Sam crossed quickly to the window. The curtain that had been singed was now burning. He yanked at it, pulled it down to stomp on it, and in the process knocked a shelf full of nesting dolls to the floor. Sam stamped the fire out. One foot crushed one of the gaily painted red nesting dolls. The outer doll splintered. The doll nestled within rolled free into the flame.
Sam stamped it all out.
“You have a fire extinguisher?” he asked. He was trying to wipe the mucousy substance from his hand and not having much luck. “Just to be safe, we should—”
But then, through the window he saw something almost as frightening as the monsters. There was a girl standing across the street. She was gazing up at him.
She had huge dark eyes, and an abundance of brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.
The girl from his dream.
Sam ran from the room, tumbled down the steps, and burst out onto the street.
The girl was nowhere to be seen.
Sam ran back inside to face a terrified Mary and Astrid, who, to his amazement, was taking notes on a pad of paper even as she hugged her brother.
“What in the—” Sam began.
“They were adapting, Sam,” Astrid interrupted urgently. “Did you see? They were changing as we watched them. Altering their physical shapes. Evolving.”
She scribbled, wiped tears from her face, and scribbled some more.
“What is going on?” Mary Terrafino asked in an abashed, diffident whisper, like she was intruding.
Sam turned to her. “Mary. You don’t talk about this.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Mary asked, looking at Little Pete, who was yawning now and beginning to drift back to sleep. “There’s something about him.”
“There are a lot of things about him, Mary,” Sam confessed wearily. “But it stays between us. I need to be able to trust you on this.”
Mary nodded. She seemed torn between staying and arguing and returning to the relative sanity of her room. Sanity won out.
“This isn’t right,” Astrid whispered as she laid her brother back on his pillow.
“You think?” Sam asked shrilly.
Astrid stroked Little Pete’s forehead. “Petey, you can’t do that again. You might hurt someone. You might hurt me. And then who would take care of you?”
“Yeah, no more monsters, Petey,” Sam said.
“No more monsters,” Astrid echoed.
Little Pete closed his eyes. “No more monsters,” he said through a huge yawn.
“I made him be quiet,” Little Pete added.
“Made who be quiet?” Sam asked.
“Petey. Who?” Astrid pleaded. “Who? Who was it? What did he want to say?”
“Hungry,” Little Pete said. “Hungry in the dark.”
“What does that mean?” Astrid pleaded.
But Little Pete had fallen asleep.
FOURTEEN