Coming over from England, I was awe-struck by what Americans do at Halloween. I find it magnificent. In England, you get the occasional fancy dress party.

There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise.

There was a hysteria in there, certainly, but there was also the exhaustion of someone who had managed, somehow, to believe several dozen impossible things in the last twenty-four hours, without ever getting a proper breakfast.

When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget.

Trees there were, old as trees can be, huge and grasping with hearts black as sin. Strange trees that some said walked in the night.

I was not so old that I would deny my own senses.

She didn't have a daddy?" I asked. "No." "Did you have a daddy?" "You're all questions, aren't you? No, love. We never went in for that sort of thing. You only need men if you want to breed more men.