and wondering if they were real, and wondering if, were they real, they would do what the sounds downstairs were now doing to him — twisting knots within his stomach, sending odd waves of Bad Feeling throughout his body (the former, only many years later, he would learn was “severe anxiety”), driving his head further under the covers, which he was slowly beginning to realize, in thoughts he had yet to understand, was a futile gesture.
He had felt disappointed with that book. The colorful, two-dimensional, decidedly un-scary figures that cavorted figuratively across its pages, menacing the (admittedly, insufferable) protagonist with comically exaggerated fangs, failed to elicit any more than a flash of amusement. He was scared, now, genuinely filled with genuine fear, and what scared him most was not knowing when it would end.