She turned the combination cylinder too far and had to start over. Okay, she could do that, she just had to get rid of this shaking. The little boy was close behind her now. She had never known any emotion that approached the terror she was feeling. She had not been aware that there was fear so great that it could stun you like a physical blow, which it was doing right now, as she saw the smile coming into the paint-white face of the child. She could not stop looking at it, at the strange, pearly teeth, at the tiny scales that made the creature appear like something that had been manufactured, some sort of odd plastic child that was inexplicably and horribly alive. It snaked along to the deafening rhythm of the drums, closing in on her and her scooter, which she finally pulled from the rack with a cry so loud and so raw that she did not realize that it was her and thought for a second that a wild animal was also in here.

The child had something in its left hand, a sort of stick—or, no, she saw that it was a blade, and she knew damn well that it wanted to hurt her with it. It came closer, smiling a little, innocent smile.

Soft-looking or not, this child was infinitely more terrible than anything she’d ever seen in any nightmare. As she started the scooter, the child came near her, very near. Its hand thrust the blade, long, silver, tapering, at once beautiful and ugly.

The drums hammered, the child slid the blade closer to her, and she felt in her right thigh a terrible fire and knew that it was cutting her. Somehow she managed to move the throttle, causing the scooter to shoot ahead and go lurching up the exit ramp. Then she turned, ignoring the one-way sign in the alley as she always did, and she was out of there, she was in the bright morning with fast clouds coming in, and that great, terrible thing up there still, now hanging not a hundred feet overhead, actually below the summit of Telegraph Hill, she could see that, and, standing on a roof across the street, the roof of that great blue painted lady that was all full of gingerbread and had that wonderful turret, was the little old man who lived there. He had a rifle and was quite calmly and steadily firing bullet after bullet into the gigantic machine.

A woman passing in a Lexus shouted out the window, “Jesus Christ is Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord,” as the thunder of the drums from the garage began to get louder.