“Mama!” he calls. He’s only been in bed for a few minutes, so I figure it’s a call for water.
“What’s up, buddy?” I ask him. He’s sitting up in bed, firmly clutching White Blankie.
“I saw a big flash of light through my window,” he says. “It went like, ‘Wha-oooom!’ ”
“Really? I didn’t see anything at all!” And I would’ve from where I’d been sitting in the living room, with its windows pretty much perpendicular to his. “Maybe it was Daddy turning the lights on in the living room. Want me to go flip them on and off so you can see if that was it?”
He likes that idea, so I sally forth with our experiment.
“Nope,” he says. “That wasn’t it. And I wasn’t imagining it! Really!”
“I’m sure you weren’t,” I say, “but I just don’t know what it might have been. Keep an eye out and tell me if you see it again, OK?”
I tuck him in again and go back to the living room. I pull the computer back to my lap, and in the time it takes Facebook to load he’s calling to me again.
“Mama? Come in here,” he says. “I saw something strange.”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes I wake up and I see shadows outside my window that look like people in the backyard, and I know there aren’t people in the backyard, but they look like people,” he says casually, as if he hasn’t just said something that gave his mother the heebie-jeebies, the willies and a great amount of botheration all rolled up in one creepy package. “That’s when I come into your room, ’cause I get scared.”
“Nope,” I say, pulling his curtains closed and trying to sound confident. “There are definitely not people in the backyard. Now try to go to sleep.”
Again I tuck him in, again I sit down, again he calls.
“But Mama,” he says. “I still see the shadows that look like people.”
“It’s just the shadows from the tree branches, honey. That’s all.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well, all clear, then.”
And I tuck him in, and I go back to my chair, and I try not to look out the windows. All clear, right? All clear.
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