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head, point downward, he went back to his bedroom, ready to face whatever was there.
    Margaret Walsh dreamed of her husband.
    She knew that her son was in his bed, dreaming of something more horrible. They’d gone to doctors, to guidance counselors, but nothing seemed to help him get over the night terrors.
    Margaret was scared for her son.
    And she missed her husband.
    She wondered how Kyle would grow up. Would he be plagued by these dreams all his life, or would they fade as he got older? Would he start finally having friends? Would he go through puberty like any normal boy and start dating girls and roughhousing and doing all the other things boys did? Or would he stay sullen and moody and difficult?
    Would he continue to have these odd violent episodes?
    And would he keep having that dead look in his eyes that he’d had when she picked him up at school? She almost hadn’t recognized the near-zombie sitting outside the principal’s office that afternoon. It was a huge relief to see Kyle’s eyes back to normal —alive again—tonight.
    Margaret didn’t know what the future was going to bring. The thought scared her. She knew that motherhood didn’t come with an instruction manual, but it was supposed to come with a support staff: the father. She didn’t have that, either.
    Now she needed to find a new school for Kyle. Maybe a new town. True, they had family here, but maybe it was time to start over completely.
    She missed her husband.
    In her dream, the two of them were walking along the coast of Darkness Falls, approaching the lighthouse. The moon was full, and they were holding hands. She could feel the sand between her toes as they walked, but, oddly, she couldn’t feel her husband’s hand, even though she clasped it tightly.
    They stopped walking, in the dream, and stared into each other’s eyes. He had such beautiful hazel eyes.
    They kissed. Margaret thought the kiss tasted metallic.
    Somebody screamed.
    Margaret jumped awake, almost strangling herself with her covers.
    Kyle. Kyle was screaming.
    She disentangled herself from her bedsheets and ran to the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom and Kyle’s.
    He wasn’t there, nor was he in his bedroom, though the light was on in the latter.
    She ran out into the hallway, scared that something—something else —had happened to her son. Margaret wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. First Kyle’s father dying, then Kyle’s dreams, then his stabbing people . . .
    Taking a deep breath, Margaret pulled herself together. He was somewhere in the house, he had to be. He probably just had another bad dream.
    As she passed the hallway entrance to the bathroom, she heard a sound. She whipped her head around and saw her reflection in the mirror.
    She also saw something in the shadows behind her.
    Then she heard the noise again. She whirled around to see that it was just the clothes on the hallway hanger, rustling in the breeze.
    Except there was no breeze out here.
    “Kyle?”
    The next thing she knew, a sharp object impaled her stomach, blood spurting out all over the place.
    Oddly, the first thing she thought was that it would take forever to get the stains out of the hall carpet.
    The last thing she thought was that the kiss with her husband in her dream shouldn’t have tasted so metallic . . .
    Caitlin Greene didn’t understand what had happened.
    She stood on the front porch with her mother and her infant brother, Michael. The flickering red-and-white lights of the ambulance lit up the street with odd colors and shadows. It was kind of like a strobe-light version of the way Kyle’s clown light lit up his room.
    Kyle . . .
    Caitlin had just seen him. He was fine.
    Okay, sure, he hadn’t been sleeping much lately, but why should that matter? That was why she had gone by to visit him in the first place, because she knew he’d been having a hard time sleeping.
    She had even kissed him, for God’s sake!
    She still wasn’t sure why she had done