They groped their way down the ladder and waited for a moment in the upper hall listening to the various sounds throughout the house and the noise of the storm. They could not see each other and they instinctively pressed their bodies close together. Nickie had his hand through Skippy’s arm and clung to it tightly. Then by a mutual impulse they moved toward the stairway with measured steps, their ears strained and listening for all that their eyes could not see.
It was a long and awesome journey to the bottom of the stairway and once there they had a whispered consultation as to whether to go around through the rooms to the kitchen or march straight past the cellar door and so on into the room. Skippy decided on keeping to the hall even though it meant passing the door to the dim regions below.
They had not taken two steps in that direction, when Nickie gave vent to a blood-curdling scream.
“What?” Skippy cried frantically.
“My foot!” Nickie was gasping in the dark. “Sump’n run over my foot!”
“A rat!” Skippy said, disgustedly. “I said to shut that cellar door, Nickie!”
“Oh my head!” Nickie groaned. “I was scared skinny. Kid, let’s run.”
Skippy was human enough to accede and they made the kitchen in one breath-taking bound.
Nickie let go his hold on the other’s arm. “Whew!” he said nervously. “Gimme a match.”
“Yeah, that’s what I say,” Skippy said, moving noisily about the room. “They ain’t on this stove—I’ve felt all over. Say, you lit that lantern we took up to the attic.”