When I was younger, I always slept best when it rained. I would slide open my upstairs window just enough for the cool night breeze to creep into my room, wafting in the smell of the wet air and damp earth as the cascade of rain drops lulled me to sleep. My mother used to warn me about sleeping with a cracked window. She would tell me that someone would climb in through the window while I slept, or worse yet, the rain could puddle up and ruin her hardwood floors. I never took these warnings very seriously, seeing as how I always kept a towel under the window, and my room was on the second floor of our house, which happened to be about 2 miles away from even our closest neighbors.
Our house was nestled neatly in the midst of a pine forest. The tall lanky trees didn’t hide much when there was just one or two of them, but our house was surrounded by hundreds. No one could see our house from the road, even if they did happen to drive past, and our driveway was easily mistaken for just a small clearing in the trees. That house felt like an impenetrable fortress, a secluded castle with a moat of trees. At the time, my father was still alive, and I knew there was nothing that could harm us as long as he was in the house. So I never felt the need to shut my window on those rainy nights, the nights I fell asleep the fastest, slept the heaviest, and dreamt the longest. But now, I wish I had.
I remember the night it happened vividly. Some nights I wake up in a sweat, panicking as if it were happening right then, all over again. The entire thing, burned into my memories, replaying itself over and over as if I hadn’t yet had enough.
I was 16 years old, and summer vacation had just begun, the last summer I would ever get to spend with my dad. We had just finished packing for our annual camping trip, and were looking at maps of trails, trying to pinpoint the perfect spot for us to set up camp this time around. My dad always liked to take the trails we were familiar with, while I always wanted to go on the ones that people tried to steer clear of. It just felt more adventurous that way, but he told me we should always rather be “safe than sorry.”
My dad always made sure I knew my strengths. He taught me to do the normal country-life things, keeping animals, shooting guns, planting food. But the most valuable thing he taught me was to trust my instincts, and to be aware of my surroundings, even in a place I feel comfortable. When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what he meant, so I never really practiced that last one. I was aware of my surroundings enough not to bump into a dresser, or trip over dirty clothes on the floor, but I never wondered why my dad stayed up at night watching the tree line with a shotgun in hand on the nights it rained, or why did the ring of mushrooms outside the house always appear under my window only, or why one corner in the room didn’t seem to capture as much light as the others. So was I ever really aware of my surroundings, if I never wondered about these things? My dad would have told me no, most likely. He checked under my bed and searched through my closet for monsters long after I had stopped asking him to. That was just the kind of dad he was.
After settling on a camping spot and marking our trails on our map, we ate dinner with my mom, who wouldn’t be joining us on our trip. She made us meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and some brussel sprouts. It was supposed to be our last home cooked meal before we set off into the wilderness for a week, and it was delicious. My dad and I helped clean up the kitchen, joking with my mom about her unwillingness to go near bugs or dirt even though she’s constantly surrounded by both, since we basically lived in the middle of a forest. I remember her smiling at us, and her rushing me off to bed so I could get some sleep before the big day. My dad hugged me goodnight, the smell of the smoke from our fireplace clinging to him, mingled with the scent of his Irish Spring soap. I made sure to enjoy this smell while I could, because soon it would be the smell of smoke and B.O. on our camping trip. “See you bright and early!” He said to me as I climbed up the stairs to my bedroom, his smile beaming. He turned around to our packs and started crossing items off our checklist, making sure we had every single thing we needed before we disembarked. Our camping trips were the highlight of his year, and honestly, they were mine too.
Once I made it to my room I realized it was raining lightly outside. Before I crawled into my bed for the night, I cracked my window just enough so that the pitter-patter of rain could lull me to sleep, and the perfume of the damp earth could blanket my room as I drifted off. I made sure to place a towel under the window, just in case any water made it’s way in. The last thing I wanted was for my mother to kill me before the trip. As I laid in my bed, I realized that my dad had sent me off to sleep without checking my closet or bed, a nightly routine I don’t think we’d ever skipped over before. I shrugged it off, he was excited for our trip and needed to make sure everything was perfect. I was too old to have him checking my room for goblins and ghouls anyway. What 16 year old is scared of monsters under their bed?
Sometimes, I wonder if maybe things would be different if he had checked though. Maybe if he had come in earlier, before I opened my window, he would’ve seen something I hadn’t. Sensed something I couldn’t. But what is the point in dwelling on hypotheticals? They can’t change what happened.
That night, after the gentle rain had sung me to sleep, my window slid open ever so slightly. It was loud enough that I woke up, but it wasn’t loud enough to frighten me. I sat up, rubbing my blearly, sleep crusted eyes with the heel of my hands, and then blinked into the near-total darkness of my bedroom. The room was only partially illuminated by a sliver of the cool blue moonlight, casting tall navy shadows of the pine trees outside, stretching them across my floor and up the walls of my room. I sat there, staring straight forward, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Everything seemed normal. Even when I glanced at the window, it seemed to be open the same amount I had opened it myself. I started to think maybe I had imagined the sound.
The rain had stopped, so I didn’t feel like the window had to be open anymore, plus without rain, there was no buffer preventing the mosquitoes or moths from getting inside. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and was about to get up and close the window when I hesitated. In the moonlight, I could see puddles had formed on my floor. One directly under my window, where the towel had inexplicably been bunched up along the baseboard, and another slightly further away, towards the middle of my room. “Shit!” I thought, mom would be so mad if she knew. My feet dangled over the side of the bed and even though I knew I needed to clean the puddles up right away, and really didn’t want to be an all you can eat buffet for the bugs outside, I couldn’t bring myself to get off the bed. My dad hadn’t checked under my bed that night, and for whatever reason, even at 16 years old, that didn’t sit right. I had never felt nervous leaving my bed before, but that night it felt like there was a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. I shook it off after a few anxiety fueled moments, and I hurriedly jumped off the bed, landing a few feet away to avoid being grabbed if there was something lurking under there. Once I was standing there, looking at my bed, I laughed at myself. How dumb can you be? I remember thinking to myself as I looked at my bed and the mountain of shit shoved underneath it. Nothing could be hiding under there. Mocking myself gave me the confidence I needed to walk over to the window and shut it.
I grabbed the towel from the floor, unsure as to how it had moved, but more focused on getting this water cleaned up before it created water spots on the floor. As I bent forward to soak up the furthest puddle, something caught my eye in its reflection. A pine tree’s shadow stretched tall against my bedroom wall, but there was something more there. Another shadow? I thought. I stared at the reflection in the puddle, focusing hard on the shadows. I thought I was seeing things, but the harder I stared, the clearer it became. There was something else in the shadow of the pine tree. Something darker, black instead of navy, dense instead of hazy. Something… solid.
As the realization dawned on me I whirled around and screamed. I didn’t see the shadow move, but I could see my closet door closing tightly behind it, the door knob releasing a slight squeal as it turned and clicked into place. My dad was in my room by the time the door had shut and he flipped the lights on, blinding me momentarily, and releasing the nervous breakdown I was about to have. I was standing in the middle of my room, towel in hand and puddle still at my feet, whimpering, trying to utter a single syllable but failing. I couldn’t do anything but stand there, staring at my closet door, while my dad held onto my shoulders trying to console me. “What’s this puddle from? Why are you out of bed so late?” He asked me, taking the towel from my hand and leaning down to dry the puddle. I couldn’t find my voice, and the moment I tried to speak a loud choking sob erupted from my throat. I shook his shoulder vigorously with my trembling hands, trying to communicate with him to the best I could. He followed my gaze to the closet, and took a step toward it. “Aw sweetie, I forgot to check your closet tonight, didn’t I? I’ll get those boogers out of there for you.” He said as he stepped toward the door, but I grabbed his arm, trying to keep him from going any further. He turned to me and smiled, the kind of smile that says “trust me”. It was a smile he’d given me hundreds of times, one that had never faltered, so I did. I trusted him.
Terror rippled through my body, icy and prickling down my scalp and all the way down my spine. My dad gripped the door knob, and slowly turned the handle. I remember trying to move forward, to pull him back, to shout at him and stop him, but I was frozen in place. I winced as he slowly opened the door. He poked his head in, and then turned back to me, stepping aside so I could see. Nothing was there. No demon, no man, no Mike or Sulley. It was empty.
I felt the tension in my body release as my shoulders slumped. I thought maybe I really had been seeing things, I rationalized that after 16 years of my dad checking under my bed and in my closets, it made sense that the first night he didn’t do it I would feel weird, or see something that wasn’t there. I met my dad’s gaze as he reached for my shoulders again. I shuddered at his touch, his hands cold and clammy, like he had just come out of the rain. “See kiddo, nothing to worry about. Not while Dad’s here.” He pulled me into a bear hug, my face pressed against his chest. The thick smell of the damp, wet earth, nearly suffocating me as he held me there. I wriggled my way out of his grip and stared at him. He looked normal, but there was something that just felt.. Off. I stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time, and he stared back. Both of us, studying one another. “You need to get some sleep,” he said to me after what felt like 15 minutes but was probably only a few seconds. His face showed no emotion. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.” He turned around and walked out of my room, flipping off the light before he left.
Before he pulled his arm all the way out of my bedroom, I noticed something strange about the shadow that his arm cast along the wall. It was darker than all of the other shadows and it looked… solid. I ran to my closet and threw it open to peer into the darkness, and called out, “Dad?”