peny498

@@@@@It isn't the upside-down talking crow they are afraid 680 of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadowReal enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumpsThey have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn't come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is day, and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining The next time it's Tessie who falls and Lo-Lo who pulls her up, casting a terrified glance behind her at the thing chasing themIt's surrounded by dancing bugs it sometimes licks out of the air Lo-Lo can see Tessie in one bulging, stupid eye She herself is in the other They burst onto the beach gasping and out of breath and now there's nowhere to go but the water Except maybe there is, because the boat is back 681 again, the one they have seen more and more frequently in the last few weeksLibbit says the boat isn't what it seems, but now it's a floating white dream of safety, and besides - there is no choiceThe big boy is almost at their heels It came out of the swimming pool just after they finished playing Adie's Wedding in Rampopo, the baby-house on the side lawn (today Lo-Lo got to play Adie)Sometimes Libbit can make these awful things go away by scribbling on her pad, but now Libbit is sleeping - she has had a great many troubled nights lately The big boy leaps off the path and onto the beach, spraying sand all aroundIts bulging eyes stare Its fragile white belly, so full of noisome guts, bulges The two girls, standing with their hands linked and their feet in the running boil of what Daddy calls the little surf, look at each otherThen they look at the ship, swinging at anchor with its sails furled and shiningIt looks even closer, as if it has moved in to rescue them Lo-Lo says We have to Tessie says But I can't SWIM! 682 You can dogpaddle! The big boy leapsThey can hear its guts slosh when it landsThey sound like wet garbage in a barrel of waterThe blue fades from the sky and then the sky bleeds red