It was 9:30 when my mother told me to go to bed that night. I had already done my homework, done the dishes, and taken my bath.
I had a sign pinned to my bedroom door with my name ‘Ben’ on it. It hung from a string on a push pin that my mom stuck into the wood. When I was in my room I was supposed to flip the sign over where it said ‘In’. I flipped the sign and entered my room. Mom followed me in there to make sure I was tucked in.
I climbed in bed; Mom tucked me in, gave me a kiss, and turned out the light before closing the door. The moment the door shut the world changed. The noise from the TV was then a muffled mumble. The bright technicolor blanket, carpet, and bedroom accessories were then suddenly a bluish chalk drawing on black construction paper with a window shaped square glowing on the carpet.
The overall tone of the night creates its own suspense. It implies mystery and requires fear. Sometimes I wish there was a second sun for the night instead of the moon. The moon is nice and all, but it’s far too dim to illuminate the endless hiding spots where monsters and madmen lie in wait.
The mattress on my bed sat atop one of those open bottom box springs. I’d crawled under there a number of times and plucked one of the springs with my finger creating an echoy note that rang out like a toy piano. That’s how I knew there was something under my bed. Just as I was starting to drift off to sleep I heard that same note. I even felt its vibration through the mattress.
I’d have called out for my mother but I was frozen stiff and couldn’t make a sound. I just laid there listening and waiting. About ten full minutes must have gone by without a repeat performance. The only thing I could think of that could have made the sound was maybe a mouse but we hadn’t seen any in the house.
I had decided to pull the covers over my head and wait it out til morning when I heard something else. It sounded like someone scratching the carpet with their fingers. This new sound also was coming from under the bed. We had no pets so it wasn’t a cat, dog, or rabbit. It went on for about a minute then stopped.
I pulled the covers over my head and pretended to be asleep in the hope that if it was a monster it might not notice me and move on to some other task it might find more deserving of its attention. I didn’t know what else to do.
The muscles in my body were all tense and I wasn’t able to get to sleep. I listened hard in the silence in case whatever it was moved. Then I’d be able to hear its body rubbing on the carpet. Instead I heard a scraping sound that vibrated through the wooden legs of the bed frame. A few times it even shook the bed slightly.
I was totally terrified at that point. If I had any doubt beforehand that what I had heard was some dream or hallucination, the continuing scraping was proof after proof, moment after moment that there was indeed something under my bed.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to look. But I could do none of these. I was a prisoner to its tormenting noise.
It did stop after about twenty minutes I’d guess. I don’t remember falling to sleep that night but at some point I must have. My mother woke me by shaking my body the next morning and pulling the covers back.
The morning light was golden and the air in my room was full of little white dust hairs that floated around in its glare. The whole room was bright and everything seemed so calm.
I jumped out of bed, hopped over to the door, and quickly turned around so I could see under my bed while being right at the threshold of my open door in case I needed to run. There was nothing there. No monster. No madman. But there was something odd. It looked like something on the carpet near one of the legs.
I crawled under there to get a better look and found little wood flakes and sawdust around the foot of one of the wooden legs of the bed frame. It had all fallen off of the leg and onto the carpet. Examining the leg itself I was shaken to my core when I saw carved into the wood the words: ‘Hello Ben’. X