“Selena, your door’s locked . . .”
It wasn’t a dream. It hadn’t been. She’d locked the door and grabbed the knife.
I wasn’t hallucinating. If I was hallucinating, Copper wouldn’t have seen it too, but she did and that means they were there.
Unless I hallucinated Copper seeing it, or she was reacting to me hallucinating, or ...
This was too much to deal with before coffee. She crawled to her feet and fumbled with the bathroom door lock.
Her first panicked glance toward the bedroom window revealed only daylight. No strange clicking thing stood there, watching her.
It wasn’t a dream. I didn’t make it up. Oh god ...
She staggered to the front door and pulled back the bolt.
What if it isn’t her, what if I open it and one of them is standing there and—
She opened the door the smallest crack and saw a faded sundress. She threw it wide and Grandma Billy stared at her over a coffee can full of eggs. “Shit,” the old woman said. “You look terrible.”
Selena burst into tears.
She had to tell the whole story twice over to get it to come out sensibly. Grandma Billy sat her down at the table and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
“So then they ... one was at the back door ... it was watching me and there was this clacking noise—oh, this sounds crazy!”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Grandma Billy. “Or yes it does, but that’s ’cause it’s a story about crazy things, not a crazy person telling it. Go on.”
“So I ran to bolt the back door and itblinkedat me. Grandma, it actually blinked! If it was a mask, it was—I don’t know, some kind of amazing one, animatronic or something, it looked so real—”
“Wasn’t a mask.”
Selena exhaled. She’dknownthat it wasn’t, but it was still a relief to hear from someone else. Someone competent. “Then it was real? There were real monsters outside my windows?”
“Yep.”
“And ... you’re frying eggs. There were monsters outside my window andyou’re frying eggs.”
Grandma Billy cracked an egg into the frying pan with a practiced flick. “Scrambling. You’ll feel better if you eat something.”
“Eat something?!” Selena could hear her voice rising hysterically. “We have to get out of here! There aremonsters!”
Grandma threw in another egg. “Well,” she said. “Yes and no. You did exactly the right thing, locking the doors. They wouldn’t have hurt you, mind, but it would’ve been an awkward night if they got in and all crowded into your bedroom.”
She set coffee down on the table. Selena gulped hers, not caring if the roof of her mouth burned. She had too many questions and couldn’t think of what to ask first. “Do you know what theywere?”
“I got a pretty good notion.” Grandma shuffled the eggs around in the pan. “Somebody’s trying to throw a scare into you, that’s all.”
“Well, it worked!” Selena clung to her coffee cup, the only anchor in a mad world.
“Yeah, but if they’d wanted you hurt or dead, there’d be none of this foolishness with things standing around and staring at you. So that’s good.”
“Good?” Selena’s teeth were chattering. She was freezing, even though the desert was getting hot and she had scalding coffee in front of her. “Why is someone trying to scare me?Me?What did I do to them? I didn’t do anything!”
“Nope,” said Grandma. “You’ve been nothing but polite, which means whoever’s doing this is a right bastard.”
“But why are there monsters?Monsters aren’t real!”
“Says who?” asked Grandma.
