Preface:

After several complaints, I want to preface this. This, along with The Poltergeist and The Giant’s Graveyard are chapters from my book The Resurrection Man. I know this ends on a cliffhanger, and I also know there are lot’s of questions to be answered. Be aware, they all have answers, and the cliffhanger is resolved in my actual book. This is just a taste of what’s to come.

The Monster Under the Bed

I woke up in the middle of the night. Another nightmare again. I shook the tiredness out of my eyes and walked to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I noticed the bags under my eyes had become even more noticeable. Of course I’d gotten a total of five hours of sleep combined this past week. My wife, Linda, came into the bathroom.

“Another nightmare?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, wiping my face with cold water to wash away the terrible images burned into my mind.

“What was it this time?” she continued, rubbing my shoulders with a look of concern in her eyes. Looking into the mirror, I marveled at the amount of weight I’d lost this past week. Easily fifteen pounds. My skin was starting to get loose. Sure, I definitely had a sizable gut, but in another month I’d be nothing but skin and bones. The few grey hairs on my head seemed to have multiplied over the past week. Ever since I woke up in the snow outside that damn building. Apparently, there was a five hour gap in my memory when I woke up there. Whatever happened in those five hours had left me with endless nightmares.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Go get some sleep, I’ll be back in bed soon.”

That’s when little footsteps came running around the corner. “Mommy, there’s a monster under my bed,” my son said with tears running down his face. His name was Tom and he was about five. I was in my mid-forties, and my wife was in her early thirties. I got started on the whole family thing pretty late.

“Not this again,” she whispered so only I could hear it. For the past month my boy had been scared of a monster under his bed.

Linda walked over to our son to sooth him and bring him back to bed, but I stopped her. “Go back to bed, honey. I’ll take him to bed.”

She looked at me with concern.

“Seriously,” I pressed. “I probably won’t be getting back to sleep any time soon. Go get some rest.”

She frowned. “Okay. But I want you to at least try to get to sleep tonight.”

“Okay,” I lied. “Come on buddy,” I said to my son, lifting him up and hugging him. I noticed he was shaking this time and a wet spot was on his crotch, soaking into my white T-shirt. “Let’s get you changed up.”

His head nodded quickly.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell mommy,” I whispered to him. He just held on tighter to me.

We walked down the hallway to his room. “You know pal, I’m a security guard with a big gun. Nothing’s gonna hurt you while I’m here.”

“I know daddy. But you aren’t always here. That’s why I’m scared.” Am I not spending enough time with my son? Maybe I should take some time off work.

Pushing that thought away, I opened Tom’s bedroom door. I don’t know what made me stop to survey the room. Maybe it was Tom shaking, maybe it was my own nightmares, or maybe it was the sudden chill in the air. I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell glad I did look around the room.

At first glance, everything seemed fine. The light from the hallway illuminated the dark room and everything appeared as it should. However, the light didn’t penetrate under Tom’s bed. Curious, I set Tom down and had him wait by the door. I walked over to the bed and knelt down next to it, feeling the strain it put on my lower back. I peeked under the bed and froze. It was pitch black… unnaturally so. Except… except for two eyes staring back at me. The pupils were clearly defined because they were surrounded by blood red irises. I could smell rotten meat. My son wasn’t lying. There was a monster under his bed.

It could sense my fear, and it smiled. The most disturbing, wide smile full of razor sharp teeth.

My first instinct was to scream, but I nipped it off as just a meek peep. I slowly backed away, never taking my eyes off whatever was staring back at me. I got up, and backed away towards my son, the eyes under the bed tracking me the entire time.

“Is that the monster you were talking about?” I quietly asked my son. He hugged my arm tightly as he saw what I was talking about.

“Yeah,” he replied in a barely audible whisper as he buried his head into my pajama bottoms.

“Hey,” I said to him as I shut the door. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll get it sorted out.” How the fuck was I going to fix this?

I picked up Tom and ran down the hallway to my bedroom. I quickly plopped him on the bed and grabbed my gun.

“Bart? What’s going on?” my wife asked.

“There really is something under his bed,” I quickly replied as I cocked my Glock. “Take Tom to your mother’s. I’ll make sure you get out.”

“What’s under his bed?!” she exclaimed.

“Just a python,” I lied. There’s no way she would believe what I saw. “But there may be an infestation. Some jackass must have let one loose during the summer and it found it’s way into our house for the winter.”

“O-okay.”

“Is that what that was daddy?” my son asked.

“Yeah. Don’t worry buddy, I’ll handle this.” How the hell was I going to handle this? “Now, don’t bother packing up. Just go. I’ll walk you to the door.

Linda got up from our bed and picked up Tom. In the hallway, I looked down to find something that made my skin crawl. Tom’s bedroom door was open.

“Come on Linda,” I urged. “Hurry up.”

“Okay, okay. I just need to grab a few things from the bathroom.”

“No!” I yelled, unable to keep my worry in check. I quietly disciplined myself and continued in a much calmer tone, “Just get to the car and go to your mother’s.”

She nodded, understanding the urgency of the situation. We hurried down the stairs and I practically pushed them into the car. I checked every nook and cranny of the thing to make sure I didn’t see those damned eyes. As satisfied as I could be in the current situation, I sent them on their way. Once they rounded to corner, I turned my attention back to the house. I backed away from it, inspecting the outside. The top floor lights were still on, but most of the first-floor lights were off. And then, as I was inspecting the windows up close, my blood ran cold. Looking right at me from the darkened living room windows were those red eyes and that horrible smile.

That son of a bitch! I took out my gun and shot the damn thing right through the window. The window shattered, but the creature was unaffected. It let out a deep rumbling laugh and faded into the darkness of the living room. “You can’t leave,” it grumbled. It’s voice was coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “You are mine now.” I felt invisible tendrils wrap around my body and began to pull me back into my house. Fear overwhelmed me. I shot my gun into the seemingly empty living room to no avail. It kept pulling me into the darkness. More laughter. My family screaming from the living room. They were gone! They couldn’t be in my living room! And then came the ripping. It was ripping something in there, and then the screams stopped. What the hell!

Just as I was about to cross the threshhold of my broken window, flame surrounded me. It burned away the tendrils, but not me. I collapsed to the ground, gasping as the fear rushed from my body to be replaced by an overwhelming sense of relief. There were footseps approaching me from behind. I whipped around, gun raised, but I stopped. It was a man in his early twenties dressed in a suit and tie. He had brown hair and brown eyes. The cuffs of his suit were singed. He seemed so familiar, but I was sure I’d never met him.