ROBIN WRITES: Halloween Bedtime Story
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By Robin Garrison Leach
The October wind howled outside, snapping brittle, brown leaves from trees and sending them plummeting to the frigid ground. Sunlight ended soon after supper; the dreariness of near-winter was setting in.
I decided to go to bed early.
I climbed beneath the blankets. Snuggled in and turned on my favorite side, facing the wall. Just as I was falling asleep, the horror began.
SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING was in the room…right behind my turned back.
I lay motionless, telling myself it was my imagination. Sure. It was almost Halloween. I’d just watched a marathon of macabre movies— ‘Nightmare’ s and ‘Jason’ s—and topped it off with the Nightly News. The news lately would make anybody a little skittish.
But then I heard a scuffing of flesh against carpet. It was coming. It edged closer and closer to the bed, shadowed and plodding. I imagined it goofily grinning, maybe a tiny dribble of saliva escaping its blubbery mouth.
I stopped breathing. Lay corpse-still, fooling myself into thinking it couldn’t see me if I didn’t move. My hair morphed into a mass of sensitive tentacles; each strand reached out from my scalp to feel the air for movement.
My nose itched but I didn’t dare scratch it. That’s what IT was waiting for. If IT knew I was alive, IT would move in for the kill.
Suddenly, the blankets felt a little heavier on top of my toes. Was IT there, at the foot of the bed, tracing the outline of my piggies with its ragged claws? Would those claws reach the baby toe, hesitate for just a moment and then GRAB MY ENTIRE FOOT and wrench it loose from my ankle??
My upper lip grew sweaty. I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t help myself: I opened my eyes wide in the blackness. The wall I was staring toward became a projection screen of grainy horror. Was that dark outline IT?
I saw a wave of wispy movement there…maybe it was just my eyelashes shivering. Or maybe it was my worst nightmare. Creeping. Closer. Closer. CLOSER.
There it was: a tickle on the back of my exposed ear, like a spider’s skitter. A noxious expulsion of fetid air curled across my cheek—fizzing like acid—and entered my flaring nostrils. ITs breath smelled like sauerkraut and old socks.
The air reeked of fear and half-digested food.
At that moment I knew what had to be done. Every scary movie ever made had shown me. I had no choice. The only way to get rid of the awful thing behind me was to turn over. To look IT square in the eye (s?) and find out WHAT IT WANTED.
I slo-o-o-w-w-l-ly straightened my spine. My ice-cold, shivering hands reached for the edge of my blankets. With a growl of defiant resignation and an arthritic creaking of shivering bones, I flipped over.
The eyes of the creature were bulging. The mouth grimaced in a death mask of pain. My tormentor hissed a message more tortuous and maddening than the collective pecks of every bird on Alfred Hitchcock’s payroll.
Halloween is only one night, my friends. But some nightmares of married life NEVER END…
“Sorry if I woke you,” John whimpered, “but I’m DYING here. Are there any Tums ANYWHERE in this house??”
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■ Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].
