Darkfall

and then forgot to put the lid back on the box.”
    “But I didn’t,” Davey protested.
    “Your father’s not teaching you to pick up after yourself,” Faye said. “That’s the kind of thing a mother teaches, and your father’s just neglecting it.”
    Penny was going to tell them about how her own locker had been trashed when she’d gone to school this morning. She was even going to tell them about the things in the basement because it seemed to her that what had happened to Davey’s lunch would somehow substantiate her story.
    But before Penny could speak, Aunt Faye spoke up in her most morally indignant tone of voice: “What I want to know is what kind of school this is your father’s sent to you. What kind of dirty hole is this place, this Wellton?”
    “It’s a good school,” Penny said defensively.
    “With rats? ” Faye said. “No good school would have rats. No halfway decent school would have rats. Why, what if they’d still been in the locker when Davey went for his lunch? He might’ve been bitten. Rats are filthy. They carry all kinds of diseases. They’re disgusting. I simply can’t imagine any school for young children being allowed to remain open if it has rats. The Board of Health has got to be told about this first thing tomorrow. Your father’s going to have to do something about the situation immediately. I won’t allow him to procrastinate. Not where your health is concerned. Why, your poor dear mother would be appalled by such a place, a school with rats in the wall. Rats! My God, rats carry everything from rabies to the plague!”
    Faye droned on and on.
    Penny tuned her out.
    There wasn’t any point in telling them about her own locker and the silver-eyed things in the school basement. Faye would insist they had been rats, too. When that woman got something in her head, there was no way of getting it out again, no way of changing her mind. Now, Faye was looking forward to confronting their father about the rats; she relished the thought of blaming him for putting them in a rat-infested school, and she wouldn’t be the least receptive to anything Penny said, to any explanation or any conflicting facts that might put rats completely out of the picture and thereby spare their father from a scolding.
    Even if I tell her about the hand, Penny thought, the little hand that came under the green gate, she’ll stick to the idea that it’s rats. She’ll say I was scared and made a mistake about what I saw. She’ll say it wasn’t really a hand at all, but a rat, a slimy old rat biting at my boot. She’ll turn it all around. She’ll make it support the story she wants to believe, and it’ll just be more ammunition for her to use against Daddy. Damnit, Aunt Faye, why’re you so stubborn?
    Faye was chattering about the need for a parent to thoroughly investigate a school before sending children to it.
    Penny wondered when her father would come to get them, and she prayed he wouldn’t be too late. She wanted him to come before bedtime. She didn’t want to be alone, just her and Davey, in a dark room, even if it was Aunt Faye’s guest room, blocks and blocks away from their own apartment. She was pretty sure the goblins would find them, even here. She had decided to take her father aside and tell him everything. He wouldn’t want to believe in goblins, at first. But now there was Davey’s lunchbox to consider. And if she went back to their apartment with her father and showed him the holes in Davey’s plastic baseball bat, she might be able to convince him. Daddy was a grownup, like Aunt Faye, sure, but he wasn’t stubborn, and he listened to kids in a way that few grown-ups did.
    Faye said, “With all the money he got from your mother’s insurance and from the settlement the hospital made, he could afford to send you to a top-of-the-line school. Absolutely top-of-the-line. I can’t imagine why he settled on this Wellton joint.”
    Penny bit her lip, said nothing.
    She stared down at the magazine. The pictures and words swam in and out of focus.
    The worst thing was that now she knew, beyond a doubt, that the goblins weren’t just after her. They wanted Davey, too.
    III
    Rebecca had not waited for Jack, though he had asked her to. While he’d been with Captain Gresham, working out the details of the protection that would be provided for Penny and Davey, Rebecca had apparently put on her coat and gone home.
    When Jack found that she had gone, he sighed and said