She chants these reminders as a mantra, a prayer to some faceless god she never quite believed in until the time came for her to need its protection.

Night is the natural state of the world; and yet all that swarms in her mind is unnatural. The cursed, the wretched, the whispered from under plastic playground structures.

Yes, night is natural, and what lives within it is anything but. The night creatures—ghosts, or aliens, or monsters, or Satan or God—they care not for the creaky floorboards or glinting mirrors. For as long as humans have evolved to conquer the dark, they have evolved to stay hidden.

She doesn’t sleep beneath the duvet. Her classmates swear by the thick fabric’s safety—a shield, they call it. She has never found the heart to tell them that if the duvet makes them feel safe, they are in more danger than they know. Safety is nonexistent. Safety is the gaping maw with invisible teeth, and they walk blindly inside.

This is why she is still alive. The adults laughed when she told them at first. The woman with pink glasses and the leather-bound notebook laughed, too—with her eyes. She thought she was able to get away with it, that she wouldn’t notice. That’s very interesting, she said, nodding kindly. All the while scrawling in that little book. So she stopped telling the adults, and later she would wonder whether they were gone, too.

They didn’t have to believe her. Tommy isn’t gone, Lovebug, they’d said the first time it happened. You saw him at recess, remember?

That wasn’t Tommy, she’d replied. First aloud. But then it was Callum, and then Joanie, and Zahra and Sameer and both Ava T. and Ava W. So she repeated her observations in her head, where she knew she’d be believed.

She went to school and looked at Tommy in his vacant ghost-eyes. She played patty-cake with Ava T.’s cold, clammy hands. She shared the M&Ms in her lunch with Sameer and pretended not to notice that he didn’t eat them.

There were days that she wondered why she pretended at all. Her classmates were disappearing around her and no one else seemed to notice. Whatever had gotten them would soon turn its hungry eyes upon her. She should flee, retreat into a safer place—live among the wolves, or by the sea.

No, she would have to tell herself. There is no safe place. Dreaming of safety is what killed them. There was no sense in running. She would wait for whatever it was to find her. She would go down fighting. At the very least, she would die knowing what it was.

The Not-Classmates weren’t much for conversation. And yet this didn’t seem to strike the teachers as odd; Mr. Bowers (who insisted on being called Josh, but she refused on principle; adults did not have first names and it was rude to pretend they did) droned on with his lessons the same way he always did, and she would have to sit there and pretend that things like conjunctions and long division were important. So in the suffocating half-silence of the second-grade classroom, she dreamt up a friend.

Lacey was taller than her, clad in black stockings and heavy eyeliner. Her platinum blonde hair—dyed, of course; with fraying ends and the texture of straw—was pulled into two curled pigtails that swayed as she walked. She often sat just behind Mr. Bowers (Josh) as he spoke, making faces and crossing her eyes in an attempt to make her giggle. Lovebug appreciated it, even if she was long past the desire to laugh these days.

✷

“Omar is gone,” observed Lacey one bright afternoon. The pair were seated atop the monkey bars, having climbed through the metal gaps with some effort. Usually the teachers yelled at her if she got too adventurous, if she used the playground equipment too creatively. Today, though, the recess manager seemed distracted, her attention always focused elsewhere.

Lovebug turned her gaze towards the far end of the playground, where the rubbery woodchips gave way to plastic grass and sharp grains of tar. A small gathering of kids from the second and third grade classes had coalesced for a halfhearted game of kickball; among them, Omar was leaning against the chain link fence. A chorus of shouts rose as someone landed a particularly good kick; the ball sailed into the air, and a half dozen mesmerized kids followed its arc.

“He doesn’t look gone,” she replied. Omar was watching the ball as it hit its peak in the sky.

“Look closer.”

She did; there was the ball, and the kids down below with their eyes glued to its descent—and there. There it was. Last year, Lovebug had gone on a school trip to the aquarium. While the other kids ran to see the penguins and the piranhas and the sharks, she had found herself stationary before the open ocean exhibit. The central tank seemed to be filled with more fish than water, their writhing, silvery bodies condensed together as they swam with the cyclical tide. There was a plaque explaining what they were, and why they did that, but the text was too small for her to decipher. Besides, her attention was called to the display within the tank itself. All those fish were swimming endlessly in one direction, around and around with mindless determination. All those fish, except one. It was just the same as the rest: vaguely ovular, glinting silver in the dim light, its bulbous eye detached from the world as she experienced it. But this fish, for a reason she could not discern, was swimming in the opposite direction, against the tide. At first glance the writhing bodies all looked the same, all uniform and detached from sentience. And then she’d looked closer, and the traitor fish had become so suddenly clear that she wondered how she’d ever missed it at all.

Among the amorphous crowd of children, Omar had suddenly become discernible. He was looking upwards with the rest of the players, but the odd crook of his head separated him from the wondrous unison of the others. He wasn’t looking at the ball, no; he was looking past it, into the sky, beyond the sky.

The ball hit the ground, sending a spurt of black tar beads into the air. It bounced upwards, begging attention from the players, and descended once more. Set apart from the bobbing heads was Omar’s still-stagnant gaze. 

“Not many left, now,” said Lacey. “Soon we’ll all be gone.”

“Not you,” Lovebug countered. “It won’t get you.”

Lacey looked at her, an eyebrow raised. Unintentionally, Lovebug found herself trying to mimic the expression. Her eyebrows wouldn’t quite behave, the muscles too devoted to each other to move out of sync. 

“Of course it will,” Lacey said matter-of-factly.

“But you’re not real,” she replied. Her voice was nasally, tinged with the telltale warning of oncoming tears.

“Why should that matter?”

She fell quiet. Lacey made no attempt to comfort her, instead turning her attention back to what used to be Omar. The boy was still looking up at the sky.

✷

When night fell, Lacey sat dutifully on the end of Lovebug’s bed. Part of her was comforted by this, enthralled by the angel of her imagination devoting herself to protection so readily. The other part of her whispered safety does not exist, the words in an echoing cycle until each sound had completely separated from its meaning, and her head filled with disembodied hisses and clicks.

She slept, somewhat fitfully. On the edge of her unconscious mind was the reassurance that Lacey was still there, still sat at the end of her bed. Lovebug could sense the shape of her: soft and half-hazy, but ever-present.

Sometime deep into the night, consciousness swept briefly through her, a breeze chilled with something formless. Lovebug opened her eyes, her gaze falling upon the silhouette at the end of her bed. Lacey watched her quietly. Slivers of pale moonlight fell upon her bleach-tarnished hair, giving it a new, deathlike sheen. Sighing, she rolled over and shut her eyes once more.

✷

Morning came, and with morning came the sun, and with the sun came Lacey’s absence. The spot at the edge of the bed was empty and cold. Soon we’ll all be gone. Lovebug got up as she always did, threw the covers haphazardly where they belonged as she always did. She padded to the edge of the bed, the floorboards creaking beneath her careless feet. There was no Lacey. There never would be again.

✷

Mr. Bowers (Josh) began his lesson to a classroom of clay models. Twelve children with waxen skin stared past him. Six kept their eyes on their notebooks, perhaps as some sort of preservation tactic. Safety does not exist. No one else had been consumed overnight, replaced by the Something that had evolved so perfectly.

It had come for her, then, and been thwarted. Perhaps Lacey had been a protector after all. Her unreality, her very existence as a product of imagination had stalled the Something. But it had also destroyed her. Lovebug got the feeling that the next time the Something came for her, it would not waste its time on a hazy imaginary friend.

She wondered what it would feel like to be consumed. Would she scream? Had Omar screamed, when he was devoured just two nights ago? What would it look like, when it finally came for her? Would it rip into her flesh, frenzied by the fearful goosebumps prickling along her arms? Did Tommy see what it looked like before it got him? The desire to know it, to name it and reduce its looming shapelessness was almost enough to overwhelm her fear. Lovebug could take comfort in that, at least; when it came for her, she would define it.

✷

She joined the kickball game at recess. Sebastian and Navin from third grade picked teams, confusion set on their faces as their consumed classmates shuffled slowly, unenthusiastically, to their designated sides. She ended up wedged in line between Ava W. and Joanie, their sluggish pace as they arranged themselves almost contagious.

Joanie’s turn to kick the ball came. She pulled her leg back, her black saddle shoe dragging against the turf. She brought her foot forward slowly, hesitantly, and missed. The buckle of her shoe scuffed against the rubber surface of the ball, nudging it a few inches away. Sebastian laughed from across the field, but Joanie didn’t waste time to even look up in his direction. Instead she merely shuffled away, trudging to the back of the line at a snail’s pace.

Lovebug approached the ball, moving it back to its starting position. As she stood up, taking one step back to better orient herself, her shoulder twinged with the weighty touch of a bony finger. The finger lifted, slowly, then landed again. Lovebug turned, her gaze falling upon Ava W.’s sunken, hollow eyes. The thing that had taken Ava W.’s body as its own stared back at her. Its face hung loosely on its skull, the skin sagging slightly, drawn and pale. Ava W. used to have a constellation of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The Something that had taken her had forgotten that detail. Or perhaps it hadn’t quite been able to replicate it. The skin around her nose was pockmarked with tiny, discolored dents; from afar, perhaps they could be mistaken for freckles. But not from here, not with the mere inches that separated them.

The Something wearing Ava W. frowned, although the skin around its mouth didn’t quite move. The corners of its lips twitched, bubbling ever so slightly as though something was wriggling beneath the waxen surface.

Clever girl, No-Longer-Ava W. hissed. Its face was motionless. Its throat remained deathly still, as though there were no vocal cords with which it could speak. She found herself staring at its neck, her chest tightening as it became clear the thing wearing Ava W.’s skin was not breathing.

The Something’s words reverberated in her head. She knew it was talking about Lacey; she had, unintentionally, fed it something it could not sustain on. “That’s why you’re weak,” Lovebug whispered to the Something. “You have to eat.”

We must consume, Not-Ava W. affirmed.

“Are all the vanished children you? Just extensions?” Bravery sharpened her tongue; still, her voice wavered.

Whatever twitched beneath the dead skin of Formerly-Ava W.’s face bristled at the question. For a moment, it looked as though it was smiling.

Somewhere behind her, Sebastian was yelling. He was saying something like kick the ball! Or What’s the hold up? It didn’t matter. The Something knew her. The Something would come for her again.

The husk of Ava W. leaned closer. Its eyes seemed to expand into its skull, spiraling voids of black ink, devoid of the light found so often in the gaze of a child.

Tonight, it hissed silently, we will not be so slow.

✷

Night is the natural state of the world. Night encourages the unnatural to stalk its prey. Lovebug did not sleep; she found herself clutching her duvet within closed fists. It was strange how, when it came down to it, the fabric between her fingers felt safe after all. In the end, she was no braver than Tommy or Sameer or Zahra.

The floorboards outside her door creaked. The door to her closet was ajar, spilling utter darkness forth from its recesses. Down the hall, she could feel the heavy presence of the stairwell and the untold horrors that might ascend it now. She ignored it all.

The Something’s presence came to her in the form of a phantom chill. Like someone walking over your grave, her grandmother used to say. The feeling rushed through her, heavy and cold, undefinable. Lovebug braced against it. Through her defense, her mind wandered into the intangible fog. She was met with resistance, the Something’s defiance of her desire to know it, to name it.

Her breath hung in the air in panicked, spiraling clouds, illuminated by white moonlight. The room was empty, and yet every shadow and barren corner was bursting with the Something; the horrifying void with its nonexistent claws. It shouldn’t be able to get her, not by the logic of the world.

We do not need reality, the Something hissed, as if sensing her thoughts. Its words were needles in her mind, small and sharp. Lovebug recoiled from it, her grip tightening around the duvet. The fabric was soft and warm and real. It was supposed to be safer. Safety is danger. Reality is nothing.

Lovebug blinked. Slowly, consciously, she relaxed her shoulders. She released her grip on the duvet. Staring straight ahead, into the empty vastness of her room, she imagined the Something. She spun it out of its weaponized nothingness, giving it eyes and a mouth and a shape. Lovebug imagined its claws and teeth, razor-sharp and glinting in the moonlight. She imagined its skin stretched taut over a misshapen skeleton, joints poking through the translucent surface.

“Neither do I,” Lovebug whispered. And then, she imagined Nothing.