Bedtime

Chapter 2

When you awaken from a deep sleep to something moving, or stirring, it can take a few moments for you to truly understand what is happening.

The fog of sleep hangs over your eyes and ears even when lucid.

Something was moving, there was no doubt about that.At first I wasn’t sure what it was. Everything was dark, almost pitch black, but there was enough light creeping in from outside to outline that narrowly suffocating room. Two thoughts appeared in my mind almost simultaneously.

The first was that my parents were in bed because the rest of the house lay both in darkness, and silence. The second thought turned to the noise. A noise which had obviously woken me.As the last cob webs of sleep withered from my mind, the noise took on a more familiar form.

Sometimes the simplest of sounds can be the most unnerving, a cold wind whistling through a tree outside, a neighbour’s footsteps uncomfortably close, or, in this case, the simple sound of bed sheets rustling in the dark.

That was it; bed sheets rustling in the dark as if some disturbed sleeper was attempting to get all too comfortable in the bottom bunk. I lay there in disbelief thinking that the noise was either my imagination, or perhaps just my pet cat finding somewhere comfortable to spend the night.

It was then that I noticed my door, shut as it had been as I’d fallen asleep.Perhaps my mum had checked in on me and the cat had sneaked in to my room then.

Yes, that must have been it. I turned to face the wall, closing my eyes in the vain hope that I could fall back to sleep. As I moved, the rustling noise from underneath me ceased.

I thought that I must have disturbed my cat, but quickly I realised that the visitor in the bottom bunk was much less mundane than my pet trying to sleep, and much more sinister.

As if alerted to, and disgruntled by, my presence, the disturbed sleeper began to toss and turn violently, like a child having a tantrum in their bed. I could hear the sheets twist and turn with increasing ferocity. Fear then gripped me, not like the subtle sense of unease I had experienced earlier, but now potent and terrifying.

My heart raced as my eyes panicked, scanning the almost impenetrable darkness.

I let out a cry.