The Amulet. A.R. Morlan

when Lucy had heard Gramma’s whimpers from under the closed door, while Daddy rang for the doctor, then the neighbors, Lucy had realized that the time of the night skirt flapping and flowing and dragging around her legs had come at last.

      And as much as losing Gramma hurt, Lucy was all antsy inside during the rest of the evening, until the time when she beard her parents’ last faint words coming through the wall (“And first thing tomorrow, that skirt goes out the door, you hear me, Alvin?” “Uh-huh....”) and then only raspy breathing. And now, she had her small finger wrapped around the doorknob, the metal cool and just the faintest bit greasy. Slowly she turned the knob until the door swung inward, into darkness even deeper and thicker and softer than the night skirt itself.

      Gramma was in there, in the almost solid blackness. Lying on her bed, a drying cloth over her face and hands, even though it wasn’t nearly warm enough to start worrying about that sort of thing yet. Lucy was glad that Mr. Byrne and Mr. Reish were both down with the grippe. Otherwise, the two undertakers might have come and taken Gramma away, and mother might have tossed the night skirt into the backyard trash bin, where any animal might have slithered or crawled into it—and Lucy didn’t want to think about what might happen then!

      Her eyes were more accustomed to the dark now. She could faintly see the two pale places where the damp hankies rested on her Gramma’s face and hands. Which meant that if the bed was there, the rocker where Mother had placed the folded night skirt had to be right here.

      Like a slumbering animal awakened by the gentle, loving touch of its owner, the night skirt rippled under Lucy’s small fingers. Darker than the surrounding darkness, the night skirt felt as warm to Lucy as if her Gramma had just removed it only moments before.

      Feeling for the opening with her hands, Lucy opened up the waistband. After tucking her nightgown around her legs (it would make a good, if makeshift, slip), Lucy stepped into the night skirt, rolling the fabric up and up, until the skirt’s hem dusted her insteps. After patting the seat of the rocker, Lucy found Gramma’s belt and tightened the stiff strip of fabric around her waist, her arms hampered by the thick roll of excess cloth scrunched up under her armpits. But Lucy didn’t mind that at all; as Gramma told her, she was going to be taller someday.

      Relishing the heavy swish of fabric around her thin legs as she walked, Lucy paused by her Gramma’s bed, whispering, “I’ll come and make you better in a little while—after I come back from their room. Then we’ll play, okay, Gramma?” After giving the still hands and face a cloth-screened pat, Lucy left the room, heading for the staircase.

      The cloth of the night skirt made a faint, susurrus noise that almost masked the delicate click-click of claws and scrabbling scritch of talons as Lucy made her determined way across the carpetless floorboards. But as she mounted the first stair tread, her skirt brushed against the next step up, and even the muted swish of the fabric couldn’t cover the thump of something hard coming in contact with soft wood.

      Lucy bent down and felt the hem of the night skirt, feeding the rolled material through her damp hands until something long and hard and bumpy slid through her fingers. As she probed the bunched fabric, the hard shape moved, first rippling, then curling in on itself as the little girl smiled in the moonlight-splashed darkness and whispered, “Gotcha.”

      Tongue pressed between her tiny teeth, Lucy worked the heavy thing toward the sewn edge of the hem, where the stitches were...and where the threads finally broke. And as Lucy extracted the oily-warm thing from the hem of the night skirt, the belt around her waist came undone, letting the night skirt drop to a cold, musty heap on the floor. Stepping out of the skirt, the special thing trapped in her sweating palm, Lucy felt nothing but limp nubby cloth under her feet...nothing more. The skirt no longer rippled, nor did it suck in the darkness anymore.

      But the coiled object in her hand was warm, writhing, as she stroked it with a tiny, short-nailed finger. She thought, I am a big girl now. I know the night skirt’s secret, and nobody had to tell me, either.

      The tiny entity curled in her palm made Lucy feel fizzy-funny inside, like her insides were all jumbled up, but it was such a nice feeling, too. And then, realizing that what she was going to do to Mother and Daddy could wait awhile, she hurried back to her Gramma’s room, her vision suddenly different in the gloom, thinking, Now we both can have some fun. I want Gramma to watch me when I get them upstairs.

      In her excitement, Lucy didn’t notice as her wing tips brushed Mother’s bric-a-brac shelf. Small china and glass things shivered and chattered in dumb anticipation on the polished mahogany shelf, waking Lucy’s mother in her room upstairs.

      PART ONE

      THE YAHOOS

      By what I could discover, the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals, their capaci­ties never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of the opinion, this defect ariseth chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition. For they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and by consequence insolent, abject, and cruel.

      —JONATHAN SWIFT,

      Gulliver’s Travels

      When the stars threw down their spears,

      And water’d heaven with their tears,

      Did he smile his work to see?

      Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

      —WILLIAM BLAKE,

      “The Tyger”

      CHAPTER ONE

      Monday, October 19, 1987

      ONE—Anna (1)

      Clawed leaves skittered before Anna Sudek’s sneakered feet as she walked down Ewert Avenue, crossing from the shabby residential section into the business district. The brittle oak, maple, and elm leaves thinned as Anna passed the first of the rough-siding and shake-shingle-roofed businesses on the left­ hand side of the street. Soon, she found herself walking down a dimly lamp lit, cracked, and pitted cement sidewalk as queasily luminescent and lightly pocked as the thin vestiges of the last quarter moon above her.

      Despite their now dead state, Anna missed the rustling of the wind blown leaves. Ewert Avenue at 2:30 in the morning was a hollow, wind-sucking discarded bottle of a place, a length of quiet emptiness enclosed by the overhangs of two- and three-story brick and frame offices and stores. The comparative silence was broken only by the lonely, rusty scree of the illuminated revolving clock/ thermometer mounted on the corner of the tan brick Savings and Loan building. The bright yellow dots against black numerals indicated that the temper­ature was a brisk thirty degrees, but Anna knew that the wind chill made it much colder.

      Over at the intersection of Ewert and First Avenue West, a Mountain Dew can clunked against the sewer grating; the sound was overloud, tinny, ringing in the predawn quietude.

      Kneeling down to pick up the empty pop can, Anna saw movement out of the corner of her eye—a chunk of darkness, breaking free of the dimly lit alley behind her side of the street—and huddled against the flaking yellow-painted sloping curb, bottle-bug green can clenched in her gloved fingers, until the moving darkness resolved itself into a brisk-walking sneakered figure clad in a navy pea coat and layered babushkas.

      Anna saw just how tense she’d been when she dropped the can into her plastic mesh bag—the swirling red and green Mountain Dew logo was crushed beyond legibility. As she continued down the avenue, now walking in the middle of the street, Anna scolded herself. Great going. Now I’m freaking out over old lady Campbell. If some yahoo creep bastard came up behind me, I’d roll over and spread ’em wide without being asked to.

      In the distance, Anna could hear Mrs. Campbell opening one of the Dumpsters in back of the Ewerton Bakery. “Shit,” she muttered. Usually Anna made it to the bakery first, especially on Monday mornings. Sunday night was when they threw out the last of the leftover pastries and stale bread, and sometimes the paper tubes of hardened decorating frosting Ma liked so much. As Anna neared the bakery, the sounds of Mrs. Campbell rooting around in the Dumpster, ripping open white plastic