Eider listened silently to the long and terrible creek that echoed through the silence of the night. It was far past his bedtime, the light up Spiderman clock mounted on the wall displaying the numbers “10:00”. Eider was supposed to have been asleep two hours ago. His mother would’ve been furious if she knew that he was still awake, but he couldn’t help it. Eider kept hearing strange and frightening sounds throughout the house and he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep even if he tried. He was scared that if he close his eyes, even for just a moment, whatever creature was making the scraping sounds on the hardwood floor upstairs would slip into his bedroom without him noticing and begin to bite at his face before he had a chance to call out for his mother. That’s what happened to the little boy in the movie his brother showed him anyways.
His older brother, Weslin, had allowed Eider to watch a scary movie with him while he was babysitting until their mother got back. But only on the condition that Eider would mention nothing about the movie to their mother. In the movie a little six year old boy, only a year older than Eider, had been sure there was a terrible monster lurking through the house. When the monster began to open his bedroom door the little boy hid his face under the covers, and before he even got a chance to call out for his parents, the monster had leapt onto him and began to gnaw at his face.
Eider didn’t want that to happen to him. He would be in enough trouble as it was, having both stayed up late and watched an off limits movie. But what if there really was a monster in the house? What if the footsteps her heard upstairs in the kitchen was the monster from the movie. It was searching the house for him since he had broken the rules, he knew it! Eider stared at his door handle in terror. He could swear, in the almost overwhelming dark of the room, he could see the door knob turn ever so slightly. His heart hammered in his chest.
“No…” He thought to himself, “Noah would’ve barked…”
Noah was the family husky. They had gotten the dog as a new companion for him and Weslin, but Eider knew the real reason they had gotten Noah was to distract the two of them when their dad left. A new fear crept up from the darkest corners of his mind. What if the monster had already gotten Noah? What if when Eider ran upstairs to the safety of his mother’s arms he would find Noah a bloody carcass in the hallway? What if when he found Noah, his stomach had been ripped open and the monster laid eggs in his chest cavity, just like it did in the movie to the little boy’s face.
A loud crash sounded from upstairs and Eider violently jerked in his bed. The edges of his fingers tingled and his palms began to sweat. He was sure that the monster was in the house now.
“What do I do? What do I do?” His tiny little voice echoed in his head. “Mom’s room is all the way upstairs on the second floor…”
He thought about sneaking out of his room to get Weslin first and then mom. But what if Mom died before they could get to her? Eider decided that Weslin was smart enough to hide while Eider went to go get their mother. After all, once he got to his mother, he was sure she could save them both from the terrible creature. She wasn’t scared to confront the monsters in Eider’s closet or under his bed, surely she could best the beast lurking in the shadows of their home.
Never taking his eyes off the door handle he slowly pulled aside the blue and red Spiderman themed covers to his race car bed and carefully stepped onto the floor. His thick, curly, near black hair fell into his face, blocking the left side of the room from his molton brown eyes. Yet another thought slithered its way into Eider’s head. What if when Eider next looked in the mirror, the next time Eider made eye contact with his reflection, his eyes turned into that of the monster. The monster would reach through the glass and pull Eider into Hell with it. Eider would be left to suffer forever, alone, terrified, and burning in the flames of the Damned. That wasn’t what happened in the movie, but Eider was smart enough to know that not everything in the movie was true.
