4.

Inside, Timothy ripped off his wet jacket and threw it over the banister at the bottom of the stairs. Then he dropped his bag onto the wooden bench in the hallway. Timothy noticed his mother standing in the kitchen down the hall, leaning her head against the cabinet next to the sink. “Hi, Mom,” he called. “Guess what?” He waited for her to turn around, but she didn’t, so he continued, “I saw a girl light her foot on fire today.”

“That’s nice, honey” was his mother’s muffled reply. A few seconds later, when she did turn around, her face was drawn. “I’m going to make dinner,” she said. “Your father should be home soon.” She looked older than usual and terribly sad.

“Mom?” Timothy tried again. She turned on the sink. “When can we talk to people about what happened to Ben?”

“Soon, honey.” She turned away from him. “When we know a little more about …” She washed her hands.

“About what?” he asked cautiously. He waited and waited, but the only answer that came from the kitchen was the sound of clinking dishes.

Later that night, when Timothy was in bed, through the wall, he could hear his parents arguing. Outside, the wind had blown away the clouds, so the moon shone brightly onto his quilt. The house rocked against a particularly powerful gust.

His parents were talking about Ben. Timothy was upset that they had each other to confide in but he had no one. And when he tried to talk to them about it, they pretended he wasn’t there.

It was after midnight, and he was awake, huddled under his blanket, thinking about the afternoon’s events, trying to block out his parents’ voices. If he didn’t get to sleep soon, he might sleep through his alarm in the morning. Despite Stuart and Abigail, he was actually looking forward to the field trip.

In his parents’ room, the closet door slammed, and Timothy heard his mother say, “Quiet, you’ll wake him up.”

He noticed that his own closet light was on. At the base of the door, a small white line reflected onto the dark wood floor. The light had not been on when he’d gotten into bed an hour earlier.

Someone flushed the toilet down the hall. “Mom?” Timothy called. No answer. “Dad?”

Ordinarily, Timothy wouldn’t have thought twice about getting up and turning off the light, but recently he’d begun to notice things he’d never noticed before. Invisible things. And what if one of those invisible things was behind the door?

“Mom?” Timothy tried again. But the rest of the house was now dead, and he was left alone with the moonlight, and the wind outside the window, and the weight of his quilt. And the light behind his closet door.

Barefoot, shivering, Timothy stepped out of bed. No one and nothing would be in there, he told himself. Scary things never happened when you were expecting them to; scary things always came out of nowhere to surprise you. He grasped the doorknob and slowly turned it. When it wouldn’t turn any more, Timothy heaved a sigh and swung the door open. What he saw made him nearly wet his pants.

Inside the closet was a large glass jar like the ones from his history classroom. The jar was taller than Timothy, covered with dust and filled with a cloudy yellow liquid. A large black lid was hanging loosely over the rim. Something dark floated near the bottom of the jar. The object began to move.

Through the smudged glass, drifting in the liquid, two arms and a leg came into view. They looked human. After a few seconds, the thing inside the jar finally came close enough for Timothy to distinguish the military emblem on its decaying sleeve. Suddenly, as if blessed with life, the dark shape raised its hands, pressed them to the jar, and brought its face against the glass.

It wasn’t an It.

It was a He.

Timothy’s brother, Ben, opened his mouth wide and showed him his purple swollen tongue. Timothy screamed.

Ben stared at him with big eyes the same color as the Chinese dragon, the same color as the specimen in Timothy’s classroom. Swirling. Black. Mad.

Ben reached up and knocked the lid to the ground. It clattered against the hardwood floor and spiraled past Timothy in a long, continuous cymbal crash. With pale wrinkled hands, Ben grasped the rim of the jar and pulled himself up from the liquid. He raised his head above the rim, took a deep howling gasp, and smiled wide, showing a mouthful of dead brown teeth.

Timothy jerked awake. He sat up. His room was dark. The closet door was closed and the light was off. It had never been on. His bedroom walls solidified and the furnace hummed somewhere below the floor. Timothy could hear his father snoring in the next room.

Sheesh.

He’d been having nightmares ever since Ben went away. This was by far the scariest. But it was just a nightmare. Not real. And that was a comfort.

After a while, the moon moved back behind the clouds, and the nightmare began to fade away. By the time Timothy’s head hit the pillow again, he’d nearly forgotten all about it. Nearly.