Darkfall

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 still 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-