“No! Wait!” Gerta grabs her mother’s hand, stopping her from leaving her bedside. “Stay.”
“Are you still scared of the dark?”
“No,” she lies, because she’s in fifth grade and shouldn’t be.
Her mother shuts the door.
It only takes sixty-three seconds for Gerta’s closet to open and the tall, spindly man in elf attire to jingle his way out.
He loves watching her sleep.
“You’re not real,” she says.
He breathes as her eyes close.
Thirty years later, Gerta will discover the newspaper article about “The Sleeper Creeper.”
