Himself had not taken it lightly, his reputation being attached to me.

To be fair, I was startled, and the bogeyman was one of the worst monsters out there, creating fear in a way that not many others could. I’d not reacted the way I’d been taught, and for it, Himself had put me in a mental institute.

Gran had come to me, of course, even though Himself hadn’t visited me once. I should have seen the light then, but I still believed he loved me.

I closed my eyes, the moment with Gran as poignant now as it had been then. The smell of her perfume whispered across my senses and I’d woken to see her leaning over me. Soft green eyes, long silver hair braided back from her face rather than the usual wild mess it was, pale skin with the hint of the freckles that had once been there, long before I arrived on her doorstep.

Her gnarled fingers brushed across my still-young cheeks. “Honey girl . . . what have they done to you? You are no crazier than I am. Seeing the shadows is more normal than not.”

My arms and legs were strapped down as if I were a danger to myself. Bindings bit into my flesh, indenting it. I suppose seeing as I’d run into traffic, the doctors might think I was trying to kill myself, even if that hadn’t been the case. “Take it away, Gran. I can’t live a life and deal with the shadow world. I know you can take it away.” My voice was sluggish from the sedation, but I remembered her face. “I don’t want it anymore.”

The tears that slid down her wrinkled cheeks cut into me, but I didn’t draw back from what I wanted. From what I thought was best for me and Himself. Her hands cupped my face and she swept her thumbs over my eyes first, closing them. “Sight bind thee from the shadows,” then her hands covered my ears, “ears whisper nothing,” then slid to my hands, “touch be gone, let the shadows fall no more to thee.”

The spell was simple, and then I was released from the institute.

Gran stayed only a few days; Himself didn’t like her.

With that simple spell from Gran on her first visit to me in my new town, I’d finally stopped seeing the strange, dark things of my childhood. I’d almost stopped believing in them too.

* * *

“I was wrong, Gran. I was so wrong,” I whispered now.

Erasing all of that hadn’t been worth it. If I’d learned anything at the ripe old age of forty-one, it was that no dream could last forever, and no man can save you from yourself.