it, trying to make the mouse squeal or run out into the open.
The other end of the plastic club was suddenly seized, held. Penny
tried to pull it loose. She couldn’t. She jerked and twisted it. But
the bat was held fast.
Then it was torn out of her grip. The bat vanished under the bed with a
thump and a rattle.
Penny exploded backwards across the floor-until she bumped into Davey’s
bed. She didn’t even remember moving. One instant she was on her hands
and knees beside her own bed; the next instant she banged her head
against the side of Davey’s mattress.
Her little brother groaned, snorted, blew out a wet breath, and went
right on sleeping.
Nothing moved under Penny’s bed.
She was ready to scream for her father now, ready to risk being treated
like a child, more than ready, and she did scream, but the word
reverberated only in her mind: Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! No sound issued
from her mouth. She had been stricken temporarily dumb.
The light flickered. The cord trailed down to an electrical outlet in
the wall behind the bed. The thing under the bed was trying to unplug
the lamp.
“Daddy! ”
She made some noise this time, though not much; the word came out as a
hoarse whisper.
And the lamp winked off.
In the lightless room she heard movement. Something came out from under
the bed and started across the floor.
“Daddy!”
She could still only manage a whisper. She swallowed, found it
difficult, swallowed again, trying to regain control of her
half-paralyzed throat.
A creaking sound.
Peering into the blackness, Penny shuddered, whimpered.
Then she realized it was a familiar creaking sound.
The door to the bedroom. The hinges needed oiling.
In the gloom, she detected the door swinging open, sensed more than saw
it: a slab of darkness moving through more darkness. It had been ajar.
Now, almost certainly, it was standing wide open. The hinges stopped
creaking.
The eerie rasping-hissing sound moved steadily away from her. The thing
wasn’t going to attack, after all. It was going away.
Now it was in the doorway, at the threshold.
Now it was in the hall.
Now at least ten feet from the door.
Now . . . gone.
Seconds ticked by, slow as minutes.
What had it been?
Not a mouse. Not a dream.
Then what? ‘
Eventually, Penny got up. Her legs were rubbery.
She groped blindly, located the lamp on Davey’s headboard. The switch
clicked, and light poured over the sleeping boy. She quickly turned the
cone-shaped shade away from him.
She went to the door, stood on the threshold, listened to the rest of
the apartment. Silence. Still shaky, she closed the door. The latch
clicked softly.
Her palms were damp. She blotted them on her pajamas.
Now that sufficient light fell on her bed, she returned and looked
beneath it. Nothing threatening crouched under there.
She retrieved the plastic baseball bat, which was hollow, very
lightweight, meant to be used with a plastic Whiffle Ball. The fat end,
seized when she’d shoved it under the bed, was dented in three places
where it had been gripped and squeezed. Two of the dents were centered
around small holes. The plastic had been punctured. But . . . by
what? Claws?
Penny squirmed under the bed far enough to plug in her lamp. Then she
crossed the room and switched off Davey’s lamp.
Sitting on the edge of her own bed, she looked at the closed hall door
for a while and finally said, “Well.”
What had it been?
The longer she thought about it, the less real the encounter seemed.
Maybe the baseball bat had merely been caught in the bed’s frame
somehow; maybe the holes in it had been made by bolts or screws
protruding from the frame. Maybe the hall door had been opened by
nothing more sinister than a draft.
Maybe . . .
At last, itchy with curiosity, she got up, went into the hall, snapped
on the light, saw that she was alone, and carefully closed the bedroom
door behind her.
Silence.
The door to her father’s room was ajar, as usual. She stood beside it,