Without warning, a hard wind blows out of the west. The window is west-facing, but it must be open, because the wind rushes through it and into the clearing, a great howling presence on which are borne more leaves, great seething masses, hissing and flapping like clouds of bats, some moist and supple, others dry and dead. The wind sweeps up the leaves on the floor, too, and the churning debris pumps around the perimeter of the clearing — red autumn leaves, moist green leaves, petals, stipules, whole bracts — pumps around like a carousel without horses but with strange beasts formed of leaves. Then as if drawn by the pipes of Pan, every leaf without exception flies to the center of the dearing and coalesces into the shape of a man, forming around the invisible presence that was always here, the sandwich-eating and soda-drinking ghost, giving it form, substance. The Leaf Man looms, huge and terrible: his bristling Halloween face, black holes where his eyes should be, the ragged maw.
Martie struggles to get up from the sofa, before he touches her, beforeitis too late, but she is too weak to rise, as if afflicted by a tropical fever, malaria. Or maybe the snake is poisonous after all, the venom finally producing an effect.
