The Watcher Rules The Dark

As kids we all talked about the monsters under the bed. We would run from the light switch to our beds and jump under the covers, hiding ourselves thinking that we were safe from whatever might be hiding beneath it. Sometimes we would ask our parents to check under the bed just to reassure us that there was nothing there.

Trevor was 7 years old and was a good student but he always had a fear that something was in his room waiting for him to go to bed at night so he would perform the same ritual every night. First he would make sure to close the closet door completely hearing the click as it closed. He was at the age that he did not want to ask his father to check under the bed so he would check himself while the lights were on, making sure there was nothing hidden beneath it but he was never worried about it when the room was lit. Night time was a different story although up till this point in time nothing had ever happened to make him think that anything would actually get him. The second part of his routine was to hit the light switch on the wall which plunged the room into total darkness before sprinting to the bed like his feet were on fire, leaping into the air and landing on the bed before tugging the covers over his head and stay quiet, listening for every little sound before drifting off to sleep.

Now up till now, there was never any noises, nothing to make him even think that he had reason to be afraid but that was about to change. It was very subtle at first and he thought it was just his imagination messing with his head. It was a typical Saturday night and he was getting ready for bed after watching a movie with his parents. He did the usual close the closet door, looked beneath the bed letting out a sigh of relief before he walked to the door and clicked off the light. Before he even began to run for the bed, he felt it…something touched his right foot, it was as if finger tips had brushed against the side of his foot and he shrieked, diving onto the bed and burrowing under the covers as if they were a shield. He trembled as he held his breath and listened, but all he heard was silence.

The silence lasted for that night but now he was not sure that he was alone in his room and the next night he was in a running position before he even touched the light switch not letting his imagination get the best of him. He snuggled deep under the covers and let the silence take over the room but just as he was about to drift off to sleep he heard the soft click of his closet door, the sound it always made when being opened or closed and he peered out very carefully. He could hear the creak of the door moving just a littleas the curtains rippled from the breeze passing by his open window, shedding enough moonlight into his room that he could see the door was ajar.

Now a sense of panic sets in,..if he gets off the bed to close the closet door he would have to let his feet touch the floor but if he left the door open, whatever opened it might just decide to come out of it. He laughed nervously having let that very thought enter his head and he weighed his options until he heard the rustling of clothes, the light tapping of hangers together as they moved and he remained frozen in his bed, afraid to move or even breathe. The door began to creak again, opening a little bit wider and at first he could see nothing but darkness till he caught a glimpse of what looked like long fingers wrapping around the side of the door.

Before he can even let out a gasp or a scream a shadowy silhouette emerges completely from the closet, but it has no distinct form other than long spindly arms, bony fingers and an elongated head but with no facial features that he could distinguish in the dark, it seemed like a solid black compared to the rest of the room. Slowly, methodically it began to cross the room towards his bed and trevor stared at it with complete horror washing over his face. As it reaches the edge of his bed, it stops, the left hand reaching up towards its face with a boney finger as if it is telling the boy to stay quiet and that is when he began to scream as loud as he could. The being shifted back just an inch or two as foot steps could be heard banging down the hallway, it was his father coming. It suddenly melted to the floor as if it had turned to liquid, disappearing beneath the bottom of the bed as the bedroom door swung open and the light suddenly turned on.

His father rushes to his bedside and holds his son who is uncontrollably shaking, doing his best to comfort him and amidst the sobs, he hears words like closet, monster, bed. His father pries his son from his arms and kneels on the floor looking under the bed but finds nothing. He then walks over to the closet and opens the door wide showing the boy that there is nothing there to be afraid of. He tells him he must be having a nightmare and there is nothing there for him to be upset about and that he is a big boy and needs to stop watching movies and reading books that are getting into his head.

After his father leaves, he remains on his bed with the light on too afraid to shut it off knowing that what he saw and felt was not just a nightmare but no one was going to believe him. He was too old to be sleeping in his parents bed and his father would never allow for it but he did not feel safe in his own room anymore. Eventually his school work began to suffer and dark circles were forming under his eyes from lack of sleep, his bedroom light always turned on but at least it kept the monster away from him or did it. About a week after a complete lack of sleep and pure exhaustion his father had enough of his ‘nonsense’ as he put it and demanded that he turn out the light in his room at night and grow up. He tucked his son into bed, told him to go to sleep then shut off the light before closing the door. Trevor yanked the blankets over his head and held his breath as he waited knowing that it was only a matter of time till it returned and it only took maybe a few minutes before he heard movement beneath him, like nails on a chalkboard scraping across the bottom of the bed and along the floor. He closed his eyes tighter, his grip on the blankets so tight his knuckles were turning white.

Then he felt it…a push down on the bottom of the bed, an indentation that felt like someone or something had sat down near his feet. The mattress began to move as it felt like something was slowly crawling up the length of it, slowly and precisely making sure not to directly touch him at least not yet. The pressure stopped right near where he was huddled and he feel the cold air as he felt and heard it breathing which felt like it was merely inches from his right ear, the only thing separating him from it was the blanket.

The same boney fingers that he saw at the closet and near his bed, now curled around the edge of the blanket his only protective barrier from whatever it was, the grip tightening as it began to tug on it, a deep whisper floated against his ear “Come out, come out and play, the night is still young.” Trevor knows that if he screams again his dad will either come to the room very angry with him or ignore him completely so he was on his own to deal with whatever was taunting him. He remembers that he had tucked a flash light into the covers after the first time something had touched his foot and with a trembling left hand he reached under and hit the switch, pulling it out and pointing it right at the shadow as it pulled the blanket down off of him. The shadow shrieked, caught off guard by the blinding light and before it can react, trevor is off the bed and running, slamming the door almost off its hinges as he runs down the hallway and down the stairs, headed right out the front door of the house, leaving the screen door wide open as he bolts to the street not caring who saw him. There was no way he was spending another night in that room. 

The aftermath of that night haunts Trevor to this very day. His parents wake up the next morning and find him outside on the street, barefoot and shaking, his face pale with the front door still wide open. There is nothing they can physically do or say to him that will comfort their child who is terrified beyond words. They end up calling a doctor and having him checked in and evaluated for his nightmares and eventually he is deemed ok but he refuses to return to his home and ends up living with his grandmother in another state. Whatever was in that room, he never learned what it was or what it wanted from him but over time he learned to sleep with just a night light.

His parents invited him years later to come to dinner at their home and it was late, so they offered him the opportunity to sleep in his old room but he refused. Stepping outside, the street light illuminating the house, he glances up towards his bedroom window and there it was- a tall shadowy figure with no face, its hands pressed against the glass and facing him as if it was watching and he knew he had to go. Whatever was after him when he was a child had never left and it was still watching and waiting for him.