The raging redness was not confined to the furnace, however. It filled the entire cellar with its flickering, as though a little corner of Hades had been moved into the house for the sole purpose of getting rid of Fuzzy Head.

Stephen did not waste a single heartbeat regretting his decision. He moved swiftly and decisively, tightening his grip on the doll and wrenching at the furnace door with his free hand.

As the fiery portal swung open a blast of heated air smote him full in the face, almost suffocating him. But he did not recoil. Instead, he drew closer to the fiery pit, despite the blistering heat, and raised Fuzzy Head up until the doll was poised above the flames at just the right angle, like a coffin in a crematorium.

"Burn and wither, little man!"

Stephen knew that he spoke to the doll but he had no clear recollection of moving his arm. Yet he must have done so, for suddenly as he stared the doll seemed to slip from his clasp and shoot forward—straight forward into the high-leaping flames.

From somewhere upstairs there came a piercing shriek.

Sweat broke out on Stephen's palms when he saw that he was still holding the doll.

Sometimes the urge to perform an act can be so strong, the need so urgent, that the imagination becomes like a pair of white-hot tongs, overheated, and capable of flattening reality to a thin edge of blackness on an anvil without substance. The mind leaps ahead of the act, and it seems to happen—with a terrible clarity.

Stephen hadn't thrown Fuzzy Head into the flames.

Thank heavens! What a fool a man was to think that destiny was a single strand that could be twisted around the finger. In the immense complexity of a child's inner life were multitudinous cross-currents. A parent had no right to be ruthless and make hasty decisions.

Fuzzy Head was almost a part of Johnny.

Perhaps Johnny needed a doll to play with, just as other little boys needed toy locomotives and white mice. Perhaps there was a streak of hard cruelty in Johnny that needed the humananizing influence of a doll. In that case, it would not be unmanly for Johnny to play with a doll, right up to the age of ten.

Perhaps the bell-rope of Johnny's inner life needed to be rung by an ugly and ridiculous 

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