?” Doughty fumbled in his pocket and brought out two pieces of saltwater taffy. He tossed one to Neil, and unwrapped the other one himself. He said,
“I have to suck these slow, you know, otherwise they get themselves snarled up in my dentures.”
Neil came forward and clambered up onto the jetty. “You still haven’t told me who was the worst Fenner of all. I bet he wasn’t as bad as the worst Doughty of all.” “Oh, he sure was,” said Doughty, shaking his head. “The Doughtys was clergy originally, from Plymouth, England. Highly peaceable folk. But the Fenners were tough farmers, tough settlers, and vigilantes. The Fenners did more to settle Napa Valley than George Yount, and most folks say that George Yount was the father of Napa Valley.”
Neil and Doughty walked side by side to the parking lot, where Neil let down the back of his pickup and heaved out three coils of fresh rope.
“The worst Fenner of all was called Bloody Fenner, and I’m surprised your pa never told you about him,” said Doughty.
“I think he did, when I was younger. An Indian fighter, wasn’t he, back in the 1830s?
They called him ‘Bloody’ Fenner because he collected ears and scalps.”
Doughty nodded. “That’s right. But the story goes that he did worse than that. Back when the white men were fighting the Wappos up in the mountains, he used to fight on one side or another, according to how it took his fancy. If the Wappos offered him a couple of square miles of good farming ground, he’d set traps for the white men; and if the white men were ready to pay him enough, he’d bushwhack the Wappos.
Nobody never proved nothing, of course, so he never came to trial, but the stories went around for years that Bloody Fenner was responsible for some of the worst of the Indian massacres, and it took a good few years before the Fenner family wasn’t shunned no more.”
Neil hefted the ropes back to the White Dove, and heaved them onto the deck.
“That’s something I wasn’t told,” he said to Doughty. “I guess Bloody Fenner was someone my family preferred to forget.”
Doughty stuck his pinkie up inside his palate to dislodge a sticky lump of taffy. “If you really want to. know about the old days, you ought to take a trip across to Calistoga and talk to Billy Ritchie-that’s if he’s still alive, but I haven’t heard different. Billy Ritchie’s grandpa was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and a lot of folks say he was the model for Israel Hands in Treasure Island. They were a tough lot, in those days, but they say that Bloody Fenner was the toughest of all.”
Neil climbed down onto the White Dove and started to uncoil one of the ropes. The day was warming up now, out here on the bay, but the gray fog was even denser, and he couldn’t even see as far as the harbor’s inlet. A fishing boat chugged past like a gray ghost.
“Here,” said Neil. He reached in his pocket and handed Doughty a five-dollar bill.
“Why don’t you go set them up in the bar? As soon as I’m through here, I’ll come join you.”
It was a gentle way of buying Doughty a free drink. The unwritten code of behavior on Bodega wharf was that you let Doughty bend your ear for a while, and then you slipped him a little money to make life a little easier for him.
Doughty said, “Don’t forget to come along, mind. I’ll set you up an old-fashioned.”
Then he tipped his nautical cap, and swayed off along the boardwalk as if he were on the deck of an old-time clipper.
Neil grinned to himself and went back to his painting and tidying up. Although the White Dove was superficially battered, it wouldn’t take much to bring back her glamour, and she wasn’t going to need a major overhaul this year. Neil reckoned to have finished her off by the end of the week. Then he could get back to his small yard across the other side of the wharf and complete work on a fishing boat he was refitting.
It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning,and the fog was at its densest. The sun was a pale yellow disk, and the wind had stilled. Neil found that he was sweating as he sorted and tied the new ropes, and he felt for a moment as if he could scarcely breathe.
He glanced out toward the bay and frowned. He was sure he could see something out there in the water. He screwed up his eyes against the yellowish haze of the fog; whatever it was, it was too far away to distinguish clearly. It was tall and pale and upr
ight, like a drifting buoy, or the sail of a small weekend dinghy.
It was only when the fog stirred that he began to understand, with an overwhelming sense of dread, that the shape wasn’t a sail at all, nor a buoy. It was a man. A man in a long white coat, standing silent and unsupported in the middle of the bay.
Biting his lip with uncertainty, Neil rose to his feet. The fog passed in front of the figure in veil after veil, but there was no question at all. It was a man, or the ghost of a man. He wore a dark broad-brimmed hat and a duster, and he stood on the water as if it was dry land. Neil shouted, “Hey! You!” but his voice sounded flat and weak in the fog, and the man took no notice at all.
Panicking, Neil turned back to the wharf and called: “Doughty! Doughty! Come take a look at this! For Christ’s sake! Come take a look at this!” A voice whispered, “Alien.
please, Alien …” “Doughty!” yelled Neil.
The door of the cocktail bar opened, and Dave Co”-way from the fish stall came out, a tall red-bearded man with a well-known line of sarcasm. “Anything wrong there, Neil?” he called out.
“Dave, do you see 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
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