The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.

The line captures a familiar, childlike logic at the heart of fear: we can intellectually dismiss a threat as unreal while still behaving as if it were real. The speaker’s “rule” (keep the foot under the covers) is a ritual of control—an attempt to bargain with anxiety by setting boundaries that feel protective. In King’s broader thematic territory, this is how horror works: the mind manufactures monsters, then invents superstitions to manage them. The humor of the admission doesn’t cancel the dread; it shows how fear persists even when reason is present, and how small acts of precaution become talismans against the unknown.