Bedtime Stories

Chapter One

Bedtime Story

It was a Wednesday. Not a significant date by any means, just another Wednesday. That's what I thought anyway, what I thought before everything happened.

I lived in a nice two story home near the beach in a fairly decent neighborhood, but recently there had been a string of kidnappings. Children taken right from their beds in the dead of night. I was drifting in and out on the couch downstairs after a long day of working a physically demanding job. My son had gone to bed about an hour before, and I was zoning out to the drone of the nightly news.

There was a noise upstairs, a soft thump that came just above me. It sounded like my son had fallen out of bed, but the recent reports had made me nervous. I went upstairs and cut into my room, opening the gun safe and pulling out my old Smith and Wesson. I double checked the drum and quietly drifted toward my son's room. His door was cracked, and I could hear a woman's voice on the other side.

Slowly, I pushed the door open to find my wife sitting in bed with my boy. She looked like she had just gotten out of the shower, her skin shone in the dim light of the moon like it was still damp and her hair hung wetly against her head like some sort of inky blanket. She clung tightly to my son as the cold air for his open window sent chills down my spine. My boy sat wide eyed next to her, both of them fixated on a book. "I think I can, I think I can." she whispered to him as she flipped the page with a free hand. Her eyes slowly drifted to me as more light flooded the room, she smiled softly at me and crooked a finger. "Come, you read the last page." She cooed sweetly.

I raised the gun to the woman and drew back the hammer "I don't know who, or what you are, but my wife died three years ago." I stated. The thing pretending to be my wife shrunk back, its gaze now fixed to me. It dropped to the floor, arms and legs far too long to be human skittered backward, drifting to the windowsill where it lingered for several minutes before leaping out. I rushed over to my son and wrapped my arms tightly around him, closing my eyes and breathing a deep sigh.

"Daddy?" I heard his muffled whimper from my chest.

"Yeah, buddy?" I asked, pulling him away to look into his eyes.

"It's still watching us..." he whispered. Slowly, my gaze turned to the window. It was still there, what ever it was. Its head barely poking above the bottom of the window, watching us, unblinking. Quickly, I grabbed my gun and leveled it at the thing's forehead, but before I could pull the trigger, it had ducked away. I rushed to the window and poked my head out, and there on the ground it stood, staring up at me. The thing had changed, it now only vaguely resembled my wife. Too long arms and legs rested idly as massive black eyes that easily consumed half of its face stare at me. The creature, the thing, whatever the hell it was, blinked, eyelids closing vertically instead of horizontally. I didn't do anything this time, it was like my body had locked itself in fear. Several long moments later, that creature dropped back down onto all fours and scurried toward the beach.

I don't know what the hell I saw that Wednesday night, but I moved away from the coast, bought myself a nice one-story home in a landlocked state, and even though I'm pretty sure I got away from that thing I never leave my door or my windows unlocked.