Then the cat looked up and dashed away, and I turned my head to see what had frightened her.

There was someone lurching toward me, through the trees—moving not with the easy gait of the living, but the stilted, horrific stagger of the dead.

And just before the mud poured into my mouth—

I screamed.

I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed.

I WAS SHAKEN awake, and the person who leaned over me in the darkness was so like the stumbling figure from my nightmare that I drew in a breath to scream again.

But then she slapped her hand over my mouth and leaned closer.

It was Agatha.

When she saw that I recognized her, she pulled her hand away, and then wiped it on my pillow in a gesture that would have been funny if I weren’t slowly getting used to the idea that I wasn’t about to be swallowed by the earth or hunted down by a zombie.

Then she watched me. After a second, she reached over and turned the nightstand light on, and I could see her face.

She looked normal, basically, but there did seem to be something—a minute spark of interest more than she usually showed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I get nightmares sometimes . . .”

She watched me evenly.

“I was getting pulled under,” I said. I had to say it aloud, to make it less real. “Down into the dirt.”

And then something incredible happened.

Agatha’s eyes meandered to my face. Then they locked together with my eyes.

And she opened her mouth.

“I,” she said.

Suddenly, the door opened behind her, and she shut her mouth.

With dread, I thought, I’ve woken Laura.

It wasn’t Laura, though.

It was Barrett.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

I was still watching Agatha; though her expression had changed, her attention drifted. Whatever she had been about to say, it was gone. Finally, I looked up at Barrett.

“Bad dream,” I said. “I think I scared Agatha. She came in and woke me up.”

“Do you want me to go get Mom?”

That was the opposite of what I wanted. I shook my head. I was relieved that she wasn’t there already—how could she have missed the screaming? “No, don’t bother her,” I said. “She had a headache.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Her headache medicine is really strong. You could probably scream in the same room and it wouldn’t wake her.” He touched his sister’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Aggie, go back to bed.”

She waited a few seconds. Having spent as much time with her as I had, I knew this was a choice. She didn’t really want to leave. I felt a pang of affection and gratitude toward her.