“I’ll let you in,” Dee whispers. She pulls the bookcase aside. It shifts with a groaning shriek. She sees what crouches outside the window, gazing in. The hammer falls to the floor. She kneels and comes face to face with it, the child, its silver-white flesh dappled in the moonlight, its mouth a black cherry, eyes gleaming like lamps, filled with the light of death, scalp stripped and wounded, where the birds have plucked the hair from her skull.

“Come in,” Dee whispers and puts out her hand.

The child hisses at her, an unearthly sound, and Dee gasps. Fear washes over her, so cold she thinks her heart will stop. The child’s mouth opens, her hand whips out to grasp Dee’s arm, to pull her out of this world and into whatever other awaits. Dee sees white teeth set like pearls in powerful jaws. She sees the blunt, crippled fingers. The small pale face seems to ripple in the uncertain light, as if through water.

She screams and the sound breaks the dream, or whatever it is. Dee sees that it is not a dead girl at the window. It’s a cat, jaws hissing and wide, tabby coat bleached by moonlight. The cat swipes at Dee, and she sees that it has no claws in its maimed paws. She backs away, making a soothing noise. The cat turns to flee, but looks back at Dee for a moment, pointed face eerie in the dim. Then it is gone, melted nimble into the black garden.

Dee sits back on her heels, shaking. “Just a stray cat,” she says. “Don’t read scary books before bed, huh, Dee Dee? No big deal. Nothing to worry about.” This is an old habit of hers—saying aloud what her dad would want to hear, while keeping her real feelings inside. There is no time to fall apart. She thinks of Lulu again and this works. Purpose calms her. Dee’s heart slows its splashy beat.

Dee looks out over the tangled growth that swarms over her back yard. It’s wild, impenetrable, scented in the night. Anything could be out there, hiding. It could creep close to the house, to the windows. And then, reaching out with a long finger … Some of the neighbors have razed their yards to the ground, she notices. Presumably to deter snakes and vermin from nesting there. Dee shivers. Ted’s yard is chaos like hers. She stares at the undergrowth that riots all over his garden. In the moonlight it seems to be moving, writhing gently. She shakes her head, nauseous. That day at the lake took almost everything from Dee but it left something in her, too. Ophidiophobia, they call it; an overwhelming fear of snakes. Dee sees them everywhere, their shadowed coils. The terror slows her mind and heart to a glacial pace.