Then the creaking came once more. This time it came from right beside the door. Dave roared. “Stay away from me! Stay away from me!” He slammed the door shut, and as he did, he saw a shadowy movement in the darkness.
He turned and looked the lounge. Every shadow hid the man within. Every shadow had cruel intentions.
Dave was aware of the sound of his father leaping from the bed, and his ears even picked up his mother’s mumbled protests, as if all of his senses had been adrenalised by terror. Now they were focused on one thing: the threats of the room surrounding him. His breath came in short, whistling hasps, but none of the oxygen was reaching his brain. His breathing began to accelerate, and soon he felt dizzy. Arms wrapped themselves about him, and Dave strained against them. He opened his mouth to shriek, but a hand muffled him.
“Hey,” his father said in a soothing tone he might use to calm a baby. “Hey, hey, hey. Shh. It’s all right now. I’m here, it’s all right.”
Dave resisted the urge to bite down on the fingers, but they eased away. He rested his head on his father’s shoulder.
“Dave?” the man said. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Was someone out there?” Dave didn’t answer, and the man ruffled his hair again. “It’s all right. Let’s get you back to your bedroom. You can go to sleep, and everything’ll be better in the morning.” The man leaned over, and locked the door again.
Dave was half carried to his room, and when his father sat him down on his bed, he yawned. After being awake until two in the morning, tiredness was beginning to lap against the edges of his consciousness.
His father caught sight of the dog at and stared at her. “What’s she doing in here?” he asked. Instead of the reprimanding tone he had expected, the man’s voice was still calm and reassuring.
Dave crawled under the covers of the bed, and his father sat down on the edge of it. He glared at him, daring him to interfere. “Tell her not to let you leave the room next time,” he said.
A ghost of a smile appeared on Dave’s face, and then wavered. “If you ever need to talk to me about anything, anything at all, you know you can talk to me, don’t you?” He put a hand on Dave’s leg, and even through the blanket, he gained some small ammount of comfort from the touch. Dave nodded.
“Good. Well, I’d better get to bed. Your mum’s gonna be mad when I wake her up with my clumsy feet,” he said, and winked at Dave. Again, that slight smile.
He stood up, and moved to leave. “Daddy,” Dave said, his voice cracking as he said it. Surprise flashed in his father’s eyes, but his usual composure soon returned. “Make him go away. Please.”
The man stood in the door way for a few more seconds. He bit his lip, and then slipped out of sight without saying anything further to Dave.
Dave thought that he wouldn’t sleep at all, or would be plagued by terrible nightmares. In fact, neither was true. Shielded by his father’s love and protected by the sleeping dog, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.
Even so, he left the lamp turned on.
His father, however, was not so lucky. “Paula? Are you still awake?” he said after being unable to sleep for more than an hour. He shook her shoulder.
“Now I am,” she said. “And you should be too. Go to sleep.”
“He’s back for Dave.”
He felt Paula sit up beside him in the near perfect darkness. “What?” she said, and he heard the tinges of hysteria that had been so common not long ago returning to her voice.
“Not literally. He sees him, Paula. He still sees him.”
“Oh, thank God! Don’t you scare me like that!”
“You’re acting like you’re relived. Even if we can’t see him, he’s still dangerous to Dave. He probably hears him every time a floorboard creaks. To Dave, he’s probably in the wardrobe right now.”
He felt her slump and Greg allowed himself to share in her misery. “Jesus,” she managed after a long time, trying to choke back her tears.
“I think we may have to . . . put him away, for his own good. Who knows what he might do next? He could hurt himself. We need to keep him safe.”
A pair of arms slid around his neck and a head leaned on his shoulder.
Greg was assaulted by images of Dave doing the exact same thing not long before, and shivered. “It is really that bad?” she said.
“I think so.” Paula began to cry without restraint now, and Greg wrapped his arms around her. “What I hate most is that if that bastard hadn’t been near Dave in the first place, he’d still be all right. “Sometimes I wish he’d found someone else. He was lucky to get away, you know.” Paula didn’t admonish him as he had expected; she was too afraid to do so now. “But what’s just as bad is that if the police had gotten him, Dave could have felt safe. We all could have. Now there’s always that chance that he really will come back.”
“What will you do if he does come back?” Paula asked.
The thought had been weighing him down for the past few days. “I brought a gun,” he said. Tears prickled at his eyes, but he wouldn’t give in to them. He had to be strong for his family.
Dave woke the next morning to a lonely home. His mother and father were still at work. The two would work until twelve. He glanced over to the clock. Ten thirty seven. His sister was still away on holiday, presumably buying designer hand bags and panties. Dave smiled a little at this thought.
The creaking was gone. Of course it was, though. It was daytime.
Dave stood. The dog was gone already, probably chewing the curtains again. The jersey was now white from all the discarded fur and Dave shook his head, careful to step over it. He began to roam about the house.
He seemed to be compelled towards his parent’s room. As he put his hand on the door’s handle, he shivered. Still, he pushed the door open and walked into the room.
Dave wandered over to his parent’s bed and looked underneath it. There was nothing there, so he stood up again, and screamed.
The man was stepping out from behind the door and into the middle of the room. Dave opened his mouth to scream again but couldn’t. Petrified squeaks were all that emerged. He knew that no-one was around to hear him scream.
Dave took a step backwards and felt himself trip. As he fell, the man tried to grab his wrist. His hand went right through Dave’s, but this was no consolation to him. Another scream tore itself from his throat before he hit his head on a corner of the bedside cabinet, and everything went dark.
Dave’s father came home from work first. He and Paula both had their own cars for convenience, and he pulled into the driveway determined to help Dave.
Taking they keys from the car and unlocking the front door, he walked to Dave’s room. “Dave?” he said, poking his head into the room. He wasn’t there, and for a second he felt a moment of alarm. “Dave? Dave?” he began to yell, moving throughout the house.
He saw his open door and ran into the room. Dave was lying on the floor, unconscious. Greg ran to him, and sat the boy up against the bed. He shook his shoulders. “Dave? Wake up! Wake up!”
Dave shook his head, and groaned at the pain that shot through his head at the motion. His father smiled at him. ‘Thank God! Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Dave said, and put a hand back to rub his head. It came back stained red. “Oh.”
“We’ll get that fixed up,” his father said.
Dave didn’t answer him; he was looking beyond him to the man standing in the corner, brandishing a butcher’s knife. He stepped towards the two of them and Dave could only watch as the man towered over his father.
His hood had fallen back, and once again Dave could see his face, and the terrible features. The ghost of a nose, the thinness of the cheeks, the sunken eyes. All of the details culminated to create something akin to a Halloween mask.
The man got down onto his knees and licked his lips. He rubbed the flat of the blade against his father’s cheek. Greg showed no sign of noticing the cool steel. It was as if he couldn’t touch or see the man. The man grinned at Dave. You next, he mouthed to the boy, and his heart burst into fluttering palpitations.
Dave’s head fell back again, and he was asleep.
This is the second half to my story. Enjoy. I hope.
