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shadows, under her own bed, maybe even. She was sure that, whatever this was, it had rows of sharp teeth—and if she was able to look in those teeth, she would find shreds of her sister’s white nightgown.
    Please,
Rose thought.
Please, go away. Spare me. Please.
And then she thought of part of the little prayer Mama had both girls say each night before bed: “Angels watch me with the night, and wake me with the morning light.”
    And just like that, she could move again. She gasped, and air rushed into her lungs. The foul animal smell dissipated. She sprang from her bed without daring to look underneath, scampered down the hall to her parents’ room, and flung open the paneled wooden door.
    “What on earth?” asked Mama, squinting into the moonlight spilling from the hallway.
    “Something was in my room,” Rose said, panting. The windows were shut, the shades drawn. The air in her parents’ room was dusty and still, and smelled of Daddy’s cigarettes and Mama’s Jean Naté. Daddy’s work shirt was hung up on the back of a chair, its arms limp at its sides; in the dark, this made the chair look strangely human, as if it would start walking across the wooden floorboards on its four legs.
    “Another bat?” asked Mama, sitting up in bed, her pale nightgown glowing. Beside her, Daddy stirred, sat up, and groaned—they’d had a bat in their room in the early spring, and he’d had to chase it out with the broom. He reached for the clock. It was a little before 5:00 a.m.
    “No. Not a bat. I…I don’t know what it was,” Rose admitted.
    A monster. A monster who followed me from my dreams. One of Oma’s mares.
    “I could hear it, smell it, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t move at all. I think…” Did she dare say it? “I think maybe whatever it was got Sylvie.”
    Her father made a dismissive chuffing sound.
    “Shhh,” Mama soothed. “You’re all right now.”
    “Go back to bed,” Daddy said, voice gruff and sleepy. “It’s too early for any of your stories, Rose.”
    Daddy always said Rose had quite an imagination, which was his kind way of saying that she liked to exaggerate, to make things up just to see if she could get away with it.
    “I can’t,” Rose said. “Didn’t you hear me? There was something there. Something in the room with me. And Sylvie is gone!”
    “There was nothing in your room,” Daddy said, turning over. “You had a bad dream, that’s all.”
    Rose shook her head. She wasn’t a scaredy-cat like Sylvie with her nightmares.
    “But it wasn’t a dream,” Rose insisted. “And I’m not making it up. It was real.”
    “I’m sure your sister’s in her bed,” said Mama, voice low and calm.
    “But she
isn’t.
I think a mare got her.”
    Mama turned on the bedside light with an irritated snap.
    “A
mare
? How many times must I tell you girls? Oma’s stories were just that: stories.” She jumped out of bed, pulled on her robe, and marched down the hall. She returned in less than a minute and reported, “Sylvie is right in her bed, where she should be.” She slipped off her robe and climbed back into her own bed. “And, I might add, where we all should be. Off you go.”
    “But she wasn’t there a minute ago, I swear,” Rose said.
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” Daddy said with a groan, sitting up. “I’m going to go put some coffee on.”
    He thumped out of the room in his striped pajamas, hair rumpled.
Be careful,
Rose wanted to call after him.
It’s out there still.
    Rose crawled in beside her mother; Daddy’s spot was still warm. She snuggled up next to Mama, laid her head on Mama’s shoulder.
    “Ah, my poor girl.” Mama sighed. “You really are scared silly. I wish to God Mother hadn’t filled your head with all that nonsense.”
    Rose heard water running in the kitchen, and the sound of her father flipping on the old wooden Philco radio. Daddy hummed along to the tune. The door of the new Frigidaire opened, then closed.
    While