was on the bed, Daddy’s arm around his back, asking him what was wrong.
Tad dared to look into the mouth of his closet again.
The monster was gone. Instead of whatever hungry beast he had seen, there were two uneven piles of blankets, winter bedclothes which Donna had not yet gotten around to taking up to the cut-off third floor. These were stacked on the chair which Tad used to stand on when he needed something from the high closet shelf. Instead of the shaggy, triangular head, cocked sideways in a kind of predatory questioning gesture, he saw his teddybear on the taller of the two piles of blankets. Instead of pitted and baleful amber eyes, there were the friendly brown glass balls from which his Teddy observed the world.
“What’s wrong, Tadder?” his daddy asked him again.
“There was a monster!” Tad cried. “In my closet!” And he burst into tears.
His mommy sat with him; they held him between them, soothed him as best they could. There followed the ritual of parents. They explained there were no monsters; that he had just had a bad dream. His mommy explained how shadows could sometimes look like the bad things they sometimes showed on TV or in the comic books, and Daddy told him everything was all right, fine, that nothing in their good house could hurt him. Tad nodded and agreed that it was so, although he knew it was not.
His father explained to him how, in the dark, the two uneven piles of blankets had looked like hunched shoulders, how the teddybear had looked like a cocked head, and how the bathroom light, reflecting from Teddy’s glass eyes, had made them seem like the eyes of a real live animal.
“Now look,” he said. “Watch me close, Tadder.”
Tad watched.
His father took the two piles of blankets and put them far back 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 it 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. Tad. 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 watched 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