“Mummy!” I heard a high pitched voice whispering in my ear. I replied with an unintelligible drowsy grunt, as I was laying in my bed deeply asleep before the voice suddenly woke me up.
“Mummy, he’s back!” The voice whispered again, sounding more nervous and slightly louder than before. I finally managed to snap out of my sleepy state once I heard that sentence, recognizing the whispering voice to belong to my six year old son, who was standing right next to my bed, looking concerned.
“Alright…get in my bed and wait for me here. No matter what happens, stay inside my bedroom, okay sweetie?” I ordered my son as I frantically hopped out of bed and grabbed the flashlight I kept on my nightstand.
“Be careful mummy…he’s scary!” my son uttered curled up under my bedsheets. I nodded and smiled at him, took a deep breath and stepped outside my bedroom.
This was the second time he had appeared that month after staying relatively quiet during the spring and the first few weeks of the summer, it seems his adherence to his code of conduct is unwavering, he might take a break for a short while, but you can be assured he’ll come back eventually. It almost makes him look romantic…well, at the very least I can say he’s more loyal than my ex-husband.
When I first bought that house after being left to raise my little boy on my own, it seemed to good to be true: A large and gorgeous house with tons of rooms and sprawling hallways that was somehow cheap enough for me to be able to afford with my minimum wage job at the local supermarket, it was so surreal I broke into tears in front of the landlord. My son was also on the brink of crying, but his tears were of pure joy and wonder when the landlord mentioned that house located on an unsuspecting suburb in northern England was said to be sitting under the burial place of an ancient medieval knight.
“Can you imagine if we met that knight, mummy?” My child excitedly exclaimed upon hearing the news from the landlord. Little did he know back then how he would end up regretting that wish ever since his first appearance just a couple weeks after my son and I moved in.
The plan was simple, at least on a surface level: I had to get to the basement to find an old crucifix that had been hidden there since before we moved in and bring it to my bedroom, it was the only way he would leave us alone…at least until the next time he came back. Because that’s the thing, every time I brought the crucifix to my room, it would inexplicably disappear and teleport back to the basement the following morning, forcing me to repeat the process again and again. Of course, the catch was that he was out there, roaming the house, out to get anyone who crosses his path, so getting to the basement wasn’t nearly as easy as it may originally appear.
I could hear him lurking in a nearby room, his heavy footsteps and the clanking noise he made as he roamed around with his metallic armor echoed across the whole building. It sounded like he was near the kitchen, which was a problem since I forcefully needed to pass through the kitchen in order to get to the basement.
I needed a way to bypass him, but how? A distraction…perhaps if I could distract him with something or lure him away from the kitchen for a short while and use that time margin to rush to the basement without running the risk of of having to confront him face to face.
I decided to head to the bathroom, there was a small closet where I kept my cleaning supplies in between the bathroom and the kitchen, the idea was to make noise in the bathroom to get his attention and then use the few seconds that would take him to hear the noise and decide to go check them out to run towards the closet located in between the two rooms and hide there and finally, once I was sure he was in the bathroom, rush out of the closet and towards the kitchen and subsequently to the basement.
I turned on the sink in the bathroom at full power to make sure it was as loud as possible, the noises from the kitchen stopped for a couple seconds…it was clear he had heard it. Wasting no time, I immediately sprinted towards the closet and squeezed myself inside, for a moment there I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to fit in, but thankfully, I was short and slim enough to barely make it, my contortion classes from back in high school also helped a lot.
The closet’s interior was compact, dark and claustrophobic, I couldn’t see anything, I could barely move around and I was starting to have trouble breathing, but it was worth it. His metallic footsteps started reverberating across the hallway, just as I had planned, he was going to the bathroom and he hadn’t noticed me inside the closet. A loud, repeating banging noise erupted from the bathroom, he was banging on the sink to try to stop it, and it seemed it wasn’t quite working as the noise repeated over and over, with each bang being louder than the one that came before it…now was my chance!
I frantically exited the closet and started running in the opposite direction of the bathroom, the banging noises persisted…good, he was still distracted with the sink. I ran past the kitchen and descended the staircase that led to the basement. There it was, sitting on a shelf was the crucifix that I needed, I had never been a religious person, but seeing that crucifix and holding it in my hands after all I had been through gave me unimaginable relief, you’d think I’d eventually grow used to it after having repeated the same experience for over a year ever since my child and I first moved in, but you’d be wrong, cradling that crucifix almost felt like hugging my plushie back when I was a kid and suffered from night terrors, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me as long as I held onto it.
I exited the basement feeling confident and secure and started walking back to my bedroom, I just needed to get there, place the crucifix under the pillow and then my child and I could finally enjoy a good night’s sleep. Footsteps could be heard in the distance, their tip-toeing erased all traces of the relief and confidence I was feeling seconds before as my face turned pale upon realizing those footsteps didn’t sound heavy or metallic, they didn’t belong to him…it was my son.
I rushed to my bedroom feeling my heart pounding with every step I took. Before I could reach my destination, I found my son standing in the middle of the hallway carrying a pencil and a piece of paper.
“Honey, you’ve scared me to death! I’ve told you to stay in my room! Why did you come out? You have no protection, he could’ve caught you!” I yelled at my son, feeling enraged due to his disobedience but also relieved he was okay.
“But mummy, I just remembered a plan I thought up a few days ago in school!” my son protested.
His heavy footsteps suddenly echoed through the dark hallway once again, at a faster pace than before. A couple seconds later I saw his silhouette sprinting towards us with his sword in hand. My child hid behind me as I faced him and showed him my crucifix extending my arms. He stopped dead in his tracks and fixedly started at the crucifix without moving a muscle. His face expression was hidden behind a helmet that fully covered his entire face, but it was apparent he kept watching the crucifix as my son and I began to slowly back away and walk towards the bedroom as I made sure to not turn my back on him and to keep the crucifix in his line of sight.
My son and I reached my bedroom at long last and did not hesitate to lock the door behind us and place the crucifix under the pillow. Several seconds of silence followed, it seemed we had once again managed to live to fight another day.
The footsteps abruptly resumed, they were getting closer, he was coming to the bedroom! I once again leapt out of bed and grabbed the crucifix. I was in shock, he always used to stop once I reached my bedroom with the crucifix, what had I done wrong this time?
He aggressively stabbed the bedroom’s door with his sword and began cutting it down in a slow but precise vertical slice as my child grabbed the pencil and the piece of paper he had obtained earlier and began to draw.
I screamed as he finished cutting down the door and broke into the room, my son kept drawing. I tried to show him the crucifix to keep him at bay, but it was no use, he kept advancing towards us as if it didn’t affect him anymore.
“Done!” My son exclaimed as he finished his drawing. Up until that point I hadn’t payed attention to it, but now I could clearly see my child had drawn a large pentagram.
He was mere inches away from my faces, he could’ve easily killed me if he had wanted to, but instead he walked right past me and towards the pentagram my son had just drawn.
The whole room started to shake as a shadowy figure emerged from the pentagram. I didn’t manage to see it clearly, as the last thing I saw before rushing outside the house alongside my child was him as he prepared himself to engage the shadowy creature in battle.
To this day, I can still occasionally hear him as I walk past my old house at night. He’s still there, trapped in a seemingly endless duel against that unholy creature my son summoned. He truly is fearless and persistent, always willing to rise time and time again until his enemies are beaten, like a true knight.
The way I’ve just described him almost makes him sound endearing at first, but trust me…pray you aren’t among those enemies of his, or else you’ll have to learn about his qualities the hard way.