Daddy interrupted a snore with a strained grunt. Momma whimpered softly
and hugged to herself her swollen stomach.
Tommy blinked and was awake. Soothingly, he patted Kokey and Old
Rabbit. He squeezed Mr. Bear's paw. Then he slipped his hand into the
opening in Mr. Bear's overalls and took out Daddy's cigarette lighter.
He knew how to work it. But first he waited.
"Don't think about it," Daddy had told him and he didn't think about
it, really. But he couldn't help feeling it. The Ugly Thing was out,
clear out of the hole now, and moving. He could feel that and the awful
hunger moving with it. Aunt Martha's room was closest and her door was
open. Momma and Daddy's room was closed. The Ugly Thing moved fast,
faster, and reached out, thirsting, hungering....
From Aunt Martha's room came the quavering wail and from the Thing
there flowed a sense of vicious, evil joy.
There it was, but was it enough?
Tommy hugged Mr. Bear once, tightly, and slipped noiselessly from the
bed. He wasn't thinking about it, he couldn't, he wouldn't think about
it. But he knew what he had to do. He had the lighter. At the bedroom
door he worked it. Opened the door a crack; thrust it out. And then, in
a little rush, back to bed where he lay quietly, and he didn't think
about it, he and Mr. Bear and Old Rabbit and Kokey Koala.
* * * * *
After a little, the sense of feeding hunger was gone and the feel of
the Ugly Thing was gone, back into the hole in the closet, forced back
by the flickering yellow light of the flames started by the cigarette
lighter. Then, when the smell of smoke grew thick in the room and he
could hear the crackling of the fire burning the house, Tommy shook
Daddy awake.
It wasn't hard to get out through the bedroom window, except for Momma.
But she made it all right. And Tommy had a little trouble holding
tightly to each member of his family as Daddy lifted him out of the
window, but they made it all right too. Of course Aunt Martha didn't
make it--how could she? But it was fun watching the firemen in the rain
from the Krausmeyer's porch next door as the house and the closet with
the hole in the closet all burned up together.
Aunt Martha?
"Funny thing," Tommy heard one fireman say to another the next day, in
the sunshine, as they looked over the smouldering ash, "the old bat
must have been as dry as dust inside. Twenty years in the department
and I never did see a body so completely consumed--teeth, a little
bone.... Hey, get on away from here, son! Get along on home with you!"
Daddy and Momma said Aunt Martha had gone away on a trip. Tommy might
have known pretty well where she had gone, if he had thought about it,
but he didn't think about it. None of his family did. What for? Aunt
Martha had had to go away, sure. She went. All right, who missed Aunt
Martha?
Anyway, there were lights in all of the closets in the new house they
moved to and lots of room for everyone, even baby sister. And there
were no holes, not even mouse holes, in any of the closets.