In that suffocating darkness, every childhood fear came rushing back at once. The strange blue object felt almost menacing in my hand, its jagged curves and spikes refusing to give away their purpose. I turned it over and over, searching for clues, imagining everything from some bizarre pest-control device to a forgotten piece of experimental tech. Confused and slightly unnerved, I walked down the hallway and gently shook my son awake, holding the thing out like evidence from a crime scene.
This evening, we had a power outage. I went into my son’s room to get some candles from under his bed, and suddenly I discovered this.
