The woman gasped.
The cruel one and his father stumbled back, shouting. They covered their eyes.
The horror bellowed in agony.
The wind screamed in tandem with the bright light’s roar.
It wasn’t the boy.
It was the trickster.
91
Last backed against the sloshing marrow walls. The muted colors cast her face in a bone-white glow. She trembled, and a small moan escaped her as the monster under the bed swung around the corner.
The walls pulsed, lighting with red and white, as he dragged his fingers through their spongy surface. The dank, musty smell grew, and a hot, barely-there wind licked over us.
His voice sounded like the groan of a closing door or the scrape of a wool rug over rough wood. He smiled as he sang an eerie lullaby:
Go to sleep,
little girl,
go to sleep.
Dream of me,
little one,
in your sleep.
Sun is gone,
moon is gone,
everybody’s gone,
in your sleep.
The song formed a sawtooth rhythm, scraping back and forth, and with every line, Last flinched.
I stepped in front of her, shielding her from the monster’s seeking eyes.
Harry had called him a weak coward, and I could see why a slipshot would think that.
Slipshots were brash and wild and loved nothing more than stealing, lying, and murdering.
This monster didn’t care about any of those things. He only wanted to make children cry. He wanted to catch them in nightmares.
He looked, surprisingly, just like a man I’d once seen at a child’s birthday party in Central Park. He’d made dozens of balloon animals for all the children at the party. Pink balloon dogs. Yellow balloon elephants. Orange balloon monkeys. Blue balloon swans. There were even balloon flowers, hats, and swords thrown in.
The balloon artist had had milk-pale hands, flat, round nails, and fingers that were triple-jointed. I’d found his hands odd at the time but was more interested in the animals he was tying with quick precision.
Nothing else was unusual about him. He had a large forehead, a receding hairline, a short, tepid chin, and flat teeth that curved slightly inward.
That balloon artist looked exactly the same as the monster under the bed.
When he cut off his song and smiled at me, I realized he was the same man.
