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The Beast doesn’t need fear. Fear is rational, understandable — a reaction to a presented stimulus. Any idiot can make people fear him. Nightmare indulges the Beast’s desire to cause abject terror. It starts slowly at first: Just for a second, you see a human face in the path of a circular saw. Your keyboard feels unaccountably warm and fleshy, but when you look down it’s fine. Walking down the street the shadows fall at the wrong angles. You bump into someone, an old friend from your childhood, and all you can do is run and scream. You fall into the arms of your wife, shaking and sobbing, but she’s holding you too tight and she smells wrong. Your daughter comes up behind you and sinks her teeth into your thigh. You scream in pain and bolt out of the door. Looking back, you see your daughter’s face.

Only then does the real terror begin.