Doctors in white coats and fake smiles, they poke and prod and ask me dumb questions. Even when they scribble down my words I can tell they aren't really listening, just like all grownups. So I'm going to tell the story to this other kid they keep here. He'll listen.

It's simple, how the three of us went down to the old tunnel that day to play, how we found the box and what was inside. How Cecil went first, then Freddy a few days after that, and then how it came to be my turn.

My turn to draw The Funny Man.

A hot summer day, the three of us going to the tunnel that can be anything you want it to be, and on that day I remember it was a cave and inside lived a horrible monster with teeth like daggers and red eyes that could freeze your heart. Other days it might be a dragon or a troll.

Shoal Creek runs through the tunnel, on each side narrow ledges for walking and the opposite end looked as bright as a flashlight on a dark night. Somewhere along the way Freddy kicked something and caught it before it skidded into the creek - a wood box, inside it three pieces of chalk. Before he could throw the chalk away Cecil stopped him.

"Wait. We can use that." He pointed to the wall. "We can draw a monster. Something to look at while we battle."

Art teachers always pointed to Cecil as our example, his people always looked like people and not like a bunch of squiggly lines. Maybe that's why he had the idea in the first place, or maybe the idea was hanging there in the tunnel waiting for someone to think it up. Whatever the reason, Cecil took a piece of chalk so we could describe our monster with claws and fangs and slobber that burned whatever it touched, with horns and a tail. Cecil listened and drew until finally his shoulders bunched up and he spun around with the kind of face my mom got sometimes when she'd had enough.

"I can't draw with you two adding stuff all the time," he said. "Get lost."

Freddy and I picked our way through the tires and trash and sharp rocks to other end of the tunnel, past the greasy little ponds where bugs swirled over green scum. We climbed the nearest bank, high enough to see our neighborhood on the opposite ridge. The roof of Freddy's house poked out over some dying pines, though I knew enough not to mention it. We threw rocks, got hot and bored, even the birds too hot to sing. Finally we headed back and found Cecil with his arms crossed, staring at the wall.

Using only yellow chalk, he had drawn not a monster but more of a person with weird angles to his arms and legs, as if he had extra joints. His head looked like a football. Freddy snorted, stepped close enough to put his nose to the wall.

"What is it? A vampire?"

"No," Cecil said.

Freddy grinned, probably enjoying our class artist having drawn the dumbest monster ever. "I know," he said, putting up his hands like Frankenstein. "It's an evil used car salesman." Freddy's dad sometimes sold used cars, sometimes he did lots of other things, but mostly he just slept during the day and left at night. Freddy saw Cecil's face and stopped. "Okay then. What made you draw him?"

"Don't know. Just happened." He turned to me. "One minute there's this picture in my head of a monster, the next thing I know I'm drawing this guy. This funny man."

A winter wind blew through the tunnel, which made no sense given it was mid-July. Outside the summer glare looked wrong, like the time we had a solar eclipse. We looked at each other, at the wall, and my stomach turned the kind of queasy it gets after eating too much Halloween candy. Cecil gave me a weak smile.

"Let's go find something else to do."

Anything sounded good to me as long as it was somewhere else.

The night after Cecil drew on the tunnel wall, I had a dream.

The three of us followed a long-legged man with a head shaped like one of those long squashes through gray trees dripping with moss and black leaves. It seemed like our woods, only it didn't. The man turned, gave us a smeary grin like someone had painted a picture on a pumpkin and then tried to wipe it off with a dirty rag.

We found ourselves at the back of a house. He raised a hand with fingers long as noodles, broken dirty nails at the end, and tapped three times on a window. It slid open and out peered a little girl. With those fingers he reached into a pocket and pulled out a doll the size of a kitten. A breath from his mouth and it squirmed to life, turned and looked at us with black button eyes.

The girl reached out, took the doll into her arms.

Nothing but a weird dream, or so I thought after waking up. Just a dream, until I saw Freddy and Cecil the next day, when we realized all of us had the same one. Until we realized the girl was Cecil's little sister.

A million times Cecil had complained about his sister, how she was a pest, how she always got what she wanted: toys, candy, trips to the zoo.

Dolls.

Cecil said she carried the doll everywhere, to bed, to meals, and his parents never said a word. "It's creepy," he said. "But creepy beats annoying."

Freddy laughed and swung his bike close. "Creepy? That dream freaked you out."

"It didn't bother you? That we all had the same dream?"

Freddy shrugged, pedaled away. Cecil turned to me.

"What about you?"

I didn't know what to think, but I told him I didn't think it mattered if she walked around with a doll if she was leaving him alone. The answer sounded wrong even as I said it, but he seemed happier. Then Freddy rode closer.

"It's my turn."

We must have given him the same blank look. "My turn to draw," he said. "I want to see if it works for me."

"You want a doll?" I asked. "You don't even have a sister."

"No, dummy. I want to see what happens. Don't you?" He had a strange look on his face, kind of like when we knocked at his door and we could hear arguing inside and he wouldn't let us come in, or the way his mom looked if you surprised her early in the morning. Cecil shook his head.

"I don't think you want to." He looked tired. The dream spooked him more than us, but then again it was his sister. I wanted to say more, but I knew better, not in front of Freddy.

"I'm going," Freddy announced, then headed toward the creek.

Our neighborhood nudged against Shoal Creek and the woods. We knew all the shortcuts, the places where bums built fires and drank beer, their cans left on the ground like shiny seeds waiting to burst open. We hid our bikes in the usual place, ran to the tunnel. It looked the same, a black mouth swallowing water in one end and pissing it out the other. Inside the cool darkness, I half wanted to see the drawing and half wished we were somewhere far away, in the sun where things could never hurt you.

The wall was blank. No funny shape, no sign of him at all. Freddy grabbed the blue piece of chalk from the box and told us to go outside.

We left, sat on the bank and threw rocks, kept to the shade, Cecil more quiet than normal. I kidded him about his sister and the doll.

"It's not funny," he said. "She hardly talks and mom and dad don't see anything wrong. They just smile and pat the doll's head. I told them about my dream. They patted my head too." He found a stick, snapped it in two and tossed the pieces into the creek. We watched them spin and dip, get caught in a small eddy and finally get mired in the scum that clung to the bank. "I'm starting to think I'm the one who's crazy. Know what I mean?"

I nodded. Usually my dreams disappeared before breakfast, but this one stuck to me like a stain. He snapped another stick, looked at the ends and then toward the tunnel.

"Think he's done?"

"Probably. The way he draws, it couldn't take long."

I think each of us waited for the other to take the first step. I sighed, stood, and he followed.

"Knowing Freddy," I said, "he probably drew some stick man with fangs and claws. Remember the time we had to draw a picture from our favorite book and everyone had to guess the book? We never did figure out what that was."

"Yeah."

When we got back to the tunnel, Freddy sat on the concrete ledge staring up at the dark wall.

On it, in blue chalk, was a picture of The Funny Man.

The night after Freddy drew his picture, I planned on skipping sleep. I slipped into the basement with the old TV set, got a Coke and ate Oreos while Godzilla and some giant bug slugged it out. Somewhere around Tokyo I fell asleep.

It was one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming but you can't do anything about it, where logic is like some apple too high on the tree to reach so why even bother. We followed him through the woods, to another window. He scratched at the glass and the window rose.

Later when I woke on the couch, my pajamas soaked and a different movie playing on TV, I realized the guy had been Freddy's dad. No doll changed hands, instead it was a gold coin. Freddy's dad smiled at the thing like he'd found an old friend.

Me and my folks went out of town the next few days to visit family and when I got back neither Freddy nor Cecil wanted to talk about dreams or dolls or gold coins or the fact it was Freddy's dad.

"Don't mean nothing," Freddy said.

Cecil had a faraway look, like he was seeing past the houses and hills off to the west. "Yeah," he said. "Nothing." We rode our bikes, slow as molasses under a hot sun. Cecil stopped and I did the same.

"So," he said. "It's your turn."

"For what?"

"To draw. On the wall."

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew enough to not say it out loud. "Why? Freddy's drawing is probably still there. I might as well wait."

They shared a look, then Freddy smiled. "Nope. All gone."

"I don't care. I don't want to draw on some stupid wall." I tried to pedal away but Freddy cut his bike in front of mine and Cecil blocked me from behind.

"You got to draw," Cecil said, then grabbed my arm. "You got to."

Freddy had eyes like that doll, hard and black. Cecil squeezed my arm hard enough to hurt, so I pushed between their bikes, my legs pumping the pedals. When I glanced back they sat there and Cecil cupped his hands to his mouth as a turned the corner for home.

"You're going to draw him on the wall! You've got to!"

They kept after me at school, in the neighborhood. My folks could tell something was wrong, but I suppose they figured it for some kid spat. Once I tried to explain it to mom but it came out all wrong, so I changed it halfway through into something about a girl, which got me the "aren't kids so cute" smile. And then came that night, when The Funny Man came calling in my dreams for the first time.

I'd already figured out a few things, about Cecil and Freddy drawing the picture, and the weird gifts. Cecil's sister drove him nuts, so she gets a doll and suddenly leaves him alone. Everybody knew Freddy's dad could be mean as a hornet, so he gets a gold coin and maybe he turns out nice. What I couldn't figure out was why it mattered that I draw on the wall. Mom and dad were okay, so was my older brother when you got down to it, plus he was in high school and spent most of his time chasing girls, so the only time I really saw him was around the supper table. This dream was different, one I had over and over, that got worse and worse until it stayed in my head not only when I slept, but when I was awake too.

In it, The Funny Man killed my family.

He'd appear in my room, lead me down the hall like a puppy on a leash. I couldn't talk, couldn't do anything except follow. The door opened and there they slept, my parents, arms across one another, my dad ripping an occasional snore, my mom with her free hand across her eyes.

"Stop," was the word I tried to cough out, to choke out, but it wouldn't come. The room had a hazy look as if seen through a greasy window. He peeled back the blanket and sheet, my dad shifting and mom snuggling close, then he ran those long fingers along their bodies. They moaned like they had stomach aches, only not like that at all, as if they liked what he was doing and hated it at the same time. He kept going and they kept moaning, even when their skin began to come off in strips.

The same dream, again and again, so bad my folks finally called the doctors and they put me here with all the other crazy kids, except I'm not crazy.

I just don't want to draw that picture.

Sometimes Cecil and Freddy whisper to me in the nightmare that if I just draw him on the wall the pain will go away. I don't care anymore what happens if the last piece of chalk gets used, I don't care if he gets loose or goes away or flies to the moon, but I don't want to be the one to draw that picture. I don't want to know what he would give me, or what it would do.

So there's this other kid, the one I'm going to tell the story to again tonight. He likes hearing about the man, especially about the gifts. Tonight we're sneaking out and going down to the tunnel, down to the box and last piece of chalk. I'll point out the place on the wall and maybe go up on the creek bank, maybe throw a few sticks in the water before I head back home. I'll leave him to do what he needs to do.

Draw the Funny Man.

The End

Story copyright Barry Hollander, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com