didn't answer. Not even a "Come and get him, then, stupid baby!"
She kept going toward the well, her steps slowing, slowing, until she was dragging her feet through the grass. The moldy smell was worse than ever.
A spot of color caught her eye. Sunny gold, out of place in the gloom … Floppy Dog! He was at the base of the curved wall of well-stones, tipped over so that his glassy-button gaze fixed curiously on Megan.
Expecting Robbie to leap out at her and yell "Boo!", she crept closer.
The grass around the well was all wet and mashed flat. A low creaking noise came from the old rope as the bucket swung lazily in a circle.
"Robbie?" Her voice sounded too loud in the evening hush. Too afraid. She strained her ears, now actually hoping for his teasing laughter.
Nothing, nothing but the creaking rope and an airplane buzzing by high overhead.
Something else was in the matted-down grass. Robbie's baseball cap. Streaked with green sludge.
"He fell in," Megan said in a choked whisper. "Oh, gosh, he fell in the well."
She took another step, her stomach feeling like a sinking weight, the back of her neck crawling like it was covered with spiders. She picked the cap up tweezed between her thumb and finger. Her nose wrinkled at the yucky smell, which made her think of a fish tank that needed to be cleaned.
It took every bit of her courage to stick her head over the rim and look down. The surface of the water was a pool of night-black.
"Robbie?"
Leaning over like that, she was suddenly sure he was sneaking up behind her. Now he'd yell, or push her.
She whipped around fast and saw only the empty park. Floppy Dog was within reach so she bent and seized him and hugged him to her chest with one arm. The other held Robbie's stinky cap out at an angle.
No Robbie. No anybody.
She saw what looked like a trail of bent grass heading out of the park. It didn't lead the usual way, to the street, but toward the drainage ditch that ran behind the houses.
Relief burst in her like a firework. Robbie had fallen in, but he'd climbed out. Gone home the back way, so that no one would see him all wet and gross. A grim sort of satisfaction – serves him right! – mixed with her relief.
Hoping to catch up with him, hoping even more that he got in trouble from his daddy for tracking well-muck through the house, Megan trotted along the trampled-down trail.
She imagined the look on his face when she gave him back his hat. She'd smile, all sweet, but he'd know where she found it. He'd know that she knew what had happened.
The ditch was dark and muddy, bordered by backyard fences. Heaps of trash were piled along its sloped sides. A shopping cart lay on its side like a weird dead animal.
The gate in their backyard was halfway open. A smeary handprint stood out on the whitewashed wood. Megan snickered. The finger-marks were long drags. Robbie must just be coated with icky slime.
She slipped through and used her foot to push the gate shut behind her.
Inside, somebody yelled. Megan hurried. A singsong chant – Robbie's in trouble! Robbie's in trouble! – rang merrily through her mind.
Crash as a piece of furniture or something went over. And then a screech, a really awful scream.
Megan stopped on the back porch. It felt like she had a big wad of dry bread stuck in her throat all of a sudden.
Bob must really be mad, and she hadn't ever, ever heard Robbie scream like that. How bad did a spanking get to make an almost-teenager sound that way?
The sliding glass door was open. She smelled chicken cooking and something burning. And that nasty aquarium-stink, too.
Mommy wasn't in the kitchen. A pot of noodles was boiling over. The stool Bob had been sitting on was overturned. His beercan was on the floor. A puddle of beer was on the tile. So were long sloppy marks of black gunk.
Everything was quiet.
Too quiet. Creepily quiet. Like the park had been.
Megan opened her mouth to call for her mother, but changed her mind. She hung Robbie's hat on the doorknob that led from the kitchen into the laundry room. She tucked Floppy Dog into a cupboard for safekeeping and turned off the stove under the noodles.
The aquarium-smell was everywhere, so thick she could taste it. Like rotted fish sticks and spinach.
As she went into the hall, she went tip-toeing and holding her breath.
Something was at the bottom of the stairs. Something big.
It was Bob.
Had Robbie knocked his own daddy down the stairs?
She tip-toed closer, eyes wide and agog.
Bob was sprawled on his back like he was trying to make a snow angel on the hall carpet. He was covered with green and black goo. And red stuff. Dark red, runny stuff. It came out of holes in his neck and face.
Megan knew dead from TV and from the movies. But this was dead-dead, for-keeps dead.
There were pennies on his eyelids. Old, nasty pennies. And shiny stuff in his slack mouth. Coins. More pennies, nickels, dimes, maybe even quarters. Stuffed in his mouth like he was a gumball machine.
A shriek built and built in Megan. She could have been a cartoon steam whistle, quivering and turning purple just before the long, loud blast.
But the shriek couldn't get past the bread-wad in her throat.
The trail of sludge and slime led upstairs. Megan followed it, trying not to step in any, walking on the sides of the stairs so they didn't squeak. More coins were stuck to the carpet.
Her mouth made the word 'mommy,' but she couldn't make any sound. She could hardly breathe.
She heard a squishing noise, like someone walking in wet shoes. Coming closer.
Megan ducked into her bedroom and shut the door all but a teeny crack.
Robbie had gone bonkers. Like on the TV shows. He'd gone bonkers and killed Bob. Maybe Mommy, too. If he found her, he'd finish the job.
A shadow fell over her peeping eye. A shape slouched past, squish-squish-squish and a blast of dead-fish stink so strong that she gagged. It was past and gone too fast for her to tell if it was Robbie or not. Though it had to be … who else could it be?
She wanted to hide under her bed, or way back in the closet. Just hide, and close her eyes, and wait for everything to be okay again.
Instead, she opened her door as she heard the thing squelching down the stairs. She ran on fleet little feet to the end of the hall, and into Mommy and Bob's room.
Mommy wasn't in the bedroom. Or the bathroom. Or under the bed, or in the closet.
But there was red on the floor. Red like what had been coming out of Bob. Lots of it, a big splotch and then a streak. As if a trash bag full of spaghetti sauce had been dragged, leaking.
She followed it to the top of the stairs and looked down. Bob was gone, leaving another big splotch where he'd been and another leaky red drag mark headed back for the kitchen.
Megan ran down the stairs, forgetting all about being quiet and sneaky now.
Back through the kitchen. Back across the yard and into the drainage ditch. Back to the park.
Her side had a deep, hurting stitch in it by the time she got there. She heard an echoing splash and made for the well.
It was full nighttime, and the streetlights didn't shine very far through the trees and bushes. There was enough light for her to see the shape at the edge of the well, and Mommy on the grass.
Mommy had pennies on her eyelids, too. They stayed there as if glued when the dark shape picked her up and teetered her over the lip of the well-stones.
"No! Mommy!" The words exploded out of her.
The shape jumped, startled. Mommy dropped limply into the well. Splash.
It whipped around to face Megan, and what little light there was fell on it.
Megan's feet tangled together. She went down hard, a real bellyflop, scraping the heels of her hands as she flung them out to break her fall.
The thing at the well wasn't Robbie.
Its skin wa
s green-black, glistening with ooze. It was shaped almost like a person, but with a hunched back and no neck and long squirmy claw-tipped tentacles where fingers and toes should have been.
As it moved, parts of it sparkled in the dim light. Coins. Embedded in its skin like scales. Most were pennies, turned green.
Stringy, mossy hair was plastered wetly to a head that bulged squat like the head of a frog. It had the wide split of a mouth and the bulbous yellow eyes of a frog, too, but the rest of its features were almost human.
The frog-thing-well-monster inflated skin under its chin in a huge swelling bag. Its mouth gaped wide and Megan saw its teeth. Rows and rows of sharp, sharky teeth.
It croaked a belching bullfrog's croak. An outrush of breath worse than any of the other awful smells blew back her hair.
Megan cringed and cowered on the ground. She couldn't run, knew that even if she tried she wouldn't get three steps before it was on her.
It came closer. It moved with a rocking, waddling gait that looked clumsy but was quick. She could see its yellowish underside, and mildewy wrappings that might have been clothes.
The monster uncurled one long, splay-fingered hand. It had black suckers along its fingers. They slurped and smacked with a disgusting life of their own.
It held out a nickel. Bright and silvery-new.
She stared.
"Muh … my nickel?" Megan whispered. "My wish!"
The suckery squid fingers wrapped around the coin again. The creature hitched itself up and squatted on the rim of the well.
"I didn't mean it," Megan said. "This isn't what I wanted, I didn't want anybody to get hurt, please!"
A smile curved the frog-thing's toothy mouth. It rolled backward into the well the way scuba divers on TV