Bogeyman

 I laid in the bed staring up at the wooden ceiling, time ticking by as I rested in a house that had been abandoned. My eyes searched the wood, hoping answers rested within the grain as the silence stretched around me, occupying the home, nestling beneath beds and within closets. I could imagine the home alive, children everywhere, laughter intermingled with scolding words and warnings.

Now it was empty and cold. I hadn’t bothered to light a fire. Each room was illuminated by a single candle, as it was at night normally. In the room down the hall, a dozen little beds waited for children who had fled in terror just four nights ago. No one had returned to the home since, except me. 

The bed beneath me creaked as I moved, trying to find some comfortable position that likely didn’t exist. The caretaker had spent her time with her charges rather than worrying about her comfort. I had found her at an inn with twelve youths whose eyes were red and faces pale. Things that hunted children were rarely real, and all too often an imagined danger from the active mind of an innocent. 

Yet the haunted looks in their eyes as they whispered of what lurked in the dark had stirred me enough to lie, a shift on as though I were their keeper, in an uncomfortable bed waiting for the house to erupt into preternatural life. I inhaled the smell of musk and ash, then watched the candle flicker idly until my eyes began to drift closed.

A long, slow creak echoed down the hall. My eyes shot open, my breathing suddenly all I could hear as I strained to listen. No steps resounded, no claws on the wall. Just a single, lonely creak.

I stood and walked to the door, looking down the hall to where I saw a door standing open. No shadows loomed around it, yet the candlelight from within the room flickered wildly, casting eerie shadows on the ground. 

My feet carried me forward until I stood close enough to touch the door, which was in the room hidden on the other side. With one breath to calm my racing heart, I stepped around it and peered within the room with a dozen little beds. 

The candle sat in the middle of the room on a simple little table beside a plain chair where the caretaker watched her flock before they dreamt. I glanced around the beds, seeing nothing disturbed. Everything was neat, tidy, and perfectly in place.

Another creek echoed when I stepped into the middle of the room. As I turned, a closet door slowly opened, revealing the dark depths within. In the low light, I couldn’t see beneath the hanging children’s clothes. 

The door stopped once it was wide open, exposing itself. Yet the light wouldn’t penetrate it, keeping its secrets hidden in shadow. I exhaled and took hold of the candle on the table. My feet pulled me closer, the candlelight wavering as I stepped towards the open door. 

Darkness seemed huddled within. My heart thudded softly as I looked down into the shadows before steeling myself. I knelt and shoved the candle within the closet. 

The darkness broke, as though swarming around me and revealing nothing but discarded shoes and the odd broken toy. A breath of release escaped me as I sagged slightly, muscles relaxing. 

“Well done,” I muttered under my breath, congratulating my mind at the ability to frighten myself with minimal effort. Monsters never frightened me. Humans, though? They were deceitful, cruel, and vicious. They were the first to kill or torture in the name of something being different or wrong. They were the first to hunt the outsider, to treat people like me, like monsters, like prey. 

Lurking in the dark, playing games, hunting me… A shiver went down my spine as I stood up, frightening myself more than anything in the room had. Memories of running for my life filtered through my mind, of hiding in a home, waiting to be found bounced around my mind. A child scared, unable to hide who she was.

I swallowed and blinked, wondering at my own mind’s nonsense. Despite myself, I turned, looking around the room as though it held a secret person, lurking beyond my sight. My lips pursed as a lump rose in my throat. 

My heart began to race once more as I walked to the edge of one of the beds, glancing at the hem of the blanket. The shadows waited, filled with potential. Beyond the candle’s flickering, I heard it, just barely there. The gentle inhalation and exhalation of something breathing.

I closed my eyes briefly, finding the pit in my stomach and trying to tell it to be still. There was no one beneath the bed. An adult couldn’t fit beneath one. I would have seen someone come in. 

My eyes immediately glanced to the windows, noting they were all still shut. Yet perhaps I had fallen asleep briefly when my eyes had closed and someone had come inside. Perhaps it wasn’t a monster at all, but a human, terrifying children and their caretaker for their own sickening delight. Perhaps, just perhaps, they knew what I was and was waiting.

I felt my skin grow cold as I slowly lowered myself down and took hold of the edge of the bedding. Exhaling sharply, I tore the bedding off and looked beneath the frame, peering in the darkness with sudden bravery.

Nothing was under the bed. 

I squatted down, looking beneath the bed with sudden renewed confidence and yet disbelief that nothing was there. The breathing stopped. The flickering candle showed nothing.

With a sigh, I stood, letting the bedding drop from my hand to the bed. As I looked up I froze, eyes falling on the man in the corner of the room, features invisible in the darkness. He was broad, strong hands clasping a knife and a bit of rope. 

The breathing started again, sudden and loud. I knew it was him, his eagerness obvious in the increased rate. A slow, too wide grin slid over his lips, now visible in the low light of my candle. 

Behind me, the door to the closet slammed shut. I jumped, dropping the candle to the ground as the man pushed off from the wall and began to stride towards me. Its flame guttered and died, suspending me in eternal darkness.

My body moved quickly, carrying me through the open door, slamming it behind me as I ran down the hall. I grabbed the door to the room I had been laying in, closing it behind me and resting my back against it as I fumbled with the lock. 

The door handle jiggled. Then groaned as something tried to force it open. I kept my back to it, holding the door as I tried to glance around. 

“I know you’re in there, beast,” he snarled. “If you don’t open this door, I will cut those evil eyes out of you when I get hold of you. Let me in or you’ll die screaming in pain.” 

Tears slid down my cheeks as I stepped away, mired somewhere in what was happening and memories of the past. I shivered as he thundered on the door, a strange whimper of fear escaping me. With one loud thud, the door stopped and silence consumed the room, only the sound of my rapid breathing accompanying me.

I took one tentative step forward towards the door, trying to find my own center amongst the chaos swirling inside. Then another step until I was at the door. My hand, trembling, reached out to grasp the handle.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. I screamed, turning, only to be pushed up against a door. The man was covered in darkness, except for his sick grin as he pressed up against me, knife glinting in the shadows.

“Found you,” he snarled, the sound mixing with a laugh of victory.

I shuddered, suddenly frozen. My eyes looked around the room, noticing my bag on the ground by the bed. Too far away. The candle by the bed flickered softly, beyond my reach. Nothing else was in the simple room. Not even a window I could break and escape through.

My brows furrowed as he touched the blade to my cheek. No windows. 

“How did you get in here?” My voice was small and shaken, belonging to a child I wasn’t anymore.

The man stopped, pausing his promise of pain for just a moment. My breath came out ragged. “You can’t be him. He was a human. Humans can’t move through shadows,” 

I tilted my head to look at the man. His grin remained, an integral part of my fear manifested. I swallowed and shifted, stepping forward until our bodies pressed against one another. My hand touched his face, looking at him as though I had only seen him for the first time through adult eyes.

“I am not that girl anymore. He can’t hurt me now. But you…” I paused as the grinning facade began to fluctuate. “You can certainly frighten me. Why?”

It stepped back, sliding into the darkness and all but vanishing. I peered into the night, stepping into the shadows as though I would bump into it if I tried hard enough.

“I would never harm you,” the voice whispered. “Frighten, yes. Fear is how I survive. But never harm. I keep that which harms at bay.”

There was nothing to see. Then a shadow existed, the face of an aged woman, which melted into that of a devil, into that of a tall slender man, and back to the grinning man of my nightmares. 

“You need to scare people? To survive?”

He turned his head, the grin present and alarming. I swallowed back my urge to run. 

“Yes. It keeps me alive. I am, as always, whatever you fear.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “The one that haunts children. The monster under beds.”

“Behind doors.”

“In closets.”

His grin shone. “You know of me.”

“I thought you were in my head.” 

“I am.” He stepped forward, the knife and rope ready, as though to bind me. 

I looked over the instruments and back to his face. “Do you want me to run?”

“I do.”

“And this fear… you’ll use it?”

“There are things in the dark, in the night. Things I swallow with delight.” Razor teeth showed in his smile. 

“I had heard you protected children. If you were ever real at all.” 

His head tilted. “Fear protects us all. It is how we all survive. My role is to keep you alive. To help you thrive. Fear serves you by never allowing what wants to kill you get close enough.”

I nodded my head in quiet understanding. There were so few monsters that remained who had ever hunted children, truly. Now I knew why. “Thank you,” I said softly. “For protecting them. And me.”

His grinning hunger didn’t falter. “You are welcome.”

“Can I do anything to thank you?”

“Run.”

I tried not to smirk at the invitation before I looked at his face, at the tools in his hand, and turned. I hadn’t taken more than two steps when a hand had grabbed my hair and pulled me back against him, yanking my head back so my throat was exposed. 

“Did you think you could get away?” his gruff voice was a whisper in my ear. 

I whimpered involuntarily, struggling to pull away from him. The strong fingers tightened, pulling haardeer, before he forced me down to my knees at the end of the bed. 

A ragged breath escaped me as the knife was pressed against my cheek. “Now, I promised you pain.” 

My fingers closed on the bag beside me, pulling it against my back and holding it tight. The long rope was extended. He leaned down, reaching to grab my arm. I swung, hitting him in the face with the bag of tools.

A grunt echoed as he staggered backward. I pushed up, grabbing the door handle and pulling it open as his hands closed on my shoulders and pulled me backward. With a strange ease he threw me onto the bed.

The powerful body was atop me in moments, hands grabbing mine and winding the wrists in twine. With strange ease, he pulled them above my head and tied the rope to the iron headboard. The knife touched my cheek and then slid downward, glancing over my throat.

“Shh,” he whispered against my skin. “If you move, you could get hurt.” The wrist flicked, a paper-thin cut forming on my chest just below my collar bone. 

I shivered and whimpered, tugging on the bindings above my head, watching his grinning face as he slid the knife lower, running it along the thin shift that covered my body. I held still, chest heaving from the panicked breaths. 

“Look at you. Helpless. At my mercy.” His grin somehow widened. The knife slid over my breast, edge playing with the nipple through the thin fabric.

A soft moan escaped me and his brows rose. “Did you hear that, beast? You like it, don’t you?”

Conflict stirred within me, moving between arousal and fear that the creature fed. His knife slid under the neckline of the shift and pulled downward, cutting the fabric open so it lay on either side of me. 

“Is this what you’re afraid of?” he growled as he freed himself from his own trousers, engorged and eager. Fingers wound in my hair. “Is it?”

I whimpered and looked into his eyes, knowing if I said no he would stop. With a shiver, I nodded, legs moving to try to push him away. His menacing grin deepened as he set the knife on the table by the candle, hands pulling my thighs apart roughly.

One hand grabbed my throat as he positioned himself between my legs. “Beg me not to,” he growled.

“Please don’t, Please. Please stop. I can’t… please don’t do this. Please.” Each word was filled with the eagerness of want. Tears stained my cheeks as he smirked, mouth finding mine in a wet forced kiss before he pushed his hips forward.

He slid in with ease, my wetness evident. We both groaned in sudden satisfaction. I opened my mouth to his as his tongue tasted me, hips pulling back only to pound in again, plunging deeper within.

His face changed, mutating between faces I knew and had never seen, varying between myths I had heard of and those I had never known. Yet our kiss continued, different tongues and tastes greeting me as the nightmare evolved, dropping the facade of my hunter as the fear faded into lust and need.

The bogeyman rammed into me again and again, our bodies moving together in quiet understanding and need. I shuddered beneath him, whimpering against his skin as he bit my shoulder and neck, leaving marks with different teeth each time.

A groaning snarl fell from his mouth before he bit my bottom lip and then captured my mouth in a hungry kiss. Desperate need pushed me to the brink as I cried out, his lips catching my moan and returning it. Our movements reached a crescendo and his voice strained as he paused, one final deep thrust before he burst within.

I felt ecstasy spill into me and through me, a sudden sense of safety and euphoria. My body bucked beneath him, muscles clenching around his length as I released, nails digging into my palm and against the rope. 

Panting, the nightmare laid atop me, lips kissing my chest. One hand lazily grabbed the knife, cutting my arms free with one simple gesture. 

I moaned, wrapping my arms around him and kissing his forehead. The grin was gone. He was just a man now, no more frightening than any other I had known.

His head lifted as he gazed up at me, a slow, knowing smile. “Your fear. It’s gone.” 

I tilted my head. “Thank you for that, too.” 

Our lips met and he kissed me tenderly. “Thank you for it. And for,” he laughed and gestured at my naked body. “I had forgotten there was more than the fear. That there is more to nurture oneself with.”

“Protectors ought to be loved, too,” I murmured. His head laid on my chest as I closed my eyes, my arms holding me against me.

“May I stay?” he asked softly.

I made a soft sound of happiness. “Always.”