“Can you think of a better one?”
“No.”
The traffic light turned green. The last of the pedestrians had crossed. Nick pulled into the intersection and turned left.
After a while, Jack said, “Different, huh?”
“Somehow.”
As they headed farther downtown, toward the office they talked about it, trying to figure out what the difference might be.
X
At Wellton School, the last classes of the day were over at three o'clock. By three-ten, a tide of laughing, jabbering children spilled through the front doors, down the steps, onto the sidewalk, into the driving snow that transformed the gray urban landscape of New York into a dazzling fantasyland. Warmly dressed in knitted caps, earmuffs, scarves, sweaters, heavy coats, gloves, jeans, and high boots, they walked with a slight toddle, arms out at their sides because of all the layers of insulation they were wearing; they looked furry and cuddly and well-padded and stumpy-legged, not unlike a bunch of magically animated teddy bears.
Some of them lived near enough and were old enough to be allowed to walk home, and ten of them piled into a minibus that their parents had bought. But most were met by a mother or father or grandparent in the family car or, because of the inclement weather, by one of those same relatives in a taxi.
Mrs. Shepherd, one of the teachers, had the Dismissal Watch duty this week. She moved back and forth along the sidewalk, keeping an eye on everyone, making sure none of the younger kids tried to walk home, seeing that none of them got into a car with a stranger. Today, she had the added chore of stopping snowball battles before they could get started.
Penny and Davey had been told that their Aunt Faye would pick them up, instead of their father, but they couldn't see her anywhere when they came down the steps, so they moved off to one side, out of the way. They stood in front of the emerald-green wooden gate that closed off the service passageway between Wellton School and the townhouse next door. The gate wasn't flush with the front walls of the two buildings, but recessed eight or ten inches. Trying to stay out of the sharp cold wind that cruelly pinched their cheeks and even penetrated their heavy coats, they pressed their backs to the gate, huddling in the shallow depression in front of it.
Davey said, “Why isn't Dad coming?”
“I guess he had to work.”
“Why?”
“I guess he's on an important case.”
“What case?”
“I don't know.”
“It isn't dangerous, is it?”
“Probably not.”
“He won't get shot, will he?”
“Of course not.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I'm sure,” she said, although she wasn't sure at all.
“Cops get shot all the time.”
“Not that often.”
“What'll we do if Dad gets shot?”
Immediately after their mother's death, Davey had handled the loss quite well. Better than anyone had expected. Better than Penny had handled it, in fact. He hadn't needed to see a psychiatrist. He had cried, sure; he had cried a lot, for a few days, but then he had bounced back. Lately, however, a year and a half after the funeral, he had begun to develop an unnatural fear of losing his father, too. As far as Penny knew, she was the only one who noticed how terribly obsessed Davey was with the dangers — both real and imagined — of his father's occupation. She hadn't mentioned her brother's state of mind to her father, or to anyone else, for that matter, because she thought she could straighten him out by herself. After all, she was his big sister; he was her responsibility; she had certain obligations to him. In the months right after their mother's death, Penny had failed Davey; at least that was how she felt. She had gone to pieces then. She hadn't been there when he'd needed her the most. Now, she intended to make it up to him.
“What'll we do if Dad gets shot?” he asked again.
“He isn't going to get shot.”
“But if he does get shot. What'll we do?”
“We'll be all right.”
“Will we have to go to an orphanage?”
“No, silly.”
“Where would we go then? Huh? Penny, where would we go? ”
“We'd probably go to live with Aunt Faye and Uncle Keith.”
“Yuch.”
“They're all right.”
“I'd rather go live in the sewers.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“It'd be neat living in the sewers.”
“Neat is the last thing it'd be.”
“We could come out at night and steal our food.”
“From who — the wings asleep in the gutters?”
“We could have an alligator for a pet!”
“There aren't any alligators in the sewers.”
“Of course there are,” he said.
“That's a myth.”
“A what?”
“A myth. A made-up story. A fairytale.”
“You're nuts. Alligators live in sewers.”
“Davey—”
“Sure they do! Where else would alligators live?”
“Florida for one place.”
“Florida? Boy, you're flake. Florida!”
“Yeah, Florida.”
“Only old retired coots and gold-digging bimbos live in Florida.”
Penny blinked. “Where'd you hear that?”
“Aunt Faye's friend. Mrs. Dumpy.”
“Dumphy.”
“Yeah. Mrs. Dumpy was talking to Aunt Faye, see. Mrs. Dumpy's husband wanted to retire to Florida, and he went down there by himself to scout around for a place to live, but he never came back 'cause what he did was he ran off with a gold-digging bimbo. Mrs. Dumpy said only old coots and a lot of gold-digging bimbos live down there. And that's another good reason not to live with Aunt Faye. Her friends. They're all like Mrs. Dumpy. Always whining, you know? Jeez. And Uncle Keith smokes.”
“A lot of people smoke.”
“His clothes stink from the smoke.”
“It's not that bad.”
“And his breath! Grody!”
“Your breath isn't always like flowers, you know.”
“Who'd want breath like flowers?”
“A bumblebee.”
“I'm no bumblebee.”
“You buzz a lot. You never shut up. Always buzzbuzz-buzz.”
“I do not.”
“Buzzzzzzzzzz.”
“Better watch it. I might sting, too.”
“Don't you dare.”
“I might sting real bad.”
“Davey, don't you dare.”
“Anyway, Aunt Faye drives me nuts.”
“She means well, Davey.”
“She… twitters.”
“Birds twitter, not people.”
“She twitters like a bird.”
It was true. But at the advanced age of almost-twelve, Penny had recently begun to feel the first stirrings of comradeship with adults. She wasn't nearly as comfortable ridiculing them as she had been just a few months ago.
Davey said, “And she always nags Dad about whether we're being fed well.”
“She just worries about us.”
“Does she think Dad would starve us?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why's she always going on and on about it?”
“She's just… Aunt Faye.”
“Boy, you can say that again!”
An especially fierce gust of wind swept the street, found its way into the recess in front of the green gate. Penny and Davey shivered.
He said, “Dad's got a good gun, doesn't he? They give cops really good guns, don't they? They wouldn't let a cop go out on the street with a half-ass gun, would they?”
“Don't say 'half-ass.”
“Would they?”
“No. They give cops the best guns there are.”
“And Dad's a good shot, isn't he?”
“Yes.”
“How good?”
“Very goo
d.”
“He's the best, isn't he?”
“Sure,” Penny said. “Nobody's better with a gun than Daddy.”
“Then the only way he's going to get it is if somebody sneaks up on him and shoots him in the back.”
“That isn't going to happen,” she said firmly.
“It could.”
“You watch too much TV.”
They were silent for a moment.
Then he said, “If somebody kills Dad, I want to get cancer and die, too.”
“Stop it, Davey.”
“Cancer or a heart attack or something.”
“You don't mean that.”
He nodded emphatically, vigorously: yes, yes, yes; he did mean it; he absolutely, positively did. “I asked God to make it happen that way if it has to happen.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning at him.
“Each night. When I say my prayers. I always ask God not to let anything happen to Dad. And then I say, “Well, God, if you for some stupid reason just have to let him get shot, then please let me get cancer and die, too. Or let me get hit by a truck. Something.”
“That's morbid.”
He didn't say anything more.
He looked at the ground, at his gloved hands, at Mrs. Shepherd walking her patrol — everywhere but at Penny. She took hold of his chin, turned his face to her. Tears shimmered in his eyes. He was trying hard to hold them back, squinting, blinking.
He was so small. Just seven years old and not big for his age. He looked fragile and helpless, and Penny wanted to grab hold of him and hug him, but she knew he wouldn't want her to do that when they might be seen by some of the other boys in his class.
She suddenly felt small and helpless herself. But that wasn't good. Not good at all. She had to be strong for Davey's sake.
Letting go of his chin, she said, “Listen, Davey, we've got to sit down and talk. About Mom. About people dying, why it happens, you know, all that stuff, like what it means, how it's not the end for them but maybe only the beginning, up there in Heaven, and how we've got to just go on, no matter what. “Cause we do. We've got to go on. Mom would be very disappointed in us if we didn't just go on. And if anything happened to Dad — which nothing is going to happen to him — but if by some wild chance it did, then he'd want us to go on, just the way Mom would want. He'd be very unhappy with us if we—”
“Penny! Davey! Over here!”
A yellow cab was at the curb. The rear window was down, and Aunt Faye leaned out, waved at them.
Davey bolted across the sidewalk, suddenly so eager to be away from any talk of death that he was even glad to see his twittering old Aunt Faye.
Damn! I botched it, Penny thought. I was too blunt about it.
In that same instant, before she followed Davey to the taxi, before she even took one step, a sharp pain lanced through her left ankle. She twitched, yelped, looked down — and was immobilized by terror.
Between the bottom of the green gate and the pavement, there was a four-inch gap. A hand had reached through that gap, from the darkness in the covered serviceway beyond, and it had seized her ankle.
She couldn't scream. Her voice was gone.
It wasn't a human hand, either. Maybe twice the size of a cat's paw. But not a paw. It was a completely although crudely-formed hand with fingers and a thumb.
She couldn't even whisper. Her throat was locked.
The hand wasn't skin-colored. It was an ugly, mottled gray-green-yellow, like bruised and festering flesh. And it was sort of lumpy, a little ragged looking.
Breathing was no easier than screaming.
The small gray-green-yellow fingers were tapered and ended in sharp claws. Two of those claws had punctured her rubber boot.
She thought of the plastic baseball bat.
Last night. In her room. The thing under the bed.
She thought of the shining eyes in the school basement.
And now this.
Two of the small fingers had thrust inside her boot End were scraping at her, digging at her, tearing, gouging.
Abruptly, her breath came to her in a rush. She gasped, sucked in lungsful of frigid air, which snapped her out of the terror-induced trance that, thus far, had held her there by the gate. She jerked her foot away from the hand, tore loose, and was surprised that she was able to do so. She turned and ran to the taxi plunged inside, and yanked the door shut.
She looked back toward the gate. There was nothing unusual in sight, no creature with small claw-tipped hands, no goblin capering in the snow.
The taxi pulled away from Wellton School.
Aunt Faye and Davey were talking excitedly about the snowstorm which, Faye said, was supposed to dump ten or twelve inches before it was done. Neither of them seemed to be aware that Penny was scared half to death.
While they chattered, Penny reached down and felt her boot. At the ankle, the rubber was torn. A flap of it hung loose.
She unzippered the boot, slipped her hand inside, under her sock, and felt the wound on her ankle. It burned a little. When she brought her hand out of the boot, there was some blood glistening on her fingertips.
Aunt Faye saw it. “What's happened to you, dear?”
“It's okay,” Penny said.
“That's blood.”
“Just a scratch.”
Davey paled at the sight of the blood.
Penny tried to reassure him, although she was afraid that her voice was noticeably shaky and that her face would betray her anxiety: “It's nothing, Davey. I'm all right.”
Aunt Faye insisted on changing places with Davey, so she would be next 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 fat
her 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.
Had it been trying to drag her down and kill her? Right there on the street?
No. In order to kill her, the creature — and others like it, others with the shining silver eyes — would have had to come out from behind the gate, into the open, where Mrs. Shepherd and others would have seen them. And Penny was pretty sure the goblins didn't want to be seen by anyone but her. They were secretive. No, they definitely hadn't meant to kill her back there at the school; they had only meant to give her a good scare, to let her know they were still lurking around, waiting for the right opportunity….
But why?
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