Malorie doesn’t like this. She doesn’t want to read this at all. She imagines even the floor going mad.

Some claim their shadows travel without them. Others claim there’s only one creature, in all the world, and that its many shadows stretch across the planet like dark fingers.

She doesn’t need this folklore. She doesn’t need rumors and theories. She needs facts.

There are stories of intentional attacks in what was once New York City. Rumors of aggression in Des Moines, Iowa. NOTE: Only people who live in areas where people-on-people crime was once common seem to suggest these things. There is no verifiable account of a creature forcing a person to look at it.

Tom snores, and Malorie clicks off the light. Her heart is hammering. Even reading about the creatures tends to send fog to the mind, a cloud to reason.

Olympia snores. Two teens vying for space, even in sleep.

In the dark, she remembers a time at home, after school, when she and Shannon fought over who would get to pick what board game the family would play in the living room. Dad, exasperated, told them they could both choose and play their own games. Malorie can see him, his hair as dark as her own, his eyes set deep in his face. She thought of Mom and Dad as law back then. A law to be broken of course, but law nonetheless. And when Shannon got bored with her own game and joined Malorie with hers, Malorie understood that their father had somehow, invisibly, made that happen.

She hopes she’s done things like this for her kids. She thinks she has.

She feels a tap on her back.

She falls flat to the floor, heart thudding.

“Mom.”

It’s Olympia, whispering, her lips pressed to Malorie’s ear through the fabric of the blanket.

“What?” Malorie whispers back.

“We’re not alone in here.”

Malorie goes cold.

“Someone is standing in the doorway,” Olympia says. “I can hear them breathing.”

Malorie’s mind seems to stop. For a second. She thinks nothing. Only feels. Then, an image of Gary. As if he’s been waiting to reveal himself all this time and chose now to do so. She has to decide something, fast.

“Is the door closed?” she whispers.

But she’s already got her eyes closed, and she’s already getting up, slow, quiet, from under the blanket.

Standing, she turns to the door. No time to listen.

“Get out,” she says. “Whoever you are, get out. I’m armed. All five of us are armed.”

No response. But she can feel the person, can feel the presence some twenty feet away.

“Get out,” she says.

She hears the familiar sound of Tom waking. Olympia whispers something to him.

“Eyes closed,” Malorie tells him. Then, “You’re leaving us no choice.”