Things that go bump in the night

The scariest hidden monster for us as parents may be the monster that hides in our child's sleeping brain. Occasionally, JR cries out for us in tears from his bed. We run to his room to find him standing at the door, or sitting up in his bed, keening and wailing, tears streaming down his face, and his eyes closed. He can't talk to us. He can't tell us what has him so upset. We struggle to comfort him, to lay him back down, to move him into a calm sleep again from whatever it is that is terrorizing him in his sleep.
It breaks our heart.
Then, five or fifteen or thirty minutes later, he is peaceful. Asleep with that beautiful little boy face, curled up in his Bob the Builder sheets, holding onto his yellow blanket, and the terrors seem a figment of our imagination rather than his.