Heavy breathing. Footsteps. Faint cackling. The doorknob turned.
Michael jolted awake, sweat dripping down his forehead and all over his body. He screamed for his mother and she came running in.
“What’s the matter?!” she cried as she burst into his bedroom. He threw his blue star-patterned duvet off of himself and ran into her arms.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here,” she soothed.
A few minutes passed and he was back in bed with his mother sitting beside him, stroking his messy brown hair.
“I’m taking you to a doctor on Monday. I can’t keep having you staying up all night because of these stupid nightmares. God knows how your brother sleeps through it all.”
I never slept through it. He kept me awake every night with his whimpers and his cries, his screaming and his panting. I wish that’d been the worst of it. I wish it hadn’t become something worse, something that haunts me to this day.
—-
“Daddy!”
I darted to my daughter’s bedroom, just like my mother had once done for Mikey. Her nightmares had begun when she was four. She was now six and no therapy, no counselling, no holidays or sleeping tablets had made any difference.
When I finally climbed back into bed with my wife an hour or two later, she turned and smiled at me. It wasn’t a happy smile, but one of comfort and gratitude.
“Do you want me to start going in there? I’m sure she won’t mind if it’s me instead of you,” Ava suggested. “No, no,” I shook my head, “you need the sleep. I just don’t know what we’re going to do when the baby gets here.”
We talked for a little while longer about the future. Perhaps sending Molly to stay with relatives would help? Or one of those treatment places we’d been adamant of not sending her to in the beginning? We talked and talked until an almost silent sound interrupted our whispers.
Scratch, scratch, scratch
Ava and I shared looks before both slowly getting out of bed to figure out where the sound was coming from. I tried to hide my fear, but the sound was so recognisable it was almost impossible not to shudder every time I heard it.
Ava creaked open Molly’s bedroom door and we both peeked through the small gap. Molly was fast asleep. Her nightlight lit up the room and nothing and no one else was in there. In fact, the noise had stopped completely. Ava shrugged at me and closed the door, but as soon as our backs were turned, the sound started again.
This continued every night for a couple of weeks. First the scratching, then the giggling, then the hot breath on our ears as someone (or something) asked us that seemingly normal yet spine-chilling question;
What’s the time?
Molly didn’t seem any different at first - in fact, she was better than ever. Her nightmares had stopped and she was the happiest she’d been since she was a baby. Ava thought this was a good thing and if we just moved house then everything would be perfect.
But I knew better. I knew that whatever this was would follow us no matter where we went and if we refused to answer its question for much longer, we’d meet the same fate my mother had, and Molly would be gone.
I stared blankly at the TV every night asking myself the same things. Will they give up the search for Molly like they did with Mikey? Will mine and Ava’s deaths be recorded as suicides? Will our screams ring in our baby’s ears for the rest of their life?
Well, last night, I got an answer - not an answer to any of the questions I’d been asking myself lately, but one I’d been asking myself for the past 20 years. Mikey was in my bedroom. He wasn’t ten years old anymore, but I recognised his dishevelled brunette hair and piercing blue eyes.
Of course, I questioned whether this was real at first, whether this was one of the signs that my death date was getting closer, but it was real.
Michael told me everything. His disappearance wasn’t real for him. He’d been trapped in the same time loop for all these years. He broke free from it when Molly stopped having her nightmares.
He had a whole life story to explain his disappearance, but he knew it wan’t true. He knew what had really happened. And he knew how to save us all.
“You have to kill Molly.”