Casper had learned to vanish before they learned to walk. At midnight the shadowy figure came, tall and slow, leaning over the crib rail with a face Casper never saw. So Casper did the one trick that worked. They held their breath and disappeared. Their hands faded first, then their fat little legs. But tonight the figure did not leave. It reached into the crib and swept its cold fingers through the empty air, searching. That was the problem. Casper could turn invisible. Casper could not climb. The crib walls rose high above their head, smooth wood with no gap to squeeze through. Even unseen, Casper was trapped in a small square box, and the figure knew it. The hand swung closer, brushing the mattress where Casper lay flat. Invisibility hid their body. It did not move their body out of reach. Casper's foot bumped something soft. The old teddy bear, its seams torn and its fur worn thin, wedged in the corner. And under it, folded thick, lay the quilt their grandmother had stitched. Faded flower squares. Soft gingham patches. Casper had slept under it every night. An idea formed, clumsy and quick. Casper grabbed the quilt's edge with both fists and dragged it over their whole body. The heavy cloth settled. Casper went still beneath it. The figure's hand landed on the lump and pressed down, feeling the shape of the quilt. It felt only fabric. Casper stayed invisible, but the quilt hid the last thing invisibility could not — the dent their weight made in the mattress. The hand paused. It patted the crib again, confused, finding a blanket where a baby should be. But Casper was still stuck in the crib. Hiding was not escaping. So Casper worked their small arms and pushed the teddy bear up the crib wall, wedging it against the rail. Then they climbed onto the bear's soft body, still hidden under the quilt, and stretched one hand toward the latch that dropped the crib side. The latch clicked. The side of the crib swung down with a bang. Casper tumbled out, wrapped in the quilt, and hit the nursery floor. Rows of young plants lined the shelves around them, their leaves grey in the dark. Casper scrambled under a low table, still bundled, still unseen. Above, the figure straightened. It stared at the open crib, at the empty mattress, at the bear lying on the floor. For the first time it had lost them. It turned, slow, and began to move through the nursery, hunting where Casper had gone. Casper had escaped the crib. Now they were loose in the dark room, wrapped in a quilt they could not drop, with the figure between them and the door.

Casper crouched under the low table, still wrapped in the quilt. The figure moved through the rows of plants, sweeping its cold hands over the leaves. The door was across the room. The figure stood in the way. Casper had to reach that door, but the quilt made them slow, and the quilt could not come off. Without it, the dent of their body would show on any soft surface. Casper needed the figure looking somewhere else. One shelf held an odd plant. A thick stem rose from a cracked pot. At its top sat a wide bloom shaped like a hungry mouth, ringed with sharp teeth. Its two orange eyes glowed in the dark. When Casper shifted, the bloom turned and tracked the movement. It was awake. It was watching. And it was close to the path the figure walked. Casper made a plan. They needed the figure to pass right beside that toothy flower. So Casper reached out from under the quilt and knocked the torn zombie bunny off the shelf. The stuffed thing hit the floor near the flower with a soft thud. Its red eyes caught the dim light. The figure turned toward the sound. It stepped closer, slow, reaching for the fallen bunny. Its cold arm swept past the cracked pot. The flower struck. Its jaws snapped shut around the figure's arm and clamped down hard. The teeth held. The figure jerked back, but the flower did not let go. It pulled the other way, rooted deep in its pot. The two locked together, straining, the arm caught fast in the biting bloom. This was the gap Casper needed. They dropped the quilt and vanished. Color left their hands. Sound left their ears. Feeling left their whole body. The dent in the quilt no longer mattered, because Casper was off the cloth and moving across the bare floor, where invisible feet left no shape. Casper crawled fast toward the door. The figure wrenched and twisted behind them, busy with the flower's grip. Casper reached the door. They pushed their small body against it. The gap at the bottom was thin, but Casper was small, and Casper was flat. They squeezed under, unseen, and came out the other side. Behind the door, the figure finally tore its arm free. The flower's jaws snapped at empty air. The figure spun toward the door, but it was too late. Casper was already through. Casper let the invisibility go. Color came back. Sound came back. The cold floor stung their palms. They had made it past the figure. But now they were alone in a new dark room, with no quilt to hide the dent of their body, and only a thin door between them and the thing that hunted them. The door had no latch on this side.