cats. She threw back the covers, got out of bed, and stood very still
in her pajamas and bare feet, steaming.
Not a sound.
Finally she went over to Davey and looked at him more closely. Her
lamp’s light didn’t reach this far; he lay mostly in shadows, but he
seemed to be sound asleep. She leaned very close, watching his eyelids,
and at last she decided he wasn’t faking it.
The noise began again. Behind her.
She whirled around.
It was under the bed now. A hissing, scraping, softly rattling sound,
not particularly loud, but no longer stealthy, either.
The thing under the bed knew she was aware of it. It was making noise
on purpose, teasing her, trying to scare her.
No! she thought. That’s silly.
Besides, it wasn’t a thing, wasn’t a boogeyman. She was too old for
boogeymen. That was more Davey’s speed.
This was just a . . . mouse. Yes! That was it. Just a mouse, more
scared than she was.
She felt somewhat relieved. She didn’t like mice, didn’t want them
under her bed, for sure, but at least there was nothing too frightening
about a lowly mouse.
It was grody, creepy, but it wasn’t big enough to bite her head off or
anything major like that.
She stood with her small hands fisted at her sides, trying to decide
what to do next.
She looked up at Scott Baio, who smiled down at her from a poster that
hung on the wall behind her bed, and she wished he were here to take
charge of the situation.
Scott Baio wouldn’t be scared of a mouse; not in a million years. Scott
Baio would crawl right under the bed and grab that miserable rodent by
its tail and carry it outside and release it, unharmed, in the alley
behind the apartment building, because Scott Baio wasn’t just brave-he
was good and sensitive and gentle, too.
But Scott wasn’t here. He was out there in Hollywood, making his TV
show.
Which left Daddy.
Penny didn’t want to wake her father until she was absolutely,
positively, one hundred percent sure there actually was a mouse. If
Daddy came looking for a mouse and turned the room upside-down and then
didn’t find one, he’d treat her as if she were a child, for God’s sake.
She was only two months short of her twelfth birthday, and there was
nothing she loathed more than being treated like a child.
She couldn’t see under the bed because it was very dark under there and
because the covers had fallen over the side; they were hanging almost to
the floor, blocking the view.
The thing under the bed-the mouse under the bed! -hissed and made a
gurgling-scraping noise. It was almost like a voice. A raspy, cold,
nasty little voice that was telling her something in a foreign language.
Could a mouse make a sound like that?
She glanced at Davey. He was still sleeping.
A plastic baseball bat leaned against the wall beside her brother’s bed.
She grabbed it by the handle.
Under her own bed, the peculiar, unpleasant hissing
scratching-scrabbling continued.
She took a few steps toward her bed and got down on the floor, on her
hands and knees. Holding the plastic bat in her right hand, she
extended it, pushed the other end under the drooping blankets, lifted
them out of the way, and pushed them back onto the bed where they
belonged.
She still couldn’t see anything under there. That low space was
cave-black.
The noises had stopped.
Penny had the spooky feeling that something was peering at her from
those oily black shadows . . . something more than just a mouse . .
. worse than just a mouse . . . something that knew she was only a
weak little girl . . . something smart, not just a dumb animal,
something at least as smart as she was, something that knew it could
rush out and gobble her up alive if it really wanted to.
Cripes. No. Kid stuff. Silliness.
Biting her lip, determined not to behave like a helpless child, she
thrust the fat end of the baseball bat under the bed. She probed with