“No, no!” June shouldered her roughly aside. “Don’t go in! It’ll get you, too!”She heard a thud just inside the door. Dimly through the glass she saw the flicker of movement as the snout of the Eater raised and wavered toward them.“June!” Mrs. Warren jerked her away from the door. “Let me in! What’s the matter? Have you gone crazy?”Mrs. Warren stopped suddenly, her face whitening. “What have you done to Dubby, June ?”The girl gulped with the shock of the accusation. “I haven’t done anything, Mrs. Warren. He made a Noise- eater and it – it –” June winced away from the sudden blaze of Mrs. Warren’s eyes.“Get away from that door!” Mrs. Warren’s face was that of a stranger, her words icy and clipped. “I trusted you with my child. If anything has happened to him –”“Don’t go in – oh, don’t go in!” June grabbed at her coat hysterically. “Please, please wait! Let’s get –”“Let go!” Mrs. Warren’s voice grated between her tightly clenched teeth. “Let me go, you – you –” Her hands flashed out and the crack of her palm against June’s cheek was echoed by a choonk inside the house. June was staggered by the blow, but she clung to the coat until Mrs. Warren pushed her sprawling down the front steps and fumbled at the knob, crying, “Dubby! Dubby!”June, scrambling up the steps on hands and knees, caught a glimpse of a hovering something that lifted and swayed like a waiting cobra. It was slapped aside by the violent opening of the door as Mrs. Warren stumbled into the house, her cries suddenly stilling on her slack lips as she saw her crumpled son by the couch.She gasped and whispered, “Dubby!” She lifted him into her arms. His head rolled loosely against her shoulder. Her protesting, “No, no, no!” merged into half-articulate screams as she hugged him to her.And from behind the front door there was a choonk and a slither.June lunged forward and grabbed the reaching thing that was homing in on Mrs. Warren’s hysterical grief. Her hands closed around it convulsively, her whole weight dragging backward, but it had a strength she couldn’t match. Desperately then, her fists clenched, her eyes tight shut, she screamed and screamed and screamed.The snout looped almost lazily around her straining throat, but she fought her way almost to the front door before the thing held her, feet on the floor, body at an impossible angle, and stilled her frantic screams, quieted her straining lungs and sipped the last of her heartbeats, and let her drop.Mrs. Warren stared incredulously at June’s crumpled body and the horrible creature that blinked its lights and shifted its antennae questingly. With a muffled gasp, she sagged, knees and waist and neck, and fell soundlessly to the floor.The refrigerator in the kitchen cleared its throat and the Eater turned from June with a choonk and slid away, crossing to the kitchen.The Eater retracted its snout and slid back from the silent refrigerator. It lay quietly, its ears shifting from quarter to quarter.The thermostat in the dining room clicked and the hot air furnace began to hum. The Eater slid to the wall under the register that was set just below the ceiling. Its snout extended and lifted and narrowed until the end of it slipped through one of the register openings. The furnace hum choked off abruptly and the snout flipped back into sight.Then there was quiet, deep and unbroken until the Eater tilted its ears and slid up to Mrs. Warren.In such silence, even a pulse was noise.There was a sound like a straw in the bottom of a soda glass.A stillness was broken by the shrilling of a siren on the main highway four blocks away.A choonk and a slither and the metallic bump of runners down the three front steps.And a quiet, quiet house on a quiet side street.Hush.
