Prologue

Prologue

Crouched and hidden behind a rusted burn barrel that was propped against a dilapidated shed, the boy clapped his hands over his ears to block out the screams. There were times when he thought he might’ve been awake while dreaming, sleepwalking through a nightmare, but he’d never felt cold, or the raising of gooseflesh on his arms, like he did right then. And never in all of his eleven years had he ever seen something so terrifying as what lay on the other side of the shed’s door.

The screams grew louder, more intense, as the poor creature begged for its life. A moment ago, when the boy dared a peek through the window, the blood on the floor had looked like a shiny red pool that reflected the fluorescent glow from the lone light flickering over the macabre scene. He’d also seen two misshapen eyes bobbing inside a glass canning jar.

In a brief interlude, when the animal’s screeches had died down, murmurs had carried through the tired wooden slats of the door. The sounds of taunting. Letting the boy know his tormentor had caught wind of his hiding place.

“Wake up,” the boy whispered to himself. “Please wake up.”

Earlier in the day, long before he’d been awakened from sleep by sounds beyond his room, one of the boy’s classmates had told him about The Sandman. How he punished those who didn’t go to sleep when they were supposed to, by giving them nightmares and, in some cases, stealing their eyeballs to take back to the moon, to feed his children. The boy had laughed it off, thinking it the most ridiculous story that liar had told yet. Not anymore, as the pitch of agonized screams tore through the shed once again, over the whooshing of blood inside his ears.

He wished he’d stayed in his bed, hidden beneath the blankets.

Had he been brave, he would’ve taken one of the large knives laid out across the floor beside the many tools scattered about. Ones used to inflict the unimaginable pain carried on that hoarse voice bleeding through the wall beside him.

Except, his body wouldn’t move. His heart beat so hard against his ribs, he could scarcely breathe.

Monsters are real.He was sure of it. Undeniably certain that the one holding the sharp blade on the other side of the door, his own uncle, was the same man his classmate had told him about.

The figure who lurked in the dark and brought nightmares to life. The one who’d surely find him next, if he made so much as a peep.

The Sandman.