good shoulder, and stared at his left foot. His tennis trophy was dangling from it, the one that had broken when he had moved the trophy case into the bedroom. The top of the trophy—the sharp, jagged end of the broken-off tennis racquet—was buried deep in his flesh, imbedded in the tendons.
“Shit!” Neal yelled again. But this time, he could hear cold fear in his voice. In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see the minute details of the tennis trophy’s sheared off racquet—the crook about halfway down the shaft, the jagged spirals of metal that fanned out from the end, the little patches of rust...
“Get it out of me!” Neal shouted, over the incessant wailing of the baby.
Annie leaped down onto the floor, a terror-stricken look on her face. She reached for the trophy but couldn’t seem to decide how or where to take hold of it.
“Jesus!” Neal said in frantic frustration, shoving himself upright on the floor. Another wave of pain crested in his shoulder. Bright red blood ran down the trophy’s side and dripped steadily onto the floor. He started to grab the base of the trophy with his hand, then changed his mind and pressed on it with his good foot, holding its heavy base against hardwood.
Neal closed his eyes and braced himself.
In one quick but agonizing motion, he yanked his foot away from the metal object, letting out a grunt that sounded more animal than human. He passed out for a few seconds. What he saw when he opened his eyes, he would never forget. His foot flung out a thick spray of blood that splashed across Annie’s ashen face. She looked like someone in a horror film who had just witnessed a slashing.
But the image just beyond her was far more disturbing. Over the top rail of the crib, two dark eyes were watching him. He could see the top of Natasha’s fuzzy head and her two tiny, paw-like hands gripping the wooden rail. The eyes seemed completely vacant, yet there was a feeling that they conveyed in that fleeting moment that Neal could only interpret as...satisfaction.
Neal screamed, screamed like he never had before in his life.
Annie clasped her hands to her cheeks, smearing her face crimson, unaware that Neal’s blood had splashed across it. She stared at his foot, her eyes wide with horror. There was a puffy, gaping hole in its sole, about the size of a dime. Blood was spurting out of it, forming a puddle on the floor.
“Ambulance!” Annie blurted. “We have to call an ambulance!”
She leaped up from the bed and took a step towards the night stand. Instead of the hardwood, she stepped on Neal’s left hand and cried “Ow!” (something that Neal would later remember and find darkly amusing) and began fumbling with the telephone. But at that moment, Neal barely heard or saw any of this—he was still in shock. He looked back over at the crib, but Natasha had disappeared—her head and hands were no longer visible.
“What’s wrong with this damn thing!” Annie said frantically. She was punching 9-1-1 into the telephone over and over again, the receiver to her ear.
Neal finally came to his senses. “It’s dead, Annie. You left it off the hook. You have to hang up and wait until...oh, never mind!”
“What?” she said, rattled.
“Just hang up, Annie. I don’t need an ambulance. I’m not dying.”
Annie hesitated, staring down at his bleeding foot—it was still gushing blood. “But you have to go to a hospital!”
“Maybe I do, but you’re not going to get anybody on that phone until you hang up for a minute and get a dial tone.”
Annie lowered the receiver, but did not hang up. She was still staring at Neal’s foot. For a second, he thought she would throw up.
“Get me a towel, for God’s sake.”
“You need to wash it out,” she said, glancing at the blood-drenched trophy. It was lying on its side, a few feet away from Neal, between him and the crib.
“I know, but I don’t want to get blood all over everything.”
