Free 1503933547 by Paul Pen

with your eyes?” said my brother.
    Grandma took a deep breath. She felt for her plate with her fingers. Then a hand slid across the table to her right. She touched the seventh plate. She always smiled when she found that Mom had served it, but this time her chin trembled.
    “Let’s eat,” Dad said.
    “Let’s eat,” Grandma repeated. Her lips were reddened, her eyes swollen, the tip of her nose raw.
    “Why are you so sad?” I asked her.
    She put her cup down on the table, and dried her lips with a cloth napkin full of holes. Mom had explained to me that moths made the holes, so for days I’d searched for caterpillars all around the basement. I wanted to feed them with my clothes, see them grow, and witness their metamorphosis. But Mom filled wardrobes and drawers with mothballs. For days the basement smelled of nothing else.
    “Can’t you see how sad she is?” I said to everyone.
    Mom lowered her head.
    Grandma put her napkin on her lap. A strained crease of flesh spread across her face in the worst imitation of a smile.
    “Did the Cricket Man do something to you?” I asked. “I saw him go into your room.”
    Her normally cloudy eyes filled with tears.
    Then the baby’s high-pitched scream came from the hall.
    “Have you left him in the bedroom?” asked Dad. Grandma blinked as if she’d just remembered there was a baby in the basement.
    “Go get your son,” Dad ordered my sister.
    She put the sugar jar down on the table. The teaspoon clinked against the edge of the glass. She looked at Grandma, then held a finger to her temple and moved it in circles.
    “Don’t do that,” Dad said.
    “Do what?” asked Grandma.
    “Nothing,” replied my sister, “I’m not doing anything. I’ll go see what’s wrong with him.”
    She tipped a final spoonful of sugar into her coffee and closed the jar as she got up. Then she was still for a moment and sat down again. She lifted the jar with her elbow resting on the table. “Would you mind going?” she asked me.
    “Me? Why me?”
    She looked at the jar. Then tipped it up. It was just like the firefly jar.
    “Well, if you don’t want to . . .” She left the jar on the table and ran her finger around the edge of the lid. “I could—”
    “All right,” I interrupted when I understood she was blackmailing me, “I’ll go.”
    She smiled and took her finger away from the lid.
    “If he’s crying because he’s hungry, bring him here and I’ll feed him.”
    My brother pushed his chair out to block my path.
    “ She has to go,” he said.
    I tried to dodge around him but he moved again.
    “ She has to,” he insisted.
    “I don’t care who goes,” Dad said, “but go now. I can’t stand that child’s screaming.”
    In the crib, the baby was crying with his arms stretched out toward the ceiling, as if he wanted the Cricket Man to find him and take him away. I put a hand on his tummy and rocked him. His crying began to subside. When I put a finger near his mouth, the baby caught it and began to suck. A mistaken look of peace lit up his face.
    That was when I noticed the bulge under the sheet.
    It moved near his feet. At first I thought it had been his legs thrashing about as he cried, but the bump was too far from the baby’s body, like a stretchy limb that wanted to escape from its own anatomy. The bulge moved to a corner of the crib. I went on tiptoes to grab hold of my nephew. Before I could lift him and get him away from the thing that moved under the sheet, the bulge positioned itself on his chest. Like a second body.
    I felt the tickling of whiskers before I saw anything. A gray, pointed nose, twitching, appeared between my hands. It bumped against the baby’s chin, and my nephew just managed to turn his head to escape the thing.
    The rat came out from under the sheet. It walked over the little boy’s cheeks, sinking its feet into the flesh. One of the front ones found purchase on his nose, the other near the ear. The rodent’s claws opened