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behind the desk.
    “I’ll go flip the sign, Mama,” she said.
    “Good girl,” Mama said. “Then head on up to bed.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” she said, giving Mama and the man a little curtsy as she left, because she knew she had to be especially good, especially polite, in front of guests. No matter what was happening, they had to play the perfect family, Rose had to be a perfect child.
    “Turn on the charm, girls,” Daddy always said. “Make them want to come back and see us again.”
    “Cute kid,” the man said, as he leaned against the desk to fill out the form.
    “Yes,” Mama said. “She’s a good girl.”
    Good girl. Good girl. Good girl.
    Rose skipped down the driveway (she was right—the man did drive a Rambler) and to the sign, where she stepped forward, into the light, and flipped it so that the
No
showed. She stood for a minute, bathed in light, as if onstage with the Tower Motel backdrop behind her. She did a little dance, a few ballet moves Oma had taught her—slide, step, slide, pirouette, curtsy. She thought of Sylvie saying that she was going to leave one day and run off to Hollywood to be a star.
Not me,
Rose thought as she danced.
I’m going to stay right here forever.

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock
    Paramount Pictures
    Hollywood, California
    August 11, 1955
    Dear Mr. Hitchcock,
    Sometimes a butterfly is not just a butterfly.
    This is what Oma taught me.
    You know the worst thing I learned from her?
    You can be a monster and not even know you are one.
    They look like us.
    They think they are us.
    But really, they’ve got a monster hiding inside.
    If that’s not a good idea for a movie, I don’t know what is.
    Sincerely Yours,
    Miss Sylvia A. Slater
    The Tower Motel
    328 Route 6
    London, Vermont

Rose
    Rose was having the dream again. A dark, formless beast had overtaken her, pinned her, crushed her from all sides until she got smaller and smaller—the size of a doll, then as tiny as a teardrop. She did her best to fight it, but in the end she was powerless.
    Wake up,
she told herself.
Time to wake up now.
    She opened her eyes. The broken-winged butterfly was in an old canning jar on Sylvie’s bedside table. It banged silently against the glass, a shadow in front of the curtained window. Rose watched it struggle in the dim light of early dawn, her heart pounding, her lungs unable to draw a breath.
    She was sure she was awake, and yet her body was completely paralyzed. The air was heavy with a rank, wild-animal smell.
    Rose listened hard. She was sure she could hear something breathing nearby—a rasping, grunting, guttural sound—but there was nothing there.
    Or was there? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement, a shift in the darkness. And there was the feeling she had, this deep sense that something else was in the room, something evil that meant to do her harm.
    Her eyes darted around, but found only the familiar landscape of the small bedroom she shared with Sylvie. And yet, it was also terribly unfamiliar, off-kilter, bathed in a greenish glow, as if the moonlight itself was somehow the wrong color. Rose opened her mouth to scream, to call for help, but she couldn’t make a sound.
    Am I dead?
she wondered.
    Concentrating with all her might, Rose tried to sit up—just to wiggle her pinkie—but the only thing she could move was her eyes.
    She looked past the butterfly in the jar to Sylvie’s twin bed. She willed her sister to wake up, open her eyes, and save her, but she realized now that Sylvie’s bed was empty. The covers were thrown back, the pillow indented where Sylvie’s head should be.
    A horrible thought came over Rose: A mare had come. And it had gotten Sylvie first.
    There it was again—the rotten, wheezing stink of rancid meat breath and damp fur, so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. She heard a low, quiet sound, almost like a growl; felt it vibrate through her whole body. She still couldn’t see anything—it was hiding in the