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mine. I expect the razor-thin black blades to penetrate my exposed back at any moment. When they don’t, I peer over my shoulder. He’s still there, watching.
    “You can’t have him! You can’t fucking have him!”
    Logan squirms beneath me, so I pull him in tight.
    “Jessie?” comes from the living room. The nightmare man begins to drift away, not back toward the door, but Logan’s closet.
    “Jessie!” comes from the end of the hallway, then pounding feet. Shannon has noticed the open doors.
    The nightmare man pauses by the closet, and shifts his gaze from Logan’s squirming, crying form to me. The cold beams crackle over me. He’s looking directly into my face when he slips beneath the door. He’s telling me something.
    That my room isn’t the only entrance into the house.
    The room fills with light. “Jessie,” again, and then Shannon’s arms wrap around my stomach and she pulls with surprising strength. I help her in lifting me from the bed and try to stand beside her, but stumble a bit as she attempts to throw me aside. She rushes to Logan, who throws his arms around her, squeezes himself against her body, even as she presses him back to look at him.
    When she’s satisfied he’s not hurt, she clutches him to her, pressing his teary red face into her chest. Then she turns her focus to me.
    Through clenched teeth, she says, “What do you think you’re doing?”
    I almost take a step back. I’ve never seen her so angry. She looks as if the only thing preventing her from ripping me apart is the eight-year-old boy clinging to her.
    The room pulses in the same rhythm the dark light throbbed from the nightmare man. But now the room expands and contracts. I realize it matches the beat of my heart. I can’t breathe. I suck huge rasping gulps of air and it’s not enough. “He was here. The nightmare man was here, at the end of the bed.”
    At that, Logan peeks over his mother’s shoulder at me with huge, round eyes.
    * * *
    As I approach Leslie’s section of the call center, I scan for her floor walkers. The coast is clear, so I speed-walk to her cube and crouch down.
    Still talking into her headset, she opens her big eyes even wider as if to say, “What the hell?” then leans back and scans the aisle. I grab a sticky pad and a pen and write “Break time?”
    She nods. I examine her cubicle as she talks calling plans and notice the drawing of her I did tacked up on the wall.
    The first time we talked, out at the smoker’s shelter, she told me about her art and I told her I used to draw, too.
    She said, “Yeah right.”
    So as I spent the afternoon squeezing blood from stones, I drew her from memory. I used a late ’80s/early ’90s Vertigo Comics goth-style, kind of Sandman -ish. It turned out really well, so I walked directly up to her, tossed it on her desk, and said, “Bam!”
    She looked at it, and before I strutted away like it was nothing, I saw an expression on her face that showed new respect—and something else.
    She still has the portrait hanging up.
    She says, “Well, you do sound happy with your current calling plan. I’d switch, but good luck to you.”
    She yanks her headset off and gives me a shove toward the main aisle and the door.
    At the shelter, I put two cigarettes in my mouth and light them, then hand her one.
    When she takes the first drag, it makes me tingle a bit. I don’t get many tingles.
    “What’s up?” she says. “You could have gotten me in trouble.”
    I laugh. “Come on! You need encouragement to take a smoke break?”
    “Yeah, okay.” She stares off and smiles. I can tell she’s happy I went to get her. Because she’s got a view of the smokers’ shelter, she’s always coming out for me. I’m sure she finds the change nice, the acknowledgment that I value her company.
    “So what’s up?” she asks.
    I’d thought about telling her about what happened with Logan. The situation has me feeling even more isolated than usual. But suddenly I don’t feel