Torned Souls

15| bedtime; part two

The door finally, and thankfully, burst open, and I lay bathed in light while the bottom bunk, the resting place of my unwanted visitor, lay empty and peaceful.

I cried and my mother consoled me. Tears of fear, followed by relief, streamed down my face. 

Yet, through all of the horror and relief, I did not tell her why I was so upset. I cannot explain it, but it was as though whatever had been in that bunk would return if I even so much as spoke of it, or uttered a single syllable of its existence. 

Whether that was the truth, I do not know, but as a child I felt as if that unseen menace remained close, listening.

My mother lay in the empty bunk, promising to stay there until morning. Eventually my anxiety diminished, tiredness pushed me back towards sleep, but I remained restless, waking several times momentarily to the sound of rustling bed sheets.

I remember the next day wanting to go anywhere, be anywhere, but in that narrow suffocating room. 

It was a Saturday and I played outside, quite happily with my friends. Although our house was not large we were lucky to have a long sloping garden in the back. 

We played there often, as much of it was overgrown and we could hide in the bushes, climb in the huge sycamore tree which towered above all else, and easily imagine ourselves in the throes of a grand adventure, in some untamed exotic land.

As fun as it all was, occasionally my eye would turn to that small window; ordinary, slight, and innocuous. But for me, that thin boundary was a looking glass into a strange, cold pocket of dread. 

Outside, the lush green surroundings of our garden filled with the smiling faces of my friends could not extinguish the creeping feeling clawing its way up my spine; each hair standing on end. 

The feeling of something in that room, watching me play, waiting for the night when I would be alone; eagerly filled with hate.

It may sound strange to you, but by the time my parents ushered me back into that room for the night, I said nothing. I didn't protest, I didn't even make an excuse as to why I couldn't sleep there. 

I simply and sullenly walked into that room, climbed the few steps into the top bunk and then waited. 

As an adult, I would be telling everyone about my experience, but even at that age, I felt almost silly to be talking about something which I really had no evidence for. I would be lying, however, if I said this was my primary reason; I still felt that this thing would be enraged if I so much as spoke of it.

It's funny how certain words can remain hidden from your mind, no matter how blatant or obvious they are. 

One word came to me that second night, lying there in the darkness alone, frightened, aware of a rotten change in the atmosphere; a thickening of the air as if something had displaced it. 

As I heard the first casual twists of the bed sheets below, the first anxious increase of my heartbeat at the realization that something was once again in the bottom bunk, that word, a word which had been sent into exile, filtered up through my consciousness, breaking free of all repression, gasping for air screaming, etching, and carving itself into my mind.

"Ghost."