Twenty-five years ago, Elias Zwarteveen unwillingly turned into a bogeyman. Desperate for a way to reverse the transformation, he'd like to meet another one of his kind.
His girlfriend's seven-year-old has it on good authority that the janitor's cl...
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Elias hurled himself down the stairs, checking the bathroom and Selina's bed first, his bogeyman heart pounding like a drumband on parade, but Lowie was nowhere to be seen. The bright coat that should be hanging from the little-person-coatrack in the hall was gone and so where the froggy rain boots that used to be underneath. Bogs!
Bogs, bogs, bogs bogs bogs ...
Anger surged from his chest to his brain. He had an inkling where the young man was going and while cursing himself for having been blindsided by a seven-year-old, he grabbed the school's floor plan from the desk and hurried into the night.
Oh how he'd fly that young man back to his bed. No more nice bogeyman now. He'd scare him out of his wits. He'd scare him so bad, he'd never again dream of leaving his bed before morning.
Careful to stay out of the lamp light, he rushed to Lowie's school. The building sat quietly in the dark. The only thing out of the ordinary was the front door that was left ajar.
Elias slipped through and took a few turns in the darkness to orient himself, crumpled floor plan in hand. Offices to the left, a staircase up, a narrow hallway to the right. Off he went.
A scream made his nightmares tense.
Lowie!
As his nightmares rippled out in nervous waves, Elias raced through the hall without thinking.
A faint light seeped from a door. Could Lowie be in there?
The smell of bleach pricked his nose and the taste of fear tickled his taste buds.
A quiet sniffle sounded from behind the door.
"Lowie?"
He pushed inside, frantically looking for the boy but in the tick of darkness, amidst swirls of the darkest, most vile nightmares, a pair of piercing cold eyes was waiting. "What ..." a deep voice crooned, "is your worst fear?"
In his worst dreams, Elias had never imagined to be subjected to his own antics. Unprepared and with his guard down, he fell into another bogeyman's trap.
For a split second, his mind went blank, but then ... zap, Elias was in hell.
In a corner of the closet, between an industrial vacuum cleaner and a cardboard box with detergent, lay a small body. Lifeless.
He recognized the bright coat and froggy boots.
Lowie.
He rushed over but before he reached the boy, Selina popped up.
Still dressed in shrubs, her brown hair up in a functional bun, and her beautiful face lined with worry, she knelt down beside her kid. She wiped his floppy hair from his face and tried to wake him by shaking his shoulders. Her professional training and expertise kicked in swiftly. She took his pulse and dropped her ear to his mouth, checking his chest for movement.
