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It's not true, what my mother said. That there's nothing there in the dark that isn't there in the light. She said it thinking it would comfort me. She turned the light on and then off again to prove it. But she was wrong. I knew it even then. Maybe that's why, in dreams, I couldn't turn the light on. It would be broken, or I would be paralyzed, unable to reach for it. Flicking the switch helplessly around and around. Hearing only an impotent click. Or lying prone as if encased in concrete. No movement, not even a scream.
It was a vampire, a ghost, a presence. Invisible. Silent. It lived in my closet, and only came out in the dark. Only after my mother had left.
They called them Night Terrors, and fought them with logic. I could tell they didn't believe me. They really thought there was nothing there. I wanted to believe them, wanted to be normal and good and sleep though the night without screaming. I would have done anything. As it happens, I wasn't given a chance.
The fire started in the Master Bedroom. A wire had been installed incorrectly. Not grounded, or crossed, or something. The whole wall was blazing away on the inside before the slightest whiff of smoke broke through. And my parents were heavy sleepers. They never woke up then I came to lie on the floor next to their bed, when I'd got lucky and made it out of my room and down the hall to theirs before the vampire got me. Only once. I crawled under the bed and they shrugged to one another and went back to sleep.
That night we were all asleep when the fire alarm finally got tripped. I sat bolt upright, eyes wide, unable, for the moment, to understand what was happening. The siren was so loud and insistent that at first I thought it came from inside my own head. Then my brother came barreling into my room, yelling “Get out! Get out! Get outside now!” He scooped me up, bedding and all, and ran. All I could do was hold on to him. He smelled like a camp fire, which I recognized from the time we built a fire on the beach and roasted s'mores and hot dogs and corn. I ate too much macaroni salad. Or maybe it had been out in the sun too long. I threw up all over the boat and didn't get to go swimming.
Now, my brother deposited me on the front lawn, where I could just hear the fire trucks beginning to wail over the buzzing in my ears and the now muffled sound of our alarm. My brother ran back inside the house, yelling that I should stay where I was. That he was going to help Mom and Dad. I sat watching the house, waiting for all three of them to come running back out through the door. That's when the first flame became visible, licking it's way through the roof like it was the styrofoamy shell of an ice cream cone.
When the trucks showed up, they still hadn't come out. My mother had instructed me not to talk to strangers, but to always be polite to guests. I wasn't sure which category these men fell into, so I stood up, but stayed where I was. One of them saw me and came over. He had crinkly eyes, and he stooped down so he could be with me face to face, like I'd seen my father do with the new puppy up the street.
“Are you alone out here?” he asked.
I nodded yes. I figured that was a safe response, as it didn't break either rule.
“How many people are in the house?”
I thought for a moment, then held up three fingers. The fire man turned and yelled over his shoulder, “There's at least three of them in there!” The other firemen were busy pulling out equipment and running around. I heard glass breaking and saw my window fall out of its frame.
“The front door's open,” I said, pointing. Then I clapped my hands over my mouth. My eyes began to well up when our neighbor, Mrs. Berg, came running over in her night gown, her paisley robe flapping open and her pink. fluffy slippers threatening to fall off with every step.
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