November 1, 1989

 

 

Joey woke up on his bed, in the dark. His clock threw bright red numbers all around him. It was 1:45. He didn't move and with his smurf quilt pulled over his body, up to his chin he looked like a giant slug. His eyes were big and as white as the icing on a wedding cake only they didn't suggest happiness. Not at all! Joey hated the dark, with it's awful sounds and shadows he could never be quite sure if the inconsistent scratching on his window was just a big, old elm or a vampire, with it's dark piercing eyes, floating through the crisp night air.

But he had to go pee.

He really had to go and there's no denying or delaying that feeling. But it was dark and even the frowning Bozo the Clown light his mommy had bought him earlier that year couldn't cover up the fact that someone or something could still be watching him. Just watching, ready to pounce, or snatch or do whatever those things do to ten* the shit out of you then take your life. The things that live in the dark, in the closet or under your bed.

Joey was deathly afraid of his bed or, more precisely, what was under it. It was one of those captain's beds that stand three feet off the ground and you had to run and jump as far as possible just to get on it. Yes, he had one of those beds and yes, he had begged and pleaded for it because Jimmy Barker had one and he was cool. It was a great bed, at the start. Then Joey started noticing shadows underneath the long drawers.

"They're just shadows," he would tell himself," Just shadows." But these shadows moved.

They crawled and slithered along the floor. Sometimes when he was all alone he could have sworn that he saw two or four or six bright, beady green eyes staring at him; beckoning him; pleading for him to dangle one of his hands or feet over the edge of his mattress. And sometimes at night he could feel the coarse, hard, matted fur of something long dead; maybe a wolf or lion with long sharp claws. Yes, he used to like his bed.

Used to.

But he had to go pee. And Joey could just imagine the frown in his mother's eyes and the scowl of disapproval on her face as she walked into his room and asked the few inevitable words.

 

"What's that smell?" she would mutter and those three words said it all. He would break down crying because he was five and still wet his bed like a baby.

He hated his bladder too. Why couldn't it wait until morning? Why couldn't it wait until there was enough light in his room to be able to see the creases in Bozo's frowning face? Because his bladder was in cahoots with his bed and the shadows. But he had to impress his mommy by going pee in the toilet, all by himself That door was just so far away and that light switch so high up.

But he had to go.

So Joey stood on his bed, scared to death about what would happen if he lost his footing and fell. If he just toppled over the side of his bed and into the gaping jaws of the shadow things like a marionette tossed into the toybox after a long, tiring day. Oh how he longed to go out in the hallway. Out into the light where nothing evil comes, and the only shadows don't move. Joey knew that the light was on in the hall because he could see it filtering in through his door which was only open a crack. His mommy closed the door on him on purpose. So he wouldn’t get out, away from the shadow things. So he wouldn't flush the toilet and disturb her 'beauty sleep'.

But he had to.

Joey just stood there on his bed for ten, maybe twenty minutes, mesmerized by the shadows on the floor.

Then he jumped.

He leaped a leap very big for a five year old.

"Bigger than my mommy could jump." he thought silently. And he saw in his mind's eye his mommy in the next room, sleeping in her new waterbed from Sears, not even noticing that her son was jumping for his life.

 

"I hate you, mommy !"he cursed at her and, although it was barely a whisper, she heard it in her dreams. So Joey jumped and every moment he could see the light from his door getting closer. Then he looked down and saw...

And saw what?

It was darkly silhouetted against Joey's window shade by the feeble glow of that frowning Bozo light so it couldn't be a shadow.

It was dark gray mottled fur and bright green eyes. Those eyes were what he noticed first though, glittering from within like they were powered by some high-beam flashlight; and those claws; those long, ivory-brown claws; stained a deep red on the tips by the blood of it's other prey.

Then he screamed and the nightlight went out in a spark of blue light.

He let loose a long, unearthly wail as if the whole #4 Fire Brigade was rushing down his street. Then he let go of his bladder in a short, very powerful flood.

And his mommy did not hear.

And when she came the next morning to wake him up for kindergarten she saw a very large puddle of blood on the floor. And on top of the piles of Lego's and Construx was Joey, sprawled out like a snow angel. There were a few bloody handprints on the wall closest to the door and down in the comer, right beside Joey's bedpost was something that looked like a dust bunny.

And the Bozo light was back on and smiling.