Five
My father, far too reserved since my mother vanished from our lives, gives me a crooked smile every time I try to explain the strange coincidence between my night terrors and the lunar calendar.
He says I’m exaggerating.
That it’s just stress.
I look away from the fractured sky, where a blackened moon is embedded like an unblinking eye in the middle of the night. From the shadows, a jagged, toothy grin emerges on a blurred face—a face that seems to root itself into pointed ears that stretch and elongate, melting into a savage snout… until it becomes a beast that should not exist. A presence that makes me shiver before I can even comprehend it.