I woke up at 3 a.m. to get some water, my throat parched and my eyes heavy with sleep. As I shuffled down the hallway, I saw a soft yellow glow spilling out from under my son’s door. I paused when I heard his voice, small and sleepy, coming from inside.
“Mom, can you turn off the light?”
Without thinking, just running on autopilot, I reached into the room without looking, found the switch, and flicked it down. “Goodnight, honey,” I mumbled.
I turned and walked toward the kitchen. But as I got back to bed, my hand hovering over my own duvet, I stopped dead. The fog in my brain cleared instantly, replaced by a surge of ice-cold adrenaline. I remembered… my son wasn’t home; he had gone camping with his father for the weekend. They were three hours away.
I was supposed to be alone in the house.
Panic seized my chest. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I sprinted back down the hallway, my bare feet slapping against the wood. I threw the door open, my hand trembling as I slammed the light switch back on.
I rushed to his room and froze.
He was sitting there. Or at least, something that looked exactly like him was sitting on the edge of the bed. It was wearing his pajamas. It had his messy hair. But when it looked up at me, its smile was too wide, stretching unnaturally from ear to ear, filled with far too many teeth.
“I asked you,” it whispered, using my son’s voice perfectly, “to keep the light off.”
