to Penny and could have a closer look at the injury. She made Penny
take off the boot, and she peeled down the sock, revealing a puncture
wound and several scratches on the ankle. It was bleeding, but not very
much; in a couple of minutes, even unattended, it would stop.
“How’d this happen?” Aunt Faye demanded.
Penny hesitated. More than anything, she wanted to tell Faye all about
the creatures with shining eyes. She wanted help, protection. But she
knew that she couldn’t say a word. They wouldn’t believe her. After
all, she was The Girl Who Had Needed A Psychiatrist. If she started
babbling about goblins with shining eyes, they’d think she was having a
relapse; they would say she still hadn’t adjusted to her mother’s death,
and they would make an appointment with a psychiatrist. While she was
off seeing the shrink, there wouldn’t be anyone around to keep the
goblins away from Davey.
“Come on, come on,” Faye said. “Fess up. What were you doing that you
shouldn’t have been doing?”
“Huh?”
“That’s why you’re hesitating. What were you doing that you knew you
shouldn’t be doing?”
“Nothing,” Penny said.
“Then how’d you get this cut?”
“I . . . I caught my boot on a nail.”
“Nail? Where?”
“On the gate.”
“What gate? ”
“Back at the school, the gate where we were waiting for you. A nail was
sticking out of it, and I got caught up on it.”
Faye scowled. Unlike her sister (Penny’s mother), Faye was a redhead
with sharp features and gray eyes that were almost colorless. In
repose, hers was a pretty enough face; however, when she wanted to
scowl, she could really do a first-rate job of it. Davey called it her
“witch look.”
She said, “Was it rusty?”
Penny said, “What?”
“The nail, of course. Was it rusty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you saw it, didn’t you? Otherwise, how’d you know it was a
nail?”
Penny nodded. “Yeah. I guess it was rusty.”
“Have you had a tetanus shot?”
“Yeah.”
Aunt Faye peered at her with undisguised suspicion.
“Do you even know what a tetanus shot is?”
“Sure.”
“When did you get it?”
“First week of October.”
“I wouldn’t have imagined that your father would think of things like
tetanus shots.”
“They gave it to us at school, ” Penny said.
“Is that right?” Faye said, still doubtful.
Davey spoke up: “They make us take all kinds of shots at school. They
have a nurse in, and all week we get shots. It’s awful. Makes you feel
like a pin cushion.
Shots for mumps and measles. A flu shot. Other stuff. I hate it.”
Faye seemed to be satisfied. “Okay. Just the same, when we get home,
we’ll wash that cut out really good, bathe it in alcohol, get some
iodine on it, and a proper bandage.”
“It’s only a scratch,” Penny said.
“We won’t take chances. Now put your boot back on, dear.”
Just as Penny got her foot in the boot and pulled up the zipper, the
taxi hit a pothole. They were all bounced up and thrown forward with
such suddenness and force that they almost fell off the seat.
“Young man,” Faye said to the driver, even though he was at least forty
years old, her own age, “where on earth did you learn to drive a car?”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, lady.”
“Don’t you know the streets of this city are a mess?”
Faye demanded. “You’ve got to keep your eyes open.”
“I try to,” he said.
While Faye lectured the driver on the proper way to handle his cab,
Penny leaned back against the seat, closed her eyes, and thought about
the ugly little hand that had torn her boot and ankle. She tried to
convince herself that it had been the hand of an ordinary animal of some
kind; nothing strange; nothing out of the Twilight Zone. But most
animals had paws, not hands.
Monkeys had hands, of course. But this wasn’t a monkey. No way.
Squirrels had hands of a sort, didn’t they?
And raccoons. But this wasn’t a squirrel or a raccoon, either. It
wasn’t anything she had ever seen or read about.