During the day there are trees, of course, but that’s all that they are. They have been thinned out, pushed back, and pruned and trimmed. Their branches are only permitted to spread out high enough to provide shade for picnics and afternoon pstrolls.

By day, it seems that the trees have been tamed. They are carefully managed… bound in our parks, fenced in or kept out.

At night, the woods come out, dark and vast and terrible. They block the cold, meager light of the moon. They reject the sterile glow of the street lamps. They muscle right up to the edge of the sidewalk and lurk menacingly on the edge of the consciousness of all who hurry past them. Branches that are not permitted to cling and block and grasp at passersby reach out in shadow form at night… a feeble ghost of what they should be, but a ghost that has power and presence nonetheless.

Those whose ancestors once dwelt in the shadows of primeval forests understand that trees at night give shelter to all manner of things. The night woods are alive with witches and wolves, goblins and ghouls, shades and spirits.

We have slain the great giants that once straddled the earth. We have formed the framework of our civilization from their bones and and built our cities on their graves.

Is it any wonder that we find ourselves haunted?

The light from the kitchen illuminated a few feet of bare gray wall on the left side of the stairs. The first two steps were visible, and the two below that faintly so. On the right, there was nothing but darkness. Somewhere in there was the big looming shape of the furnace, which could roar to life with such sudden noise and ferocity that it could be startling anywhere else in the house.

“I have nothing to fear but fear itself,” the child repeated, leaning into the darkness to reach for the switch on the gray wall. Unable to hit it from the relative safety of the kitchen, the child stepped down onto the first step and reached out again to flip it.

The old switch made an audible click. At the bottom of the stares, a bare, clear bulb burst forth with light then went dark with a pop, leaving the child with an afterimage of itself and a jumbled impression of the cluttered basement.

“I have nothing to fear but fear itself,” the child said, with much less certainty.

There was a shelf straight ahead with a great big flashlight on it, three feet from the bottom of the stairs. All the child had to do was grip the handrail and follow it down, then follow the wall to the shelf.

“I have nothing to fear but fear itself,” the child said, moments before taking a big step up and back, closing the door, and backing out of the kitchen.

Fear, it transpired, was scary enough in and of itself.