Monck’s Corner, South Carolina August 19, 1986 The room is dark but not quite still. A threadbare curtain breathes in and out at the window, shuddering in the sticky Carolina heat. Outside, the hum of night things fills up the quiet, a chorus of moist throats and raspy wings calling through the torn screen. In the bed beneath the window, a girl in a pink cotton nightgown writhes amid tangled sheets. She is a lovely child, raven-haired and pale, a fringe of sooty lashes lying uneasily against her cheeks. Her whimpers turn to tears, turn to wails, turn to shrieks. She is awake but not awake,
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