was upside down, she was looking at a right-side up bedroom, one not unlike her own. She stuck her hand in and touched the floor that should have been the underside of her bed. It was a solid floor with rough carpeting.
Leaning further under the bed, she could feel gravity pulling her toward the floor. She tumbled over and popped out into the different bedroom. She sat up and looked around. The moan rose up again, this time from right behind her. She turned around and saw, sitting on a bed not unlike her own, was a girl not unlike herself. Except, this girl's skin was gray and pulled too tight. Her mouth was too large and filled with sharp teeth at odd angles. The gray girl moaned again, pointing right at Christie.
Christie could not scream. Her entire body was frozen. Even the air in her lungs refused to move.
“Dad!” yelled the gray girl.
The gray girl continued to scream as Christie scrambled under the bed and came back out into her own room. She sat silently and stared at her bed, breathing heavily. She waited for the monster to come crawling after her, but after a while she realized it was not coming. Christie sighed, thank goodness whatever that thing was seemed just as scared of her as she was of it. She stood and went back to bed.
As she lay in bed, Christie heard a door open. A light clicked on underneath her bed.
She could hear a deep, growling voice say, “What's wrong, honey?”
The gray girl shrieked, “There's something under my bed!”
“Well,” said the deep voice, “I guess I should have a look under there.”
The Thing in My Dreams
I sat at the edge of my bed, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Sunlight sneaked its way through a gap in my curtains and landed right on my face. I recoiled away from the warm light and stood up. It had been a restless night. I had grown used to them.
Every night for the last three months had been spent in the same nightmare. Something with too many teeth chasing me through the neighborhood. Each night I tried changing my escape route but each night it still caught me. I would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. When I finally found myself asleep again the creature would be waiting and the chase would start again.
The dream was always so vivid. It was too real. I would find myself walking past the same places I had run past in my dream and my body would go numb. Sometimes I would catch myself taking the same routes that I had tried in my dream. I would go out of my way to avoid entire blocks of the neighborhood.
I did not know what this creature was or why it chased me in my dreams. Some nights I would try to reason with it, others I would try to fight it off. None of it worked. The creature would not or could not speak, and it tore through my defenses like paper. All I could do was run, so every night, that is what I would do.
But standing in my room this particular morning, I thought back to that night's dream. Once again I had been cornered by the creature. It stalked forward, opening its wide mouth filled with rows upon rows of sharp teeth. Just it was about to close its jaws on me it stopped and pulled back. The creature was whimpering. I stared at the creature. It was afraid. I laughed and taunted the creature.
Then I heard something. A low rumbling noise that shook my entire body. The sound was coming from directly behind me. The creature turned and fled from the thing that made the noise. I turned to face it. I cannot remember what I saw, but when I saw it I woke up in a cold sweat.
Behind You
Something was following James. It had been following him all day. He could hear its footsteps in between his own. Everywhere he went it was not far behind. In the morning it had been a few yards away. By lunch it was never more than a few feet away. Now, as the sun began to set, it was so close he could feel its breath on his neck.
Whatever it was, it was always behind him. No matter how quickly he turned around or how confined a space he was in it was directly behind him. Around lunch he turned his back to the wall of a four story building, but when he walked forward he still heard the thing's footsteps following from behind. He could not see it in reflections or in the pictures he tried to take with his camera.
At first it had been annoying. It felt like a joke someone was playing on him, but now James felt threatened by whatever this was. Its footsteps perfectly matched his own, for a few moments he thought that it had left him but when he listened closely he could make out the difference between his steps and those of the thing. They fell just a bit harder than his own. Even the breathing, that was constantly warming the back of his neck, had started to fall in rhythm with his own. When he reached for things he could feel a presence, as if something were resting just against the back of his hand.
James sat in his living room with all the lights on. He sat and watched the clock and listened to the sounds of the thing that seemed to be just behind him in his chair. As the clock ticked forward he could feel the thing pulling closer. It was right up against him now. James shut his eyes and tried to block out the sound of its breathing. Then, suddenly it stopped.
James opened his eyes. He looked at the clock. It was midnight. Perhaps the thing had passed. Like a trial. James had overcome it. James let out a sigh in relief and felt it. The thing's breath. It breathed out through his own mouth with him. James tried to move but he felt locked in place. He struggled and sweated but his body refused to move. James' vision started to fade and he felt weak. As he started to lose consciousness he could feel himself stand up.
He heard his own voice say, “My turn.”
And then everything went dark.
The Man in the Dark Blue Suit
Allison slammed the front door behind her and turned every lock. She peered through the door’s peephole and saw him. A tall, thin man in a dark blue suit. She had seen him all day and thought it a coincidence. She saw men in suits around her most days, but when he was on the train with her and then in the parking lot ahead of her she realized something was wrong. That was when she finally got a good look at his face. It was always smiling. The eyes were too big and had no color. The hair seemed fake, almost like a solid mass of plastic.
He was on the corner when she turned her car into the driveway and now he was right outside her door. Allison reached for the phone. There was no signal. Same went for her cellphone. She flicked a light switch and nothing happened. All of this had to happen now. She had lost cellphone service and suffered black-outs before, but why did they have to all happen at once now that she really needed these things.
There was a knock on the door. A slow, steady knock. One beat every five seconds. She did not have to check the peephole to know who it was. She did not want to check. She knew that when she did she would just see that awful face right in front of her. The knocking continued at the same pace, but each knock grew louder. She could hear the door straining against each blow. Was he trying to knock the door down?
As if to answer, the next knock sent a few fragments of wood scattering onto the floor. Allison ran to the back of the house. She weighed her options. She could not stay here, not when that thing was going to break in eventually, but the fence in her backyard was too high. She would have to run past her front door to escape. Could she get to her car before it noticed her? What would it do if it did? She decided to wait. If she left as the thing entered her house she could run around the outside of the house while it searched the inside.
Allison listened. Even from back here she could hear the sounds of her door being smashed open. She opened her back door and ran straight into the man in the dark blue suit.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
She turned to run but he was behind her too. She looked out of her window and saw dozens more standing outside.
“Come with us, if you please,” they spoke in unison.
Do Not Look
You have heard them before. Just as you are falling asleep and your mind and body start to numb. Something scratching at the window, or breaking the branches off trees, or scrambling across your roof. You hear these things and, as you just want to sleep, say this is jus
t the wind. But you know this is not true. In the back of your mind, the part that is still active as the rest of it falls asleep, you know that these are the sounds belong to the things that live in the night.
You have seen them too. That quick, fleeting shadow that jumps through the light cast through your window. Those shaking trees on calm, breezeless nights. Even in the day you may have seen them in the corner of your eye. You may have caught them knocking something over on their way back into the shadows before you get a proper look at them.
You have seen and heard them, and even when you explain to yourself that these are just regular noises or tricks of the light you know the truth. You know the truth and it scares you. But you hide behind your lie to stay calm, to feel safe. Little do you know is that this ignorance, however false, is actually making you safe.
They hate being seen and heard. They belong to the shadows and to be known hurts them as much as the all-revealing sun. It burns them to be noticed. And when they burn they lash out to try and stop the pain. They retreat from your accidental glances, but if you were to look directly at them they would scream. A scream so loud and piercing you would think it were your own if not for the unnatural tones it produced. This scream would drown out everything, even your cries for help as they attacked.
So go