“…the one who wears Daddy’s face when he thinks you’re asleep.”
I froze, my hand hovering over the duvet. The hallway was empty, illuminated only by the faint amber glow of the nightlight, but the chill in the room suddenly sank straight into my bones.
“What do you mean, baby?” I managed to ask, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady and light.
“He stands in the doorway,” my youngest continued, their small fingers gripping the edge of the blanket tightly. “He watches you. But his eyes are wrong, Mom. They’re too wide. And his smile has too many teeth.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. Caleb had been working incredibly late recently. The stress of his new project had been wearing on him, fraying his temper, hollowing out his cheeks, and sparking a cold, quiet tension between us. But this… this was something entirely different.
“It’s just the shadows playing tricks on you,” I lied, stroking their hair to soothe them. “Daddy loves us. He’s just tired.”
“I know Daddy loves us,” they whispered back, eyes unblinking. “But that’s not Daddy in the hallway.”
I backed out of the room, leaving the door cracked just the way they liked it. The corridor was silent, bathed in the pale light of the moon filtering through the window. I walked toward the master bedroom, every maternal instinct screaming at me to look over my shoulder, the hairs on the back of my neck standing at rigid attention.
When I pushed the bedroom door open, Caleb was already in bed. His back was to me, the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders indicating he was in a deep sleep. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding, chalking the conversation up to an overactive childhood imagination, and moved to my side of the bed.
I slipped under the covers and turned off the bedside lamp. The room plunged into absolute darkness. I closed my eyes, desperate to shake the lingering unease.
Then, I felt it. The mattress shifted, the springs groaning in protest.
But the movement didn’t come from beside me, where Caleb lay. It came from the foot of the bed.
I snapped my eyes open. In the sliver of moonlight cutting across the room, I saw him. Caleb. Standing perfectly still at the edge of the mattress, staring down at me.
My youngest was right. His eyes were entirely too wide, unblinking in the dark. A terrifying, unnatural grin stretched across his face. And from the pillow right beside my ear, I heard the heavy, rhythmic snoring of my husband, still fast asleep.
