You're big now, your mother has told you so many times, with too many candles on your birthday cakes to be afraid of the dark. But you aren't scared of the dark, not really, it's just that the thing that lives in your closet only comes out in the dark, after everyone else has gone to bed. Your mother and father love you very much and they've opened your closet door in the middle of the night more times than you can count— it has to be one of those high numbers that even grownups can't count to— to let you see that nothing is in there. But it hides where no one could find it, and it comes out and creeps through your room until its shadow looms over your bed and... and, you don't know what it will do if it were ever to catch you sound asleep! You've always woken up just in time to catch it retreating back into the closet, latching the door shut from the inside, pulling it to with a creak.

You lay tucked into the covers, trying to think about anything but the monster in your closet. It was so late past your bedtime, but how could you sleep knowing that as soon as you settled into the pillow, that door knob would turn and it would slip out and slink towards you.

What was that noise that woke you? It was a rustling from inside the closet, you were sure. It could have been the wind outside or even the mischievous, prowling cat playing some game only it knew the rules of. It could have been those things, and your father would say it was the product of an overactive imagination, nothing at all, but it wasn't.