ONCE UPON A TIME, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine. He killed. a

waitress named Alma Frechette in 1970; a woman named Pauline Toothaker and a junior high school student

named Cheryl Moody in 1971; a pretty girl named Carol Dunbarger in 1974; a teacher named Etta Ringgold

in the fall of 1975; finally, a grade-schooler named Mary Kate Hendrasen in the early winter of that

same year.
He was not werewolf, vampire, ghoul, or unnameable creature from the enchanted forest or from the snowy

wastes; he was only a cop named Frank Dodd with mental and sexual problems. A good man named John Smith

uncovered his name by a kind of magic, but before he could be captured - perhaps it was just as well -

Frank Dodd killed himself.
There was some shock, of course, but mostly there was rejoicing in that small town, rejoicing because

the monster which had haunted so many dreams was dead, dead at last. A town's nightmares were buried in

Frank Dodd's grave.
Yet even in this enlightened age, when so many parents are aware of the psychological damage they may do

to their children, surely there was one parent somewhere in Castle Rock - or perhaps one grandmother -

who quieted the kids by telling them that Frank Dodd would get them if they didn't watch out, if they

weren't good. And surely a hush fell as children looked toward their dark windows and thought of Frank

Dodd in his shiny black vinyl raincoat, Frank Dodd who had choked ... and choked ... and choked.
He's out there, I can bear the grandmother whispering as the wind whistles down the chimney pipe and

snuffles around the old pot lid crammed in the stove hole. He's out there, and if you're not good, it

may be his face you see looking in your bedroom window after everyone in the house is asleep except you;

it may be his smiling face you see peeking at you from the closet in the middle of the night, the STOP

sign he held up when he crossed the little children in one band, the razor he used to kill himself in

the other ... so shbb, children ... shhhh ... shhhh
But for most, the ending was the ending. There were nightmares to be sure, and children who lay wakeful

to be sure, and the empty Dodd house (for his mother had a stroke shortly afterwards and died) quickly

gained a reputation as a haunted house and was avoided; but these were passing phenomena - the perhaps

unavoidable side effects of a chain of senseless murders.
But time passed. Five years of time.
The monster was gone, the monster was dead. Frank Dodd moldered inside his coffin.
Except that the monster never dies. Werewolf, vampire, ghoul, unnameable creature from the wastes. The

monster never dies.
It came to Castle Rock again in the summer of 1980.
Tad Trenton, four years old, awoke one morning not long after midnight in May of that year, needing to

go to the bathroom. He got out of bed and walked half asleep toward the white light thrown in a wedge

through the half-open door, already lowering his pajama pants. He urinated forever, flushed, and went

back to bed. He pulled the covers up, and that was when he saw the creature in his closet.
Low to the ground it was, with huge shoulders bulking above its cocked head, its eyes amber-glowing,

pits - a thing that might have been half man, half wolf. And its eyes rolled to follow him as he sat up,

his scrotum crawling, his hair standing on end, his breath a thin winter-whistle in his throat: mad eyes

that laughed, eyes that promised horrible death and the music of screams that went unheard; something in

the closet.
He heard its purring growl; he smelled its sweet carrion breath.
Tad Trenton clapped his hands to his eyes, hitched in breath, and screamed.
A muttered exclamation in another room - his father.
A scared cry of 'What was that?' from the same room - his mother.
Their footfalls, running. As they came in, he peered through his fingers and saw it there in the closet,

snarling, promising dreadfully that they might come, but they would surely go, and that when they did...
The light went on. Vic and Donna Trenton came to his bed, exchanging a look of concern over his chalky

face and his staring eyes, and his mother said - no, snapped, 'I told you three hot dogs was too many,

Vic!'
And then his daddy was on the bed, Daddy's arm around his back, asking what was wrong.
Tad dared to look into the mouth of his closet again.
The monster was gone. Instead of whatever hungry beast he had seen,