HER FATHER TURNS.…
“Ah!” Lizzie flinches, and then her left foot isn’t on the rung anymore. Gasping, she lunges forward, wrapping her arms around the ladder. Her heart thump-thump-thumps so hard she feels it in her throat. She wants to wait, not try getting down until the shakes go away—but she mustn’t, she mustn’t, she mustn’t!
Oh Dad, Dad, Daddy!
Somehow she gets down, half tripping, half slithering, and then she is pelting out of the barn and over the slippery gravel drive. The rock snatches her shoes, and she falls, ripping the knees from her jeans. The pain is strangely good, quick and bright as a firecracker and much better than the acid fear on her tongue. She claws her way up, shivering so hard her teeth go clickity-clickity-clickity-click. But now there is the kitchen and a square of warm yellow light and her mother, framed like an angel in a painting. Lizzie bursts through the kitchen door, the door going bam so the windowpanes complain and the glasses chatter in the cabinets. “Mom, Mom!”
“Lizzie?” Her mother’s eyes probe Lizzie’s face and then she gasps at whatever she’s read. “Stay here, Lizzie, stay right here!” Quick as a whip, Mom is out the door and sprinting for the barn. She doesn’t even bother with a coat.
A stiletto of terror pierces her heart, and Lizzie thinks, Oh, Momma, Momma, be careful, be careful, be careful! Face pressed to the glass, she waits and waits and waits, scrubbing away breath-fog so she can see the moment her parents emerge from the barn, the very second her mother rescues her father.
Hurry, Mom, hurry. The windowpane is going all wobbly, as if her house is starting to melt. Lizzie’s eyes burn, the tears chasing each other down her cheeks so fast they drip-drip-drip from her jaw. “Hurry, Mom,” Lizzie whispers, her voice thinning to a watery squeak. “Save Dad. Pull him out before the whisper-man slides all the way inside and fills him up. Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
But Lizzie, you saw. This is not the monster-doll, but a voice that is calm and reasonable and centered in a clear patch of the storm in her mind. The voice is, in fact, a little like Mom’s that last time Lizzie raised a fuss about lima beans on a Try-It Tuesday: Just try one little no-thank-you bite.
Now, Lizzie, this calm little voice says, you saw, honey, how far he reached? And when he turned?
“No, you’re wrong! I’m not listening to you.” Lizzie presses her hands over her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you. Mom is strong and smart, you’ll see. Mom will beat him, Mom will—”
All of a sudden, across the yard, the barn door crashes open with so much force, the muted smash of wood and metal seeps through the window and into the kitchen. “Yes!” Lizzie’s heart, full to bursting with fear and worry, seems to rocket out of her chest. She is dancing on tiptoe, bouncing up and down. “Yes, Mom, yes, you got him, you …”
But then Lizzie’s voice dies on her tongue, because all she sees