"What comes next, Kyla baby?" She’d done that for me since the day I’d been born, or at least for as long as I can remember. Even though I was already eleven years old at that point (number one twice, I remember a birthday card saying), I’d beg my mom to sing to me every night until I was tired enough to fall asleep. At least then I had a distraction from the creaky floor and the closet that sat almost directly in front of my way-too-big-for-a-kid bed.
"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily..." I whispered, forcing my eyelids to push against each other. My entire face scrunched up and I suddenly thought of Cole. He was too old for Mommy ... I didn’t know why she’d been so happy to be with him at first. They only ever fought and when they weren’t fighting, they hardly spoke. She told me that she loved him, once. I was crying in my room because I was scared of the noises I kept hearing under my bed (short, quick thumping noises, kinda like someone was tapping the underside of my bed to get my attention) and Mommy passed my room with tears falling from her eyes too. I thought she heard the noises and was scared just like me, but after having a long talk about how grownups have fights sometimes I figured out that she’d been crying because of Cole ... not because of the girl under my bed.
"Life is but a dream." Mommy breathed in that wispy, tired way that she did every night. It made me smile and she smiled back, brushing the black hair out of my eyes. I could hardly see her through the dark, but I knew the smile was there.
"You coming to bed anytime tonight?" Cole pushed open my door, and a wave of light flooded in. I didn’t mind the light, but I shielded my eyes from him. He always took Mommy away from me ... and he always took the light out of her. I needed her light to fall asleep, but I rarely had it anymore. I didn’t know why she always flocked to him whenever he called, but it didn’t matter. The reason didn’t matter, the reason never mattered — it was just that she did it. She left me behind in the dark. I may have had my Juniper Jade covers to hide under, but it was a big bed, and Juniper Jade never scared away the monsters.
"Yeah, in a few." Mommy closed her eyes and forced out the words. She stopped smoothing the hair away from my face and pinched the space between her eyes. The light drained from Mommy’s body, and darkness devoured the entire room. Spongebob didn’t stand a chance. I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream at Cole — make him go away and never come back to do this to us, but I couldn’t. It’d only burn out Mommy’s light even more, maybe even extinguish it.
"A few what? Weeks? Days? Hours?"
I bit my lip as I watched my Mommy’s mouth curl into a sigh. I could feel her stomach shrink into a little ball, shriveling away with the smile I put on her usually glowing face. I squeezed my blanket tighter and imagined Juniper Jade’s mouth curling into the same sigh, her purple mane standing on end. I didn’t like the thought so I let up on the blanket and just bit my lip harder instead. It hurt and I tasted metallic blood, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the knot in my stomach did. My whole body started to shake, but I tried to hold it back. Mommy didn’t need another reason to squeeze the space between her eyes or rub the place just above where her glasses sat.
"Cole, you know damn well what I meant. Just go to bed and I’ll see you there when I feel like it." She talked with her eyes pressed shut, her face scrunched up like I had earlier. She was still pretty, though. I’m sure I looked like a chubby, wrinkled hamster when I did it.
Cole didn’t say anything; instead he slammed the frail door as hard as his little muscles could. The room went pitch black again and Spongebob’s smile glowed brightly once more; I could almost hear him laughing. A few porcelain dolls sitting on the shelves Daddy put up slid closer to the edge, but stopped just short. I imagined the walls doing Mommy’s sigh, sick from the impact, and I sat up against my headboard. I didn’t like the thought of those walls looking down on me; I didn’t like the dark ... I didn’t like that I couldn’t see Mommy anywhere.
"Mommy?" I whispered. "Mommy ... don’t go..." I felt the air in front of me for her familiar soft skin, but I only scraped the edge of her nightgown. I heard my throat let out a small whimper, urging the silk to come back.
"Mommy, please ... don’t leave." I reached out into the air again as my abused door was opened, the light flooding in once more. I didn’t shield my eyes this time.
She shook her head and looked at me with scared eyes. I hated this part of every night, the two seconds right before the light from the hallway was cut off and I was left behind with only Spongebob to protect me.
"Mommy..." I said again, but she wasn’t listening. Cole yelled from down the hall – words I didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand – and she left me behind. The light was gone. She was gone, and I immediately knew I wasn’t alone.
I clawed at the underside of my covers and held my breath. The dark infected every inch of my room. Spongebob’s weak light was just enough to see the monster in my closet and keep him there, but the little girl that lived under my bed could do whatever she wanted. Sometimes she even let the closet monster out.
"Kyla and Markie sitting in a tree..." Fingernails tore at the wood floor under my bed. She always waited for Mommy to leave. I stayed hidden under my blanket, but her grinding fingernails didn’t stop. "K ... I ... S ... S ... I ... N ... G." She spat each letter like a boy, pushing out every breath and gagging on it. It was hard for her to crawl around; every little movement she made seemed to make her lungs more and more like grapes. I used to feel bad for her, and I wanted to help, but I made the mistake of telling her that. That was the night she tried to steal my legs.
Cole was the only one that ever saw the bruises on my arms and legs. I was still dripping wet, just a scratchy towel over my oddly shaped body, when he told me to deal with it — ignore the pain, ignore the girl clawing at me, and eventually she’d just stop when she was through with me. He told me to not even tell Mommy, and I never would have. If she had seen all the scratches and bruises and the blood, she would have gone to my school in a rage only to find out that no one ever hurt me there. She’d find out that nobody even knew my name, and after she found that out, I can’t even imagine what she’d think of me, her only daughter, her angel. To the entire school, I was just the girl in the back of the room, the sweaty girl that always wore long-sleeves and fell asleep every moment she had the chance.
The room went quiet, and that’s how I knew she was watching me. Sometimes if I pretended to be asleep she went away, so I pressed my eyelids together hard enough to see the little firework show behind them.
"Kyla baby, come on out." Tugs on my blanket. I held on. I was safer under there.
"Go away..." I whispered. "Go away, go away, go away."
"But I just wanna be your friend, Ky." That’s what Daddy used to call me. I bit my lip harder, forcing back the icy tears. "Do you want to see Daddy again?" Her hands groped the end of my bed, pulling herself up. I could see her grayish blue skin even when I shut my eyes.
"Yes." Tears escaped. "I miss him so much..."
"I can take you to him." She eagerly spat the words. "Just come out from under there and we’ll go see him now."
"I know you’re lying." I tugged the blanket, trying to force her back onto the floor.
"Friends don’t lie to friends. We are friends, aren’t we?" She didn’t wait for an answer. "We’re best friends. We’ll be best friends forever." I felt her snakes for fingertips searching for my hands. "I know life is hard without him. Life is hard with your mommy and her boyfriend."
"Stop. Go away, please..." Her voice was in my head, bouncing and vibrating like a dodgeball with a trapped bird inside.
"But I can take this all away. Just come with me."
I opened my eyes and watched my shaking hands let the blanket fall. All I saw was dark and Spongebob glowing faintly in the distance. The closet door was open.
"Come with me," she whispered from the closet, a blue hand waving me over. Cole and Mommy were yelling in their room. Cursing. Screaming. Throwing things. I crawled to the end o
f my island of a bed and let my feet touch the cold carpet.
"To where?" I breathed the question, walking toward Spongebob’s light in front of the closet.
"Wherever you want. Name it." I stood in front of the closet, my body rattling. The closet monster grumbled sort of like Cole just waking up. "Step in and I’ll take you to your Daddy." There was a smile in her voice, and those pearl eyes were on me. A hand took mine as Spongebob’s light died. It felt like holding a dozen freezepops. I wanted the feeling to blanket me just like Juniper Jade did a few minutes before. Cole was yelling louder, but I didn’t hear Mommy at all.
"I want to be in the dark forever."
"Aren’t you afraid?"
"Being afraid with open eyes is better than being afraid of opening your eyes."
"Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream," she sang, tugging me in. "Put a pillow over her face and listen to her scream."
"Stop it."
"Burn, burn, burn your house ... Burn it to the ground." She pulled at my arm harder, but I tugged back toward my bed. "Watch it as it goes to flames and their bodies won’t be found." She laughed as I tried to pull away harder. Her skin felt like it was tearing, but she didn’t let me go.
"No, no, no..."
Light flooded the room and Mommy picked me up from off the floor. I couldn’t hear what she was saying through her tears and through the sound of things breaking in the next room. Something about leaving? I thought the house was coming down.
We were sitting in the car together, looking at the house. I could see the light on in Mommy’s room, but my room was dark again.
"Are we leaving?" I asked, just to make sure.
"Yes." Mommy sighed. "We’ll be staying at grandma’s for awhile."
"Are you afraid?" She looked startled by the question, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter with her stubby hands. All she did was nod vacantly and start the car.
Pulling away, Mommy started to sing, "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream." I hummed the rest with an empty head, closing my tired eyes. The wind groaned an empty threat — "...best friends forever..." — and I told myself it was just the wind. Only the wind.
Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Middle-earth, Josie Beecher is a freelance writer/poet living in California with her husband and their two fur-babies. When she's not writing she spends her time slaying dragons, baking cupcakes, jogging, and exploring in between the words of other writers. Her work has been published in Teen Ink Magazine, Penny Ante Feud, and The Poetic Pinup Revue. "Orange Girl," her first poetry collection, was published in January 2012 by Black Coffee Press. You may read more of her work on her blog (josiebeecher.blogspot.com).
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Something in Our House
by D.W. Gillespie; published October 22, 2013
11:13 PM
Dan sat among the dolls and toys and games with his head drooping heavily in his hands. He wasn’t quite into a deep sleep before being summoned from his bed by his three-year-old daughter Kate, but he was close enough. Her voice drifted through the electronic monitor in a softly prodding tone, calling him to her bedside. He was used to being beckoned thusly, though not like this, not gentle and easy, but he was too tired to register how different this scene was.
Dan held firmly to the stance that Kate was too old for the baby monitor, but the truth was, the gadget wasn’t for Kate. It had been a long day at work, and an even longer evening at home, and Dan wanted nothing more than sleep. Overhead, an endless cycle of shadows danced on the ceiling, a parade of unicorns and shooting stars and clowns, dear God, why clowns. Of all the things to soothe a child to sleep, the thought of garish, smiling clowns was enough to give him nightmares.
It was, wasn’t it? The clowns did give you nightmares.
The voice in his head was his, of course, but it was a different brand of interior monologue, the kind that didn’t like to show itself in the light of day. This voice always spoke in whispers, always when the house was dark and still and full of secrets. Even Dan, as dense as he could be, knew exactly what that voice was. It was nothing more than the deepest part of his imagination, that tiny part of every person that holds sway over the tired, sleep starved mind. During the waking hours, this voice was brushed away as easily as wiping a strand of hair off your forehead. But in the dark, its influence grew and swelled until it drowned out all rational thought. When the sun was up, Dan heard only the clear, elegant voice of reason, but in the midnight hours, he heard the cracking death rattle of despair.
"I had another dream," Kate said matter-of-factly.
Dan grimaced. He knew why he was there, knew that his duty involved smoothing the edges of nightmares down to dull, painless nubs and ensuring that all was still sound and sane in the world. This was the duty of all fathers in the late hours of the night, but it was never quite that simple with Kate. Ever since she was eighteen months old, she had what doctors called night terrors — a good name that, but not nearly enough to capture the essence of the moment. The first night was burned into his memory like a brand, and he doubted that it would ever fade.
It was the scream. Not the scream of a baby that’s suddenly aware of its wet diaper or empty belly, but the terrified yowl of an animal being eaten alive. That was his first thought as he sprang into consciousness already on his feet, that somehow a cat or a raccoon or a stray dog had crawled into the bed with them as something tore pieces of its flesh away in great, gory ribbons. As he darted into the bedroom, that’s exactly what he expected to find, because the simple fact was, he couldn’t imagine — couldn’t fathom — a child making such sounds. But she did, and he and his wife Shelly both stared at her for a solid ten seconds before waking her, such was their amazement and dread.
In the time since, Dan often thought back at that moment with striking clarity, realizing now what neither of them would have ever admitted to the other. That first glance at their darling girl writhing and shrieking was so awful, so very horrific, that neither wanted to be the first to touch her, as if that terror could somehow be passed from person to person as easily as the flu. It seemed just as silly now as it did then, but silliness didn’t change the truth.
These episodes continued throughout the next year in fits and starts. Sometimes weeks would pass without incident, then — boom — three in one week. Shelly immediately had appointments made with an increasing series of dead ends: the family practitioner, sleep specialists, neurologists. All gave more or less the same answer. No one understands night terrors, and there really is no way to prevent them. Some grow out of it, some never do, and what you’re left with is learning how to deal with it.
So, that’s what they did, they dealt with it. They all put on their happy faces and pretended that it was just part of the agreement parents made with the universe. You take the good with the bad and you make it work, and the rational, sane voice of the sunlit hours carried Dan and Shelly through their long days at work. But at night, that voice grew weaker and weaker, and as soon as Dan’s head hit the pillow, he felt his gut tighten and his heart race, and the whisper grew.
It’s going to happen again tonight...
That year, more so than any in Dan’s life, felt like a waking dream, so like a ghost among the living. There was no one to confide in; any talk with Shelly inevitably turned sour as she accused him of blaming Kate. Never before had he felt so isolated, and even now, after everything else that had happened, he wondered if the episode at work was inevitable.
They made you do it, the night voice whispered. They planned it ... just think, after everything comes out, there’s nothing to stop them kicking you to the curb.
"No," Dan muttered aloud. He wouldn’t hear this. He loved his family. He always had, and he knew that even good men make mistakes.
"Daddy?" she said.
"Sorry honey. I’m just talking to myself."
That didn’t matter now. What he had done, what he was doing, that was all secondary to this moment. While i
t was true that the episode at work — and that was how he thought of it now, the episode at work — threatened to dissolve the very foundation his family had built upon, that didn’t matter, not at eleven o’clock on a Thursday, not crouched sleepy and shirtless at the end of his daughter’s tiny bed. Now, the only thing that mattered was her, was to listen and soothe and give comfort and sanity to a dream that had none.
Several times over the past few months, Kate had spoken of her dreams in the daytime with shocking clarity and vividness. These quiet moments with his daughter disturbed Dan more than he cared to admit, but not because of what it revealed about her. Her words flung him back into his own past with a desperate suddenness as violent as a head on collision, and all at once, there he was, sitting bolt up in his own bed, the warmth of his own urine soaking through the Ninja Turtle sheets, darkening the cotton, making him feel guilty and scared and helpless despite the fact that he was too old to wet his bed, too old to be afraid of the darkness.
There were clowns ... you remember that don’t you?
He remembered, and even though Kate never mentioned clowns, she still spoke of things that made his skin crawl. Once she told him she saw a baby with a towel over its face, but the towel was moving and she knew the baby was suffocating, and she reached forward to help just as spiders — dozens of them — began crawling over the sides of the fabric. She spoke of dark things, places that didn’t exist, that couldn’t be real, but that had distinct geography and precise details. There was a man that worked at a grinder, his back to her as he hunched over a table, grinding away at something metallic and blood slicked, and as she approached, he turned and showed her the hole that was his face, charred around the edges but full of webbed cocoons within. She told of this, and other things on the way to daycare or in front of the TV, never with the wondrous voice of a child who has invented something hidden and magical, but with the distant monotone of someone who survived an atrocity.
Dan was glad these conversations happened during the day when his own voice of reason was at its peak, and he never hesitated to explain them away as easily as fanning a moth out the door. But tonight had gone off the track from the beginning, and only now as he began to shake the dust from his own mind was he realizing that. For the first time, she had not awoken screaming, and she was explaining what she had seen, and no matter how he tried to interject, she would not stop.