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 Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:45 pm
Quote: The Monster Under the Bed (5) : There’s a faint scratching under your bed. Maybe you’ve heard it in the nights leading up to now, or maybe it’s just started, but the scurrying noise is starting to drive you mad. What is it? A bug? A creature? Your imagination? If you try to ignore the noise, it grows louder and louder and louder, until it’s practically all you can hear. You can try to ignore it but sleep is impossible. If you’re hoping to get any rest, you’re going to have to investigate–but you’re not going to like what you find. A flashlight under the bed yields nothingness–a darkness so deep that it seems to swallow up all light. The noise is worse but you can’t see anything. But you’re already in its trap. If you try to reach into the darkness, something grabs your wrist; if you try to walk away, your ankle. Its grip is icy and sharp, like being grabbed by knives, and it pulls. No matter how hard you fight against it, it’s stronger–and it drags you into the darkness. You fall, for what feels like an eternity–and then you jerk awake, violently. Maybe it was just a bad dream. But it doesn’t explain the fading red marks from where it grabbed you. When you look again, it’s just your bed–but you have the distinct feeling that something is missing.
At first she closed her eyes and tried going back to sleep. Maybe it was Elsie making noise. Rolling around in her bed. But--
No, she heard something. A sound she didn’t recognize. Under her bed?
Not her bed. Under Elsie’s bed!
What was it, though?? A mouse? Lucasta? No, she didn’t like coming in there to sleep, and certainly not under the bed. She didn’t know what to do if there was a real monster under the bed! Especially if she couldn’t risk powering up to deal with it!
So she did the only thing she could think of. She hopped out of bed and darted out of her room and across the hall to Henry’s.
“Wake up!” she hissed with distress, shaking her twin’s shoulder. “There’s something under Elsie’s bed!”
She could have gone to their parents, but what if it was her fault that a youma or something got into the house??
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:45 pm
Henry mumbled unintelligibly as he slowly came awake, jostled out of dreams that immediately slipped out of reach as Abby shook him.
“Wuh-izzit?” The words slurred together as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. Henry paused to yawn, then sat up and blinked blearily at his sister. “D’you have a bad dream?”
He looked around to try and check the time and found the numbers 2:43 staring back at him from the little alarm clock on his bedside table. Henry yawned again. He didn’t really want to get out of bed, but Abby looked anxious and he couldn’t just leave her like that, even if he was pretty sure she was just having nightmares. Being magic did that. He knew Mom and Dad had bad dreams, too.
When he could stand without falling over, Henry slid out of bed.
“It’s okay, let’s check it out.”
He paused to dig through his side table drawer, pulling out the flashlight he kept there in case the power ever went out.
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:45 pm
See? Abby knew Henry was the right person to go to. He might not have magic, but he was definitely the most capable nine-year-old that she knew.
She bounced anxiously on the balls of her feet as she waited for Henry to get everything he needed. A flashlight would have been a good start for her, but she’d completely forgotten they’d existed and just wanted to have her brother come and protect them from monsters.
“There’s definitely something under her bed,” she insisted with a hissed whisper. She was wide awake after having heard the sounds for just a short while. Normal things didn’t make that kind of sound. Oh no, what if Elsie got eaten while she was away??
She quietly crept back towards her and Elsie’s room and pointed towards their sister’s bed.
“Just listen!” She was certain she could hear something still!
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:46 pm
Henry still looked skeptical, but he let Abby lead him back to her room. There was a nightlight in the hall, and another in Abby and Elsie’s room, so he didn’t have to use the flashlight just yet. He still held it at the ready, just in case.
He peered into the room around the doorframe. Nothing jumped out at them, and he couldn’t see anything over by Elsie’s bed. Henry held very still and listened. He thought he heard something like a faint scratching sound, but it was soon drowned out by a wet sniffle.
Elsie poked her head out from beneath a mound of blankets.
“Is it a monster?” she asked, huddled in the very center of her bed. Her eyes looked a little shiny like she was trying not to cry but having a hard time of it.
“I don’t know,” Henry whispered back. He crept into the room and turned the flashlight on as he slowly approached the bed, sparing a look at Abby. “I think Lucasta would know if there was a monster here. So… maybe it’s a toy? Like it got stuck with the sound on but the battery’s almost dead so it’s just making weird noise?”
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:46 pm
Oh right, Lucasta would definitely be able to tell if there was a youma in the house and would jump into action immediately. Again, she was so relieved that she thought of getting Henry to help, because in her exhausted panic she’d forgotten about all of that stuff, too. Despite being the only one with magic powers of the three in the room.
“I guess?” she made a face, clearly not sure what to think about it. “Elsie, can you get up and jump over here?” she asked, holding out her arms to catch their little sister if she made a jump towards her. Sure, it wouldn’t solve the issue of whatever was under the bed, but at least Elsie would be safe!
“Do you want me to look?” she offered with another hesitant glance at her brother. She didn’t want him to put himself in any danger, but she definitely felt safer with him there. “Or… call mom and dad?”
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:46 pm
“I can look,” Henry offered.
He wasn’t afraid. He was pretty sure there was a logical explanation for it. Sure, he knew monsters were real, but he also knew the likelihood that one actually got into the house was very, very low. They had security cameras and motion sensors everywhere, not to mention Lucasta.
Henry waited for Elsie to get off the bed. She stood up on the very edge of the mattress and took a big leap toward Abby, landing light-footed but distressed, snuggling close as soon as she was safe. Her blonde hair was a mess and she had sleep lines on her face, but her eyes were very big in the dark, clearly wide awake.
Once Elsie was safe, Henry dropped onto his knees and peered under the bed from a few feet away, shining the flashlight at a spot near the corner where the dust ruffle had twisted out of place.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
He crawled closer to make sure, nudging the dust ruffle aside a bit more. Sure enough, there wasn’t anything there. No monster, but no toy either.
So then what was making that sound? Now that he was closer, Henry could hear it better. Something scurrying or scratching. Like a trapped animal maybe. He might wonder if a bird or a bat got caught in the attic somehow, except the sound was definitely coming from under the bed, not above them. Henry frowned and shined the flashlight around, searching for anything he might have missed.
He reached beneath to feel along the rug, and something grabbed him.
Henry let out a shout. He struggled, but whatever it was held onto him—cold and sharp, like ice wrapped around his hand. It pulled at him, tried to drag him forward, but there was nothing there except empty space. Henry reared back and put all of his strength into yanking his arm out. Somehow he managed to wrench himself free. It felt like falling, like when he was lying in bed trying to fall asleep but startled back awake.
When he blinked, the sensation was gone and he was laying on the floor.
“Did I slip?” he wondered.
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 4:47 pm
“Henry!” Abby gasped when Henry was suddenly pulled out of sight--
But then appeared like he’d never been gone in the first place! She had her arms tightly around Elsie, hoping to keep her safe from whatever was under the bed. The urge to push Elsie out of the way (gently and to a safe place) so she could dive under the bed to find Henry was strong, but thankfully it all happened so fast that she didn’t have to act on it.
She kept an arm around Elsie but knelt down next to Henry, gently tugging on his arm to pull him away from the bed.
“You suddenly disappeared. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe dad or mom can look in the morning but--” she paused with a sheepish grimace. “Can we stay in your room with you tonight?”
She certainly didn’t want to leave Elsie there by herself, and she wasn’t going to stay in that room with something weird going on!
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