The figure started as a dot on the window, but when the wind gave way Rachel saw it clear as anything.  It had arms and legs like any person, but it limped along through the snow as if it shouldn’t even be alive.  The hands groped forward with twisted, clawed fingers.  No eyes bobbed around in the sockets, just two holes like bellybuttons.  

Before Sammy opened his mouth, the cold gripped her as the creature stared into her.  She could hear it digging around in her head, sniffing at every memory she ever had, and everything she ever learned.  

“Snow wraith,” Sammy whispered.  His whole body shook and he pulled his toy train close to his chest.  Inside they had fire, so he shouldn’t worry.  If it came in, it melted and died.  

Stop, It’s not real.  For a moment, she let Sammy’s fantasies chip away at her common sense.  Her eyes painted whatever they wanted on the snow, like how in art class a piece of paper became a garden.  The swirling snow in the wind tingled her imagination, until she saw made-up images and heard made-up sounds.

I took James, now I’m here for you.

James.  The boy from up the road.  Rachel imagined him stumbling through the white, lost.  She almost didn’t see him.  He walked back toward his house, but when he got there, only more snow stretched out forever.  In her head, he sat down in the snow and put his face in his gloved hands.

No need for monsters.  Everything made sense without them.  Sometimes people just got lost.  

Her parents’ voices struggled to come to her from far away, but it didn’t matter.  They didn’t know about what stumbled outside.  Rachel tried to pull herself out of whatever pit Sammy trapped her in, but a wall of fear closed around her head, and she couldn’t move.  

There’s nothing to be afraid of.  

She repeated the phrase in head until it lost its meaning, and still her parents sounded like they were shouting into the Grand Canyon.

They yelled in low voices so she wouldn’t be able to hear, but she could anyway.  After all, the kitchen doorway wasn’t soundproof.

“Mom Dad Momdad Madad,” Sammy wailed.  His words slurred so not much more than noise came from his mouth.  Did he think adults would save him from something not real?

They stopped yelling, and turned to look out of the kitchen.  At least they weren’t mad at each other for a little bit.  Was this why babies cried?

Mommy darted into the living room, with Daddy trailing behind.  He held a brown bottle in his hand.  She stooped next to Sammy and held his shoulder.

The sounds of the crying danced in on each other, swirling in whirlpools like at the waterpark in the summer.  Everything one could imagine existed, and adults couldn’t imagine much of anything.  She almost agreed the deepest evil in the world hobbled through the blizzard to kill all four of them.  Her chest clenched, and tears formed behind her face.

But then her silly kid brother managed to get his words out.

“Snow wraith. Outside. Coming.”  He gasped in between each syllable.  Trembling like someone in the Arctic, he fell into Mommy’s chest.  She stroked his hair, and looked the same way she did the year before when they lowered the big box into the ground, and everyone said nice stories about Gramma.

The spell cracked, and Rachel climbed out of the pit of lies.

“They don’t come during the day,” cooed Mommy, “Not for James, and not for you.”  She wouldn’t give up the trick.  Just tell him the truth.  He would find out eventually.  Adults lied for the sake of lying, because kids didn’t know any better.

Sammy broke down again, and Rachel couldn’t stand it anymore.  Maybe Mommy had some deep dark secret reason for hiding reality from him until the proper time, but she didn’t care.  “They’re not real.”  Her face burned, and Mommy looked up at her in this strange way she didn’t understand.

Daddy used one of those not-allowed words no one ever said.  Burping, he stared straight ahead, and squinted so she couldn’t see his eyes.  “Boy might be right.”  With the mouth of his bottle, he pointed at the window, and giggled.  “There it is, comin’ for you, with its frostbites and icy claws.”  As if to stop all the terrible cackling from tumbling out of him all at once, he grabbed his stomach.  After downing half the bottle, he shuffled over to the window.

The figure out in the snow grew more color now.  Despite the wind whipping white every which way, Rachel couldn’t mistake its hairless head and spindly legs.  More than anything, the empty sockets stood out as less than nothing.  There had to be some other reason for what she saw.  Snow wraiths weren’t real.

But I’m right here.

There were no monsters.  Nothing could be made of snow and ice and be alive.  If she didn’t know this, she didn’t know anything.

The eye holes in the figure’s head gazed into her through the window.

Why are you so sure? How much about anything do you really know?  

Even the adults believed in it.

Where does reality come from if not adults?

The creature put its hands on the frosted windowsill, and Daddy jumped back.

“Stop.”  Mommy took a step toward Daddy, and after a pause, stuck her finger at him.  So she agreed with Rachel.  Wraiths only lived in stories.  

But Daddy knows about the world, who are you going to trust?

At least Rachel had someone on her side.

Before Rachel saw him turn around, Daddy swung his palm at Mommy.  With a crack and a cry she stumbled to the ground.  A red mark stained her cheek, which looked like how Rachel traced her hand in art class.  Tears streamed down and washed away the mark, but they served as their own kind of sign.

A thumping noise came from the front door.  The beast wasn’t by the window anymore.  The sound rattled through the whole house, bouncing through the yawning cave in Rachel’s chest.  Swelling, the symphony filled her head and surrounded her ears, so she didn’t know anything except the pounding.  

Now am I real? Or are you so stubborn?  

The more her answer remained no, the louder the knocking got.  Enough.  No more mind tricks.  “I’m making you up!”  Rachel squeezed her eyes as tight as they went, but still the sound came because it cared about her ears.  She pressed down on them until they hurt, but up and up the noise climbed from inside her.

Through the din she heard someone crying in stubby breaths, filled with sediment.  Who?

Mommy sat on the ground, clutching Sammy to her breast and cooing in his ear.  With eyes dry as Rachel’s throat, she made as if to get up, but Daddy stood with his arms crossed in front of the door, so she sat back down.

Snow pattered Rachel’s cheeks through the sealed roof, and melted.  The wailing went on.  From where?

Not from Sammy.  He squished his face against Mommy and moved his lips up and down.  With closed eyes, he drifted away into his Little Kid Land where the fake dressed up as real and the real dressed up as fake.  She remembered the other world from when she was younger, as one remembers a dream.   Mounds and mounds of candy, and life-sized castles made of sand where kids ruled on seashell thrones.

She wanted to throw up just thinking about all the colors and magic and stupid made-up animals.

What’s he saying? Tell me, tell me.  

She didn’t want to know, not if the voice did.  It sounded shrill, like whatever Sammy whispered made it nervous.  

There was no voice.  All this nonsense lived in her head.  Remember, remember, remember.  Even if everything was so vivid. 

Someone screamed, and Daddy kneeled over in laughter.  He shook, and bellowed almost as loud as the knocking.  He swung his head all around and stared right through Rachel, howling like a werewolf she saw once in a nightmare.  If she looked at him for a second longer she would go insane.

Sammy rocked back and forth in Mommy’s arms.  He had to be wrong.  Babies didn’t know anything about anything.

“It can’t come in, it can’t come in...” The words drifted from his mouth to her ears.  He repeated them over and over like a magic spell.  He wouldn’t stop.  The phrase pressed on her brain, and morphed into a mixture of fear and anger.  

Choke him. He’s no help to anyone.

She could squeeze all the childish breath out of him in a second, and there would be no one but adults in the whole house.  She needed to show she was a grown-up who understood how everything worked.

Put out the fire, put out the fire. Prove I’m made-up.  

The words didn’t keep the monster out, the heat did.  Nothing did.  There was no monster.  She started walking toward the kitchen to fill a big pale of water, but her leg froze.  What if it was real?  Without the fire, it would burst in and kill all of them.  

Water. Now.  

The whole world would make sense from then on, and even Sammy would have to agree.  She needed to get rid of the heat.  A test of the truth.

Without meaning to, she slipped into a corner of Sammy’s Little Kid Land she thought couldn’t exist.  She stood in the same room, but blood covered all the furniture.  Hand prints marked the walls, and red blotches pooled on the carpet.  By the door slouched Daddy, with ripped clothes, and his bottle splintered beside him.  Except it wasn’t him, because he had a smiling face of licked-clean bone.  

In the middle of the room, next to the overturned train, sat Sammy, propped up with his head in Mommy’s stomach, a hole of organs.  His arms lay across by the cold fireplace.  There wasn’t any banging, and the door hung open so tufts of snow tumbled in.

Rachel blinked, and the scene went back to normal.  No blood, guts, bones.

At what cost came proof?  The crashing jangled up her head, and she couldn’t think.  Daddy’s hooting washed into the swell of noise, so when she looked at him the knocking came straight from his lips.

Throw the door wide open.  

She sat down on the carpet with her legs tucked into her chest.  Everyone would be safe if she didn’t move, but the sounds grew louder around and inside her.  

PUT OUT THE FIRE.  

“It can’t come in...”  

THROW THE DOOR WIDE OPEN.  

“You’re not real!”  A story to scare Rachel and her brother, or to make them drift off into the other world and fall asleep.  It lived inside her head, but more in Sammy’s head.  He really believed in it.  He made it real.  He created this monster about to kill them.  

Which meant it didn’t exist.

Prove it.

She couldn’t, not without risking her whole family.   

Mommy’s eyes widened full of glitter.  Was she sad or scared?  Could she hear what Sammy whispered?  Did she care?

Picking up another bottle, Daddy stumbled over to Rachel and bent down in front of her.  The smell of spoiled milk came with him, and almost knocked her down.  Instead of seeing herself in his eyes, she saw those big blobs of colorful space-dust her teacher showed her last year in school.  A smile wormed through the clusters, but not a nice smile.

“Nothing’s ever real at all!”  He shouted the words as if singing Happy Birthday, and spit landed on Rachel’s cheek.  It burned into her skin, but she didn’t dare wipe it off.  He stared at the kitchen doorway for a little while, and then got up and shuffled to his puffy ripped armchair by the fireplace.  Before he came to a rest, the snores joined up in the din.

The knocking stopped.  Silence took the place of all the shouting.  This was a trick to make them open the door.  She didn’t care.  She had one last chance to catch a glimpse of the creature fading into snow-dust.

Hopping to her feet, she ignored the image of the sightless monster leering outside the door.  Sammy didn’t make up anything, she did.  She could settle this forever right here.  There was a chance it came in and killed them, but such a small chance.

“No, stop!”  Her feet carried her forward despite Sammy’s wails.  Or were they pulled?  The carpet moved under her, so she almost didn’t need to walk.

As the door grew bigger, the room shrank to the size of a corn kernel in the back of her head.  The floor, kitchen, fire, window, all pushed back there.  Mommy, Daddy, Sammy.  None of them mattered.  So they died.  Who cared?  She had to know.  They distracted her.

Whimpering came from behind her, but she couldn’t stop.  The door towered over her like one of those monstrous buildings in the city.  Each crack stuck out like scars in some massive wood face.

The knob hung a little under eye level, so she reached out.  “No, no!”  Sammy’s screech almost toppled the house, but it sounded so tiny she almost didn’t hear.

At her push, the door gave much less resistance than it should have.  To think, such a flimsy slab held back such evil.  Her stomach bubbled, and something pressed on the inside of her skull.

The wood swung on its hinges, and banged against the outside of the wall.  Wind whipped into her face, and when she blinked nothing stood there.  Snow piled on snow in an unending field of white.  The sky and the earth existed as one, because even the horizon froze over.

In the fading light and the barrage of tears coming down from above, she saw a mass of color in the bleakness.  A man crumpled facedown in a heap in the snow.  No, not a man, it looked her size.  A boy.

But she couldn’t be sure in the all the white.