The reason bogeymen exist, what gives birth to them and makes them appear, is children’s tantrums: parents at their wits’ end invent creatures more horrible and hideous than the last to scare little ones into going to sleep. But here’s the thing: for decades now, not a single new bogeyman has appeared. Why? A mystery. And what is the young and handsome Girolamo doing among these monsters, in their ancestral home from which no one ever returns?