"Goodnight, honey," said Mom as she closed the door. It clicked shut, all the way; Kevin hated it when she closed it all the way, so that the light from the hallway couldn't come in. The little bedroom was plunged instantly into total darkness.
Kevin closed his eyes and pulled the covers over his head; he reasoned that, if the light were on, it would be completely blotted out from sight that way. So even though he couldn't see it, at least that way it might still be on, just out of sight. He wasn't sure if that made sense, but he was sleepy.
At last he felt stifled and hot, and he pushed the blanket back down. The room was as dark as ever, but he could distinguish objects in the gloom now; the long line of the top of his dresser, the rumpled sweater over the back of the chair, the odd angles of the toys against the far wall. He didn't look to closely to the floor near his bed, you never know what might be lurking in the shadows.
There was no moonlight in the window, just the faint blue glow of the World outside, he guessed. He liked blue glow better than orange at least; when they'd stayed with is cousins in the city, the glow had been orange, and the first night, he'd thought it was a fire somewhere. Dumb kid, his cousin had said.
Across the room the red blocky letters of his alarm clock glowed. He stared at it, watching the minutes change slowly. He felt his throat and tongue beginning to grow dry. Why did he always get thirstiest when he was least inclined to set foot on the ground?
Slowly the sounds in the rest of the house began to die down; Mom finishing the dishes in the kitchen, Dad turning off the lights in the living room, Brad and Trish saying good-night and climbing up to their rooms, the TV turning off. Soon Mom and Dad came up too, and the house was quiet.
Kevin felt a little surprised that he wasn't sleepy any longer. The dark wasn't bothering him like it had on other nights, it was more of an inconvenience than a source of dread, like it had used to be. He still wasn't sure he liked it any better, but he was able to be in it and remain calm, like swimming in the deep end of the pool; he still didn't feel sure he wouldn't be grabbed somehow, by something he couldn't see, but he'd waited long enough now to be grabbed, and it hadn't happened so far, so he was slowly getting used to expecting it not to happen for a bit longer.
It was more like he was expecting something and couldn't sleep until he'd seen it happen, though what it was he couldn't guess. It felt a little like Christmas Eve, that sort of restless waiting feeling, though he wasn't sure he liked this version of it, it didn't feel certain that whatever happened would be a good thing.
It wasn't so much being in the dark that he didn't like, he decided to himself, but having to walk somewhere in the dark. Especially up or down the stairs, or especially especially down a long corridor. When he had to do that, he was completely unable to stop himself from imagining huge invisible hands, with finger-tips that came to grisly points, reaching and groping after him wildly in the dark. He always, always started to run when he imagined that.
The minutes on the clock ticked by. Maybe he just couldn't sleep because he was so thirsty. He considered hollering for Mom, but it was late now, she might already be asleep, and she had asked him to be a brave boy and come to get her if there was something really wrong, and not to holler if he could help it. There wasn't really anything wrong at all now, he was just thirsty. He could go get himself a drink of water, he could even reach the light switches to turn them on if he stood on tip-toe. He just didn't want to stumbled about in the dark.
For some reason his mind wandered back to the story he'd heard about that Dough man before Mom had switched the channel on the TV. Apparently a man named Dough, who no one knew, had been seen here and there in the village, and had possibly broken into someone's house and taken some food. He had certainly robbed the grocery store on the corner; well, not robbed it with a gun like in the movies, just walked out with a bunch of things and gone unnoticed. At least that's what the store owner had said when he'd appeared on the news. Kevin thought the owner had looked pleased to be talking, and had wondered how they could be sure it was this Dough man. Then Mom had changed the channel.
Why did they call him Dough? He'd asked Mom that when she'd read to him that night, and she'd made a face (he suspected she'd changed the channel to keep him from hearing about the man), and said it was what they called strangers until they could learn what their names really were. She said it was like a nick-name, but one people gave anyone who didn't have a name, or had a name that no one had found out yet. But why Dough though? She didn't know.
He wondered if it was because you could shape dough, like clay, and until you found out the person's real name it was best to leave them shapeless, changeable, so that you could change their Dough name into whatever name you needed to suit them properly.
Kevin wasn't sure whether that made any sense. He was sure, however, that he was too thirsty to sleep. Almost before he'd realized he'd made up his mind, his feet were out of the warm blankets and into the cold air, and down on the rug beside his bed.
Nothing under this bed but socks and old toys, he told himself as he pushed himself up, suppressing an old concern for his ankles in the dark. He had inspected the underside of his bed frame and mattress many, many times in the light of day, and there was no where down there for anything bad to be hiding. If they were there in the dark, then they came through some kind of invisible magic portal, and if they could come at you that way, they could come at you from anywhere, so it didn't make any sense picking out under the bed as the most likely place.
Thinking about magic portals and their supposed properties, he tiptoed across his darkened bedroom to the door. Nothing worse happened on the way than a toe stubbed on the side of his dresser. The dark may not be that frightening, but that didn't make it any more convenient.
As carefully as he could, Kevin turned the knob on his door and pulled it open. All dark and quiet in the hallway beyond; he waited to see or hear anything awful, but there was nothing, and he presently felt alright to go forward. He glanced back at his alarm clock, for some reason, and went out into the hall.
The kitchen was downstairs, as kitchens usually were; there was a bathroom on the hallway ahead, but there was no cup there, and Kevin could barely reach up to the sink. He walked to the head of the stairs and began descending quietly.
He supposed Mom thought the story about the Dough man would bother him or frighten him, and that was why she'd shut off the TV, but he wasn't sure why. Just because a person had no name, and seemed to be hungry, was no reason to be afraid of them. He turned the corner on the stairway, and saw the first floor open at the end of the stairs like a big dark square of nothing below. He made a fist in the middle of his chest in his imagination, and kept going down.
When he reached the landing of the first floor, he felt a breeze on his cheek, glanced sharply over and saw that a window in the living room had been opened, though he hadn't heard it at all upstairs. Suddenly he was very much afraid indeed.
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