Bump in the Dark

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

Bump in the Dark

By Plot Roach

“It’s all in my head.” she told herself, snapping the light switch into the on position. From the corner of her eye, she swore she saw something escape into the shadows of the hallway. “Whoever is there, come out.” she called. She was met with silence and cursed her paranoia. She left the light on and went back to bed, the hallway still dark as a tomb beyond the lights of the bedroom. She closed her eyes, pulling a pillow over her head to block out the light. I should probably just grow up and turn off the light, she thought, I would get more rest that way. But she had been unable to sleep with the light off for the last three weeks, sure that something was stalking her from the shadows.

She reached over to flick the switch off, and as soon as she had, she heard a noise. It’s probably just the light bulb cooling down, she told herself. Or some piece of crap in the room falling off a shelf or something. But she did not have the overhead ceiling fan on, so what could have moved it? She turned the light back on, pulling the pillow off of her face and leaning towards the source of the noise. She was rewarded by a glimpse of the intruder and froze in horror. It skittered into the dark hallway once again, quicker than a roach. There, on the bedroom floor was a book, opened to a specific page. When she could breathe again, she slipped from the bed, grabbed the baseball bat she kept near, and looked down to the book.

Nightmares, the title page read. It was a book on superstitions and magic, a book she had bought when she was a child and held onto because of sentimental value. It was so easy as a child to sift through the stories on those pages and imagine every creature contained within to be real and an actual predator to unwary children. But I’m a grown woman now, she thought. Those things can’t be real. And yet she could not shake the image she had just seen from her memory. Maybe it’s too much caffeine? She asked herself, pulling the book up off of the floor and taking it back into bed with her. She read through the chapters, though at one point in her childhood she had read enough of the book to almost memorize it.

The section on Nightmares spoke of how different countries and religions saw the manifestations of nighttime fears and how to conquer them. She remembered a time when she put mirrors around her room and aluminum foil on the closet floor in order to ward away the boogeyman. It seemed silly to her adult self, though she was tempted to check in her kitchen to see how much aluminum foil was left on the roll in her pantry.

You just have to get a good night sleep, she told herself. You’re too tired and aren’t thinking clearly. She closed the book and set it on the nightstand next to the bed, also setting the baseball bat next to the foot of the bed. She left the light on, knowing that she would not trust any noises for the rest of the night if she were alone in the dark room. She pulled the pillow back over her head and steadied her breathing, counting backwards from one hundred in order to coax herself back to sleep. Somewhere around the number eighty two was when she felt a pressure on her chest. It did not let up after she hit the seventies and only increased the closer she got to number fifty. She threw the pillow to the side and tried to sit up, and found that something was sitting on her chest. It was too bright to look at directly and when she tried to shield her eyes with her hands, she found that they were pinned against her sides. She tried to roll, to buck the thing off of her, but she was held tight, the pressure increasing, she could barely breathe.

In her thrashing, the bed knocked against the end table and the lamp next to it fell to the floor with a clatter, breaking the bulb and sending sparks flying. The overhead light in the ceiling fan was the only source of the light in the room and it was greatly dimmed in comparrison to the desk lamp. That was when she noticed that the creature sitting upon her had dimmed as well. She could make out its features, a doglike head on a scaly thick torso. Its fingers more like tentacles than human digits, that ended in claws. The rest of its body a thick rope like form that reminded her of a snake. It hissed and pressed its body even further down upon her, squeezing out the last of her breath. Darkness blurred at the edge of her vision and she was certain that she was soon to die.

But the darkness lashed out and toppled the beast from atop her, sending it to the floor, where it thrashed against and undefined attacker. Something struck out at the lightbulb in the ceiling fan, sending bits of glass rainging down upon her. But the body of the light-beast was enough to light the room. That was when she saw that the thing that was attacking it was really a mass of several small shadow beings. Rat like faces screeched in unison as they attacked the light-beast. Bodies built like heavily armed turtles snaked out from the darker recesses of her apartment and latched onto her would be attacker. And though their bodies seemed like they should lumber across the floor, they moved with a speed that her eyes could barely register.

One by one the shadow things fell upon the light-beast, tearing it into chunks and fleeing with their booty into the corners of her room before devouring their catch. Once the light-creature was no more, they coalesced into one great being, the head of a cat resting on the shadowy form of a woman in a gossamer thin tunic.

The glow faded from the room as the last of the light-creature’s essence was absorbed into the shadow figure. It reached out to her mind, even as a clawed hand caressed her cheek. It sighed, as if looking down at a beloved child and turned away to escape into the looming darkness, talking to her without words.
Not everything in the darkness is your enemy and not everything in the light is your friend.