Soul (Chaos #1)

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

I was six years old, and I had been locked in my room since dinner time, when Dad had come home from work and given my punishment. I still didn't understand what I had done wrong. I was the one who had been knocked to the ground. I had only stared at the boy in school, but his screams had gotten me into trouble.

I lay in my bed, listening to my parents arguing downstairs. Their voices filtered upward, full of anger and bitterness. Dad kept saying even children could see the evil in my eyes. He hated my eyes, hated when I looked at him.

But that wasn't the bit that made my fingers tremble as I gripped my stuffed rabbit. The worst part was the thing in the wardrobe and the one under the bed. They had been drawing closer all winter.

I heard their whispers every night, no matter how hard I pressed my hands against my ears. They were coming for me. I just knew. The one under the bed liked to eat little girls. It had told me so... in its own way.

The whispers were almost as bad as the fingernails scratching the wooden floor.The fingernails were almost as bad as the door that opened all by itself in the dark. The door opening was almost as bad as the red glowing eyes hiding in the wardrobe, faint at first, but growing deeper and darker every night, waiting for the right time. Those eyes were going to take me into the darkness, and nobody could stop them.

Nobody believed me. Nobody saw the eyes. Nobody heard the whispers. Only me.

And it was time. They were ready. The shortest day of the year, my teacher had said. That meant the longest night. The darkest night. That gave them time and power.

The scratches came, louder than ever. The whispers turned into terrible laughter. I heard something shuffle in the dark. I imagined the wardrobe swinging open, and those red eyes growing larger by the second. Coming closer, coming for me.

But the monster under the bed came first.

I couldn't see it in the dark, but the thing was noisy. It crawled across the floor, as I huddled against the headboard. Something pulled the covers off the mattress, dragging them onto the floor. A hand with grotesque, clawed fingers reached up from the end of the bed.

I couldn't scream. Only whimpers made their way out of my mouth. The sheet beneath me was yanked, and I was pulled along with it. With a yelp, I scrambled back to the head of the bed.

The monster jumped onto the bed, and I choked on my mother's name. The thing was worse than I imagined - cracked face full of pus and boils, fangs and claws and the stench of rotting death. It smiled, the cracks seeping. It crawled up the bed, dragging misshapen legs behind it, licking its lips the entire time.

No, no, no, no, no.

It reached for me, and I was frozen with fear.

The red eyes came into view over its shoulder. Bony hands pulled the monster back by the ankles, and the creature's screams drowned out my own when I finally found my voice.

The red-eyed monster munched and crunched on bones, and the under-the-bed-monster's whimpers faded away. Unable to look away, I couldn't stop screaming.

The door flew open, and my mother ran to me. But the light from the hallway didn't reach the bed. We still weren't safe. We were in too many shadows.

I scrambled into my mother's arms. Her back was to Red Eyes, but I faced the thing, looking over her shoulder.

"Run," I whispered. "Please run before it gets us."