He had locked the door to his room, had locked his window, and he quickly looked around to see which one had betrayed him. Both door and window were closed and locked, untouched.

The girl giggled.

He clutched the blanket tightly, pulling it to his chin, sliding back against the headboard, and pulling his feet under him as far as they would go. He was terrified and he wanted to scream, but his brain seemed to have lost all power over the actions of his body and only a dry exhalation of air escaped from between his lips.

The girl bent over, her shift sliding up, and grabbed her ankles. He could see once again her pale buttocks, and she looked between her legs at him and smiled.

He knew then and there that he had to leave. Whether Kristen went with him or not, he had to get out of this house.

He did scream then, and Kristen and his parents were at his door in a matter of seconds, and he rushed around the bent-over girl to unlock and open the door, but of course she was gone by the time they entered the room. Though his parents roughly insisted that he had had a nightmare and was acting like a child, and Kristen claimed to believe him, he used The Power and understood that his parents did believe it had happened and Kristen, bless her kind heart, did not.

He’d taken off the next morning, telling Kristen and no one else, pretending he was just going into town to meet some friends. Leaving, he’d seen the girl in the dormer window of the attic, white against the darkness, waving at him, and while he could not see the details of her face, he’d known that she was smiling.

“Hey! You okay?”

Mark opened his eyes to see the driver of the Land Rover looking at him. He shook his head, blinked. “Huh? Yeah.”

“I thought you were having some sort of fit or something there. You were thrashing around, kicking the door.”

“Sorry.”

“Looked like you were having a seizure.”

He surreptitiously pressed down on his erection.

“Nightmare,” Mark said, shaking his head. “It was just a nightmare.”

SIX

Daniel

Someone had thrown a dead cat into their yard, one of the punks who hung out on the street no doubt, and as Daniel gingerly picked up the stiff body with his shovel he vowed to kick the shit out of the little bastard who’d done this. It was probably random, not personal, but that didn’t make it any less offensive, and he found himself thinking that whether they owned their house or not, maybe it was time for them to leave. The neighborhood was going downhill and they should probably get out while they could still get a decent price for their home, before the street segued completely into slum.