"Lord of the Flies" One-shots

Halloween Special II: Ralph

Ralph had dreamt of The Beast many times since he left the island. For two years, the nightmares had haunted him. And for two years, that's all they were: dreams.

But maybe The Beast's existence wasn't just a nightmare...

Another Halloween Special! Some supernatural horror this year. Some post-island Ralph too.

Content Warning: I tried not to make The Beast look too disturbing or scary, but it's still supposed to look scary and might still be disturbing to some readers, so I'm going to put this content warning here. 

Happy Halloween!

***

He didn't believe in The Beast.

At least, that's what he had told himself. He had repeated the phrase over and over again on that boat ride back from the island.

But the nightmares still haunted him.

Ralph was sitting up in bed now, his breathing quick. He looked around the room frantically, expecting to see the creature from his nightmare standing in his room. He saw nothing. There was no Beast. It wasn't real.

Two years. It had been two years since he had left the nightmare that was the island. And still, he couldn't stand the dark. The nightlight in his room illuminated his surroundings. It let him know that there was nothing hiding in the corners, waiting for him.

A high-pitched squeak pierced through the silence. Ralph jumped, turning towards the closet. He had begged his parents to let him put a nightlight in the closet, but they had denied that request.

"The closet door is usually closed anyways," his mother had said. "You wouldn't be able to see inside of it. You don't need a nightlight in there."

But the door was open now. He stared into the dark abyss. Had that door been open all night? Had it just opened? Was that the squeaking noise he had heard just seconds ago?

He continued to stare. He thought he could see movement, but he couldn't be sure. If there had been a light in the closet, he would have known if there had been movement. Except, of course, The Beast doesn't hunt in the light. No. One could only see The Beast in the dark.

Ralph had dreamt of The Beast most nights. It took many forms, each more terrifying than the one in the dream before it.

He had thought the littluns were just dreaming. He had thought that The Beast was just a thing conjured up by their imaginations.

Until he had seen The Beast himself.

He pulled the blankets closer to him, his mind flooded with the image of a terrifying creature. A thing that had sat on a mountaintop. A thing that might have had wings, or teeth, or claws. A thing that none of them could truly describe but which all of them knew to be real.

There was movement in the darkness of the closet. This time, Ralph was sure he had seen it. His shoulders tensed, his hands gripping the blanket tighter, pulling it up to his chin as if it could save him.

A deep growl emanated from the opened closet door. Ralph felt something wet on his cheeks. Tears. His body was shaking. His mind was racing. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. It was here. It was coming for him.

Out of the darkness of the closet, a bloodied hand reached out, gripping the edge of the doorframe. The fingers were long and thin, tipped with long, sharp fingernails that scratched the doorframe as the fingers wrapped around it. Another hand reached out, as bloodied as the first, and gripped the edge of the opposite side of the doorframe.

Slowly, the rest of the creature emerged out of the darkness.

Ralph's lungs stopped working, but his heart continued to race.

It was that damned pig's head again, with its mouth dripping blood, its eyes empty and dead. The mouth was turned up at the ends, smiling, laughing. Laughing at him. At his fear.
The rest of its body was like that of a human being, except that the arms and legs were skinny and too long, and its back was arched like a cat's. Ralph could see its spine, its ribs, its shoulder blades. There was barely any skin covering the creature's bones. It looked starved. Hungry.

It was The Beast. It had come back. It had come back to claim the one thing that it had so desperately wanted, the one thing that it had hunted for, the one thing that had, for so long, been out of its reach:

Him.

The Beast slowly crawled across the floor, inching closer and closer to Ralph's bed. Ralph got his breath back. He used it to sob. He wanted to scream but he couldn't bring himself to. He was too terrified of what The Beast would do if he did.

The Beast was beside his bed now, on the floor. Ralph didn't know what to do. He decided to do the only thing that he felt would save him:

He pulled the covers over his head and hid.

It was a childish move, but he had no other choice. He couldn't run; he was frozen. He was too afraid to scream. He had seen The Beast take a myriad of forms in his nightmares, but it had never looked like...that.

A hand, cold and wet, grabbed his leg under the covers. He hadn't even felt the covers move. The bony fingers wrapped around his ankle and he was yanked from the bed with a force that he had never experienced before. He landed on his stomach on the floor, his face slamming into the carpet. He screamed as loud as he could as The Beast dragged him across the floor, back towards the closet. He screamed so loud that his throat hurt, but he didn't care. The Beast was going to drag him into the darkness. It was going to drag him to Hell, for where else could a thing like that come from. He tried to claw at the floor, tried to kick, tried to break free. But he wasn't strong enough. He screamed louder. He was quickly approaching the closet. He saw the doorframe go past his vision. The darkness enveloped him. The Beast growled from somewhere behind him. It had finally gotten him. It had finally won. This was it. He was going to die. He was--

Light flooded the room. Ralph found that he had stopped moving. He quickly glanced over his shoulder, and through vision blurred by tears, he saw that The Beast was gone.

"Ralph! Ralph, what's wrong?"

His mother was there, kneeling down in front of him. His father was there too. They had saved him. He lunged forward and hugged his mother as tightly as he could. He was shaking, screaming, sobbing.

"The Beast is real! He's here! He's in my room! He was going to kill me! He came out of the closet! He's real! I told you! He's here! I don't want to sleep in here! I don't want to sleep in here! Please don't make me sleep in here!"

Ralph could barely catch his breath. He was screaming and crying so hard that he was gasping for air. He heard his mother say the same thing that she always did:

"It wasn't real. It was just a bad dream. There is nothing in your room."

He tried to explain that he had seen it. He tried to describe what it looked like. He begged his parents to let him sleep with them. His mother insisted that he sleep in his own room, but he continued to beg until she finally gave in.

"It was only a dream," his mother insisted again as they walked out of the room. "That's all it was. A bad dream. There is nothing in your closet."

Maybe she was right. Maybe it had just been a bad dream. That's what his mother continued to tell him as she comforted him, calming him until he had stopped sobbing.

He might have believed her. He might have believed that it was all a dream. He might have, had he not heard The Beast growl when his mother had turned the lights off.