and looked down.
Her nightgown was stained with crimson.
Caroline’s consciousness emerged almost reluctantly from a dense fog of sleep. At first she felt oddly disoriented, as if her mind had somehow been separated from her body, and was now drifting in some featureless morass of not-quite-time, not-quite-space, not-quite-reality. But slowly the gray veil began to melt away, and she remembered: she had been in bed, her head resting on Tony’s broad chest, his strong arms wrapped protectively around her, the deep rhythm of his breathing imbuing her with a peace that had made her sleep utterly dreamless. But now — how much later? — she was awake, sitting up in bed, the covers clutched in her hands.
Her heart was pounding, as if she’d just emerged from some terrible nightmare. But there had been no nightmare — no dream of any kind at all.
So what had awakened her?
A scream?
Could she have heard a scream?
But from where? Outside on the street? Or inside the apartment?
The last of the mist in her mind cleared away, and she listened, concentrating, but all she could hear was the faint sound of a car passing on the street below.
Then what had happened? She’d been sound asleep, safe in Tony’s arms—
Instinctively, she reached out to his side of the bed.
Empty!
“Tony?” she called. She reached out and fumbled with the light switch by her bedside, and a second later the chandelier hanging in the center of the ceiling came on, its brilliance blinding her. “Tony?” she called out again, a little louder. She was just getting out of bed when the door to the bedroom opened, and a moment later he was back in bed and pulling her back into his arms. “Sorry,” he whispered, his lips nuzzling her ear as he reached for the light switch. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“You didn’t,” Caroline told him. “I thought — I don’t know. Something woke me up. I…” Her voice trailed away as she tried to identify whatever it was that had awakened her.
Tony’s hand fell away from the switch, and he propped himself up on one elbow, frowning. “Are you all right?”
“I–I’m not sure.”
Tony frowned uncertainly. “Did you hear something?”
“I don’t know.”
He got out of bed, went to the window and pulled the heavy roman shades up. “I don’t see anything down in the street.”
Now Caroline was out of bed, too. “I probably dreamed it, but I’m going to go check on the kids anyway.” Pulling on a robe, she went out into the hall. The night-light cast a glow just bright enough for her to see that there was nothing there. But then, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light in the hallway, she saw a glow coming from under Laurie’s door. Pulling her robe more snugly around her, she went down the corridor. “Laurie?” she called out softly.
There was no answer.
She put her hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open just wide enough to peer in, almost certain she would see her daughter sound asleep, probably with a book lying facedown on her chest.
But Laurie was not asleep at all. Instead she was huddled against the headboard, her arms wrapped around a pillow, her face pale and stained with tears, looking utterly terrified.
“Laurie?” Caroline cried, pushing the door open and hurrying to the bedside. “What is it? What’s—” Her words died on her lips as she saw the bright red stains on Laurie’s sheets and nightgown.
Laurie peered up at her, her eyes wide, and when she finally spoke, her voice shook with terror. “There were people in my room,” she whispered. “They were all around me, and they were touching me, and it hurt, and—” her voice choked off in a broken sob, but then she went on. “It hurt so much Mom, and when I woke up, there was blood all over me, and—”
As she listened to her daughter’s frightened words, the memory of Tony coming through the bedroom door a few minutes ago rose in Caroline’s memory. Her hands closed on her daughter’s wrists, and her eyes locked onto those of the terrified girl. “Was it Tony?” she asked, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible. “Did Tony—” She hesitated, then forced herself to finish. “Did he do something to you?”
The fear in Laurie’s eyes slowly gave way to uncertainty, and as the last of her terror lost its grip, she began to understand that it must only have been a dream. “No, not Tony. It was like lots of people were in my room,” she said. “All the neighbors.” Now she looked beseechingly at her mother. “But it was just a dream, wasn’t it? I mean, they couldn’t have really been here, could they?”
Caroline said nothing as she tried to put the scraps of what had happened into some kind of cohesive whole. The pain — the blood—
And suddenly it all came together and she understood. “Your period,” she breathed, relief flooding through her as the pieces fell in place. She drew her sobbing daughter into her arms, and rocked her gently. “It’s all right,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong, honey. It’s your period and all the rest was just a bad dream.”
“But it wasn’t like a dream,” Laurie wailed. “They were sticking things into me, and I’m bleeding, and—”
“It’s all right, darling,” Caroline broke in. “You just had some cramps, and now you’re having your first period.”
Laurie gazed down at the bloody stain on the bedclothes. Suddenly, with her mother here, it didn’t look quite so bad.
And the pain in her belly — the pain that had seemed like it was going to tear her apart only a few minutes ago — was almost gone. Suddenly she felt so stupid, she wanted to cry all over again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. But I was so scared, and—”
“Of course you were scared,” Caroline said, putting a finger on her daughter’s lips to silence her apology. “Why wouldn’t you have been?”
“But I feel so stupid,” Laurie wailed.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” Caroline reassured her. “Actually, except for the scare it gave you, it could have been a lot worse. I got my first period in a swimming pool. I got to the girls’ room, but just barely, and my friend Emily Peterson had to go buy some pads while I hid.” Laurie stared up at her mother, uncertain whether to believe her or not, but Caroline was already disentangling herself from her daughter. “Tell you what. You just stay here. I’ll get you cleaned up and make sure Tony doesn’t come poking around trying to find out what’s going on.” She winked at Laurie. “There are some things men don’t handle all that well. Be back in a minute.”
Half an hour later, it was over. The bed had been changed, the soiled linens and nightgown were in the washing machine, and Laurie was back in bed.
“No longer my little baby girl, I guess,” Caroline said almost ruefully as she leaned over to kiss Laurie goodnight. “You going to be okay?”
Laurie nodded. “I’m sorry I acted like such a baby.”
“You didn’t. You had a perfectly natural reaction to something that’s perfectly natural, but can also be perfectly terrifying because no matter how many times you talk about it with your mother, it still takes you completely by surprise. I thought I’d hurt myself diving into the swimming pool, and even though Emily Peterson was there when I had my first period, she thought she was bleeding to death three months later when she had hers. So stop worrying about it and start worrying about this: you’ll be going through this every month for the next thirty or forty years, and believe me, it can get really tiresome. But it’s not the end of the world, and we all get used to it. All it means is that you’re growing up, and your body is changing. Nothing to worry about. Okay?”
Laurie nodded. But a few minutes later, when she was once more alone in the darkness of her room, memories of the nightmare began to creep once more around the fringes of her consciousness, and she could almost hear the voices whispering once again.
Hear the voices, and feel the terrible touch of fingers pressed against her body, prodding her, exploring her.
But it had only been a nightmare.
