Speaker 1: I was sixteen when it happened. I didn't talk about
it for a long time, but sometimes when I can't sleep,
I still go over that night in my head. I'm
older now, I've moved out and got my own place
and job, but a part of me is still anchored
to that house. There was something about it that never
made sense. We grew up in a bad area. I'm
talking burglaries, gang signs sprayed over garage stores, Cops cruising
past our streets slow enough to make it feel like
they were waiting for something to happen. I saw someone
get dragged out of their car in front of our house.
When I was thirteen. We heard gunshots a few blocks
over so often we stopped checking the news the next morning.
People broke into homes for TVs, tools, even food. It
happened all the time, but it never happened to us.
That was something I could never explain. We weren't special.
We didn't have a dog or bars on the windows.
We didn't even have a working security system. Sometimes I'd
come home and find the screen door unlatched or a
window that looked tampered with, but nothing ever came of it.
My mom would brush it off and tell me not
to worry. I tried not too, but he'd always stuck
with me. On the other hand, my old man was
gone before I even turned six. I used to ask
about him sometimes. My mom never had much to give.
She said he worked in a specialized field, and whatever
that meant. I figured it was a nice way of
saying he was mixed up in something illegal. Maybe ran
off to keep us safe or save his own skin.
I never bought the noble sacrifice angle he left us behind.
My mom worked her ass off to keep things afloat.
I watched her come home with her feet so swollen
she had to sit on the bottom step to untie
her shoes. She'd run her hand through my hair and
go check on my little brother before she even made
herself a plate. She was always tired, but never stopped trying.
I couldn't imagine walking out on that. I started stepping
in when I got old enough to see how much
she carried on her back. I didn't want my brother
growing up with a kind of resentment that built up
in me. I figured if I could keep his world calm,
maybe he wouldn't need to carry a grudge. His name
was Michael, same as our father. I remember fighting her
on it when I first heard. I was only eight,
but I remember sitting on the side of her hospital
bed saying it made my skin crawl. I didn't want
to come home and say that name again every day.
I didn't want to picture that man every time my
brother laughed or cried or needed help tying his shoes.
But she wouldn't budge. I called him Mikey still do
wouldn't say the full name if I could help it.
He was a good kid, though, smart, curious, always in
his own little world. My mom got the call on
a Thursday night, about twenty years ago. She didn't say
much when she entered. She only stepped out onto the
porch with her coat still on. I stood in the
kitchen watching the clock tick toward ten, already knowing what
it meant when I saw how she kept her hand
on a hip, nodding. She came back in after a while,
and before I could ask, she rubbed the side of
my face and told me she needed to leave in
the morning, some project downstate. It was part of a job,
some contract work she'd picked up to fill the gaps
that a full time gig didn't cover. It wasn't optional.
She packed fast. It wasn't a first time leaving for
a job like that, but it had never been for
a full week before. She made a list of meals
and taped it to the fridge, left cab money under
the toaster in case something happened, and showed me where
she kept the house key she used to hide in
the crawl space. In the morning, she left before the
sun came up. She stood in the hallway for a second,
watching me make toast, and said she didn't like leaving us.
I told her I knew, and I'd take care of everything.
She held on to the door for like she didn't
want to let go of it. Then she walked out
without looking back. She trusted me with a house, and
more than that, she trusted me with my key. Later
after dinner, Mikey was laying on the floor with his
knees pulled up while he scribbled into the back pages
of a note book he'd torn from school. I was
sitting on the couch flipping through channels. I wasn't watching,
but every so often I looked at him. He was
humming under his breath some off keychune he'd made up
that he never stopped repeating. He was focused on whatever
he was drawing, with a seriousness that didn't fit an
eight year old. He always had that far off focus
when he got stuck in his head. I didn't think
he was weird. I think he saw things differently than
most people, since he could form full sentences. He'd been
adamant that there was something in his room, not some one, something.
I remember him telling mom that it whispered to her
while she slept. Said he woke up one night and
saw it petting her hair. She didn't know what to
say to that. Clearly it freaked her out, but she
told him he had a vivid imagination and turned the
lights on in his room for a week after that.
It didn't help. Mikey tore my train of thought when
he joined me on the couch. He sat close enough
that his shoulder touched mine. There was always his way
of asking for something without saying it outright. When I
didn't react, he finally spoke, d'ye think we could watch
a scary movie? He asked. I gave him a side eye,
Since when do you care about scary movies? I found
out about them to day in school, Me and my
friends were talking about monsters, and they said, people make
movies out of them. You already have enough problems sleeping.
I won't if I see what they really like, he
said smugly. I figured if he saw a guy in
a rubber soup pretending to be a ghost in my
break whatever spell, he'd put himself under, fine, I muttered,
But if you have a nightmare, I'm makin you sleep
in the laundry room. He smiled and shook his head.
I won't. I started flipping through the free channels. Most
of it was junk, but one station had a horror
line up running. There was a zombie movie half way through,
another one about some haunted motel. I let the previews
play while Mikey leaned forward, fascinated. Then the screen flickered
black and the emergency broadcast tone kicked in. I froze,
hands still on the remote as that flat, buzzing drone
filled the room. Mikey leaned back, confused. The words amber
alert appeared in block white letters, then switched to the
red warning screen. The message said there had been a
confirmed break in a few blocks over the authority's urged
residents in the surrounding neighborhood, to lock all the windows
and doors, and to report anything suspicious immediately. Mikey read
it slowly, lips moving, then turned to me. He didn't
seem worried, but he watched me get up. I could
already feel my chest tightening. It wasn't the alert itself,
it was the idea that if something went wrong, I'd
be the one standing between him and whatever came through
the door. I'm gonna check the house, and I said,
go brush your teeth, get to bed. But now the
movie's over. He groaned and stood up, dragging his feet
toward the stairs. I walked to the front door, pressed
in the lock, tested it twice. I pulled the windows closed,
tightened the latches, shut the blind. My hand was shaking,
and I hated that. After my paranoia induced energy wore off,
I shut off the lights in the living room and
headed upstairs. I passed Mike's room and saw that his
door was cracked open. He was already under his blanket.
He didn't say anything when I walked by, but I
knew he was still awake. I stepped into my room
and shut the door behind me. I dropped into bed
and stared at the ceiling, the same as Mikey was
probably doing. I kept my phone close. The charger cable
was lying on the ground unused. I hadn't plugged it
in earlier, and now I didn't feel like the right
time to go hunting for the outlet. I must have
been hovering on the edge of sleep when I heard it,
a high pitched scream, Mikey's voice. I sat up so
fast my shoulder cracked, My feet hit the ground, and
I was through the hallway before I knew i'd start up.
My heart kicked hard in my chest. I didn't have
time to think. He was screaming, and there was no
question in my mind what that meant. The alert the
burglar must have broken in and now is after Mikey.
I should have grabbed something abat the chair by the stairwell,
anything I didn't. I pushed this door open so hard
it bounce off the wall behind it. There was nothing.
It was only Mikey, sitting up in bed with his
arms around his knees, crying through his teeth. His eyes
were wide stuck on something that wasn't there anymore. He
saw me and flinched, then opened his mouth to speak,
but nothing came out. I walked over and sat on
the edge of the bed. My hands were shaking worse
than his. You're okay, I said. I kept my voice low,
my throat was dry. You're right, He didn't answer. His
breath hitched a few times before he could get it
under control. I reached over and pulled him in. He
was sweating through his shirt. Bad dream, I asked. He nodded.
His face stayed buried in my shoulder. I wanted to
be annoyed, but I wasn't. That scream had torn through
everything I thought I could handle. The fact that it
was a dream made it easier, but it didn't make
it go away. I was still wound up so tight
my neck hurt. You want water, I asked. No, he whispered,
you want me to sit with you a bit. He
nodded again. After a minute, he pulled away and wiped
his face with the sleeves of his pajama top. He
wouldn't look at me. Here was the monster again, he said.
I glanced around the room, taking it in. There were
clothes on the floor, a plastic cop with a juice
box straw still stuck in it, and one of his
drawings taped to the wall above his head. A thick
black line ran down the middle of the page, splitting
it in two. On one side was a boy with
a balloon, and the other side was a weird figure
made of scribbles. He saw me looking. Can you check,
he asked, his voice cracked at the end. You know
there's nothing here, I said, already standing. He probably packed
up and moved when he heard me coming. Mikey didn't laugh.
He watched me with his hands, bawled into his blanket.
I sighed and walked over to the closet. I slid
it open and waited. Nothing but a few shoes and
one of my old hoodies. He kept stealing when I
wasn't looking. I turned to him and gave a mock gasp,
empty guess. We caught him on a smoke break. Still
nothing all right, I said, let's go all in. Clausets
cleared now from under the bed. I dropped to one
knee and leaned in. I expected dust, a sock, a
piece of broken toy, maybe one of his drawings crumbled
up and shoved out of sight. But that's not what
I saw. At first. All I saw was darkness and
the clint of something smooth in the back corner. I
thought it might be a marble or one of those
glass eyeballs he picked out of a Halloween prize bin
last year. But then it blinked. It didn't blink like
a person. It flexed. A long, vertical slit opened and
closed slowly, and I realized it was staring at me.
Two massive yellow eyes sunk into a head that should
not a fit in the crawl space beneath a child's
bed frame. The pupils adjusted as I stared, thin and long,
narrowing against the light. The longer I looked, the more
of it I could make out. It was covered in thick,
uneven fur, damp around the edges, clinging to the floor,
as if it had soaked into the boards. Its body
stretched deep on the foot of the bed. Thick limbs
pressed against the underside, like they were forced there, like
it had wedged itself into a shape that didn't belong
to it. It stared at me. Its mouth was slightly open,
its tongue sat limp between rows of disjointed teeth. Thick
strings of spit hung from its staw. There was something
in that look, something not curious, not afraid, not hostile either.
If anything, it looked pleased. I couldn't breathe, my chest
locked up. I could feel my pulse in my ears,
but I couldn't will my body to move. Then its
jaws shifted, not wide, but enough to show more of
the teeth. It grinned at me. The spell snapped. I
threw myself back and scrambled to my feet. Mikey was
watching me with white eyes, waiting for me to say
he was crazy, or that it was clear, or that
we could both go back to sleep. I didn't say anything.
I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him so
hard he stumbled. I dragged him out of the room,
across the hallway toward the attic hatch near the lawnch clauset.
He was asking questions. I couldn't hear them. I pulled
the chain, dropped the ladder, and shoved him up ahead
of me. I scrambled into the attic behind him, grabbing
the string and yanking the ladder back up with both hands.
I retracted with a crack. I slammed the hatch shut
and sat back, listening for anything beneath us. Nothing. Mikey
was sitting in the corner near the insulation rolls, breathing
through his nose, trying not to cry. I sat beside
him and stared at the hatch. I pulled on my phone.
I cracked thing I brought from a guy at school
for forty bucks. The screen was scratched, but still worked.
I dialed nine one one and pressed it to my ear.
My hand wouldn't stop shaking. It rang once before the
operator answered. I didn't wait for her to go through
the usual questions. Some one broke in. I said, there's
some one in our house. I hesitated. That wasn't what
I meant, but I didn't have the words for what
I'd seen. I couldn't tell her there was something under
the bed, so I didn't explain. I repeated myself, voice cracking,
there's something in our house. We're in the attic. Please
send someone, please. She asked for my address. I gave
it to her twice. She told me to stay calm.
She said officers were unroute and asked if I could
describe the intruder. I didn't answer that. I told her
the doors were locked, that we were hiding. I asked
her how long they'd take. Then the screen went black.
I stared at it for a second, not understanding what
had happened. I pressed the button. Nothing. I flipped it over. Nothing.
It had died in my hand. Mikey looked at me.
He didn't ask if it was okay. He knew from
my face that it wasn't. And then from downstairs, something
broke through the kitchen window, followed by scrambling steps and
drawers opening and closing. Eventually it was accompanied by another sound,
a massive crash that sounded like it came from where
Mikey's room would have been. Another set of steps started,
but they were strange, like whatever was down there didn't
walk often. The first view was slow, then it turned
into what sounded like a gallop. Something big moved through
the house, gaining speed. The other said footprints, presumably in
the living room, stopped. A while later. I could hear
blooded screams. Cabinets slammed, a table, tipped, chairs screeched across
the floor, wood splintered. Something thick and weighty tore through
the hall. I heard an animalistic noise roll up through
the floorboards, something between a growl and a calf. Something
started crunching, and a massive gulp radiated through the house.
Mikey buried his face in my side. I couldn't move.
Then all sound ceased. Nothing followed, only the cold stillness
of insulation pressing against my back and Mikey's rapid, silent
breaths against my ribs stayed. I didn't know what was
going on down there, but I knew sure as hell.
I I didn't want to find out. I didn't ask
mi Key if you heard it, that would have been insulting.
He was shaking, hands clenched around my shirt. I didn't
speak either. I didn't want my voice to break the
silence in case the silence was what kept it from returning.
Time passed. When the first blue light hit the far
window in the attic, I audibly gasped. A car door slammed,
then another. Boots moved across the porch. A voice called
out from the front of the house, but I was
too afraid to make a sound. They found us both
in the attic. We were pale and shaking. My throat
was so dry I couldn't answer their first question. Mikey
hid behind me, still holding onto the hem of my shirt.
One of the officers stepped in gently. I scanning the hallway,
his free hand near his hip. They led us downstairs
once they confirmed we were alone. The house was a wreck.
The dinner table had been split in two, its senter
legs crossed inward. Two chairs were broken in places, one
lodged halfway through the dry wall. The cabinet doors hung
open and their contents scattered across the floor. A streak
of something dark had smeared across the linonium one wall.
The one beside the coat rack near the stairs had
been cracked open with sheer force. I could see where
the woods splintered outward. The broken kitchen window led in
a cust of wind, and on the floor below it
was a pistol. The officer picked it up with gloved hands.
He turned it to his partner and said something I
didn't hear. From what I overheard, they identified it as
having belonged to the man from the amber alert, the
burglar who'd been breaking into homes near by. One of
the officers patted my shoulder. He told me I'd done
a good job, said calling it in had probably saved
both our lives. His tone carried confidence. He looked past
me a few times while he spoke, scanning the room
as if something might still be standing in the shadows.
He said. The guy must have broken in, panicked and
fired off around before trying to escape, or maybe something
else scared him. They didn't know. No one had found
anything at all, and they never found that man. After this,
I nodded and kept my mouth shut. I didn't see
a reason to correct him. I wouldn't have known what
to say if I tried. Years later, I kept thinking
about what the cop said, that maybe something scared him off.
I never saw the thing under the bed again after
that night. I don't think Mikey did either. He stopped
talking about it. But I've thought about it more than
I cared to admit. That night, it could have followed
us up to the attic, but it didn't, and I've
come to believe it wasn't haunting Mike at all. It
was guarding him.