Afterward, he was embarrassed. He should not have been--there were more important things at stake here than embarrassment--but that was the way he felt, and although he told his parents he'd been scared upstairs, in the bathroom, he did not tell them why or what had really happened. Still, he made them accompany him back up, hoping that Doneen would still be there, and made his father search his bedroom closets and the other rooms off the hallway before putting on his pajamas and telling them to go downstairs, he was all right.
It was the crying that had embarrassed him the most, and he thought that if he had not burst into tears like a little girl, he might have been able to broach the subject of the servant's daughter and what she'd said. But he'd been naked and crying into his mother's blouse, and he could not bring himself to compound that humiliation with the admission of what must seem like a lunatic fear-- no matter how serious the consequences might be.
He would just have to stay alert, keep an eye on his mother, make sure nothing happened.
He stopped playing outside, stopped going places with his friends. He told them that he was grounded, that his parents would not let him go out. He told his mother that Jim's and Paul's families had gone on vacation and that Madson was grounded.
And he stayed in the house.
Stayed near his mother.
He still avoided Billingsly as much as possible, but he did not have to make an effort to stay away from Doneen .
Either her father or his parents had talked to her, or she had decided on her own to keep her distance, and he saw only occasional glimpses of her in hallways or rooms or outside in the yard, and that was fine by him.
A few evenings later, his father was cutting his hair, and the idea that he should save the cut hair occurred to him. He did not know why, did not know where this notion had come from, but almost as soon as it had flashed into his mind, it had solidified into a necessity, a priority, and after his father finished trimming his bangs and tossed away the newspapers that had been spread on the floor underneath his chair, Daniel snuck into the kitchen, took the crumpled paper with its cache of cut hair, and brought everything back up into his room.
Over the next week, he collected other things: used Kleenex, discarded toothpicks, peach pits, chicken bones, an apple core. It became almost an obsession, this search for specific objects, and while he never knew exactly what he was looking for, he always recognized it when he found it.
He understood that he was supposed to take all of the elements and combine them, make them into a cohesive whole, construct a figure that would serve as a talisman against. . . Against what?
He did not know, but he worked on the figure nonetheless, adding his newest acquisitions to it at night before he went to bed, reshaping them in the morning when he awoke.
He destroyed the figure as soon as he finished it. He had not noticed until the very end, until every element was in place, exactly what he'd been making, but when he saw the expression he'd created on the figure's face, saw the threatening stance and intimidating structure of the object, he realized instantly that he had not created a talisman to ward against something but had made a figure designed to attract something.
Something bad.
This was just what Doneen and her father and the house had wanted him to do, and he tore it up immediately, stomping and flattening the pieces, throwing them in a paper bag and taking the sack out to the backyard and burning it.
He heard whispers that night. And his father came into his room and told him in a worried voice not to get out of bed, not even if he had to go to the bathroom, until the sun came out the next morning.
He wet his bed for the first time since kindergarten, but he wasn't embarrassed and didn't get in trouble for it, and when he walked into the dining room for breakfast, he heard a portion of a conversation that ended instantly the second he walked through the door:
'What are we going to do?' Mother.
'Nothing we can do. They're back.' Father.
That night, again, he was told not to get out of bed, but something made him disobey those orders, and he crept silently across the floor of his room and slowly opened the door, peeking out.
It emerged from the shadows, a small squat figure of dust and hair, paper clip and tape, bread crumb and lint.
Gathered material from the rug underneath the furniture.
A living counterpart to the static figure he had created and destroyed.
Daniel stood in the doorway of his room, frozen, unable to even suck in a breath, watching as the horrible creature moved away from him, down the hall.
To his parents' room.
Their bedroom door opened. Closed.
'No!' he screamed.
'Daniel?' his father called from downstairs.
His parents had not come up yet! They were safe from that . . . whatever it was.
A relief so powerful that it seemed to weaken his muscles flooded over him, through him. He started left, toward the stairwell, when he heard the sound of a crash from his parents' room. The sound of something falling.
And a partial yelp.
'Mother!' he screamed, running.
'Daniel!' his father bellowed from downstairs.
He heard his father's heavy elephant tread from somewhere on the floor below, but he didn't, couldn't wait, and he rushed down the hall to his parents' bedroom and threw open the door.
The creature was on the bed.
His mother, naked, thrashed about, bucking wildly, as the figure forced itself into her open mouth. Daniel was screaming for his father, screaming at the top of his lungs, but he could not take his eyes off the bed, where his mother tried to first yank the figure from her mouth, then began beating herself violently in the face, trying to dislodge it. He knew he should do something, but he didn't know what, had no idea how he could help, and a moment later, before he could spur himself into action, his father was thundering down the hall and rushing through the open door and running up to the bed.
The figure's feet disappeared down his mother's throat.
'Help me!' his father ordered. He picked her up, began pounding her on the back. 'Help me!'
Daniel didn't know what to do, didn't know how to help, but he rushed over and his father had him grab his mother's arms and hold them up while he attempted to stick his fingers down her throat and pull out the creature.
Her face was already turning blue, and the weak wheezy gasps that had been issuing from her mouth had silenced. Her too-wide eyes stared blankly straight ahead, and only the open-close-open-close fish motion of her lips indicated that she was still alive.
Screaming crazily, a primal bellow of rage and pain, his father grabbed his mother around the waist, turned her upside down, and, holding her ankles, thumped his knee against her back in an effort to dislodge the dust creature.
It was to no avail. His mother died in front of their eyes, not professing her love for them, not reassuring them with last words, but gasping silently like a fish out of water, jerking and twitching spasmodically.
The next week was a blur. There were doctors and police and morticians and other men in uniforms and suits who came in and out of the house. An autopsy was performed on his mother's body and he wanted, to ask if they found the dust monster within her, but he was told that the cause of death was heart failure, and he figured that the creature had either gotten out or had simply dissipated and come apart within her system.
He knew, though. And his father knew. And the two of them started packing up their belongings, planning to leave.
'Where are we going?' Daniel asked.
'Anywhere,' his father said in the defeated monotone that had become his normal voice.
But they were only in the very earliest stages of packing when they were confronted by Billingsly . The servant knocked on the frame of the open doorway as usual and stood deferentially outside the room, and Daniel was immediately filled with a deep cold fear at the sight of him.
