Adults don't see it, adults don't fear it.
But I do.
I've seen it, and now I know that monsters do exist. I was asleep when a sound woke me. A scraping, scurrying noise. It was coming from my closet. I opened my eyes and looked around my bedroom. Nothing had changed. Everything, all my toys, were exactly where and how I left them; packed up neatly on either a shelf or my toy box. The right door of my closet was only open about a foot, but that was how I'd left it. The only difference was tiny, but somehow humungous at the same time. It was this; the atmosphere had changed. The air was thick with promise; promise that something bad would happen. I could taste it on my tongue; dry, heavy; the air was humid with such a promise. Goosebumps spread across my skin the way a breaking wave washes across the sand. All this change was coming from within my closet. I could feel it pulsing outwards. I could almost hear it in my head, thumping dimly like a heartbeat.
That was what scared me the most; the idea that that heartbeat could belong to something... unnatural. I sucked in a breath when abnormally long, pale fingers curled around the side of my closet's door. The pointed nails were grey and dirty; the long tips cracked and yellowing. I heard the closet's bottom creak and groan as something inside it shuffled. One small, luminescent, yellow eye peaked around the side of the door, soon followed by another. Most of the face was obscured in shadow, but it looked pale too, like the fingers. It opened the door wider, revealing its horrible body.
I imagined that whatever it was, it had drowned; that was why its skin was so pale, its scraggly dark hair hung in oily, wet threads around its head and shoulders. Clinging to its shiny wet skin was dirt and clumps of grass, as though it had clawed its way out of its watery grave. Its toes were webbed; mutated by centuries spent under the muck at the bottom of a lake. The fingers unfurled from the door and the creature gracefully and oh so eerily unfolded itself to climb out of my closet.
A scream was caught in my throat, and my eyes bulged, threatening to leave the beds in their sockets. I did only what a child of six could do; I drew my covers tightly over my head, in the simple childish belief that it would somehow protect me and ward off the monster the same way a crucifix wards off a vampire. My faith was pure, strong; it was diluted by nothing. Not any ounce of uncertainty or ambiguity or contingency. It was the most powerful belief I ever would have in my life. I stayed tucked away, under the covers, until I was sure it was gone. It was, and for one fleeting moment I hoped it had just been my overactive imagination.
But I knew it was real. I knew. I remembered how it clambered out and approach me with a slimy, rotting smile. I could smell it now. It smelled like fish.
Dead fish. Lake-water, duck-weed and mud; it filled my nostrils and laced my throat, making it difficult to breath.
"I'll kill you..." It murmured in the darkness. Its voice was raspy and cracked. "I'll feed off you..." I realized now that the voice wasn't coming from my closet; it was coming from the end of my bed. It stooped there, dripping foul water onto the carpet and began to crawl slowly across my bed. So slowly...
I knew what I had to do; I'd figured it out, in the mere second it took for the creature to crawl to me. "I don't believe in you. You aren't real." I whispered, with the same belief that had turned my flimsy, now wet covers into an indestructible shield.
Its horrible grin vanished, and slowly I watched as the creature melted onto the covers on my bed, soaking into my pyjamas.
I told mum I'd wet myself.
