Cheap Little Bedding by NoJo 3 Little Monkeys 10 Piece ...

My MIL at the start of my pregnancy was set like fire in hell that I was going to breastfeed. I did think about it, but eventually came to not wanting to, as well as for me personally it made me feel uncomfortable. She went out of her way to buy milk bags, breastfeeding pillows/clothes, certain bottles, etc. Fast forward to now (28w), I have told her numerous times I am not breastfeeding and that I was strictly formula feeding. Well, her response was “you ARE doing both, nipple confusion isn’t even real”. In which I told her formula has advanced and is closer to breast milk as ever. She didn’t like that. So, I get a message from her ; “you do canned milk it’s cheaper than formula and breastfeeding”. Canned milk where I live is legit SUGAR and water. No nutritional value at all and doctors would probably send me to a mental hospital if I told them I was feeding canned milk (I’m not, formula only). I once again told her just formula. Then there’s the clothes.. I have maybe 10 onesies for when baby is here, and she said it was enough and to “stop wasting money”. I Brushed it off, because I know she’s crazy at this point. And the animals.. they have two dogs and two cats. When me and my s/o leave to go anywhere (we live downstairs) she opens the door constantly and lets them free roam, numerous times I have caught the animals in the nursery on top of babys things (clothes, crib bedding, etc). I have told her that it has to stop, that baby can’t be around animals like that when she’s here. She ignored me. My s/o output on all of this? Just telling her to stop, telling me that breastfeeding is better because he was breastfed (they’re cheap, she’ll tell us to turn the heat off and “cuddle” for heat if we’re cold HA HA). I’m strictly using huggies brand, and they keep buying pampers brand, telling me to just use it and that it’s cheaper (it’s the same price as huggies with tax..) He’s a mamas boy, for reference 🙃

You could always smell my wife before you could see her, her umbilical cord leaving the smell of iron upon our couches it had stained, the rotting fleshy rope sour with decay, her feverish body stale with the sweat from constant hysteria.
They called it a medical abnormality. When our son Vincent was born and the umbilical cord cut, it grew out of her bellybutton like a pinkish beanstalk, always twisting, looking for a fencepost to cling on. According to my wife, it did find something to hang on. Our second child we never had.
The nights that I spent lullabying Vince and tucking him in were the nights that she would stay awake, feeding it. Madness took my wife Cherelle, and I lived with it. A maternal hiccup, I would say, nothing more.
My wife and I had been twisting and turning under our duvet on one humid summer evening.
“Darling,” She sat up upon the headboard. “I know I’ve gone off the rails a bit lately.”
I turned to look at her, catching the moonlight that beamed through our window and reflected upon sweaty shoulders and the strands of hair that stuck to her forehead.
“How so?” I asked, careful with my words.
The couch springs hurt your back, Michael. Let’s not get sent there again tonight. I thought.
She giggled. “You know what I mean.” Two raised eyebrows met her stomach.
Cherelle took my hand and placed it on her belly. The worm from her navel wriggled revoltingly under the thin fabric of her nightie. The umbilical was cold and mushy like the reanimated tail from seeping roadkill.
“It’s strange, but don’t you love it honey? I thank God for giving us this blessing to feed our twin boys.” Her eyes were bright yet vacant.
I pulled my hand away slowly as to not upset her. I caught a waft of air from my fingertips that had touched it, a smell of rotting vegetables and mulch.
“Y- Yes sweetheart, it’s wonderful.” I gave a smile before a concealed gag.
Breastfeeding is for babies; that rotten appendage was not. Spooning my wife wasn’t an option anymore – I couldn’t bear to get close to it anymore, let alone let our skin touch. Nights were colder in bed than on the sofa.
For most of the following week, I wore a warm smile on my face around the office. Freeing my head from the peculiar life at home was good for me.
“How’s the wife doing?” They would ask.
I kept my head up and smiled back: “You know how it is. Little bit clingy around the new one. She’s a great mom, though.”
On Thursday when I was back home, I swiftly plummeted back down to paternal reality. Vince was already screaming in his crib and Cherelle must have dozed off - God knows how. Though, ‘how’ probably were her sleeping pills and a cup of wine. She deserved the rest.
Unbuttoning and stashing my suit away didn’t take long. Down the hall I went, cries echoing and getting louder as I approached his room. A diaper change or maybe a lullaby ought to put him to sleep.
“Vince?” I whispered.
My hands curled around the edge of his crib; nothing sounded but that of quiet breathing. He was fast asleep.
I sighed and pushed my hair back. Should really start getting some proper sleep, maybe a cup of red was the way to go. I thought.
Turning and smiling at my son, I flipped the switch.
That’s when my stomach sunk. A baby was crying.
My ears pricked and heart thumped in my chest.
Without knowing why, I flipped the lights back on, and curiously the screaming abruptly stopped.
I slowly brought myself to shuffle towards the spare unrenovated room at the end of the hall one step at a time. Inside, I noticed the light had been left on and, in the center, another black wooden crib.
Cherelle must have purchased it when I was at work. The very sight of it sent shivers up my spine.
Lights: off.
And the crying started again.
When the lights were on again, I felt dizzy and like I was going to throw up. Yet, I couldn’t look away.
I made it dark for the last time. Every step closer to the crib made my stomach throw acidic tickles at my throat. Staring into the void of the baby’s crib, it grabbed my finger with its tiny, frigid hand.
Screaming and screaming, I bolted out of the room, leaving the switch on like it was before I had come home. I slunk into bed and for the longest time stared unblinkingly at the silhouette of trees that wavered against my ceiling. Sleep didn’t come cheap that night.
The morning set a cold, tense atmosphere upon our small home. Before work, it was usually my turn to feed and tend to Vince as I usually let my wife sleep in. Though, things weren’t usual. Cherelle wasn’t in bed.
From the hall, I caught the back of her messy black hair as she stood by the front door’s mail slot.
“Good-early morning, honey.” I said, before groggily heading off to Vince’s room.
My breathing turned sharp - his crib was empty. Horror had followed me from the night before and come for me just like I knew it would. I darted out of the room and braced against a wall to turn at the unfinished room to the left to see another empty crib.
“Honey?” I called.
Cherelle didn’t turn, nor speak. She stared unblinkingly forward and downward by the front door, crying.
“Where’s Vincent?”
No reply.
I almost didn’t want to get closer. At that moment, I didn’t want to know where he was. I kept walking on.
She was a trembling, sobbing mess - I was close enough to see over her shoulder.
Between her hands shuffled bereavement flyers, letters of support from friends and family. Tears flowed down her cheeks and stained paper with dark blotchy circles.
Remembering why the cribs were empty, I cried, too.
I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tightly from behind. Her stomach beneath my hand was smooth, and the horrifying umbilical worm had gone away.

Part one can be found here

Teller woke as dawn crept in through the uncurtained window. The light stole over the remnants of the television set and sparkled within the shards of glass on the floor. He heard Alexandrov bustling about in the kitchen. He dressed and went to join him. Alexandrov was clearing away the dishes from the night before. The room smelt of strong, sour coffee.
“Would you like a cup”? Alexandrov asked, motioning to the drip brewer on the side."
“Please.”
“I’m afraid I’ve no milk.”
“That’s OK, I don’t take it.”
Alexandrov went to pour him a cup. Teller sat at the little kitchen table. Alexandrov placed the coffee in front of him and sat down. “I’m sorry for last night. I had been drinking too much, perhaps?”
“You’re quite alright.”
“It’s a habit, you know? Boredom. And now I need a new television set.”
“Really, it’s fine.” Teller sipped the coffee. It was like diesel. He spooned three sugars into it. “Where are we meeting Lysenko?” he asked.
Alexandrov coughed. “We can go see him at his home. It’s not far,” he said.
“You’ve no other appointments?”
“You’d be surprised how few for the only Doctor in a town of 100 or so. And, well, where we are… People don’t like to bother me. They have no money to pay. Though that does not matter, I try to tell them.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s pride.”
Teller sat and drank his coffee, looking about the kitchen. He could feel Alexandrov’s eyes on him.
“You’ve no complaints for a Doctor?” Alexandrov asked.
“Hmm?” Teller pretended not to hear.
“You just seem very nervous. I can’t have helped, of course, acting the wild man. It’s the fear, right? Of the radiation?”
“I realize it’s not a huge concern. For me at least, not…”
Alexandrov waved away the indiscretion.
“My own Doctor told me so, but it’s there, in the back of your mind” Teller stammered.
Alexandrov nodded.
“Tell me, how did you find it as you drove in? This place?”
“How did I find it?”
“Yes. It fascinates me. What people think of it. How they feel as they first come across it.”
“It’s, I mean, it’s indescribable.”
Alexandrov dropped another sugar into his coffee and pointed to Teller with his spoon.
“Try.”
He smiled a knowing smile. Without the smear of vodka across it, the man’s face was warm. Interested. It made Teller relax. The man was well suited to his position.
“It’s difficult. There’s nothing you can compare it to.”
“Thank God, huh?” Alexandrov crossed himself in mock fashion, grinning.
“Mmm.” Teller sipped his coffee and thought. “It’s quiet, but not peaceful.”
“I’d agree with that.”
“You’re alone but you feel intimidated.”
Alexandrov smiled and nodded.
“It’s like being lost.”
“Exactly!” Alexandrov roughly stubbed the cigar he was smoking into the ashtray. “Exactly. Christ! Lost. Take a drink, Mr. Teller!”
“So why are you still here?” Teller asked.
“I’m a Doctor. The only one they have. Or perhaps I’m just a martyr? It would explain the drinking.”
Teller took a sip of the coffee. His lip brushed against a chip in the rim of the cup and it sent a shiver through his brain. It shook loose an importunate question he had kept buried.
“Why do they stay? You don’t believe Lysenko will take the money; use it, do you? I don’t understand it. This place is killing them all.”
“Why are you here?” Alexandrov asked, crossing one leg across the other.
“To explain to him what’s happened and get him to sign the papers.”
“But you don’t speak Ukrainian. Or Russian. So why you?”
“People are scared to come here.”
“You’re scared to come here.”
“I suppose I just need the money.”
“But you’re a lawyer?”
“Not a successful one.”
“So you’re here because…?” he pulled a cigar from the battered tin and tapped it on the table edge, “… what else would you do.”
Teller wasn’t sure how to respond.
“We believe we have free will, Mr. Teller, but… So much of what we do, we do because it could not be otherwise. A stranger looking on would think us mad or reckless or foolish. But change is the thing human beings fear most. It reminds them of death. Doing other than that to which we are accustomed is unthinkable, even if what we are accustomed to, is horrific. I have seen people sit and watch whilst their bodies rot because, somehow, that is better than going to the Doctor with the possibility they might be told there is no cure. There is hope in ignorance, and ignorance is easily dismissed by new experience. People will always stay with the Devil that they know. You are here, Mr. Teller, it seems to me, because it was the natural outcome of everything that came before. ”
Teller finished his coffee. Thick, black dregs ringed the bottom of the cup.
“I’m going to go check on the car,” he said.
Teller walked out into the hall and towards the front door. Through the crack in the living room door he saw the dull glimmer of the glass strewn across the floor. He paused. He considered whether he should tell Alexandrov about the figures he’d seen.
There was a loud, sharp rap at the front door. Teller jumped and looked back towards the kitchen. Alexandrov called through to him;
“Do you mind? I’m putting on more coffee.”
Teller went to the door. As he reached for the handle there was another loud rap on the wood which made his hand leap back. A small voice called Alexandrov’s name. Teller opened the door. A boy stood there in the light drizzle. He looked at Teller with shy but determined eyes. He rattled out something in Ukrainian. All Teller caught was a name. He mimed “wait here” to the boy and walked to the kitchen. He heard footsteps on the tiles behind him and turned. The boy stopped and stood there, gazing at his shoes. Frowning, Teller turned back to the kitchen.
“Alexandrov? You have a guest.”
Alexandrov stepped out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. He looked to the child. His brow pulled down and his mouth hung a little agape. They spoke in Ukrainian. Clipped little sentences. The brief conversation went on as if Teller were not there, stood between them. As he leaned back against the panelled wood of the hallway the young boy nodded at something Alexandrov had said, turned, and ran out of the open front door.
“We have to go,” Alexandrov said. He went into the bedroom. Teller called after him;
“What about Lysenko?”
“He will have to wait, I’m afraid.”
When Alexandrov came out he was a carrying a shiny and cracked Doctor’s bag. He was heading outside. Teller followed.
“What’s happening? What did the boy say?”
Alexandrov left the door wide. Teller pushed it to as he followed him out to the car. There was no lock.
“Alexandrov!?”
Alexandrov was throwing the Doctor’s bag into the boot of the car.
“His cousin is pregnant. Was pregnant. The child is premature.”
Teller was getting in the passenger side.
“Should I go back and get my papers? Perhaps after…?” he asked.
Alexandrov revved the engine and the car skidded out on the gravel.
They were outside the village. Alexandrov stared out at the road through a spiderweb of cracks in the windshield. He didn’t speak. Teller watched him from the corner of his eye. The man’s eyes were bloodshot with their own spiderweb of cracks. Teller watched out of the passenger window.
A light drizzle soaked everything in the tired, inevitable way that drizzle does. The quiet, grey countryside rolled past. An abandoned petrol station’s signage displayed stubbornly pre-Gulf War pricing. Teller wiped some of the condensation from the window. It was like existing within the workings of a stopped watch. A desert of time. He saw movement out in the distance, beyond a small cluster of trees. As they moved past the trees he saw that it was a wild horse. It was galloping across an unploughed field. At this distance it appeared to be keeping pace with the car. Teller’s mind wandered, drawn into an eddie by the strange illusion.
“I cannot guarantee we will have to time to see Lysenko. If it’s bad,” said Alexandrov.
His voice snapped Teller back to reality.
“Do you assume it will be?”
“Round here, births can be difficult. Perhaps it will be bad.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll see. Maybe something can be arranged?”
Alexandrov was quiet for a moment. At last he spoke;
“I know you’re keen to have the job done and be gone. I have a duty.”
“I understand,” Teller replied.
Alexandrov checked the window and drew a cigar from the tin. He smacked the cigarette lighter on the dashboard with the palm of his hand. Teller had the feeling the excessive force was applied from experience.
“The radiation, it varies wildly,” Alexandrov began, the cigar clamped in his teeth. “It was carried by the wind and rain. My house…not so bad… I’ve a Geiger counter. Where we go today, though… Still, in the short term, you needn’t worry. You’ve looked like you’re walking barefoot on broken glass since you arrived.”
“Have you had any, negative, symptoms since the accident?” pursued Teller.
“Yes, I have cancer. I don’t suppose that that calms you any?” Alexandrov said, perfunctorily. He grinned to himself, a horrid sneer that pulled the lips back over tobacco stained teeth.
“I… I’m…” Teller stuttered.
Alexandrov waved a hand at him which then went to the cigarette lighter and pulled it free.
“This was from before.” Alexandrov gestured to him with the cigarette lighter. The filament was red hot. Teller smelled the air burning in the dusty old car and recoiled a little. “Long before the meltdown. You can put away the British mask that hides your terror.” Alexandrov laughed and lit his cigar, pushing the hot metal into the soft, dry leaves. Teller heard them catch and burn. “Renal. Nasty. It was progressing fairly viciously, but, since the accident, not so much.”
“Do you think it’s related?”
“Do I?” Alexandrov stared out into the rain. The windscreen wipers moved lethargically as they smeared the water across the glass. “No. No. It’s dumb coincidence”.
*
They were on the outskirts of Pripyat. The decaying tower blocks were like weathered tombstones, the same jaundiced colour as the nails on Alexandrov’s hand. In the foreground was a ferris wheel. Half alive, the cars rocked stuporously and the spokes rained flecks of rust. On the far horizon was The Sarcophagus. An uncomfortable, hot itch suffused Teller’s body at its sight. He opened the window. They were turning off now, down a rural road. Weeds poked though where the concrete had burst and torn. Teller marvelled, again, at how quickly Nature took back the frontline once Man had deserted his post.
They pulled up beside a small block of flats. They had been driving for some time. Teller wondered why it was the small boy who had been dispatched to fetch a Doctor? He wondered where the boy was now. They stepped out of the car. Teller’s breath blew in white clouds. Alexandrov threw his cigar on the ground and crushed it under his heel. He pulled a hip flask from his inside jacket pocket and drank.
Teller looked the building up and down. It was only three storeys, built from the same institutional, beige concrete and yellow tiles as the rest of the buildings around. Each flat had a small balcony, the bars that ran along the edges looked prison-like. The place was more like a bunker than a home. That uniform, utilitarian, vaguely military, Soviet style.
Alexandrov was heading in. Teller followed him into the foyer. The floor was dusty, littered with chips of paint from the neglected walls. Yellow, curled notices still clung to a noticeboard announcing the births and death of those long born or dead. The building smelled of damp cement and standing water.
A man came down the stair to meet them. He had on a torn, dirty jumper and, outside of it, wore a large, old crucifix on a delicate gold chain. He pumped Alexandrov’s hand briefly and turned to go back up the stair. Teller didn’t think he’d noticed him there. Alexandrov motioned that he should follow him. They climbed the stair and reached a concrete hallway. The only light came in through a small, frosted window at the end of it. Teller could hardly see his hand in front of his face. He followed the shadowy form of Alexandrov who followed the shadowy form of the man who bore the crucifix. Teller heard the faint cry of an infant, bitter, bitchy and wet.
They stepped into the apartment. Crumbling linoleum barely clung to, or covered, the concrete beneath. They went into a small kitchen. A samovar bubbled and whistled on the stove. On the kitchen floor was a metal washtub filled with steaming water, soap scum and white bedsheets. The water had a pink tinge. The man with the crucifix and Alexandrov spoke in Russian, too quickly for Teller to pick out a single word. Alexandrov wore a grave look. The man with the crucifix was growing agitated, his voice was rising in volume and pitch, starting to crack. Alexandrov placed a hand on his shoulder. The man’s eyes were sparkling. He looked at Teller, who looked away. No man wanted to look through tears at the pity of a stranger. A small, older, woman with a drawn face shuffled quietly into the doorway through which they’d entered. The man sniffed and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his dirty jumper. He and Alexandrov followed the old woman out into the hall and Teller stayed, staring deliberately out of the window.
The drizzle had stopped but the sky was a stubborn, gaunt grey. A plane lazily traced a contrail above The Sarcophagus. Teller imagined the listless passengers, gazing from the small windows. He wondered if they were aware of what they stared down on? He wondered if they realized they were flying through the ghost of a smoke that had changed tens of thousands of lives? If they saw the packs of wolves, tiny dots, that had started to repopulate the surrounding woods, seeking their prey in long single file? He considered the day of the accident. The confusion, the terror, the panic. Men who were turned into the walking dead by mere minutes of radiation exposure. A space on Earth, poisoned. Made too sick for life. Cursed for millennia. He imagined the sirens blaring, warning the already dying against death. He heard the sirens blaring. The rising, falling, desperate wail.
The sound was coming from a room just off the kitchen. Except, it wasn’t a siren. It was a child. The hurt, helpless, insatiable cry of an infant. He looked to where Alexandrov, the man with the crucifix and the old woman had exited. He heard muttering coming from the room. He wanted to call out to them. To wail. To raise a siren. But instead he stepped into the room from whence the sound of the child was coming.
It was sparse and dark, the thin curtains drawn. A teddy bear sat on the window sill. A film of dust gathered in its fur. Its glass eyes stared out from a head that limped to one side. A crib was pushed against the wall underneath. A shadow behind its bars writhed uncomfortably beneath a blanket. Soft little grunts and moans came from the darkness. Teller walked over to the crib, his footsteps unsettling the stale smell of dust. He peered down at the shuffling form.
A young woman’s scream echoed from the room out in the hall. Teller’s skin pulled tight and his heart leapt. He looked back over his shoulder. An answering cry from the crib below, again, jolted his unsteady heart. The sound was the most pathetic, mournful thing he had ever heard. Rising to the point where the breath was exhausted, breaking with a hitching sob and then the awful sucking of air. Looking down, the sound came from something that looked like living death. A baby. Barely a day old. Teller swallowed hard and placed a steadying hand on the edge of the crib. It was painful to look at it. The skin was a wasted, translucent white and a spider web of raw, blue veins bulged from the surface. The limbs were twisted and flapped ineffectually. But the face, by God the face… Teller’s hand gripped the rail and the cradle creaked and groaned. The head was lumpen and misshapen. Twice the size it should have been, it lolled from side to side. One eye was obscured by some tumour like growth, the other was not so much bloodshot as blood stained; the sclera and iris entirely scarlet, the pupil a clot.
The mouth was a puckered , drooling cavern, the tongue a black and blistered stone placed in the mouth. The child had kicked off its scant blanket. Teller could not discern it was a boy or a girl. He reached in and gingerly flipped the blanket back over the thing. Its wailing quieted a little. He looked back to the doorway and listened for any sign of Alexandrov. He looked back and saw that the pitiful creature had kicked its blanket free once more. He reached in to try and comfort it once more. A pale, mottled leg kicked out at his hand as it howled. He quickly pulled his hand free. He looked down one last time at the child. He turned and walked away from the crib, rubbing his hand on his jacket.
*
The car door slammed shut. Alexandrov sighed deeply and drew a cigar from its tin.
“How was the mother?” Teller asked.
“She’ll live. She should be in a hospital bed, but…” He shrugged and sighed again. “She’ll live, at least.”
The sun was already starting to drop from the sky. The days were short. The shadows seemed to deepen the heavy lines on Alexandrov’s face. Teller looked at his own face in the wing mirror.
They had spent a long time in the apartment. They had sat at the kitchen table whilst Alexandrov and the man with the crucifix spoke in Russian. Sometimes the pair got up and went in to see the sedated mother. When Teller was left alone with the old woman she bowed her head and muttered quietly to herself. Often she got up and went to see to the crying child when it wailed. He heard her softly singing some Russian lullaby to it. It happened until a point where the child was quiet for some time and the old woman got up and went in to it. He heard her singing the same quiet lullaby to it. When she re-entered the room and sat down, it was for the last time. The child did not cry again.
“What was wrong with the baby?” Teller now asked.
Alexandrov started the car. “A lot. Many things,” he sighed.
“To do with the radiation?”
Alexandrov shrugged. “I suppose. Probably. They are stupid. Chertovy idioty! Fucking Church!”
Alexandrov was silent as they drove back towards Pripyat. Teller stared out of the window. The ferris wheel was coming into view. Its silhouette stirred a grim memory in Teller. Something he had seen in some book. It looked like a breaking wheel.
They arrived back at Alexandrov’s house. He threw his medical bag down in the hall, its contents half spilling on the old, fading carpet. Teller was righting the mess as he heard the clinking of glasses. Alexandrov looked at him through the kitchen doorway.
“Leave that. Come drink,” he said.
Teller put down the instrument he was holding and went into the kitchen. Alexandrov was sat at the table. The last, rare light of evening was struggling through the dirty window. Alexandrov was pouring them both a drink.
“I…” Teller had hardly got the sound out when Alexandrov looked at him.
“Please?” he asked.
His eyes were tired and red. Teller sat down, quietly. He waited a long time for Alexandrov to speak. He sipped the vodka Alexandrov passed him in silence. He realized that Alexandrov would not speak at all if he did not prompt him. He was like a penitent awaiting the words of a priest.
“Who was the boy who came to the door?” Teller asked.
Alexandrov threw back his vodka. “Piotr.”
“Their son?”
“No. His parents live in Slavutych.”
“They were evacuated?”
“No. They stayed in The Zone. They had Piotr and then moved to Slavutych some years later, taking him. Around six months passed. And then the boy came back.”
“Alone?” Teller asked incredulously.
Alexandrov smiled. “Somehow. He is… a resourceful child”.
“What possesses a child to come here alone?”
Alexandrov frowned. “Excuse me?” he said.
“What would make a child run away to a place like this?”
“Ahh, possesses, I understand. Who knows? I have asked. His father was a drinker. Perhaps here he is safe?”.
“Safe? Here?” Teller exclaimed.
“Sipping vodka or slugging ether, they only differ by degrees.” Alexandrov said. “In cold light, such is the nature of survival for mankind.” He picked up his glass and laughed. “Cheers!”
Teller sipped his drink. He watched Alexandrov lighting one of his small cigars. Teller had given up years ago.
“I don’t suppose you have cigarettes about the place, do you?” he asked.
Alexandrov heaved himself to his feet. “Mmm, somewhere, yes.”
Alexandrov went out into the hall and then into his room. He came back and threw a soft packet of Russian cigarettes on the table.
“Thank you” Teller said.
Alexandrov sat down and winked. “Don’t tell your Mother.”
Teller pulled a wrinkled cigarette from the packet and took the offered light. He drew deep into his lungs. They were cheap, strong and stale. The smoke was like a column of fire running through his core. It was incredible, like a pillar filling a part of him his body had forgotten was empty.
It was dark and Alexandrov flicked on the overhead light. Teller blew a thick, grey, cloud of smoke. His head swam a little. He drank off the rest of his vodka and drew again on the cigarette. He spoke through the smoke, his lungs full and his voice laboured. An old habit.
“… will we see Lysenko tomorrow?” he said.
“Tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow.”
“You never explained properly the other night. Why you don’t think he’ll take the inheritance?” Teller asked.
“I explained. You just didn’t listen.” Alexandrov refilled their glasses and continued. “You can’t fathom why he would not leave. But most would no more fathom why you came. This blighted, poisonous place. Ask your nature of yourself, why you are here, why you hold that cheap vodka and bitter cigarette? That is why. And if someone were to ask why…?” Teller stubbed out the cigarette. “You would have no answer for them,” Alexandrov continued. Would never have an answer for them. It is the same for Lysenko. Partly it is fear, fear of change. It is more powerful, more guiding, than any man dares admit. But another part of why he stays, I don’t know, does it even have a name? Perhaps determinism? That is the real reason.”
Teller lit another cigarette. “I don’t think I understand,” he said.
Alexandrov coughed heavily and got up to spit in the sink. “It’s OK, I am too tired to tell it well. Perhaps I am wrong, anyway. We will see tomorrow.”
They sat for some time talking, smoking and drinking. It was Alexandrov who excused himself, this time. They were both very drunk. Teller felt a childish, bitter pride that he could still drink with the best of them.
Alexandrov waved his hand at the cupboard under the sink. “Help yourself to another bottle if you wish,” he said.
He mumbled something further; half English, half Russian, and stumbled out towards his bedroom. Teller poured himself another glass, emptying the bottle. He thought about the figures he had seen on the television, emerging from The Sarcophagus. How the television set had switched itself on. How it had exploded. From a safe, drunken, distance he wondered how little impact this had had on him. Perhaps Alexandrov was right, maybe fear was so old and constant and vital we simply accepted it, no matter what strange form it took? Eventually he, too, stumbled out to his cot bed. The scattered glass still littered the floor. The moonlight that shone in and sparkled in the shards. Teller lay down on the cot and watched the light from beneath heavy eyelids. The air was cold but he didn’t feel it beneath the drink. He fell asleep.
*
He dreamt of her. In the dream he was laying in the bed they had shared, half awake. The window was open and a light morning breeze came in and brushed the inside of his wrist. He heard her getting ready to leave for work. He smelt her perfumed hair. He imagined the morning air smoothing its way over her bare hips and shoulders as she dressed. He heard her sing lightly to herself as she brushed her long, red hair. He shifted in and out of dreams within dreams and this dreamlike reality, finding one no more pleasurable than the other. He felt her move nearer. At the end of an outstretched arm his hand opened. He felt the soft tip of her finger in his palm. Her skin was like frozen marble. The bitter cold ran up the veins in his wrist and shocked his heart. He opened his eyes with a start and fell deeper into the dream.
The eyes that looked back were milky orbs set in bruised sockets. He realized he was dreaming but could no more wake than he could move within that dream. The figure stood at the side of the bed with its finger pressed into his palm. It looked back at him from behind the shadow cast by its shroud. The room had fallen into an unearthly gloom, as if the moon had passed before the sun. The figure maintained its strange vigil, its face unmoving, its eyes unblinking, its chest neither rising nor falling. It was the shape from the vision of The Sarcophagus. The pale, mossy skin. The strange green aura about it. The awful blanket of loneliness that seemed to emanate from something in its countenance or stature. It seemed to move in and out of focus, waves of grey static rippling across it. Teller tried to call out. A noise to wrench him back into the living world, but his voice was as frozen and fettered as his limbs.
Its expression unchanging, still holding his gaze, the shrouded figure’s icy digit started to trace a path in his open palm. A droning noise began to simultaneously spread from the core of his mind and seep in from without, as if he took it in with each shallow breath. The noise rose in volume and pitch until it took on a sickening redolence. It was an air raid siren. The finger in his palm continued to draw its slow, deliberate pattern. The air and his whole being were now subsumed by the howling, scalding noise of the siren. Its volume rose inexorably until the dim room seemed to jerk and thrum from the noise and he perceived he could feel the trembling waves of sound skate over the very lenses of his wide, terrified eyes. The air, which before had been chill, seemed to heat with the vibrations. His skin prickled and tensed, drawing cold sweat. The siren blared. The air warped. The figure smiled and clutched his hand and then there was only white light.

My son, Richie, was almost 3 years old with beautifully thick and curly brown hair that seemed to hang in place flawlessly without any serious effort. He was a growing, healthy, and happy child, with a rapidly developing vocabulary, as any parent would hope for. That, however, was before Frank seeped into our lives.
Before Frank, the boy loved talking anyone's ear off, running around like a maniac, and putting on super hero masks while pretending to fight bad guys. That’s why when he first started talking about “The Monster,” I never thought much of it as it’s expected for children his age to start developing an overactive imagination.
“Daddy do you see the Monster?” Richie said for what must be the 7th time in the past couple weeks.
“Yeah Buddy,” I replied, with that encouraging, yet slightly sarcastic voice that parents make when talking to young children, “I can see him.”
“What’s his name, daddy?”
“Uh.... Frank,” I told him, lazily spouting out the first generic name that popped into my mind. Richie then rambled off to the next subject, and talked about something like Spider-Man or Ninja turtles beating up bad guys. You know, typical little boy stuff.
The Frank sightings seemed to escalate from there. Richie would ask me or his mother if we could see Frank over there standing in the corner, or mention that Frank was in his room last night. It was at this point that I started to feel a bit of concern, it didn’t seem to be a huge deal, but it was starting to get a bit, well off putting. Frank was never playing, he was just, there. I decided to ask Richie some questions about what I believed to be his imaginary friend he called Frank, but I’d wait until the next time he brought it up on his own.
That opportunity arose one day as I picked him up from daycare and we were driving home. He had mentioned that Frank was at the sandbox that day.
“Is Frank your friend?” I asked him.
“No,” He responded, “Frank is a monster.
“A Monster?”
“Yeah, Frank is a monster. He’s a nice monster though. He looks funnnny”
Deciding to dig a little deeper I asked, “Does Frank play with you?”
“No.”
“Well then what does he do?”
“Frank watches us.”
He said it with a matter of fact demeanor that left me even more unsure of this weird situation. I’m a young first time parent in my mid 20’s, and I had no idea how to handle the Imaginary Friend situation. Should a parent play along, or be more realistic? I really didn’t want to hinder the development of his imagination, but I also wasn’t sure how far I felt comfortable with this going.
“Sometimes he talks.” Richie continued after a short pause. “At night when everyone is asleep.”
Oh great, he’s dreaming about Frank too. “Well uh, what does Frank like to talk about?”
“He said we shouldn’t move to a new house.”
What did he just say? That last shocking sentence made me feel unsettled at best. We were getting ready to put our townhouse on the market, as we were ready to upgrade to a larger home. The weird thing is, my wife and I hadn’t spoken to our son about this. We were waiting to tell him until we had found the house that we would purchase, to make the situation easier for a toddler to grasp. Feeling creeped out and somewhat awkward, I immediately changed the subject by asking Richie if he wanted a cookie. It may be a cheap trick, but any child will immediately forget about anything of the moment you bring up the possibility of a cookie.
Although the subject had been changed, my mind began to wonder. Was my son speaking with some sort of ghost? I believed that ghosts might exist, but had never seen any sort of significant proof. How did he know that we were moving?
Later that night, after Richie was in bed, I explained to my wife the conversation that had taken place in the car. She, however, seemed unfazed and somewhat skeptical. She blew it off by saying, “Oh I’m sure he just overheard us. That kid never goes to bed and is more attentive than you think.”
I suddenly realized how insane I must have sounded to think that some sort of ghost was speaking with our child. It almost seemed funny, to look back and realize that I was actually worried. Perhaps my belief in the paranormal had caused me to jump to conclusions too easily without any real rationality. I was a first time parent after all, with almost no previous experience dealing with small developing children. I reminded myself to calm down and stay rational.
Things carried along, business as usual, for the next several weeks. Richie's mentions of Frank varied from 1 to 3 times a day. I simply played along with the boy and his stories of his imaginary friend. We packed our things and moved to our new house, which came with a wonderful swing set for which Richie was ecstatic. In this house, I felt certain that it could be our forever home. I believed that we would be happy here.
It had been 3 weeks since we had moved in, and we had just celebrated Richie's 3rd Birthday. The boy was flourishing, increasing his outstanding vocabulary and easily identifying all of his shapes and colors. He could even count to 50 now. The best thing was, I hadn’t heard the name, “Frank.” Mentioned since we moved it. Not once.
Not once, that is, until a mid-Saturday morning in the early onset of fall. The leaves were starting to rest on our new backyard lawn, and I once again found myself pushing Richie on his swing set. Back and forth, back and forth, with the rhythmic squeak of the swing set. This is when everything took a turn for the worst.
“Daddy Look!” Richie exclaimed. “There’s Frank, he’s here now!” Richie pointed to the far back corner of the yard, right next to the shed. As I turned my head to look, I thought I actually saw something, something that appeared to be a large silhouette. Before I had time to fully comprehend what I had seen, I heard the thud of Richie hitting the ground, followed by the cries of pain
A few hours later the doctor entered the room with the X-rays in hand, confirming his suspicions of a broken arm. Luckily it was one clean break, no setting of the bones would be needed. Although my son was going to be okay, I was livid with myself for allowing this to happen.
How could I have been so stupid as to look away from my child while he was on the swing set, right after he let go of the chain to point at His imaginary friend. This whole situation could have been avoided had I not been so superstitious about this damned imaginary friend. But wait, I HAD seen something, hadn’t I? It was only for a split second, but it was there. A tall, large shadow of a man with deformed head. Ugh, my eyes must really have been playing tricks on me. I brushed it off and eventually managed to fall asleep, pushing the parental guilt off to deal with the following day.
Sleep proved to be just as unsettling as the day’s events had been though. My dreams brought me memories of the recent past. The swing set, Richie playing in our old house, having family over for holiday celebrations, even the day we brought baby Richie home for the first time. Except that hideous monstrous silhouette was there, in every single memory. Watching from the corner, standing behind our guests, leaning over the crib. Always there, always watching.
I awoke suddenly, bolt upright in my bed. I rarely remembered even having dreams, but this dream was so vivid, so clear, that every detail now haunted my thoughts. Needless to say, falling back asleep was not an option. I had to go do something to set my mind at ease.
Disturbed, I went over to check on my little Richie, who was supposed to be asleep. Partially to comfort myself from that horrendous nightmare. To my surprise, I found the boy wide awake. When he saw me peeking through the doorway, he asked, “Daddy, where is Hell?”
“What?” I asked in disbelief, sure that I must have misheard.
“Hell,” he said, “where is Hell?”
I was not prepared to answer these kinds of questions to my child yet, he was so young. I myself have never really been sure what I believe about this heaven and hell stuff, having never been religious. But I gave him the best, simple explanation I could muster
“Well, bud, nobody really knows where Hell is, but some people believe that Hell is a place where bad people go after they die.”
“So was your daddy a bad guy?”
“Excuse me?” This last question caught me off guard.
“Frank told me that your daddy is in Hell because he hurt those kids.”
My heart instantly plummeted, providing a sensation as if it had collided with my stomach. After skipping a beat, or three, my heartbeat resurged with the powerful thump worthy of a bass drum.
How the HELL could he have known about that? It was true that my father had hurt children. Killed them, actually. When I was young, about 12 years old, my dad had stormed out of the house in a drunken stupor. The police came knocking at about 5:00 AM the next morning to inform us that he had been identified as involved in a multiple fatality car accident, and they needed my mother to identify the body.
I remember that morning vividly. My mother was not aware that I had woken, as I hid around the corner listening to the police tell my mother of my father's demise. Needless to say, It was him. As details emerged, it became apparent that my father had drunkenly caused a car accident, slamming into a family's minivan as they were coming home from a fishing trip. My father, along with the two children in the backseat of the other car, were killed instantly. As much as my mother tried to shield me of the events, it was all over the news. I was 12 after all, and I knew how to use the internet. It didn’t take long for me to know what my dad had done.
That being said, there is absolutely NO WAY that my son would have known this story. My mother remarried YEARS before Richie was born. My stepfather is the only person my son has ever known as grandpa, and I never discussed the situation, at all.
At this point I realized, without a doubt, that Frank was more than just an imaginary friend, and it angered me. Furiously, I told my son, “No more talking to Frank, he’s not welcome here.”
“But Frank is nice.” Richie pleaded
“No, Frank is not nice, Frank is bad and if you see him again you need to tell him to leave!”
“NOOOOO!” Richie roared. Only the voice that came out did not belong to Richie. It was a sound that no toddler could be capable of making. It was a deep, dark, horrendous, malicious, and rocky voice that would be fitting of a ware-wolf, or a monster, or, or, a demon.... What's worse is the fiery, despicable, evil look of pure hatred that was in my sons eyes, although only for a moment, it was there.
The expression on his face disappeared, as quickly as it arrived, and Richie was Richie again. It was as if he had no idea what had just happened. He seemed totally fine, but I was terrified. Terrified of my only son, or whatever had just taken ahold of him
“Can I watch a movie?” He asked, completely unfazed by the event. It was as if he didn’t even realize what had happened.
“Uh.... of course, buddy,” I managed to respond with a shaky voice. I carried him to the living room, and put on Lion King for him. After he fell asleep in the next 30 minutes, I went into the shower, and simply fell apart as I broke into tears. What the hell had just happened? What was this, this monstrous thing who grabbed a hold of my son?
As I tried to explain the events to my wife the ensuing morning, she simply didn’t believe me. I can’t even blame her, I realized that it sounded crazy but I KNEW that it had indeed happened. If only she had believed me. However, we had very little time to talk about it, as Richie awoke that morning with a heavy fever. Originally at 101 degrees Fahrenheit, his temperature rapidly rose to 103 within just a couple short hours. As I picked my son up to take him to the ER, I saw him, Frank, out of the corner of my eye. Watching.
Richie was admitted immediately. The doctors scrambled to explain his condition of rapid deterioration. I sat by, watching as my son became pale, and his energy was fading. Fast. Yes, my son was fading. He was... Dying.
As the doctors ran tests on top of tests, I took matters into my own hands. I had 3 different priests arrive, all of them simply offered my son a simple blessing, but I could tell that they too were skeptical of me. I tried desperately to get my wife and the doctors to listen to me. For 2 days I pleaded with them to understand that I knew what was wrong, that there was a malicious, if not demonic, entity feeding on my boy, sucking away his life energy. Why or how, were questions in which the answer far past my understanding, but it WAS happening.
I could even see him regularly now, that evil thing, standing in the shadows. But alas, I was met with skepticism, and my wife along with the doctors ended up bringing in a psychologist to have some sort of intervention for ME. They tried to tell me that I was having some sort of mental break from the stress of a sick, possibly dying, child. I stormed out that room desperately furious. I realized in this moment that trying to explain the truth to people would be of no avail. I had only one last idea of what could be done, what HAD to be done to save my Richie.
I stayed awake in the hospital room that night. It had been almost 3 days now since we arrived at the hospital. Richie has been moved to the ICU, with the doctors still baffled. All their tests had only shown what wasn’t wrong with Richie. They didn’t understand, but I knew. I knew what was wrong with my son.
I sat there, waiting, for the demon called Frank to appear. I stayed awake until about 2:00 AM, and suddenly there he was. I could see the shadow standing over Richie's bed. He stood Calmly, but with an evil lust for the last little bit of energy that was keeping my son alive.
“I’ll make you a deal.” I said with a stern and confident done. The entity slowly turned his head until he was facing me. I could see him now, more clearly than ever. Richie was right, Frank truly was a monster. A large one, standing at some 8 feet tall, with skin the color of ash. He had the same overall shape of a Human, but with hideous, pointy features. His Long, narrow arms hung down to his knees, ending with fingers 6 inches or more in length. And his face, his ungodly face was the most hideous of all. Frank had no mouth in his ashen, peeling face. That's when I noticed his eyes. His eyes were the most terrorizing feature about him. There was no white in his eyes, just darkness. A darkness darker than any black color that one can comprehend.
“I’ll make you a deal.” I said again, forcing myself to stay steady in the presence of this creature. “Leave the boy alone, forever, and you can have me.”
The Demon tilted his head as if perplexed, contemplating my offer. After a minute that seemed like hours, He straightened up and spoke. Not with his mouth, as he didn’t have one. No, he put the sound directly into my skull. In That deep, evil voice that had previously come from my son just the other night. “It’s a deal.” And In an instant, he was gone.
The next morning, Richie's fever had subsided, just like that. The color had returned to his skin and he was eating solid food and laughing like a toddler should for the first time in days. The Doctors admitted that they were baffled, but happily discharged Richie later that day. My wife calls it a miracle, but only I understand the dismal truth.
I can feel it starting, the Illness, or whatever you call it. My fever is spiking, and I can’t stop sweating. My energy is leaving me, I barely managed to walk up the stairs into the office. Even now, I feel as if I might pass out. I cannot hide my condition from my wife for too much longer. It is only a matter of time until I am the one in the hospital bed, as the doctors try tirelessly to explain what is happening. Only I won’t make a miraculous recovery as Richie had. No, I’m certain that I will die. That was the deal I had made after all. I gave up my own life to save my son.
But, before I do perish, I’m putting this story on every parenting and paranormal form I can find on the web.
I KNOW how this sounds, I realize it seems crazy. But I’m reaching out to all parents who might be seeing the signs. I PLEAD with you, please do NOT play along if your child has some sort of imaginary friend. Stop it BEFORE it’s too late. Find someone who can expel that evil from your home and your child. But PLEASE, for the sake of you children, I beg for you to not allow this creature to take ahold of your child.
HorrorsOfStaniforth

My family came from a small village in the old country. The kind where traditions that we call “cute” or “folksy” today were followed to the letter. Even though my parents immigrated to the country where I now live years before I was born, my childhood is filled with memories of my parents telling me what to do or not do for some strange, arcane reason.
Not that I’m complaining, of course. Some of these traditions were fun, especially as a kid. I never had to make my bed before school, because doing that gives you bad luck and I would never know when I’d have a pop quiz. On nights before I had a big test at school, mom and dad would make me a big bowl of porridge and jam, and I would stick my face in it for good luck as they would laugh and hug me even though I’d make a mess of their clothes.
Of course, other superstitions were less fun or more confusing.
“Don’t whistle inside the house. You’ll lose all your money.” Mom would say.
“Don’t put keys on the glass table.” Dad would say.
“Go put bread in the neighbors’ yard so that the birds will circle their house instead of ours.” Dad would also say. “They’re not our people, it won’t affect them.” He would say with a smile and a wink.
The one tradition that they held far above all the others though, was to never violate guests’ right. Anytime anyone would show up at our front doorstep: neighbors, girl scouts, missionaries, whoever you can imagine, they would be invited inside, and immediately presented with a plate of bread and salt, water, and polite conversation, as well as anything else they might ask for. It often made for interesting, if not awkward, situations in our family home.
Eventually, I grew up and left my parents’ home for college, and every time I would come home for a visit, I would be greeted with a plate of homemade bread and salt, and warm hugs from my parents asking me to tell them crazy stories from college. When I eventually got engaged, I brought my future wife, Lindsay, to my parents’ home to find them waiting for us at the front door, my mother holding that same ornate plate covered with bread and salt, and both of them telling my fiancée in their broken English how happy they were for the both of us.
Years after I had gotten married, my wife had told me the great news that we were going to have our first child. Towards the end of her pregnancy my parents came to visit so they could be there when their first grandchild would be born, and this time, it was my turn to greet them with bread and salt. The bread was store bought, and the salt was that cheap discount kind that you get at the bottom shelf of the grocery store. They smiled, dipped the bread into the salt, and ate it happily before hugging and kissing me. Even after all these years, I was still their little boy.
My daughter, Lily, was born a healthy girl. I was always convinced she was special. She started to smile far before any baby would, and always seemed to be so alert. I was convinced that she would grow up to be some kind of genius. After a couple of months of raising our child in an apartment, we decided it was about time to find a real house for her to grow up in. We went out into the country, and after searching around, we found the perfect house for us to raise Lily in. After negotiating and closing, we found ourselves moving everything that we owned into our new house.
From first glance, everything seemed ordinary. The houses were nice and spacious, and each property had a couple of acres to it. The neighbors were close by, but not so close that you felt smothered or that you were being constantly watched by someone in the neighborhood. It was all to change when we had our first visit from a neighbor. Lindsay was cradling a crying Lily, trying to get her to sleep, when the doorbell rang. Not wanting to risk the doorbell being rung again and possibly irritating Lily further, I went to answer it to see a man wearing country clothes and a cowboy hat, accompanied by a woman, who I assumed was his wife, holding a dish of some kind. I opened the door and stepped out.
“Howdy there.” The man said, extending his arm for a handshake, which I accepted. “My name’s Victor, and this is my wife Marlene.” He said, introducing himself.
“Uhh, hi.” I said, obviously tired from the move and from taking constant care of Lily. “I’m Sasha. Sorry, my life Lindsay is inside with our baby.”
“Oh don’t worry about it, the Mrs. and I know how it is. We have three of our own.” Victor said in his loud booming voice, throwing his arm around his wife who was smiling uncomfortably. “Now I won’t waste any more of your time, we just came by to drop off this casserole to welcome you into the neighborhood.” Victor continued as Marlene extended her hands to pass me the casserole dish. It did smell great. At that point my upbringing kicked in.
“Would you like to come inside?” I asked. Lindsay would kill me for letting anyone in while we were still unpacking, but I just couldn’t bring myself to break this superstition I was raised with. After escorting Victor and Marlene to my kitchen, I put out a plate of bread and salt. I got confused looks from them, but they subsided after I also put out some water, whisky and the casserole that Marlene had made. We made small talk for a bit, and at some point Lindsay did come down with Lily to meet them. After another half hour of some awkward getting to know each other, Victor and Marlene got up to leave, saying something about getting some housework done before the week started.
As Marlene left, Victor told her to go ahead so that he could tell me about something that he had forgotten to bring up. Marlene became visibly uncomfortable and left without another word. Victor turned to me, and the large smile he had on all afternoon had left.
“Now, um. There’s something you should know about this neighborhood.” He began. “It’s very safe and has the nicest folks you’ll ever meet, but every now and again...” He trailed off, not knowing exactly how to continue with what he wanted to say. “Um…Every now and again, something comes by. We’re…we’re not exactly sure what it is.” He continued on. I didn’t understand what he was saying.
“What do you mean something?” I asked.
“Well, that’s just it. We’re not sure what it is. It ain’t human, I can tell you that much.” Victor explained.
“Is it some kind of animal?”
“No…It’s…It’s hard to explain really. It ain’t anything natural I can tell you that much. Now the important thing to remember is that it’ll never hurt you or anything. It only comes around once in a blue moon, and it’ll just kinda knock at your door. When it happens, I usually just pull the blinds down and turn the TV volume up. It goes away eventually.”
At that point I had no clue what to say. I just stared at Victor as if he would burst out laughing, saying that it was all just a joke that they like to play on the new neighbors. He didn’t though. As we just stood there in silence, he gave me a pat on the back and walked out the front door.
We never brought it up again. Life moved on, and we got settled in our new home, and we even became good friends with Victor and Marlene over the next few months after our initial encounter. Lily kept growing, and I could have sworn that she looked more and more like her mother every day. As we neared her first birthday, Lily started to become fussier and fussier. At first, we chalked it up to things such as teething or nightmares, but it only became worse and worse. Then, on the night of her first birthday, we awoke to shrieks coming from her bedroom. We raced to her crib and found her crying, with nothing we tried soothing her. It became very obvious to us: she was in pain.
We raced to the emergency room, where they took us in and ran all sorts of test on our girl. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a stern-faced doctor walked into the room. He asked us to sit down. I can’t remember the start of the conversation; all I can remember is the word that caused the world around us to crash.
“Cancer.” He went on to explain how the x-rays had shown a rather large, highly inoperable tumor on Lily’s brain. He went over our options, explained to us that it was within our rights to try chemotherapy, but given the size of the tumor as well as Lily’s young age, how it was almost certain to not have an effect. After the doctor left, we sat in that hospital room in silence for what appeared to be hours, then silently packed up our things, took Lily and drove back home in complete silence.
As soon as we entered the house, Lindsay left for our bedroom and shut herself in there, while I set Lily down on her baby chair in the living room, after which I sat down in the kitchen and fought back tears. I sat there all day barely moving for hours, getting up only to use the bathroom and to soothe or feed Lily when needed. This painful routine continued for days, with hardly a word being spoken in the house. I was beginning to wonder if mine and Lindsay’s relationship would be able to survive. I called my parents in tears and they promised that within a few days they would be there to help us out.
On the seventh day after Lily’s diagnosis, Lindsay was in the bedroom as per usual, while I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at nothing while Lily was sitting in her baby chair in the living room. I hardly even noticed that the sun was setting until the bottom floor of the house was pitch dark. As soon as I had flicked the light switch on, I heard a knocking at the door. I was in no mood to entertain visitors, so I just sat back down at the kitchen table.
The knocking wouldn’t stop. One minute. Two minutes. After three minutes, I had lost my patience completely, and I got up to tell whoever was at the door to buzz off. It had been a while since I had actually spoken, so as I walked up to the door I carefully rehearsed in my head exactly what I would say. Once I had turned the know and opened the door, I stopped dead in my tracks, with my mouth agape.
What stood there was definitely not human, or at least not anymore. It had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. It also had a mouth, but no eyes or nose. It wasn’t wearing any clothes, and all its flesh was a blackened color, and appeared to have a slimy texture. Whatever it was, it gave off a foul stench, so much so that it took every ounce of strength I had to not vomit right there.
I stood there, in front of this…creature for I’m not entirely sure how long. Once I had come to terms with the fact that this wasn’t a nightmare or hallucination, I tried to figure out what to do.
“Should I go get the neighbors and ask them to bring their gun?” I thought. “Should I run inside, lock the doors and hide?” I continued to stand there and think, half expecting what it was to at some point just lunge at me and kill me on the spot.
To this day, I’m not entirely sure what caused me to do what I did. I must have been insane. I must have thought that my daughter is going to die anyway, and that I might as well go too. Instead I just stepped back past the doorway into my house, never taking my eyes off the creature. Once I was in the house, I stepped to the side and gestured with my hand. ”Come in.”
The creature took a few steps, slowly at first, but then picked up the pace to the point where it walked at the speed of a normal person, and then made it was past the doorway and into my house.
“I’m insane. I’m insane. I’m insane.” I kept thinking to myself as I walked into the kitchen, feeling the creature’s presence behind me. I turned around, and there enough, it was standing in my kitchen, having followed me in. Hands trembling, I reached into the cupboard and took out the old plate that my mother had gifted us when we had gotten married. From the pantry next to the cupboard, I took out a few slices of black bread, and poured a generous amount of salt onto the unoccupied portion of the plate.
With my hands still shaking, and salt spilling from the side, I set the plate down on the table in front of where it was standing. It didn’t take any of the bread or salt, and I wasn’t even sure whether it could eat, to be honest.
At that moment, Lily started crying. With everything that had been happening, I completely forgot that she was still in her baby chair in the living room. I saw the creature move its head in the direction of the living room. At that moment I had started to regret what I had done. Even if my daughter was terminally ill, I didn’t want her to die like this.
For what seemed like an endless amount of time, the creature had its head turned towards the living room, listening to Lily’s cries. I was ready to attack at any second if I saw it move an inch in her direction. Instead, it slowly turned its head towards the plate of bread and salt, took a slice of the bread, and ate it in one bite, bearing its rotten, yellow teeth. Once it had finished, it turned its head in my direction, gave me a nod, and headed in the direction of the door. The moment it stepped past the doorway, Lily’s cries stopped, and I watched it disappear into the darkness.
I stood there stunned, not knowing exactly what had just happened. After coming to my senses, I ran to close and lock the door, and ran to grab Lily. When I had picked her up, I had noticed that she was smiling. It was the first time she had smiled in weeks at that point. I cradled her the entire night, expecting her to start crying from pain again at some point. But she didn’t.
As the days went by, Lily seemed to always be in a pleasant mood. Soon, it came time to take Lily in to the doctor to examine our options once again with Lindsay joining us. I decided not to tell Lindsay what had happened that night, figuring she was burdened with enough as it was. For the first time since we had gotten the terrible news, we appeared to be a family again.
We sat in the waiting room, expecting to hear bleak news once again. When the same doctor emerged from before, he didn’t have the stern face he had the past week. Instead, his face was visibly confused.
“Complete remission.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The doctor explained how they had run each test three times to be completely sure, because they had no clue how it was possible. A tumor that big to just disappear within a week was supposed to be impossible. We returned home that day with our happy, healthy girl with a new outlook on life.
Lily is now almost a teenager, and I’m grateful for everyday I have with her.
I won’t pretend to say I have all the answers of life. I don’t know if there’s a God, I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. But I can tell you this:
Never turn away a guest.

Thom sat in the head shrinker’s office. Dr. Norvak had painted the walls in soothing pastels while muzak pumped through hidden speakers softly as to be almost inaudible. It was meant to be soothing but it grated on Thom’s already frayed nerves. Thom had heard somewhere that the pastel colors were supposed to put patients at ease. Maybe it even worked but most people didn’t have some awful thing under their bed every night.
Thom wondered if places like this, doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, and other medical places all consulted the same interior decorator. Bland colors with near identical boring artwork, a sailboat or a Norman Rockwell’s “The Runaway”, and the same six months out of date magazines. He could finally look and see who won the Super Bowl back in February. In Thom’s opinion all medical and medical related offices should have the same kind of décor, not this, more honesty. Thom had a strong dislike for modern medicine, doctors in general, and psychologists in specific.
All medical offices needed relocation to basements with bare stone walls that were always damp for no discernable reason despite the torches burning in sconces. The patients waiting in the office should be chained to the walls while the doctors and staff walked around topless with black leather hoods. Because that’s what these places really were; torture chambers.
Why try to hide it? Why lie? Might as well let people know what they were in for. Honesty, personal accountability was in short supply these days.
The only good thing Thom could see was the furniture was all high enough the light fully illuminated underneath. There were few shadows. None under the chairs or couches in the waiting room nor in the inner sanctum. He expected the sanctum to be dimly lit, shadowy, a million different places something might grab him, drag him into the dark.
Thom refused the psychologists offer to pull the blinds. The sun in his face was a relief. Warm, comforting, safe. There couldn’t be enough light.
Thom hadn’t shaved in days and his face was covered in stubble. Likewise, his hair was greasy, unkempt, in turn clinging in limp clumps or standing on end. Dark circles surrounded his sunken bloodshot eyes. His handshake with the doctor was quick and his palms were sweating. An aura of body odor around him Thom tried to hide underneath a heavy application of deodorant.
Thom looked like what he was: a man on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. His body and mind were preparing to collapse from exhaustion. Lack of sleep was literally killing him.
Thom hadn’t had a decent night sleep in four months. He was starting to hallucinate. It was under the bed he shared with Libby through ten pretty good years of marriage.
Libby didn’t seem to notice or maybe it wasn’t bothering her. Little Marion didn’t seem to be bothered either. She went to bed with no more than the usual two-year-old amount of fuss. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. Thom wasn’t a saint and never made the claim.
Hey, he was human. What was he supposed to do? Say no?
In ten years of marriage to Libby he had been a decent husband to her, maybe he had been a little distant, and he was completely devoted to little Marion. Marion was his miracle. His low sperm count made it unlikely Libby would ever conceive.
The swimmers he did have were too much like him, lackadaisical. Unmotivated and unambitious they swam lazily. Libby called that lazy streak Thom time. He wasn’t lazy, he liked to do things at his own pace.
That thing under the bed couldn’t be dealt with in Thom time. It had to be handled soon. He couldn’t go much longer without sleep. When he first started hearing it he thought maybe there was a rodent in his bedroom. Foolishly he had gotten out of bed, set his feet down RIGHT BESIDE THE MATTRESS. He had no idea why he was even still here.
He fetched the flashlight from the kitchen and was coming up the stairs pretending to be a Jedi wielding a lightsaber. That’s when he saw It. Thom had turned his head toward his bedroom, blocking a laser blast in spectacular, effortless fashion. The underside of his bed was illuminated for a split second. It was under there. Looking at him. Wiry hair and pointed teeth. But in that split second, Thom saw its eyes. Red and horrible and greedy as the depths of hell. Staring hungrily at Thom. And Thom knew that if he went back to bed it would grab him by the ankle and jerk him into some awful unknowable darkness.
He ran back down the stairs flashlight and thoughts of Jedi forgotten. He had his hand on the doorknob unsure of where he was going. Anywhere that thing wasn’t worked for him. Then he thought about Marion. Imagining that thing skulking down the hall toward his sweet daughter’s bedroom. His cowardice would condemn his little girl.
He had to stay so it would leave his baby girl alone. Thom didn’t think about his wife that long first night. It was under his bed mere feet from Libby and she never entered his mind until the sun began to rise. He could hear it moving. There would be an occasional hiss of course hair moving against the underside of the box springs. Occasionally Thom heard it snort like the snot in the things nose was making breathing difficult. It was letting him know it was still waiting for him to come back to bed.
As the sun rose Thom began to feel a little silly. There were no such things as monsters. There certainly weren’t any underneath his bed. He was a grown man and such fears were for children. He wasn’t a child he was a man and he was going to act like a man; terrors of the night be damned. He marched determined not to acknowledge the creeping fear rising up his spine drawing the skin of his testicles tight.
He was going to march confidently into his bedroom, kiss his wife good morning, get dressed, eat breakfast, have coffee, and go to work. All normal boring adult things. No room for monsters under the bed.
Any minute now his legs would begin to move again.
The rising sun crept through his window and slid across the floor chasing away the shadows in the bedroom. Golden morning light, safe morning light, pushed the shadows further under the bed causing those remaining to thicken and blacken. The sunlight fought its way just underneath the bed and Thom heard a low growl. The sound was more the release of breath, like through a snotty nose.
Every night since had led Thom through the same routine. After dinner they gave Marion a bath. Then they would put her jammies on her and lay her in new big girl bed. Her outgrown crib replaced with a new toddler bed. Marion took to it right away telling them, “I go big girl sleep.”
After Marion had her fill of stories and drifted off into big girl sleep, he and Libby headed downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes. They never started the dishwasher until Marion had her bath. They might share a glass of wine. Thom would stream some music through Spotify or Pandora or on occasion Slacker Radio while they did the dishes. Thom would make a show of knowing all the lyrics, albums, and bands that came on. Libby pretended to be impressed.
After the dishes, Libby would take a quick shower and the pair would spend a couple of hours watching television or playing Diablo 3. Nothing satisfied like finding a fresh new piece of epic loot. A love of dungeon crawlers and loot hunts were a thing that had brought them together in the beginning of their relationship. They had their favorites, she still liked Minecraft. Thom liked role playing, action role playing, and shooter games but they shared a common passion for dungeon delving.
During the childless years they spent most of their free time enjoying worry free sex and hunting for loot. Entire weekends could easily be spent naked with a bottle of wine, a pizza, two controllers, and rumpled sheets. They were good years even without children but then Libby announced one morning she was pregnant.
She did it while making breakfast. Pass the butter, thanks. How much bacon do you want? Three cakes should do me. We’re going to have a baby. No big deal. Thom had burst into tears and then they had laughed at him. It was a good morning.
Marion had filled a void that Thom didn’t know had been growing between Libby and himself. She was an easy baby. She smiled and laughed all the time. She loved her mommy, but she was without a doubt her daddy’s girl. Thom could always make her go to sleep where she wouldn’t for Libby, or get her to eat, or most importantly he could get her to stop crying when her mother couldn’t. Marion would look at him and grin, hold his face in her tiny little hands, and whisper, “Daddy.” All the love in the world lived in her shiny face and that single breathy word.
He couldn’t leave her because It would have her. Libby didn’t seem to interest It much. It wanted him. Thom had to do something. His work was beginning to suffer. He was a programmer for a mid-sized firm and so far his skill set kept HR from firing him.
He had pulled off enough code Fu and IT wizardry in his eight years with the company that he got a little slack for his increasing level of flakiness. In fact, his work had talked to Libby to get him to go see a therapist. They were concerned the current round of pressure and deadlines was leading to burnout. They didn’t want to lose him as an employee. If he kept on they would have no choice but to fire him.
He went to the shrink more at Libby’s insistence than out of fear he might get fired. He was an experienced capable Software Engineer with a proven track record. Finding work would never be an issue for him again. His promotion to project manager meant he no longer had to be in the saddle for eight hours a day or more.
Now here he was in a psychologist’s office.
How could he explain there was a monster waiting in his home under the very bed he shared with his wife? Whenever Thom tried to sleep it came for him. He had tried sleeping on the couch only to hear it drag itself out from under the bed and begin slumping down the hall.
It moved slowly, heavily, so he would know it was coming. Moving ever closer. And when he slipped up and tried to sleep it would have him. Thom’s final moments would comprise of gnashing teeth, screams, and pain. While his sanity walked on out the door. Hell waited in the shadows beneath his bed. How could he explain? No prescription contained the cure for what ailed him.
Once he started down that path this nice well-meaning doctor would throw him into a nice well-meaning mental hospital where he would be unable to protect his baby from the thing under his bed. Who knew what other terrors lurked in the shadows? Would he be locked in a rubber room with a metal cot bolted to the floor? A room where the overhead never turned off so there would always be bristly hair or sharpened claws scraping the underside of his metal bed?
Would it whisper never ending stories about taking his family as he lay locked up, helpless? Would it tell him how his daughter screamed? Thom didn’t know and didn’t want to find out.
Dr. Norvak was missing a leg. The doc walked with a pronounced limp and the aid of a cane. He had a kind face with sharp and inquisitive eyes. Here is a man who regularly gets his eight hours sleep, Thom thought. His clothes were pressed and clean unlike the rumpled outfit Thom wore. Thom, Thom the wrinkle bomb.
“So, Thom, I hear you’ve been having trouble sleeping? Trouble at work?” Dr. Norvak asked. He looked at Thom at what Thom supposed was supposed to be concern. The stare was a little too direct, too intimate. A person didn’t become your best friend because you made an appointment. People who assumed intimacy got on Thom’s nerves. Friendship should be earned slowly, like trust. Hard won, easily lost.
Thom gave a vague nod keeping a distance from the doctor. Thom drifted near the window to stand in the golden patch of sun painting the floor. Well lit didn’t mean the room was trap free. Since this thing appeared in his life Thom had seen all manner of horrors. Things lived in the shadows no one should see. Most didn’t. Most people went about their lives oblivious of the hungry faces leering from dark places.
He heard homeless ranting about evils in the dark. Hard to avoid them in the city. He used to think them crazy. Ravings easily dismissed, crazy talk, not reality. Now he knew differently. Paranoid rants echoing between buildings contained more truth than he’d ever known. The thing under his bed confirmed it.
Looking at his appearance reflected in the doctor’s windows he didn’t see himself. The software professional, upwardly mobile successful man was gone. Haunted eyes stared back at him from a face he barely recognized. Stubbled cheekbones jutted out. He resembled one of those insane ravers. Dr. Norvak could only offer platitudes, dig into his childhood, or worse prescribe a sleep aid. Thom had moved beyond help. He’d lost sight of the path.
Dr. Norvak stared at him expectantly. He must have asked a question Thom completely missed.
“What did you say? Sorry, I was…. somewhere else.” Thom’s cheeks reddened. Focus never used to be a problem. One more thing he had lost control of. He hated it. Now he kept up with shadows and paths of shadows.
“I asked if you’d like to sit down. It’s ok if you’d prefer to stand. Never mind, where did you go?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course, it matters. You don’t think I can help you, but I can.”
Sure buddy, sure you can, Thom thought, got a flamethrower? An old priest and a young priest? All I need to do is tell you about the monster under my bed. A monster who won’t let me get any sleep. My work is suffering? Who gives a fuck about work? It wants to eat me or my daughter. Perhaps both, like a two for one. Get a clue.
Thom didn’t say any of that. He said, “No, you really have no idea.”
The doctor grinned. Condescending jerk, Thom thought. He sat behind his desk, fingertips meeting in a little teepee over a yellow legal pad, smiling over his glasses at Thom. Thom was too far away to read what was written although he had no doubt the words hospital and paranoid were somewhere close to his name.
“Let me take a shot in the dark, and if I’m right, you sit, and we talk like civilized men.”
Thom nodded said, “But if you’re wrong, I’m out of here and you write up a glowing review. I get back to my life.”
This time the doctor nodded and then continued, “Fair enough. You haven’t been sleeping well, that’s obvious. You’re edgy, on guard, shadows make you nervous. Out of high school you went to college where you got by, not great, not bad. From there, you landed a job where you do enough to not get fired.”
Thom wasn’t overly impressed with the loose generalities. A bunch of carny bullshit meant to fool rubes. If this was his best bit Thom was wasting his time.
“You have a wife you’re slowly becoming disinterested in. You don’t know why. One child, maybe more, and the child is the reason you’re still around. The sex is boring, repetitive. Life has shown you all it has to offer leaving you feeling stale. So, you went out and made a mistake.”
The doctor had his attention. Still, millions of married people felt the same.
“Guilt about the mistake claws at you, an affair, maybe you stole something…no,” now the doctor seemed to be considering him for the first time. Thom felt like a bug under a microscope. All secrets laid bare. “No, I don’t see a thief. You don’t strike me as a particularly violent man either. Let’s rule that out, shall we? Your sin was betrayal, I think. You thought you could get away with it, keep it to yourself, but it’s haunting you.”
Thom stood considering.
“It won’t let you sleep. The lack of sleep is affecting every other aspect of your life. You’re trapped. You don’t want to lose your family. You can’t move past the guilt. To confess might cost your family and that’s too high a price. How am I doing?”
Thom crossed the room and sat down.
“Close. But not quite.”
Dr. Norvak raised his eyebrows slightly. “Okay, let’s start with what I got right.”
Thom leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes for a second. A low growl echoed from behind a bookshelf. Thom’s eyes snapped back open and he exhaled a breath he wasn’t aware of holding. Dr. Norvak appeared not to notice.
“I hate my job. Up until this…this…insomnia started I hated my life.”
“Lots of people hate their jobs. They make changes to improve their lives.”
“Yeah, but I’m not lots of people.”
“Do you think that attitude is a little self-absorbed? Empathy binds us together as a society. It makes us human.”
“I know how fucked up it sounds. We’re just getting started.”
“My apologies Thom, I don’t mean to be confrontational. Please, continue.”
Thom shook his head, “Growing up I always felt there was something to look forward to. There was always the next level to aspire to. A goal to work toward, you know?” Thom didn’t wait for an answer. He had opened the flood gates. The story would be told.
“After graduation, I was married, had a kid. I’d locked down the big tech job. All that remained was…routine. I’d get up, drink coffee, go code, come home, eat dinner, watch tv or play a game, go to bed. The next day I’d get up and do it again. Nothing changed. Ever. I wondered, is this it? Is this my life? I felt like I’d been programmed into an endless loop. Every day was the same.
One day we had a retirement party for one of the senior partners. The guy already looked dead to me. In a way I knew he WAS me, thirty or forty years down the road. Congrats, here’s a cake and a cheap watch. Go home. Try not to die. I turned to leave and ran into her.”
“Her?” The doctor raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, her. Don’t most stories in here involve a her?”
“Please continue. Her.”
“She was interning. Still in college. Hopeful. You know the type, pretty, fresh, bright eyed, naïve, nice tits. Starry eyed a senior project manager bumped into her. I took advantage. She asked if she could take me to dinner. Pick my brain. I guess she wasn’t quite as naïve as I thought.”
“Go on.”
“She was fun, flirty. Didn’t really talk about work. Her youthful optimism, things she wanted, places she wanted to go, her passion was infectious. Libby, my wife, droned on about neighbors or the baby. I felt like I was suffocating.”
“She talked me into going to a club with her. She didn’t have to try hard, I wanted to go. She looked amazing.
The club pulsed with heat, noise, desperation. Conversation was impossible. It didn’t matter. She took me by the hand, led me to the dance floor, fed me a pill that was probably ecstasy but I’m not certain, and we danced.”
“You danced? Nothing more?”
“Well, by dance I mean she was grinding up against me. Rubbing my hands up and down her body. Libby never moved like that. Even when we were young, she never moved like her. I should have felt awkward. I didn’t. Older guy, hot young girl, the drugs, fuck it’s cliché.”
“The next morning, I came home and told Libby a lie about staying in the office. She asked why I didn’t answer the phone I told another lie about being in the secure server room. She doesn’t know it doesn’t exist. She never understood much about what I do. I went directly to the shower and then to bed. That’s when…never mind…
Libby didn’t suspect anything and why should she? I’d never done anything like this before. I’d been Mr. Dependable for years. Staying out all night was an anomaly, a one-time deal, nothing to be concerned about. Either that or she didn’t care. She trusted me, couldn’t conceive of me being unfaithful. I don’t believe she knew how unhappy I was either. I don’t know. You’d have to ask her.”
“You interrupted yourself. You were going to say that was the first time,” Dr. Norvak made circles in the air with his hands, the universal GO ON gesture, “what?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“That isn’t the whole truth, is it? Let’s do an experiment.” Dr. Norvak stood up. Moving toward the beaded chain which would close the blinds. “I’m going to close these blinds. Each lie you tell, I turn the rod blocking out a little more sunlight.”
“Please, don’t. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Thom jumped up, rushing toward the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. Dr. Norvak locked the door sometime during his story.
“I know exactly what I’m doing, Thom. This is a place for honesty. Confession. More lies and we’ll sit, locked in together. In the dark.”
The square of unfiltered sunlight now marred with thin shadows thrown by the blinds.
The doctor looked at him flatly, all kindness and consideration gone. “Sit down, Thom. What you do determines what It is going to do. It’s like a bear in that regard don’t you think? Yes, quite like a bear.”
“What am I supposed to do? What is It? How do you know about It?”
Dr. Norvak tapped his missing leg. “I’ve dealt with It before. Confess. That’s what It wants, why It chose you. Your guilt called It.”
“But I did confess.”
“The whole truth, dear boy.”
Dr. Norvak twisted the clear plastic rod and the blinds rotated. The shadows thickened into bars.
“It was an accident! How much do I need to suffer?”
“You took on a special burden when you chose to reward faithfulness with betrayal. You chose. Now own your choice, take responsibility.”
Another twist. The bars thickened. Sunlight swapped places with shadow becoming thin beams cutting the darkened square.
“I can’t do that!,” Thom wailed, “I can’t lose Marion!”
“Your wife leaving you, taking your daughter is a possibility. It taking her where you will never see her again is a certainty. It will suck your pain and guilt forever. That’s not possibility. That WILL happen. You look close to breaking, and I’m a fair judge, I don’t think you have much time at all.”
A claw emerged from behind the bookshelf scratching a fine tear in the silken wall paper.
Tears ran down Thom’s face. Somehow this doctor knew. If the rod twisted anymore the blinds would cut off the sunlight completely. Thom knew when it happened his guilt was inescapable. Everything comes home eventually. “You know what gamma-hydroxybutyric acid is?”
“GHB. A date rape drug.”
Thom’s voice was flat, mechanical, relating the details of premeditated rape as casually as reading off a grocery list. “I’d gotten some before the retirement party. I’d had my eye on the intern since she started. I asked her out. I asked her to the club. My heart was pounding as I slipped it into her drink. I took her on the dancefloor to speed it through her system. I guess I used too much, she started to go limp. I drug her to the bathroom.”
Dr. Norvak said nothing. The claw had been joined by another, tearing new strips in the wall.
“While having sex with her-“
“Raping her.” Dr. Norvak corrected.
“Yes. R-Raping her. She stopped breathing. I got scared and left her on the toilet. Later I heard she died. It wasn’t my fault.” Thom’s eyes pleaded for Dr. Norvak to understand, to open the blinds.
“You raped and murdered a young woman, left her in a filthy bathroom to die, because you got bored.”
“N-no” Thom blubbered. “I didn’t mean to-“
“What? Kill her? Violate her? What exactly didn’t you mean to do? Go to the police. I’ll give you one day and then I’m duty bound to call them. One day, Thom. One. Your hour is up. If you want to talk further, your company isn’t going to pay for any more of my time. That will be on you. If you’d like to discuss anything else, make an appointment with my secretary. Get out of my office.”
Dr. Norvak twisted the rod. Sunlight flooded back in chasing away the shadow.
Confessing to Libby went the way he imagined. Three days ago, she’d taken Marion and left. He was sure the police were looking for him. There had been several knocks on the door. Now they were out there pounding. The frame shook beneath the force. Pictures of his family rattled, falling off the walls shattering. Broken glass tinkled along the hallway. His cell phone indicated seventeen missed calls.
He’d pushed all the furniture out of the bedroom except for the mattress and the lamps. No shadows in here. He’d figure a way out of this mess, but first he needed to sleep. As he lay staring at his bedroom door, the closet swung open on silent hinges. A low growl emanated from the darkness within.
Outside the front door he heard, “Cut the power, we’re going in.”

My son, Richie, was almost 3 years old with beautifully thick and curly brown hair that seemed to hang in place flawlessly without any serious effort. He was a growing, healthy, and happy child, with a rapidly developing vocabulary, as any parent would hope for. That, however, was before Frank seeped into our lives.
Before Frank, the boy loved talking anyone's ear off, running around like a maniac, and putting on super hero masks while pretending to fight bad guys. That’s why when he first started talking about “The Monster,” I never thought much of it as it’s expected for children his age to start developing an overactive imagination.
“Daddy do you see the Monster?” Richie said for what must be the 7th time in the past couple weeks.
“Yeah Buddy,” I replied, with that encouraging, yet slightly sarcastic voice that parents make when talking to young children, “I can see him.”
“What’s his name, daddy?”
“Uh.... Frank,” I told him, lazily spouting out the first generic name that popped into my mind. Richie then rambled off to the next subject, and talked about something like Spider-Man or Ninja turtles beating up bad guys. You know, typical little boy stuff.
The Frank sightings seemed to escalate from there. Richie would ask me or his mother if we could see Frank over there standing in the corner, or mention that Frank was in his room last night. It was at this point that I started to feel a bit of concern, it didn’t seem to be a huge deal, but it was starting to get a bit, well off putting. Frank was never playing, he was just, there. I decided to ask Richie some questions about what I believed to be his imaginary friend he called Frank, but I’d wait until the next time he brought it up on his own.
That opportunity arose one day as I picked him up from daycare and we were driving home. He had mentioned that Frank was at the sandbox that day.
“Is Frank your friend?” I asked him.
“No,” He responded, “Frank is a monster.
“A Monster?”
“Yeah, Frank is a monster. He’s a nice monster though. He looks funnnny”
Deciding to dig a little deeper I asked, “Does Frank play with you?”
“No.”
“Well then what does he do?”
“Frank watches us.”
He said it with a matter of fact demeanor that left me even more unsure of this weird situation. I’m a young first time parent in my mid 20’s, and I had no idea how to handle the Imaginary Friend situation. Should a parent play along, or be more realistic? I really didn’t want to hinder the development of his imagination, but I also wasn’t sure how far I felt comfortable with this going.
“Sometimes he talks.” Richie continued after a short pause. “At night when everyone is asleep.”
Oh great, he’s dreaming about Frank too. “Well uh, what does Frank like to talk about?”
“He said we shouldn’t move to a new house.”
What did he just say? That last shocking sentence made me feel unsettled at best. We were getting ready to put our townhouse on the market, as we were ready to upgrade to a larger home. The weird thing is, my wife and I hadn’t spoken to our son about this. We were waiting to tell him until we had found the house that we would purchase, to make the situation easier for a toddler to grasp. Feeling creeped out and somewhat awkward, I immediately changed the subject by asking Richie if he wanted a cookie. It may be a cheap trick, but any child will immediately forget about anything of the moment you bring up the possibility of a cookie.
Although the subject had been changed, my mind began to wonder. Was my son speaking with some sort of ghost? I believed that ghosts might exist, but had never seen any sort of significant proof. How did he know that we were moving?
Later that night, after Richie was in bed, I explained to my wife the conversation that had taken place in the car. She, however, seemed unfazed and somewhat skeptical. She blew it off by saying, “Oh I’m sure he just overheard us. That kid never goes to bed and is more attentive than you think.”
I suddenly realized how insane I must have sounded to think that some sort of ghost was speaking with our child. It almost seemed funny, to look back and realize that I was actually worried. Perhaps my belief in the paranormal had caused me to jump to conclusions too easily without any real rationality. I was a first time parent after all, with almost no previous experience dealing with small developing children. I reminded myself to calm down and stay rational.
Things carried along, business as usual, for the next several weeks. Richie's mentions of Frank varied from 1 to 3 times a day. I simply played along with the boy and his stories of his imaginary friend. We packed our things and moved to our new house, which came with a wonderful swing set for which Richie was ecstatic. In this house, I felt certain that it could be our forever home. I believed that we would be happy here.
It had been 3 weeks since we had moved in, and we had just celebrated Richie's 3rd Birthday. The boy was flourishing, increasing his outstanding vocabulary and easily identifying all of his shapes and colors. He could even count to 50 now. The best thing was, I hadn’t heard the name, “Frank.” Mentioned since we moved it. Not once.
Not once, that is, until a mid-Saturday morning in the early onset of fall. The leaves were starting to rest on our new backyard lawn, and I once again found myself pushing Richie on his swing set. Back and forth, back and forth, with the rhythmic squeak of the swing set. This is when everything took a turn for the worst.
“Daddy Look!” Richie exclaimed. “There’s Frank, he’s here now!” Richie pointed to the far back corner of the yard, right next to the shed. As I turned my head to look, I thought I actually saw something, something that appeared to be a large silhouette. Before I had time to fully comprehend what I had seen, I heard the thud of Richie hitting the ground, followed by the cries of pain
A few hours later the doctor entered the room with the X-rays in hand, confirming his suspicions of a broken arm. Luckily it was one clean break, no setting of the bones would be needed. Although my son was going to be okay, I was livid with myself for allowing this to happen.
How could I have been so stupid as to look away from my child while he was on the swing set, right after he let go of the chain to point at His imaginary friend. This whole situation could have been avoided had I not been so superstitious about this damned imaginary friend. But wait, I HAD seen something, hadn’t I? It was only for a split second, but it was there. A tall, large shadow of a man with deformed head. Ugh, my eyes must really have been playing tricks on me. I brushed it off and eventually managed to fall asleep, pushing the parental guilt off to deal with the following day.
Sleep proved to be just as unsettling as the day’s events had been though. My dreams brought me memories of the recent past. The swing set, Richie playing in our old house, having family over for holiday celebrations, even the day we brought baby Richie home for the first time. Except that hideous monstrous silhouette was there, in every single memory. Watching from the corner, standing behind our guests, leaning over the crib. Always there, always watching.
I awoke suddenly, bolt upright in my bed. I rarely remembered even having dreams, but this dream was so vivid, so clear, that every detail now haunted my thoughts. Needless to say, falling back asleep was not an option. I had to go do something to set my mind at ease.
Disturbed, I went over to check on my little Richie, who was supposed to be asleep. Partially to comfort myself from that horrendous nightmare. To my surprise, I found the boy wide awake. When he saw me peeking through the doorway, he asked, “Daddy, where is Hell?”
“What?” I asked in disbelief, sure that I must have misheard.
“Hell,” he said, “where is Hell?”
I was not prepared to answer these kinds of questions to my child yet, he was so young. I myself have never really been sure what I believe about this heaven and hell stuff, having never been religious. But I gave him the best, simple explanation I could muster
“Well, bud, nobody really knows where Hell is, but some people believe that Hell is a place where bad people go after they die.”
“So was your daddy a bad guy?”
“Excuse me?” This last question caught me off guard.
“Frank told me that your daddy is in Hell because he hurt those kids.”
My heart instantly plummeted, providing a sensation as if it had collided with my stomach. After skipping a beat, or three, my heartbeat resurged with the powerful thump worthy of a bass drum.
How the HELL could he have known about that? It was true that my father had hurt children. Killed them, actually. When I was young, about 12 years old, my dad had stormed out of the house in a drunken stupor. The police came knocking at about 5:00 AM the next morning to inform us that he had been identified as involved in a multiple fatality car accident, and they needed my mother to identify the body.
I remember that morning vividly. My mother was not aware that I had woken, as I hid around the corner listening to the police tell my mother of my father's demise. Needless to say, It was him. As details emerged, it became apparent that my father had drunkenly caused a car accident, slamming into a family's minivan as they were coming home from a fishing trip. My father, along with the two children in the backseat of the other car, were killed instantly. As much as my mother tried to shield me of the events, it was all over the news. I was 12 after all, and I knew how to use the internet. It didn’t take long for me to know what my dad had done.
That being said, there is absolutely NO WAY that my son would have known this story. My mother remarried YEARS before Richie was born. My stepfather is the only person my son has ever known as grandpa, and I never discussed the situation, at all.
At this point I realized, without a doubt, that Frank was more than just an imaginary friend, and it angered me. Furiously, I told my son, “No more talking to Frank, he’s not welcome here.”
“But Frank is nice.” Richie pleaded
“No, Frank is not nice, Frank is bad and if you see him again you need to tell him to leave!”
“NOOOOO!” Richie roared. Only the voice that came out did not belong to Richie. It was a sound that no toddler could be capable of making. It was a deep, dark, horrendous, malicious, and rocky voice that would be fitting of a ware-wolf, or a monster, or, or, a demon.... What's worse is the fiery, despicable, evil look of pure hatred that was in my sons eyes, although only for a moment, it was there.
The expression on his face disappeared, as quickly as it arrived, and Richie was Richie again. It was as if he had no idea what had just happened. He seemed totally fine, but I was terrified. Terrified of my only son, or whatever had just taken ahold of him
“Can I watch a movie?” He asked, completely unfazed by the event. It was as if he didn’t even realize what had happened.
“Uh.... of course, buddy,” I managed to respond with a shaky voice. I carried him to the living room, and put on Lion King for him. After he fell asleep in the next 30 minutes, I went into the shower, and simply fell apart as I broke into tears. What the hell had just happened? What was this, this monstrous thing who grabbed a hold of my son?
As I tried to explain the events to my wife the ensuing morning, she simply didn’t believe me. I can’t even blame her, I realized that it sounded crazy but I KNEW that it had indeed happened. If only she had believed me. However, we had very little time to talk about it, as Richie awoke that morning with a heavy fever. Originally at 101 degrees Fahrenheit, his temperature rapidly rose to 103 within just a couple short hours. As I picked my son up to take him to the ER, I saw him, Frank, out of the corner of my eye. Watching.
Richie was admitted immediately. The doctors scrambled to explain his condition of rapid deterioration. I sat by, watching as my son became pale, and his energy was fading. Fast. Yes, my son was fading. He was... Dying.
As the doctors ran tests on top of tests, I took matters into my own hands. I had 3 different priests arrive, all of them simply offered my son a simple blessing, but I could tell that they too were skeptical of me. I tried desperately to get my wife and the doctors to listen to me. For 2 days I pleaded with them to understand that I knew what was wrong, that there was a malicious, if not demonic, entity feeding on my boy, sucking away his life energy. Why or how, were questions in which the answer far past my understanding, but it WAS happening.
I could even see him regularly now, that evil thing, standing in the shadows. But alas, I was met with skepticism, and my wife along with the doctors ended up bringing in a psychologist to have some sort of intervention for ME. They tried to tell me that I was having some sort of mental break from the stress of a sick, possibly dying, child. I stormed out that room desperately furious. I realized in this moment that trying to explain the truth to people would be of no avail. I had only one last idea of what could be done, what HAD to be done to save my Richie.
I stayed awake in the hospital room that night. It had been almost 3 days now since we arrived at the hospital. Richie has been moved to the ICU, with the doctors still baffled. All their tests had only shown what wasn’t wrong with Richie. They didn’t understand, but I knew. I knew what was wrong with my son.
I sat there, waiting, for the demon called Frank to appear. I stayed awake until about 2:00 AM, and suddenly there he was. I could see the shadow standing over Richie's bed. He stood Calmly, but with an evil lust for the last little bit of energy that was keeping my son alive.
“I’ll make you a deal.” I said with a stern and confident done. The entity slowly turned his head until he was facing me. I could see him now, more clearly than ever. Richie was right, Frank truly was a monster. A large one, standing at some 8 feet tall, with skin the color of ash. He had the same overall shape of a Human, but with hideous, pointy features. His Long, narrow arms hung down to his knees, ending with fingers 6 inches or more in length. And his face, his ungodly face was the most hideous of all. Frank had no mouth in his ashen, peeling face. That's when I noticed his eyes. His eyes were the most terrorizing feature about him. There was no white in his eyes, just darkness. A darkness darker than any black color that one can comprehend.
“I’ll make you a deal.” I said again, forcing myself to stay steady in the presence of this creature. “Leave the boy alone, forever, and you can have me.”
The Demon tilted his head as if perplexed, contemplating my offer. After a minute that seemed like hours, He straightened up and spoke. Not with his mouth, as he didn’t have one. No, he put the sound directly into my skull. In That deep, evil voice that had previously come from my son just the other night. “It’s a deal.” And In an instant, he was gone.
The next morning, Richie's fever had subsided, just like that. The color had returned to his skin and he was eating solid food and laughing like a toddler should for the first time in days. The Doctors admitted that they were baffled, but happily discharged Richie later that day. My wife calls it a miracle, but only I understand the dismal truth.
I can feel it starting, the Illness, or whatever you call it. My fever is spiking, and I can’t stop sweating. My energy is leaving me, I barely managed to walk up the stairs into the office. Even now, I feel as if I might pass out. I cannot hide my condition from my wife for too much longer. It is only a matter of time until I am the one in the hospital bed, as the doctors try tirelessly to explain what is happening. Only I won’t make a miraculous recovery as Richie had. No, I’m certain that I will die. That was the deal I had made after all. I gave up my own life to save my son.
But, before I do perish, I’m putting this story on every parenting and paranormal form I can find on the web.
I KNOW how this sounds, I realize it seems crazy. But I’m reaching out to all parents who might be seeing the signs. I PLEAD with you, please do NOT play along if your child has some sort of imaginary friend. Stop it BEFORE it’s too late. Find someone who can expel that evil from your home and your child. But PLEASE, for the sake of you children, I beg for you to not allow this creature to take ahold of your child.

Baby Thomas has been stood rigid in his crib for 5 days now, his little hands gripping the bars and his angelic little face contorted into a terror-filled silent scream. Nothing can rouse him from this sudden nightmare.
I had better start from the beginning...
It was too good to be true. A huge piece of land in the English countryside for the ridiculously low price of £5000.
My husband Peter saw this as a great opportunity for the family. A cheap piece of land - a huge piece of land we can build our dream house on.
The land was enormous and I was sceptical. Peter however felt we needed to grab this opportunity with both hands. And grabbed it we did.
There were some issues, however. On 1 April last year, our 20-strong team of builders suddenly down-tooled and abandoned the property, never to be seen again.
16 months later and we finally had our dream home. I could hardly believe my luck. A sprawling estate - fit for a duke or duchess.
The pristine white kitchen had enough space for 20 guests at the dining table. There was a huge island in the middle with a wine fridge, a giant refridgerator, floor to ceiling patio doors leading out to a sprawling garden surrounded by woodland, outdoor furniture and inside a sofa area around a home Cinema set-up. To be honest we could live in the kitchen alone. There are flats in the UK smaller than our kitchen.
My husband Peter worked hard for us and that meant having to work away most weeks so I was left alone with our three children: Katie, Amy and baby Thomas.
Peter kissed us all as he left for London for the week. After putting the kids to bed i heard something being pushed through the letterbox.
A small envelope sat on the floor in the hallway with beautiful writing on the front To the occupiers.
I opened the letter.
Please know that your new, beautiful home has been built on the site of St Joan’s Correction House. Founded in 1839 this was a hospital for the insane and disturbed. Many people suffered on this site and I strongly advise you to take your family and leave with immediate effect.
I tore up the letter and pushed it out of my mind. This was my dream home and nobody would take this away from me.
Following the letter, things became extremely sinister.
Katie, my 8 year old was quiet at breakfast.
“What’s the matter, Darling?” I asked her.
She did not make eye contact.
“The laughing old lady came again last night” she declared. “She said we have to get out”.
Amy, her 6 year old sister added: “the crying little boy sat on my bed last night. He wants his Daddy”.
I felt uneasy but picked up Baby Thomas ready to feed him and assured the girls “it was a bad dream - don’t worry! Mummy is here to look after you!”
I woke at 2:30am.
“Mummy! Please help me! Mummy I’m scared!”
My poor girls.
Leaping out of bed I check on them. Katie is fast asleep.
I move to Amy’s room. I’ll give her a hug and get her back to sleep.
To my horror, Amy is sound asleep too.
Confused, I return to bed.
“Mummy! Please help me! Mummy I’m scared!”
Bolting out of bed again I check the girls.
Both sleeping soundly.
I check Baby Thomas. Sleeping.
Disturbed, I move to the couch downstairs and manage to stay asleep until morning.
Waking up in the morning I venture to the huge kitchen to make coffee.
Shocked, I see the pristine white walls covered in scrawled writing. EVERYWHERE.
The girls come down for breakfast and I scold them appropriately.
“Girls, you DO NOT draw on the walls! Do you understand?! Mummy and Daddy bought this house for us all and you cannot be naughty and write on the walls! Mummy is so angry with you now!”
My poor girls’ eyes filled with tears.
“But Mummy we didn’t do anything!” Sobbed Katie.
I looked closer at the writing on the walls.
Eliza 1859
Where is my Daddy ... please .... now
Get out or they will kill you ... get out now
The naughty old man says I must jump to see my Mummy
5 years ... see you soon my babies!
It’s been 2 weeks and Peter still isn’t home from work in London.
His phone says Out of service.
I try to settle into bed.
Scratching. Wild, persistent scratching from the wall next to my bed. I sit up. I hear Katie and Amy chattering away.
I walk down the hallway and see Katie and Amy chatting away lively to the corner of the room. There is nobody to be seen.
Three weeks and my husband Peter still isn’t home.
I start making the children dinner.
Urgent, furious whispers fill my ears - i can’t tell what they are saying.
Hysterical, manic laughter fills the room.
I check the children. The girls are sat motionless in front of a dead TV.
Baby Thomas is standing in his crib, as if on Pause. A frightened scream on his face and his little hands gripping the bars of his crib.
Six weeks and my husband Peter still isn’t home.
My Baby Thomas hasn’t moved for some time now, scared stiff in his little bed.
My girls are becoming cold and distant.
Peter Thomas Wilson - where are you my darling?! I need you.
Ten weeks and my husband Peter still isn’t home.
My eldest daughter Katie has been sat in her room for 3 days now staring at the ceiling.
Baby Thomas hasn’t moved from his crib, a terrified look on his little face.
And Amy? Amy keeps saying she wants to go back home - i keep telling her this is her home.
A new letter comes through the door.
An old sepia photo of a very familiar looking Victorian gentleman with a huge beard looking into the middle distance accompanied by a quote.
Peter T Wilson, founder of St Joan’s Correction House. 1799 - 1888

My name is Katie. I have a son named Jaxton, and he's about to turn 5 years old. When I was younger, I was always fascinated with the prospect of having children of my own, and eventually settling down in a nice cottage in the woods with a loving husband and two beautiful kids running around the yard. Unfortunately, that dream didn't exactly become a reality for me- I was 24, had one boy, and we lived in a dingy apartment on the "bad side" of Chicago.
Jaxton's father had died when he was only one, he took his own life while me and Jaxton were out one day. Thank god Jax was too young to see him hanging on the ceiling fan in the living room, but the mental image was brought to the front of my mind every time I looked at that fan. Eventually, I tore it down- it helped a lot, but sometimes, I still feel a bit uneasy when I'm in the room.
My family wasn't supportive of me becoming a mother at such a young age, so we haven't had the best relationship, and I never got the chance to make friends toward the end of high school and college like most girls my age, so for the most part, it was just me and him, working through the highs and lows of life.
Even though the circumstances didn't sound quite dreamy, we managed just fine. I was able to make enough money to pay rent, and keep food on the table, working two jobs in town. By day I worked at Kohls, then I would head home, change into my greasy stain-ridden polo and jeans, and walk down to McDonalds for a 6 hour shift dealing with drunken idiots and homeless people asking for a free hamburger. Like I said, not the kind of lifestyle that most girls would swoon over, but I managed, and Jaxton was happy. That's all I truly cared about at the end of the day.
He was getting old enough to attend Kindergarten, and I really wanted to make it a good experience for him, so I was set to have a meeting with one of the schools on the nicer side of Chicago and see if there was any way to get an inter-district transfer. He was supposed to be enrolled in the school a few blocks away, but even at the elementary level, there was violence, bullying was rampant, and I didn't feel comfortable with him growing up in that lifestyle. It would be worth it to cut back on my hours to ensure he got a good education in a safe community. I dressed up in the most "formal" attire I owned- a white button down shirt tucked into a pair of slacks that I stole from Kohls while I was on break, and I threw a turtleneck sweater in my car in case it started getting cold, and put Jaxton in a nice pair of jeans, and a white formal shirt that was in better condition than I would've expected from goodwill, and a new pair of shoes that he desperately wanted. I didn't exactly think wearing vans with flames on them was the best idea for a formal meeting, but it gave him a bit of confidence, and I thought that it would come in handy if they wanted to talk to Jaxton at the meeting,
I was looking in the mirror one last time, to make sure my hair was straight and there were no buttons that had popped off on my blouse, when I heard Jaxton's shaky voice call out from the doorway,
"Mommy, there's a monster under your bed."
I turned around, and saw him quivering in fear. Holding my arms out, he sluggishly crawled into them, and I gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead,
"Honey, there's no monster under the bed. I promise you. Want me to check to make sure?"
He nodded, still trembling in fear, and I put him down and lifted up the silky white sheet that beautified the small bed that we shared every night. There was nothing to be found, unless you'd consider a few dust bunnies and an old sock monstrous.
When I showed him that nothing was under there, he seemed to be at ease. I gave him a slight smile, and he smiled back. Even though this wasn't the life I had dreamed of through high school, I was so happy that I was able to give Jaxton the best life possible. He deserved that, we'd been through so much, more than he could ever understand. I wanted to see him succeed. Even if it meant constantly checking under the bed for monsters.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The meeting went great! The woman who we talked to sat down with us and discussed the matters, and I explained the situation. She was understanding, and tried to figure out the best solution possible for everyone. While we couldn't get public transportation because it was too far out of way, since we made too little money they would allow Jaxton to get reduced price lunches at school every day, which would take a huge burden of the stress off my chest in the mornings. Even though it would be an extra 45 minute drive to get him to school and back, I knew it would be worth it. Eventually, maybe we could get a house closer by the time he starts making friends in middle school and wants to hang out. Plus, I knew that his education would be significantly better, and he would get along well with his classmates. I wanted him to have as high of a chance as possible at getting into a great school, if that's what he ended up wanting to do with his life.
When we got home, I got on Reddit for a short while, and caught up with some of the top posts. Even though I knew it was a waste of time, it was nice to get lost in the internet and thumb through the different subreddits. Jaxton was in our bedroom, playing with some model trains that I bought him for Christmas last year. For some reason, he had this fascination with trains. I guess that's your typical kindergarten boy; one week, it's dinosaurs, the next it's trains, and before you know it they're rambling about all the different stars and planets. It's great to listen to them find so much they enjoy in the world, but it can be a bit expensive to try to adapt their toy collection with every new passion they stumble across.
All of a sudden, I heard Jaxton scream. I ran to the bedroom and saw him on top of the bed, hiding in the covers. I threw over the sheet and he was in tears, his face red and his eyes were wide as saucers. I picked him up, and asked him what happened, and he pointed toward the small closet that we kept our clothes in.
"Is there a monster in there baby?" I asked him, curious as to what he might've seen that jumped him that badly. He nodded his head, and I motioned towards the sliding closet door. As I was about to open the door, he screamed, and hid away his eyes. He must've had a terrible nightmare to think that there was a monster under the bed first, then in the closet, I thought, and creaked open the peeling wooden door. The hanging clothes swayed a little, but there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. He looked, turned away, and looked again. He started to cry once more, and I hugged him really tight.
"When you get to big boy school, you're going to have to learn to check for monsters yourself" I said, and he looked at me with that confused expression that children always seem to have when they don't understand something. I continued, "Your teacher isn't going to be able to check for monsters for you. She'll tell you to make sure they're not there. Next time you see a monster, do you think you can be a brave boy and check for him yourself?"
He nodded, and I played with his hair a little bit. The kind of way you'd expect a boy's father to mess his hair up. It made me a bit sad thinking about all the memories he'd miss out on: first fishing trip with dad, all sorts of father-son bonding things that I would never be able to compare to. I did everything in my power to try to give him the perfect life, but I knew there would always be something missing. Someone missing.
Nevertheless, I promised myself that I'd make his life great any way that I could. I had actually taken a few online classes to try to learn how to fix things, and had a collection of Youtube videos and blog entries I'd found that might be helpful if he ever asked me how to do things a kid would normally ask their dad. I wasn't the best with my hands, but I truly did my best, and I'd like to think I did a damn good job at it.
Eventually, we ate dinner- today he got a treat of Froot Loops because he did so well at the interview today with me, and homemade Rice Krispy treats for dessert. He always loved making those- it was cheap, they tasted good, and it was easy enough that I could trust him to do most steps while I was browsing the internet or reading a book.
We made our way to bed. When he was younger, I had a rickety crib set up for him in the corner of the bedroom that way I didn't hurt him while I tossed and turned. However, as he got older, I decided to sell it to get a bit extra money, and used it to buy toys. I offered him the entire room, but he didn't seem to have a problem with sharing the bed. I kissed him goodnight, rolled over, and turned out the lights, the only thing left illuminating the darkness was a small nightlight plugged in by the bedroom door.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I woke up to see Jaxton standing in front of the mirror. This was weird, because it was only 4:45 AM, and the sun hadn't begun to rise yet. I whispered to him, but he kept his gaze on something in the mirror. I guess it's possible he wanted to surprise me or something, since my birthday was in a few days and I wouldn't be home to celebrate, so I tried to roll over and go back to sleep. I checked on him again 15 minutes later, but he was still staring intently into the mirror.
"Jaxton, honey, are you alright?"
I guess it's possible he was sleepwalking, or too groggy to have heard my whispers. Not breaking focus on the mirror, he said words that sent chills through my body,
"Mommy, there's a monster in the mirror."
I rolled my eyes. The only thing I could see in the mirror was Jaxton's reflection. But, his dark face was the palest I had ever seen, his eyes locked on something that wasn't his reflection. I decided to get up, and try to coax him to get back into bed.
"Show me the monster, honey" I said, still half asleep. He pointed to the corner of the mirror,
"Right there."
I made my way over to the thin mirror, expecting to see nothing but a cobweb or a spider hanging from the mirror, but froze in shock.
From Jaxton's angle, you could clearly see a horrid creature. It hung from the ceiling, right over where me and Jax had lie not 3 minutes ago. It was curled into a ball, scaley black skin with huge popping veins throughout its' body. It had no mouth, and no nose, just two huge, closed eyes. It looked about the size of me, and I don't have a clue how it was hanging on the ceiling. It appeared to be...sleeping. I whispered for Jaxton to get the hell out of there, and we tried to quietly jog through the door, hearts beating faster than I thought it could safely beat.
Just as we were about to clear the bedroom door, Jax tripped on his laces, and let out a sharp squeal. I grabbed him, and looked up at the creature that hung above my bed. Its' eyes slowly began to open, what would normally be white was crimson red, and solid black pupils were in the middle of the eye sockets. It looked around the room, then looked at us, and began to laugh.
I wanted to stick around, to see what it would do, but I knew better and carried Jax while sprinting through the apartment building. The creature was slow at first, but quickly gained on me and Jax. It was running on all fours, its' arms bulging with muscle as it got closer and closer. I could almost feel the warmth of the creature when I threw open the stairwell, and began leaping down the stairs, trying to comfort Jaxton in the process but knowing I would ultimately be unsuccessful. The door closed behind us, to my relief, but two seconds later the creature tore through the door, sending the entire thing crashing down the staircase with us. Luckily, we were already out of the doors' reach when it fell, and the only thing that was crushed was the flimsy metal handle that our landlord called a doorknob.
Eventually, we reached the first floor. I threw open the door as quickly as possible, knowing that the beast would destroy it immediately anyways, and sprinted for my parked car a block away. My arms were beginning to ache, but I knew that Jax could never keep up on his own feet, so I slung him over my shoulder and ran faster than I'd seen any Olympic runner go when we used to watch the games on television. The creature got held up by the door for a brief moment once again, but quickly burst through, shattering the small glass window, and chasing after us.
I ran and ran, until I got to the little Camry that was parked under a streetlight. I pressed the unlock switch as I got closer, and practically threw Jax into the passenger seat as I slammed the door and locked the doors. I could see the monster coming closer and closer, staring directly at the tan car as I fumbled with the keys to try to get the ignition started.
Jaxton was screaming still, staring back at it, while I tried time and time again to get the car started. I knew I should've gotten this looked at, I thought to myself, as the creature got closer and closer until it was only a car length away. Just as I was about to accept our fate, the engine started. I heard glass shatter as I sped off into the night, not looking back for a second. The passenger window was destroyed, as if something had stuck their arm through and smashed it, but Jax was still in the seat next to me. Close call, I thought to myself, buckling Jax' seatbelt as the engine roared into the silence of the city streets.
I reached into my pocket to phone the police, but my phone was nowhere to be found, so I decided to just keep driving. Nothing mattered at that point- my items were replaceable, my phone could be claimed under insurance, if my car was damaged I'd get it fixed. All that mattered was me, and Jax. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The car ran out of gas next to a convenience store, about 40 miles away from my house. I assumed at this point, the creature was gone, but I wanted to play it safe, so I put up a sunshade, and used whatever blankets were in the back seat of the car to cover my side window and the window that Jax was sitting next to.
I broke down in tears. We made it, somehow. It was the closest to death I'd ever been, and the closest to putting Jax in danger that I ever wanted to be. I held his hand, and said to him, over and over again,
"You're going to be okay, baby. We'll be okay. We made it."
We talked for a bit, and eventually, I decided to go inside and see if they had any spare gas. Jaxton was still a bit afraid, and I didn't want to force him through social interaction, so I let him stay in the car, but made sure to lock the doors and cover every window possible so nothing could see inside.
I put my glasses on, and walked into the convenience store. The man at the front counter looked bored, but when I explained the issue, he went to the back for a moment, then came out with a full Jerry can of gasoline. He handed it to me, as well as a bottle of water, and smiled,
"Be careful you two. It's dangerous out there."
I smiled back, and thanked him for the gas. I offered to give him whatever cash I had in the car, but he declined it, and said the water was on the house. I went back out to the car, opened the gas latch, and started to load fuel into the tank. I scanned the surrounding area: it was a nice area. Lots of residential buildings tucked away off the main road. There were a few shops down the street that illuminated the night sky with bright neon lights and flashing letters, and a bustling bar seemed to be having a live event at the end of the road. This appeared to be one of the nicer areas of Chicago, something I hadn't much experience with. It made me smile to realize that Jaxton would be attending school somewhere like this, where people seemed friendly, and it was safe. Safe from violence, safe from gangs, safe from whatever that horrid thing was.
I brought the empty Jerry can back inside, thanked the clerk at the counter once again, and went back to the car. Jaxton seemed to be sleeping, his head facing away from me. I started up the engine, and drove for a bit, when I decided to see if he was really asleep.
"Jax, you want to get some ice cream?" I saw a McDonalds nearby, and thought that he could use a treat after what he had gone through.
But he remained silent.
"Jax?"
He slowly turned around, the part of his eyes which used to be pearly white was a shade of crimson red, his pupils were black as the night. He opened his mouth,
"Mommy, there's a monster inside of me."

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