Washington, D.C. February 23

She knew there were no monsters.

And yet, when the lights were out, she also knew that there were.

It's why she screamed when she heard the footsteps. There was a quick flurry, someone running-no, darting, that's the way it sounded, definitely darting-and then there was a crash, glass being shattered, a piece of pipe, perhaps, swung against the ugly overhanging fluorescent light. Everything turned shadowy; the whole room was suddenly fifty percent darker than it had been. Then, almost before she could register what was happening, there were more footsteps, on the other side of the garage-how did he get over there so fast? It didn't seem possible-and another crash, another light smashed, and then it was dark. Not just darker this time, but completely dark. She couldn't see her hand right in front of her face.

It was absolutely quiet, too. Black and silent.

And suddenly there it was.

The feeling.

Even under normal circumstances, when things were calm, when she was tucked safely in bed, under the down-filled covers with the lights out, Maura Greer was overwhelmed by the dark. Even in her own room there was nothing she could do to stop her imagination from running wild. To stop her heart from beating madly and her throat from drying up and that thing inside her head from saying: Be afraid. Something bad is coming. Something really is there, inside the blackness…

And now something really was there.

Footsteps again.

She could hear someone breathing.

She thought she was going to faint. Her whole body was shaking and, despite the freezing temperature and dankness of the garage, hot, clammy sweat was starting to drip down the back of her neck.

Maura had lived with this fear for so long. Maybe her whole life. As a child she needed a night-light. When she went away to college, got her very first apartment, she used to leave the light on in the hallway outside her bedroom. She told her roommate it was so she could find the bathroom when she woke up in the middle of the night, but that wasn't true at all. It was because the darkness terrified her. Filled her with numbing, paralyzing dread.