From upstairs, I hear my mother call out groggily, “Sam? Sam? What was that?”

I crawl to my feet and look out the broken window. Outside, the cue ball sits in the dewy grass among the glittering shards of glass.

“I’m sorry about the window.”

Agnes waves a dismissive hand, but I can see she is thinking about her bank account and making some calculations. “At worst, we have cardboard and duct tape. I think there’s an old tarp around here somewhere.”

A red welt has erupted on my shoulder, and it hurts when I move it; I try not to let on as I crouch in the damp grass, picking up shards of glass by the light from inside the laundry room. Mother initially told me to leave it until morning, but I find something cathartic about picking up the glass. It focuses my attention away from the bruises growing on my back.

“Why did you throw the ball?” Agnes asks. Her voice is nonchalant, but there is something more beneath it, covered over with carefulness.

I cannot keep it inside me any longer. The secret is clawing its way out. What if Julian hurts my mother, too? She has to know about him.

“He frightened me,” I say at last.

“Who did?”

“Julian.”

I prick my finger on a shard of glass and put it in my mouth as blood bubbles to the surface. “I’ve seen him,” I continue, not looking at her. “I’ve seen him everywhere.” I think of the small crawling thing in the hallway, the boy pulling feathers off a bird, the one who chases me through the house, these many incarnations of him.

When I finally look up at her, I see shock on her face. Shock, but not the disbelieving kind.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.” I turn back to the work of picking up the glass. “There’s something wrong with him.”

The moon comes out and lights the pieces of glass into beautiful shining things. How strange that something so sharp and dangerous could be so beautiful, like stars crashed into the ground. I remind myself to be careful.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going to kill a little girl,” I tell her, wishing this revelation felt like a weight off my chest rather than a deep, sinking feeling in my gut, as if speaking it aloud has made it more real, as if the act of sharing reality has cemented its true form. I hear my mother suck in her breath. “And … others, too, I think. I don’t know how many. There’s something … inhuman about him. Even as a boy.”

My mother appears to be speechless. A long moment passes. “Well, that can’t be,” she mumbles at last, shaking her head.

I resume my cleaning while she stands where she is, lost in thought, and we are left with the sound of the locusts buzzing low and mellow, owls adding their spectral moans to the song of the swamp. The night is cold, and the dew on the grass is half-frozen, making it increasingly difficult for me to differentiate between glass and ice. My fingers, gone white and numb, grow clumsy and stiff. They stop feeling like my fingers.