It’s an irrational fear, she knows, but one that she’s never been able to shake. She cowers under the blankets, an icy finger tracing slowly down her spine. She shivers, burrowing deeper into the covers, pulling the blanket over her head to form a sort of insulated cocoon. If she can’t see them, maybe they can’t see her.

She can never see them, of course. It’s all in her head. But she imagines she can see them, even in the deep fuzzy darkness that her myopia shows her. And she can feel them, feel the way the cold, cold chill creeps behind her on the stairs at night, feel the malicious presence tickling in the back of her mind that makes her run up the steps two at a time for the safety of her bed, even as she tells herself there’s nothing there.

Sometimes, even in the warm safety of her room, she feels them, and she leaps for the bed and grabs for the thick comforter to throw over her body, as if mere down and fabric can protect her. But somehow she knows they can. She knows, in the sanctuary of her room, buried in a deep warm womb of pillows and blankets, that she’s safe.

Slowly, lulled by the familiar heavy warmth surrounding her, she drops into a gentle sleep, only to wake to a familiar terror as the things that go bump in the night tap at her window and scratch at her door. But soon she relaxes, secure in the knowledge that they can’t get her. After all, she has her pillows, and her blankets, and her warm cocoon, and if she burrows beneath the covers, they can’t see her.

Or at least, she can’t see them.