There’s a certain kind of anger that you can only see in a child. Blind and lost, it burns brightly, not despite its confusion but because of it. I saw it that evening in my daughter; her eyebrows furrowed and tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes, as her older sister left for a whole weekend away. Defiant and heartbroken, she didn’t know – couldn’t imagine – why she was being left behind. I saw it, then, and fool that I was, denied it as the impotent feelings of a child. So it is that, when she slips out of bed and spills down the stairs, I am the one to blame. The kitchen is silent, and she is thinking no more carefully than I was, as she cracks open the back door and slips silent into the night. My daughter is young, and she is determined and blissfully unaware – as only a child can be – of the thousand dangers that thrive in this darkened world. The empty backyard is the only thing watching her scale the branches of our sycamore tree – and haven’t my daughters always been such good climbers – and hops into the front yard, hidden by shadows and bushes. She dodges down the street, shadow to shadow, like the spies she sees on TV, the world no more dangerous to her than a mouse. She is unafraid. Until the demons come.

     Laughing and jeering, the voices are sudden against the backdrop of the night, and my daughter can do nothing but freeze as their presence grips at her heart. They smell like danger, and roiling nausea builds in my daughter’s throat as they move past her hiding place. Shadows are her only armor against the lumbering demons and she watches them pass in terror-gripped silence. Their laughs are high and cruel, as they move with a strange, loping stagger on their too-long bodies. Slowly, they draw to a halt, gathered around a strange mass in the darkness. The smell of danger builds, pungent and somehow sweet, bringing back memories of late night gas station visits even as their laughter shudders to a stop, and when they pull away, the world suddenly blazes to life, brightening into day in a split second, forcing my daughter back, further, from the sun that they have summoned forth against the shadow-soaked night. The demons leave as quickly as they had come, leaving nothing but my daughter and the blaze of danger, to stare each other down.

     My daughter is defiant, and so, so brave, and she knows when it’s time to come home. Her feet carry her desperately down the street, no longer angered, no longer silent. Her feet pound like the fear in her chest and the crackling sun pulses in the distance, outlining her with light. The bang wakes me, as she slams through our back door into the still-dark kitchen and she wails, high and helpless, nothing more than a child. She babbles of demons and portals opening in the night, and I send her to her bed, pile her trembling form with soft things to comfort her soul. I tell her there are people who deal with demons and their portal and later, I hold her closely in my arms, when those people come, dressed in their dark blue uniforms, to ask her what she saw.

     It is my job to protect my children. I know this, even as I tuck her into bed for the second time. She is exhausted, and her eyes droop, though I can still see remnants of fear in her eyes. Eventually, dawn will come, and the blackened bits of bush will be lit by the sun’s warming rays – an unneeded reminder of all that she has seen tonight. Tomorrow I will ask her not to play in the streets, as I always do, but this time my daughter will not pout. She won’t frown or groan as she drags her body away from the open expanse that seems perfect for games. Instead, she will glance down the road, to the yard with the charred and sad bush in it. As she stares at it, a look of exhaustion will flit across her eyes, and she will nod. In the next moment, my daughter will walk back to our yard, and follow the path up to our front door. Tomorrow, my daughter will decide to play inside, where she knows it is safe. And when ventures out into the world again – as is inevitable – it will be with a newfound certainty that danger exists, and the reminder that she can always come running back into my arms.