I swallowed the pills my brother, Colby, pressed into my palm in the mornings.

“From Dr. Harris,” he told me. “Just to help your mind rest.”

Day by day, I felt heavier, slower, more confused. I forgot appointments. I stared at walls. I lost time. People said it was grief. I believed them.

Until that night.

The Child in the Moonlight

I heard it before I saw it—a thin, chattering sound, like teeth hitting together in the cold.

I looked up, and there, near the balcony doors, huddled in a corner where the moonlight pooled on the floor, was a small figure wrapped in a dirty blanket.

For a moment, my mind did exactly what it had been trained to do for months: it rejected what it saw.