It stared at him with feather eyes, its head a mass of dust and hair strands, its open mouth an empty hole crisscrossed by broken toothpicks. It was not quite the doll he remembered from the past, not quite the figure Tony had been making, but some unwholesome hybrid. He stayed by the door, hand still on the light switch, afraid to move. Fully dressed and wearing protective combat gear, he still would have felt unprepared to face the small figure; barefoot and naked, he felt completely vulnerable. It stared at him from its corner with an intensity and malevolence he had never seen before, and the thought occurred to him that it knew he had destroyed its brethren, Tony’s creations.

And it wanted revenge.

That was stupid, he told himself.

But he could not make himself believe it.

The horrid figure shifted against the toy chest, its feather eyes never once leaving his. What had the doll been planning? To kill him the way his mother had been killed, to stuff itself down his throat as he slept? Daniel trembled as he thought of how close he had come to that fate. He was so dead tired tonight that if he had fallen fully asleep, nothing could have awakened him. By the time he was roused, it would have been too late.

He glanced around for a weapon, saw the handle of his old baseball bat peeking out from beneath the bed. Did he dare try for it? It was a good five steps away. He’d have to rush halfway across the room, duck down and grab it. What would the doll be able to do in that time?

It didn’t matter. Unless he wanted to run out into the hallway naked and let the doll escape to boot, the bat was his only hope.

The good thing was that the bat was sticking out from under the foot of the bed, the part nearest the door. It would be difficult to grab, but not impossible, and even if the doll ran for the door while he was grabbing the weapon, it would not have time to open the door and he would be able to whale on it and destroy it before it could escape.

What if it attacked him instead?

He did not even want to think about that.

Daniel shot one more glance at the dark shifting figure, then moved quickly, dashing across the carpet. He bent down, acutely aware of the vulnerability of his dangling genitals, and braced himself for an attack as he reached under the bed and hurriedly grasped the familiar tape-covered handle.

The door clicked open behind him, and he whirled around to see the doll running out of the bedroom, laughing in a whispery sibilant way that reminded him of the sound of broom bristles on hardwood floor.