Almost everything that truly frightens waits for you to go still.
It doesn't break down the door. It doesn't scream. It doesn't chase anyone down a hallway. It knows it doesn't need to. It's enough to wait for you to turn off the television, for the street noise to fade, for the house to settle into that silence you thought was yours. It's enough that you're alone for the right amount of time.
You don't need monsters if fear already lives with you.
The eleven stories in this book bring no monsters from outside. The ones here were already within, in the places where one doesn't look because one believes them safe: the bed where you sleep, the hand that writes for you, your own voice, your own face, the person others believe you to be, the dead you love. Not one of them needs the night. They only need you to pay them attention. And once you do, they don't leave — because to look at one of these things is, almost always, to show it where you are.
There are no explanations here. Don't look for them. What is explained stops being frightening, and these stories don't want to comfort you: they want to walk with you until a certain hour and leave you there.
The title is not a metaphor. Read them during the day, if you can. And if you read them at night, as you almost certainly will, remember when you close the book that the last page doesn't turn anything off, that the house will be just as quiet, and that you'll still have to cross the hallway to your room.
Just in case.
Don't turn off the light.