Kathleen Reese stood in the doorway of her daughter’s bed-room, ready to turn out the light.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
Pulling the covers up to her chin, Gwen Reese made a wide-eyed gesture toward the open closet. Above her luminous blue eyes, her eyebrows settled into a deep frown and her small lips twisted up and to one side, as if in great deliberation. For a ten year old girl, there was a great deal of censure in that look. It was a look that said I can’t believe you forgot! If I can’t trust you to remember that one little thing, then how can I trust you at all?
“I’m sorry,” said the little girl’s mother, smiling apologetically. “I almost forgot.”
Kathleen crossed the room and slowly closed the sliding door until it tapped the wall. “There,” she said. “All safe.”
The child nodded her approval. That reproachful look was gone now, replaced by one of gratitude. Her heart-shaped face was framed by a tangle of tresses that reflected the dim light like liquid gold.
My little angel, thought Kathleen. My beautiful little angel.
“Good night, Gwenny.”
Gwen rolled her eyes at the nickname, but she could not help but to smile. “Hm! G’night, mum.”
Once again, Kathleen stood in the doorway of her daughter’s bedroom, and suddenly Gwen felt as though she were seeing her mother for the very first time; not as a parent, but as a human being. Gwen had never thought of her mother as being old, but that’s exactly how she looked at that moment. Yes, old. Old and defeated. Lying in her bed, Gwen noticed how the shadows settled into the wrinkles below her mother’s eyes (her mother called these lines “crow’s toes”, which never failed to make Gwen giggle), but it wasn’t until now that Gwen thought of those wrinkles as a sign of age. Even worse, there were deeper lines forming at the corners of her mouth. These new wrinkles, reflected Gwen, seemed to have appeared spontaneously while she wasn’t paying attention. And they seemed to be spreading; the same way cracks seemed to spread on weather-beaten wood. But the deep cracks on her mother’s flesh were different...they were spreading fast. And her thick, lustrous brown hair was not so thick or lustrous or even brown anymore; it was thin, untamed, and a few shades closer to the gray of middle age, though she was a woman of only thirty-seven. Gwen saw these things, and she knew that it all had something to do with the Monster; the Monster who was, at this very moment, sitting in his lair at the bottom of the stairs.