I switched off the downstairs lights and went upstairs. There were only two bedrooms. The smaller room was where I put everything that didn’t fit in the rest of the house, so it was a mess. Eventually, I had plans to make it into your room, but for the time being, you were going to stay in the master bedroom with me. I already had a crib in the corner, and people had been giving me clothes and supplies for weeks.

Outside, the branches of the oak tree in my front yard brushed up against the small bedroom window. If someone wanted to do so, they could readily climb the tree and enter the house that way. But that window, too, was locked. I had learned my lesson that I only had to be careless once.

And then there was the master bedroom.

I stood in the doorway, hesitating to go inside. When I turned on the overhead light, it flickered, then popped and went out. I swore. I’d need to get Darrell to replace the bulb for me. With no light, I couldn’t see into the shadows. I could cross the carpet to the bathroom and turn on the light there, but the distance across the bedroom felt like miles. A prickling chill of fear went up my back. Darkness was behind me, darkness in front of me.

“Hello?”

I said it out loud, softly, tentatively. There was no answer. Of course not. But what I did hear made me clench my fists until my nails bit into my skin. The wind screeched, wailing like a skeleton trapped in a grave.

It was wind through the crack of an open window.

My legs wouldn’t move. I was frozen where I was. I could have stayed in that doorway forever.

You’re imagining things. You left the window open.

That was what I told myself. I liked cold air at night, and I liked waking up to the chill of the house in the fall. No one could get in there without a lot of trouble. The second-floor window looked out on the backyard, and there were no trees nearby. The only thing on the house wall was a drainpipe, and it would have taken an itsy-bitsy spider to climb up that water spout.

I went to the window. Yes, it was open, just by an inch or two. I threw it wide open and stuck my head out into the breeze, which carried nothing but quiet rain. The yard itself was dark, backing up to the woods. I couldn’t see anything. I closed the window again, but this time I made sure it was shut, and I locked it.

I’d opened it myself last night. I’d simply forgotten to shut it when Darrell woke me up in the early morning. That was the answer.

Wasn’t it?