When he was a child, the terror announced itself with shrieks. During the first year, the shrieks resulted in his bedroom door opening, and a gently hand on his cheek. But a year became two, then three. By the fourth, the door seldom opened, and when it did, it heralded shouts, and once in a while, slaps. One warm night, at 4 AM, his mother had screamed “SHUT UP” outside his door for five minutes. Or so it had seemed, given that he could not yet tell time. Not, at least, as the grownups did.

This morning, in the stillness of his cabin, there had been neither shrieks, nor the promise of comfort, nor the fear of an enraged person three times his size. His eyes had opened abruptly. As they adjusted to the minimal light on the room — moonlight, especially bright in the clear mountain air — there were no hulking shadows, no bearers of punishment that was in fact worse than what had knifed its way into his sleep. The monsters, dreamed and seen and felt, were to him distant memories. Or so they should have been.

He lay, still, breathing deeply, focusing on the sound of the wind blowing tree branches against the bedroom window. He reminded himself that, even secluded, amidst wildlife that would happily feast on him, amidst — in some of the more eerily quiet and dilapidated houses nearby — human would-be predators armed with assault weapons and stupidity rather than claws and razor-sharp teeth, amidst a harsh winter that at times seemed to have a bloodlust off its own, that he was in fact completely safe. Safer than he had been.

In that moment, it was of little comfort.