And-amazingly, considering how adamant he had seemed the first night-he would toddle off. She followed him once or twice to make sure he got in bed all right. Then she would pick Sams up off the floor and settle him into his bed as well, and return to her own.
Sometimes, she went right to sleep herself. Sometimes she was still awake when the alarm jangled and Willard stumbled up at 5:00 to get ready for work.
After a week or so of that, she woke up in the middle of the night, rolled onto her side and saw…Will, Jr.
“Can’t you sleep, either?” she whispered.
He shook his head solemnly.
She let him sit on the edge of the bed for a few moments, stroking her hand up and down his arm, soothing him in the way that had worked so well when he was younger.
Then he stood, leaned over and kissed her, and went on his own back to bed.
That continued for a few more days, with Burt and Will alternating their deep night visits. They never came at the same time or on the same night.
4
That phase came to a head at the beginning of the third week in April.
For four days in a row, all three boys visited their parent’s bedroom. Only this time, they did more than just stand by Catherine’s side until she woke.
“Mom! Mom!” Will was half-whispering, half-shouting in her ear, his voice urgent with fear and need. “Mom, wake up!”
She sat bold upright.
“Shhh. Don’t wake your father.”
“Too late,” Willard rumbled from the other side of the bed. “What’s going on?” He felt for his own alarm clock next to his side of the bed, and lifted it up close to his face. “Two-fifteen? What…?”
“It’s all right, Willard. Will just had a bad dream or something.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” Will whispered, as if afraid that someone else, someone not his father or his mother would hear. “I thought I saw…something…some one in my bedroom. A shadow by the closet. It moved. I’m scared.”
By this time Willard was sitting up as well. “There’s no one there, son, you must have been dreaming or…”
“No, I wasn’t asleep. I haven’t been asleep for…for the longest time now. I was just laying my bed looking up at the ceiling. Sometimes I see birds up there, I think. And I like to watch them fly in little circles. In little circles.” His voice too on a dreamy, muffled quality that Catherine found unsettling.
“Then that was it,” Willard said, laying back down and hunching under the covers. “You were dreaming. Go back to bed. I’ve got to get to sleep now.”
“Mom,” Will whispered again. “It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t like before, with the birds”-at the mention of the phantom birds, Catherine felt a chill along her spine-“this time there was something in there.”
“All right.” Catherine got out of bed, threw on her robe, and stepped into her slippers. “Let’s go see.”
As the two of them left the bedroom, she carefully, quietly closed the door. Willard really did need his sleep. The drive into L.A. was hard enough without doing it half-awake.
In the boys’ room, she picked up Sams and put him back in his bed, then flicked on the Mickey Mouse lamp. The dim light cast shadows across the room, shadows that danced with each movement she or Will made. She padded to the closet-there hadn’t been a door on the closet when they moved into the house and, in spite of his promises, Willard hadn’t yet installed a new one. She slid the row of shirts and coats back and forth, showing Will that there was nothing behind them. She even lifted some of the fallen clothing from the floor and stacked them onto the upper shelves.
“Nothing here.”
“No. Not now.”
“All right, then. Up you go.” She waited for Will to climb into the upper bunk and settle himself, then returned to her own bed.
She was still awake when she heard another whisper in her ear.
“Mommy?”
It was Burt this time, standing so close to her that she could smell his warmth and the slightly acrid sweat on his pajamas.
“Yes?”
“I saw something in my room. A monster, I think.”
Catherine sighed. It much be contagious. Monster-itis, or Something-spooky-in-the-dark-itis. And both boys had caught it.
“Catherine.” Willard didn’t move or say anything else, but she understood his message. Get him back to bed and let me sleep!
“Come on, Burt.”
Together they walked the length of the hallway and entered the back bedroom. Then she went through the same routine. Pick up Sams and put him in his bed. Turn on the light. Check the closet. Reassure Burt that everything was okay. Get him bundled into his bed. Check on Will, Jr., retrace her steps to the master bedroom. Slide into bed as quietly as possible so she didn’t disturb Willard again.
This time she had slipped into sleep, had even begun to dream-another of those vivid, surrealistically realistic, unmemorable dreams, even though she didn’t realize it, since the dream seemed merely an extension of the night’s alarms-when her eyes opened yet again.
Sams.
He didn’t speak
He didn’t even wait.
As soon as he saw that she was awake, he crawled onto the bed, over her, and under the covers between her and Willard.
“What the hell…!” Willard shot out of bed, brushing frantically at the front of the well-worn Lakers T-shirt that was part of his night wear. That and his boxers. Winter or summer, never anything else.
Catherine sat up just as abruptly.
“Willard!”
“He’s wet! Soaked! Just feel.”
She did. She hadn’t noticed it when Sams crawled over her into the bed, but he was drenched, sopping, the front of his pajamas stained shades darker than the back.
Sams had been wearing extra-thick pull-up night diapers for a couple of months now. He had never had an accident before. He was almost completely potty-trained. Both Catherine and Willard were proud of how well he had managed the transition.
But now, he lay curled up on the bed, deeply asleep in spite of having just come into their room seconds before, and smelling pungently of urine. There was a dark spot spreading on the sheet beneath him, and a matching dark spot across most of Willard’s chest.
“Okay, Willard. You change. I’ll take care of Sams. And the bed.”
By the time she had picked the baby up, he was awake. He started to whimper.
“You’re all right,” she began. Then: “Willard, he’s shaking like a leaf. Trembling all over.”
Now that he was over the shock of awakening to the feel of wet-baby against him, Willard seemed more in control. He had stripped out of the T-shirt and, since they were damp as well, out of his boxers.
Naked, he circled the bed and put his hand on Sams’ back.
It felt like he was touching an electric vibrator set on ‘high.’
Willard rummaged in the closet for an old sweat shirt while Catherine removed Sams’ pajamas and the diaper. Urine dripped from the plastic lining, ran glistening down the back of Sams’ legs.
Willard grabbed him and wrapped him in the sweat shirt, holding him close while Catherine pulled sheets and
