To my surprise, Harold did let go—mostly, I think, to keep our mothers from coming up to see what was going on. It was too late. In her efforts to get the sock off her head, Fluffy had rolled under the bed.

A bolt of lightning sizzled through the rainy sky.

For an instant I had dared to hope that this was one of the times when the floor was in its solid state. The lightning told me that it was not. And when I heard a pop like someone pulling his finger out of a bottle, I knew Fluffy was gone.

The popping sound drew Harold to the edge of the bed. “Come on out, Fluffy,” he said, reaching under to grab her.

When he couldn’t find her, he bent and lifted the edge of the bedspread. Then he scrambled over the bed and looked down the other side.

“What happened?” he asked nervously. “Where did she go?”

“Why don’t you crawl under there and find out?” I said bitterly, feeling so wretched I thought I might throw up.

Having Harold as a witness did not, of course, mean that our mothers were going to believe us. Nor did it help that when we finally did convince Mom and Aunt Marguerite to come upstairs we found Fluffy sitting on my bed, licking her paws. Glad as I was to see her, the sight gave me a shiver. Nothing had ever come back from underneath my bed before.

Nothing.

“Harold, you know that David has been playing this foolish game for years,” said Aunt Marguerite sharply. “I don’t want you to encourage it. His poor mother has enough trouble with him as it is.”

“Just look under the bed,” insisted Harold. “Look at the floor!”

I could have told him what would happen. In fact, now that I think of it, I had told him—several times—when we were younger. He just never believed me. So he was actually surprised that when he finally convinced Aunt Marguerite to get down on her knees and raise the edge of the bedspread all she saw was bare floor.

Harold and my aunt didn’t stay much longer. After they left, Mom yelled at me for “dragging up that stupid fantasy again.”

And that was the end of things—until later that night, when Fluffy began talking to me.

She had come and curled up on my pillow when I climbed into bed, the way she often did. This had made me a little nervous. But she had seemed perfectly normal since her reappearance, so I had let her stay.

It was storming again when the big clock downstairs struck midnight. As the last chime faded, Fluffy opened her eyes.

They were red.