Darkfall

“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 good.”

“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.