Frankenstein

squirming out of it, maybe too many to shoot them all.” He put the basket on the floor beside Nummy. “Don’t drink any of that.”
    “What is it?” Nummy asked.
    “A couple different kinds of paint thinners, some lamp oil, and charcoal starter.” He handed Nummy a box of matches. “Hold these.”
    “Why would I drink that junk?”
    “I don’t know,” Mr. Lyss said, screwing the cap off the spout on the gasoline can. “Could be you’re a secret degenerate boozer, you’ll drink anything that’s got a kick to it, and I just haven’t known you long enough to see it.”
    “I’m no boozer. That there’s an insult.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way,” Mr. Lyss said as he moved among the cocoons, holding the can high, pouring the gasoline all over them so they dripped on the floor. “I was just looking out for you.”
    Right away the slithery sounds started again.
    “They don’t like you doing that,” Nummy said.
    “You can’t be sure. Maybe they’re the degenerate boozers you’re not, and they’re all excited by the smell, they think it’s cocktail time.”
    The cocoons hung all around Mr. Lyss, and he turned from one to the other, saying, “Cheers,” as he raised the gasoline can to them.
    The sacks bulged and rippled now like they hadn’t done before, and Nummy said, “You better get out of there.”
    “I suspect you’re right,” Mr. Lyss said, but he took time to pour out what was left in the can.
    The ceiling creaked louder than before, and there was the sound of wood cracking.
    Certain that this was like one of those movies where people are eaten alive and nothing nice ever happens, Nummy closed his eyes. But he opened them at once because with his eyes closed he wouldn’t know if something might be coming to eat him, too.
    The air was full of fumes. Nummy had to turn his head away from the cocoons, toward the door, to get any breath at all.
    Mr. Lyss seemed to be breathing with no trouble. He dropped onto one knee beside the basket. One at a time, he removed the caps from the paint thinner, the charcoal starter, and the lamp oil, and he tossed each can on the carpet under the cocoons, where the contents gurgled out of them.
    The fumes were worse than ever.
    “I got some gas on my hands, Peaches. I’m a little leery about striking a match. You do the honors.”
    “You want me to light up a match?”
    “You know how, don’t you?”
    “Sure, I know how.”
    “Then better do it before the air’s so full of fumes it goes off like a bomb.”
    Nummy slid open the box and selected a wooden match. He closed the box—you always close before striking—and scraped the match on the rough paper side. He only had to strike it twice to light it.
    “There,” he said, showing it to Mr. Lyss.
    “Good job.”
    “Thank you.”
    On the creaking ceiling, the plaster began to crack between the knotty-pine beams.
    Mr. Lyss said, “Now throw the match where the carpet’s wet.”
    “You’re really sure?”
    “I’m very sure. Throw it now.”
    “Once I throw it, we can’t never undo what we done.”
    “No, we can’t,” Mr. Lyss agreed. “That’s the way life is. Now throw it before you burn your fingers.”
    Nummy threw the match, it landed on the carpet, and—
whoosh!—
flames jumped from the floor to the sacks. Suddenly the bedroom was bright and hot, and the things in the cocoons went crazy.
    Some plaster fell down, Nummy saw one of the burning cocoons begin to split open, and then Mr. Lyss had him by the coat and was pulling him into the hallway, telling him to run.
    Nummy didn’t need to be told to run, not the way that he needed to be told to throw the wooden match, because he’d been wanting to run from the moment they saw the cocoons. He went down the stairs so fast he almost fell, but when he stumbled, he bounced off the wall, and somehow the bounce got him balanced again, and he made it all the way to the bottom still on his feet.
    When Nummy looked up the stairs, he saw Mr. Lyss plunging toward him, and on the second floor, a big burning something staggered out of the bedroom. Nummy couldn’t say whether it was a buglike Mr. Lyss thought or more of a walking snake, because it was a not-finished thing that hadn’t been in the cocoon long enough, just dark shapes changing inside whirling fire.
    A walking snake would have been more interesting and maybe even scarier than a bug, but either way, Mr. Lyss didn’t care about what was behind him, only about getting