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 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, ear to the crack, listening. He was snoring. She couldn't hear anything else in there, no strange rustling noises.
Again, she considered waking Daddy. He was a police detective. Lieutenant Jack Dawson. He had a gun. If something was in the apartment, he could blast it to smithereens. On the other hand, if she woke him and they found nothing, he would tease her and speak to her as if she were a child, Jeez, even worse than that, as if she were an infant. She hesitated, then sighed. No. It just wasn't worth the risk of being humiliated.
Heart pounding, she crept along the hall to the front door and tried it. It was stir! securely locked.
A coat rack was fixed to the wall beside the door. She took a tightly rolled umbrella from one of the hooks. The metal tip was pointed enough to serve as a reasonably good weapon.
With the umbrella thrust out in front of her, she went into the living room, turned on all the lights, looked everywhere. She searched the dining alcove and the small L-shaped kitchen, as well.
Nothing.
Except the window.
Above the sink, the kitchen window was open. Cold December air streamed through the ten-inch gap.
Penny was sure it hadn't been open when she'd gone to bed. And if Daddy had opened it to get a breath of fresh air, he'd have closed it later; he was conscientious about such things because he was always setting an example for Davey, who needed an example because he wasn't conscientious about much of anything.
She carried the kitchen stool to the sink, climbed onto it, and pushed the window up farther, far enough to lean out and take a look. She winced as the cold air stung her face and sent icy fingers down the neck of her pajamas. There was very little light. Four stories beneath her, the alleyway was blacker than black at its darkest, ash-gray at its brightest. The only sound was the soughing of the wind in the concrete canyon. It blew a few twisted scraps of paper along the pavement below and made Penny's brown hair flap like a banner; it tore the frosty plumes of her breath into gossamer rags. Otherwise, nothing moved.
Farther along the building, near the bedroom window, an iron fire escape led down to the alley. But here at the kitchen, there was no fire escape, no ledge, noway that a would-be burglar could have reached the window, no place for him to stand or hold on while he pried his way inside.
Anyway, it hadn't been a burglar. Burglars weren't small enough to hide under a young lady's bed.
She closed the window and put the stool back where she'd gotten it. She returned the umbrella to the coat rack in the hall, although she was somewhat reluctant to give up the weapon. Switching off the lights as she went, refusing to glance behind into the darkness that she left in her wake, she returned to her room and got back into bed and pulled up the covers.
Davey was still sleeping soundly.