Short Horror Stories

The Thing In The Dark

Every child, sometime, is afraid of the dark. Whether that be what's in the dark or the unknown of the dark. But when daytime comes, they feel safe again. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to go.

A young girl was walking home from school one day with her friends when she felt the hair-raising feeling of being watched. Looking behind her, she found nothing. Just the whisper of the breeze in the trees and the fall of a few golden leaves.

Each day, she would walk home, and each time, as she passed that specific spot, she would feel as though she was being watched. Sometimes, she even thought she saw a figure standing across the road.

Every time she looked back, though, she found nothing. Only the falling of a leaf or two, and the whisper of the wind.

She would put it off as paranoia. A simple fear that every child had. Until a week later.

She was at home in her room before bed, her parents already having gone to bed. She was sitting in her room, doing some reading, when she felt the feeling again. Looking around, she found only the shadows cast by the lamp on her nightstand.

She turned off the lamp and covered up, falling quickly asleep.

In the middle of the night, while she slept, a figure stepped out of the shadows. The shadows that the girl thought the lamp cast were actually the shadows of the creature.

The whispers the child thought was the fall air was actually the voice of the creature.

The creature laughed at the child's disbelief. After all, the scariest thing about the dark is the thing in the dark.

The creature stepped forward until it was standing at the foot of the girl's bed. It stirred the air around the girl's ear, causing her to wake up.

She sat up and looked around, thinking her mother was waking her for some reason.

As she looked around, she again found nothing.

The creature that stood at the foot of her bed, the thing that haunts the night, was gone. She knew it was there, though. She knew it was still there. Waiting for the right time to strike fear into the heart of its victim. Waiting to prove the fact that it was the scariest thing in the night. That is was fear itself.