“Look up,” she said. They were in the park and heading toward the cemetery. He looked up, but instead of following her pointing hand, he looked into her eyes. She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not a cutter.”

“I wasn’t looking at you for that reason,” he said.

“Then why?”

“The glow makes it difficult for me to clearly see your face.”

“There’s nothing important to see,” said Melody. “But out there, across the field, do you see the yellow cloud hovering a few feet above the ground?”

He shifted his gaze and saw what looked like a small cloud come down to earth, wisps of a sulfurous shade roiling and drifting slowly above the field. “What is it?”

“The miasma. If any part of it touches you, you’ll be disintegrated—erased out of existence. Not just in the night world but in your waking life, and the strangest thing is that no one will remember you. It’ll be as if you never existed in the waking world. All I know is that this cuts deeply across many dimensions and through many planes of existence, but reality will somehow rearrange itself and blot out the wound you are, and no one—even your parents—will be the wiser. The only memory of you that will still exist will be with other sleepers who knew you in the night world.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale,” said Owen.

“Don’t worry about it making sense,” she said. “You’ve got to keep an eye out for the miasma. It’s slow-moving but stealthy and is attracted to sleepers. The good news is it can easily be outmaneuvered. The bad is you can’t hear it approaching. I once saw a sleeper taken down by it. It looked horribly painful and slow as the ethereal body went up in smoke. It looks insubstantial but once it’s got you, that’s it. So, keep your wits and watch your back.”

Owen felt his hair stand up and a chill run down his spine. He turned quickly, only to wake in bed with the first light of dawn showing through the bedroom blinds.

6

DESPITE ALL THE GALLIVANTING around through the night, Owen felt unusually refreshed, as if his sleep had been deeper and more sustained than normal. He was often still yawning and stretching until he had a cup of black coffee, but on this day, he jumped out of bed, feeling a reserve of energy. While sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast, staring out at the birds and the feeder that needed restocking, his mind was on Melody and the night world. The prospect of visiting it again excited and scared him.