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butterfly, and the second policeman’s hands are trembling as he fires his gun, and the bullet is coming right at her and she’s going to die she’s going to—
    “Veeda!”
she cried.
    Tildie jerked awake, her short brown hair hanging in front of her eyes, covering the narrow scar on her forehead. Her nightgown was plastered on her sweating body. She was shaking uncontrollably, the images she’d just seen glued to the insides of her eyeballs. The small bedroom that had become the be-all and end-all of her world was dark, and in the darkness she was sure, she was absolutely positive, that the monsters were lurking again. They had enfolded her into themselves, or itself, or however many selves they were, and had—as a consequence—taken up permanent residence within her, waiting for their moment to escape and wreak more havoc. “Veeda!” she screamed again, and then the room was suddenly filled with light.
    It was not a particularly large room. The walls were pink, and there was a single dresser that was nevertheless large enough to contain all her clothes, save for the blood-soaked nightgown she hadn’t seen since That Night (It had been analyzed thread by thread and was now in a plastic bag safely tucked away in a locker she would never see.) And 49 there was that large mirror on the other side of the room. She’d never seen a mirror quite so large and didn’t understand the need for it, but otherwise she didn’t give it any thought.
    Veeda stood framed in the doorway. Veeda was the only person she ever saw these days. Veeda, with her brown skin and that pretty red dot on her forehead, was also the only person she cared about, because Veeda cared about her. Veeda had, through no means Tildie understood, taken her away from the dark cell and the scary people who had put her there and who had treated her like
she
was the nightmare that everyone should be afraid of.
    “Tildie, sweetie, I’m right here.” Her voice had that strange accent, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Veeda was where she needed her to be.
    “It came back!” Tildie cried out. “I saw it! I felt it! I—”
    Veeda sat on the edge of the bed and took the child into her arms. “It was just a dream, Tildie,” she said soothingly.
    Tildie clutched at the fabric of Veeda’s white lab coat. It was just like the coat Tildie’s pediatrician had worn, back when Tildie had had a pediatrician and a mother to take her to him. Veeda wore it for the same reason: She was a doctor. That was all Tildie had needed to hear when they’d first met. Everyone knew doctors made you better, and if Veeda could make her better, that was all Tildie wanted.
    “I don’t have ‘just dreams,’” Tildie whispered, her voice as ominous as any child’s could be.
    “Yes. You do. Now you do, just like anybody else.”
    “I don’t want it to come back.” She glanced around nervously, as if worried “it” might hear her.
    “It never will, Tildie,” Veeda assured her. “It never will.”
    50 DOCTOR Kavita Rao remained with Tildie, cradling Tildie’s head on her shoulder until the child drifted back into what Rao could only pray would be a dreamless sleep. Then she eased the girl back down onto the pillow. She didn’t turn the lights out immediately, though. Instead she remained there, watching the child, making sure there was no repetition of the episode before finally shutting off the lights and closing the door.
    She then came around to the observation room. Her “associate” was standing there waiting for her, staring through the one-way mirror that allowed the girl to be observed without knowing it was happening.
    “When was the last time you went home and got a good night’s sleep?” he rumbled. In some ways he was no less disconcerting than he had been the night he had first come to her.
    “A lifetime ago,” she said, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes. She’d been monitoring all of Tildie’s vitals during the girl’s slumber