'Now look,' he said. 'Watch me close, Tadder.'

Tad watched.

His father took the two piles of blankets and put them fa rback in Tad's closet. Tad could hear the coathangers jingling softly, talking about Daddy in their coathanger language That was funny, and he smiled a little. Mommy caught his smile and smiled back, relieved.

His daddy came out of the closet, took Teddy, and put him in Tad's arms.

'And last but not least, Daddy said with a flourish and a bow that made both Tad and Mommy giggle, 'ze chair.'

He closed the closet door firmly and then put the chair against the door. When he came back to Tad's bed he was still smiling, but his eyes were serious.

'Okay, Tad?'

'Yes,' Tad said, and then forced himself to say it. 'But was there, Daddy. I saw it. Really.'

'Your mind saw something, Tad, 'Daddy said, and his big warm hand stroked Tad's hair. 'But you didn't see a monster in your closet, not a real one. There are no monsters, Ta Only in stories, and in your mind.'

He looked from his father to his mother and back again -their big, well-loved faces.

'Really?'

'Really,' his mommy said. 'Now I want you to get up and go pee, big guy.'

'I did. That's what woke me up.'

'Well,' she said, because parents never believed you 'humor me then, what do you say?'

So he went in and she witched while he did four drops and she smiled and said, 'See? You did have to go.'

Resigned, Tad nodded. Went back to bed. Was tucked in. Accepted kisses.

And as his mother and father went back to the door the fear settled on him again like a cold coat full of mist. Like a shroud stinking of hopeless death. Oh please, he thought, but there was no more, just that: Oh please oh please oh please.

Perhaps his father caught his thought, because Vic turned back, one hand on the light switch, and repeated: 'No monsters, Tad.'

'No, Daddy,' Tad said, because in that instant his father's eyes seemed shadowed and far, as if he needed to be convinced. 'No monsters.' Except for the one in my closet.

The light snapped off.

'Good night, Tad.' His mother's voice trailed back to him lightly, softly, and in his mind he cried out, Be careful, Mommy, they eat

the ladies! In all the movies they catch the ladies and carry them off and eat them! Oh please oh please oh please But they were gone.

So Tad Trenton, four years old, lay in his bed, all wires and stiff Erector Set braces. He lay with the covers pulled up to his chin and one arm crushing Teddy against his chest, and there was Luke Skywalker on one wall; there was a chipmunk standing on a blender on another wall, grinning cheerily (IF LIFE HANDS YOU

LEMONS, MAKE LEMONADE! the cheeky, grinning chipmunk was saying); there was the whole motley Sesame Street crew on a third: Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Oscar, Grover. Good totems; good magic. But oh the wind outside, screaming over the roof and skating down black gutters! He would sleep no more this night.

But little by little the wires unsnarled themselves and stiff Erector Set muscles relaxed. His mind began to drift....

And then a new screaming, this one closer than the nightwind outside, brought him back to staring wakefulness The hinges on the closet door.

Creeeeeeeeeeee

That thin sound, so high that perhaps only dogs and small boys awake in the night could have heard it. His closet door swung open slowly and steadily, a dead mouth opening on darkness inch by inch and foot by foot.

The monster was in that darkness. It crouched where it had crouched before. It grinned at him, and its huge shoulders bulked above its cocked head, and its eyes glowed amber, alive with stupid cunning. I told you they'd go away, Tad, it whispered. They always do, in the end. And then I can come back. I like to come back. I like you, Tad. I'll come back every night now, I think, and every night I'll come a little closer to your bed ... and a little closer

... until one night, before you can scream for them, you'll bearsomething growling, something growling right beside you, Tad, it'll be me, and I'll pounce, and then I'll eat you and you'll be in me.

Tad stared at the creature in his closet with drugged, horrified fascination. There was something that ... was almost familiar.

Something he almost knew. And that was the worst, that almost knowing. Because

Because I'm crazy, Tad. I'm here. I've been here all along. Myname was Frank Dodd once, and I killed the ladies and maybe Iate them, too. I've been here all along, I stick around, I keep myear to the ground. I'm the monster, Tad, the old monster, and I'llhave you soon, Tad. Feel me getting closer ... and closer....

Perhaps the thing in the closet spoke to him in its own hissing breath, or perhaps its voice was the wind's voice. Either way, neither way, it didn't matter. He listened to its words, drugged with terror, near fainting -(but oh so wide awake); he looked upon its shadowed, snarling face, which he almost knew. He would sleep no more tonight; perhaps he would never sleep again.

But sometime later, sometime between the striking of half past midnight and the hour of one, perhaps because he was small, Tad drifted away again. Thin sleep in which hulking, furred creatures with white teeth chased him deepened into dreamless slumber.

The wind held long conversations with the gutters. A rind of white spring moon rose in the sky. Somewhere far away, in some still meadow of night or along some pine-edged corridor of forest, a dog barked furiously and then fell silent.

And in Tad Trenton's closet, something with amber eyes held watch.

'Did you put the blankets back?' Donna asked her husband the next morning. She was standing at the stove, cooking bacon. Tad was in

the other room, watching The New Zoo Revue and eating a bowl of Twinkles. Twinkles was a Sharp cereal, and the Trentons got all their Sharp cereals free.

'Hmmm?' Vic asked. He was buried deep in the sports pages. A transplanted New Yorker, he had. so far successfully resisted Red Sox fever. But he was masochistically pleased to see that the Mets were off to another superlatively cruddy start.

'The blankets. In Tad's closet. They were back in there. The chair was back in there, too, and the door was open again.' She brought the bacon, draining on a paper towel and still sizzling, to the table.

'Did you put them back on his chair?'

'Not me,' Vic said, turning a page. 'It smells like a mothball convention back there.'

'That's funny. He must have put them back.'

He put the paper aside and looked up at her. 'What are you talking about, Donna?'

'You remember the bad dream last night

'Not apt to forget. I thought the kid was dying. Having a convulsion or something.'

She nodded. 'He thought the blankets were some kind of -' She shrugged.

'Bogeyman,' Vic said, grinning.

'I guess so. And you gave him his teddybear and put those blankets in the back of the closet. But they were back on the chair when I went to make his bed.' She laughed. 'I looked in, and for just a second there I thought -'