Jamey actually began to wonder if he had done something to offend Martin, but a few days later, he received a phone call from him. He sounded cheerful and energetic again, and invited Jamey to come join him "and a few other kids" for a party the next Friday.

Jamey's father was back from his business trip, and not planning to travel in the near future. For just one moment, Jamey considered trying this on the level, in the open. That would have been the easy way. But he knew in advance what the questions would be: What kind of party? Where? Who's going to be there? Will there be chaperones? And he knew he didn't have answers to those questions, and no lies to tell that wouldn't eventually betray him. Even if he managed to get his mother on his side, even if he could convince her to become an advocate for him, there would be no passing his father, who guarded the gateways of his life like the Sphinx of Thebes. No, there was no question in his mind: it was his father's fault that he was forced to practice deception. Whatever consequences might befall him, this was a struggle for freedom. He might be punished cruelly, but justice was on his side. It was his father's fault that Jamey had to wait until his parents had retired and the house had been quiet for just long enough, that he had to sneak out of the house like a reverse thief and race away into the night on his bicycle.

Martin's parties involved mostly other kids from church, and a few older kids Jamey had never met before. They gathered at prearranged times after dark at Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Minneapolis, where they held a strange kind of séance. Sometimes there were drugs or alcohol, though sometimes not. Sometimes they undressed; sometimes some of the kids would pair up and go off on their own for a while. Jamey was pretty sure they were having sex. Sometimes Martin would go off too, sometimes with a girl, sometimes with a guy. That made Jamey angry.

The evening always ended with a strange thing called "the shivers." There was an abandoned, unlit nook behind a dilapidated mausoleum, where there was a strange pit of which they could not see the bottom. They gathered there, and would start to tremble uncontrollably; it would spread from person to person. Jamey wondered if it might be the drugs, but it happened even when there was no drugs. Maybe it was mass hypnosis or group mania. Sometimes there would be a purple light, emanating from the earth and most strongly from the pit. The shivering would grow in intensity, and it would take all of them; and then the lights started. Colored lights would fly up out of the ground; up and through them. When the lights stopped rising and the shivering stopped, they would get dressed and leave, and Jamey would ride his bike back home and sneak back into the house, and sleep off the intoxication and "the shivers."

Jamey just lay on top of the covers of his bed as darkness descended on his room, like the blissful unconsciousness of sleep. But Jamey’s sleep was not unconscious. It was filled with horrific nightmares. He woke suddenly, just as he had Sunday morning with terror trapped in his throat. But this time he woke into the pitch dark of the middle marches of the night.

There were strange noises clattering throughout the house; strange knockings and rattling that emanated from the walls. It was just like in his dream, so he pinched himself hard, trying to wake up. But there was no waking up.

It was too dark to keep any sense of where he might be or which way he was facing, but then he heard a horrible, low, squealing, screeching sound. It was muffled at first, and sounded, as it had in his dream, like it was coming from somewhere close, like behind the closet door. It could have been a human howling with rage, but he finally realized it was the cry of a pig or a boar.

Jamey wanted to get up and run, but his arms and legs had turned into jelly. He could barely hold himself up, much less escape from his room. It was too late for that anyway. A sudden, deafening commotion arose. Every single orifice in his room – air vents, windows, doors, drawers – all rattled violently and then popped open, and his room filled with an unearthly, purple light. Out from under his bed scuttled giant, spider- and scorpion-like things; lizards popped the grills off of air vents and scurried up the walls; drawers flew open and enormous, deformed bats flew out of them, blotting out the ceiling.

His closet door was the last to open. It slammed against the wall with a cracking sound like a canon. In came a fish-headed thing about the size of a man, bearing a lantern made of a human skull. Then came a spiny, giant lizard, rearing precariously up on its hind legs and clutching a spear fashioned of bone. Last emerged a tall, shadowy figure, so large it had to draw itself in and bow down in order to pass through the closet door. Its head was fully one third the size of its whole body and Jake recognized the bloody tusks and snout of the Boar Man.

The Lizard Thing leapt forward and picked Jamey up by the neck, bruising his jaw and throat and strangling him. It pinned him against the wall, while other dark, scorpion things moved forward and pinned down his other limbs so he could not move.

Jamey now noticed a horrible sewer-like smell, as the Boar Man moved toward him, holding up an enormous, singed, bloody book bound in leather. It shrieked and roared, not randomly like some animal, but articulately, as though speaking. It deftly opened the book with its cloven hoof-hands, and held a particularly blood-splattered page up so Jamey could read it in the eerie light of the skull lantern. He saw, clearly written in his own hand, his full Christian name: James Aldrich Wright.

The Boar Man slammed the book shut and from its robes pulled a black, jagged dagger, glinting like obsidian. Huddling in the shadow of the Boar Man was something like a gnome or a troll, pale and sinewy, with rows of needle-like teeth, and ears long and pointed like those of a mule. Jamey realized it was about as big as he was; it was only the immense size of the Boar Man that made it seem tiny. The Needle-toothed Man took the dagger from the Boar Man and slowly came forward, eyeing Jamey hungrily. The Lizard Thing tightened its grip around Jamey’s throat, as the Needle-toothed Man approached him, pressing his hideous face right up against Jamey’s, so that Jamey could feel his fire-hot breath. Jamey gasped as the Needle-toothed Man pushed the blade up against his chest, so he could feel the point of the blade cutting through his shirt and piercing his skin. The Needle-toothed Man seemed to be enjoying Jamey’s fear, savoring it.

But instead of plunging the dagger in, he turned slowly toward the Boar Man and said, “Of course he’s lost his magic. But did you stop to think that we can always claim him, and that for as long as we don’t, the gate stays wide open? We can drink all the blood we want!”

The Boar Man screeched and squealed angrily, and the two of them entered into an extended argument, squealing and screeching in the pig language. Each time the Needle-toothed Man gestured at the Boar Man, he seemed accidentally to drive the dagger into Jamey’s chest just a millimeter deeper. Jamey expected to die any second. But he did not die and, after what seemed an eternity, the argument ended. The Needle-toothed Man turned to Jamey again and hissed, its hot spittle burning him as it landed on his face, “We’re going to have some fun! And if you value even one more second of your pitiful life, you will not breathe a word of this to anyone. Do you understand? A-NY-ONE!”

Then, without warning, he signaled to the scorpion things, and they undid Jamey's trousers and yanked them down. With a single swift motion, the Needle-toothed Man stabbed Jamey’s thigh with the blade. Unbelievable pain shot up from Jamey’s leg through his whole body. Then the Needle-toothed Man pulled the blade out, the Lizard Thing let him go, and all was blackness after that. Jamey lost consciousness.

When Jamey woke up it was morning, and the sun was actually shining through his window. The room appeared quiet and undisturbed, just as it had been when he’d gone to sleep. Jamey looked down expecting to see the bed covered with blood, but it was not. His pants were lying on the floor in a rumpled heap. There were bruises on his body, just where his father had left them. Pain and stiffness and the numbness of depression. And another bad dream, he thought. No Boar Man. No way out of this dull, pointless life. Nothing but a bad dream.

It was in gym class, later that day at school, when he was undressing to change into his gym uniform that he saw something odd on his thigh. He stared at it and stared again. He touched it gently with his fingers; it felt rough like a scab. He tried to look at it as closely as he could, to see what it was. In the bright florescent lights of the locker room, he finally could not deny that he saw on his thigh, right where the Needle-toothed Man had stabbed him, an odd, jagged scar in a shape like the hoof-print of a pig.