Don’t Look Under the Bed

Tommy Gross was nine years old when he learned why you don’t look under the bed.

The only child of a perfect household, he was the definition of normal. He loved soccer and video games and loved to read Goosebumps despite having nightmares every now and then after reading a really good book. His parents told him that he had an active imagination, but it never felt like something he made up.

His biggest fear was the dark. This made going to bed a challenge, he always had to look in every cranny, closet, and hidden spot before he felt safe. Even then he still wasn’t confident something wasn’t there hidden in his toy chest or behind his mirror. Whenever he went to bed, he left his door ajar to let the kitchen light shine in until his parents went to bed.

“The night” started out like any other night. Tommy had gotten ready, having brushed his teeth and changed into his PJs and checked all the spaces he normally checked to make sure there was nothing in his room, and climbed into bed. He was playing a video game when his mother came in as usual to kiss his forehead and take away the game before turning off the light.

He never was able to get to sleep right away. That night, his mind wandered from one thing to another. He hummed that commercial song that wouldn’t get out of his head and started thinking about everything at school and something he’d watched on YouTube.

It shouldn’t have been this hard to get to sleep. It wasn’t like his parents were out. That always kept him up. He just wanted to stay up until they got back. He told himself everything was fine. There was nothing to worry about. He remembered a story he’d heard somewhere about a thing under the bed. He tried to turn his thoughts to cartoons, but the story kept coming back to him.

He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it. It wasn’t like the other stories that he’d heard about the monster with blue and green skin and bolts in his neck like Frankenstein. It had been about a boy, around his age who wasn’t afraid of anything. The boy was nothing like him, but he imagined himself in it.

One stormy night the boy heard a noise ruffling under the bed. He decided to look under and find out what was making it. When he looked, he found something terrifying, but no one knew what it was he’d seen, because he was never seen again.

What was it that lurked down underneath his bed? Tommy’s mind raced with the possibilities of what it was. The dark frightening ghouls and specters that he hated thinking about raced to mind. The undead and creatures of other worlds crawling on pointed claws gave him shivers.

He told himself it was just a silly scary story. He probably heard from one of his friends. Or maybe it was just from a TV show or Scary Story to Tell in the Dark. He stared out into the crack of the door into the light.

There was something about it he couldn’t shake off. What if a monster did lurk below waiting for him to fall asleep? Tommy pulled the blanket up higher. The monster still was there, under the bed, in his mind.

The light from the hall dimmed. His parents were going to bed. It was getting late.

If Tommy didn’t do anything, he’d never get to sleep. If he did, he would probably have a nightmare and wake up screaming and running to his parent’s room. Neither option was appealing. He had to do something.

All he had to do was prove to himself there was nothing under there, because there wasn’t anything there. He knew that, somewhere in the logical part of his brain. He had worked himself up. His parents warned him about doing this all the time. It was time to grow up. He climbed to the end of his bed and jumped off, more so away; far enough from the bed that the monster couldn’t grab him.

He turned to the bed. It was dark and the bed skirt hid the unknown beneath it. He didn’t have to check. He could go to his parents. They could check with him. If he did that, it might hide. It would wait till they left and come back later. He didn’t want to do that. It might get angry. It might make it worse. It could last forever. He might never escape it.

He was doing it on his own. He readied himself. Tommy bent down; he strained to see whatever he could below the hem of the skirt. It was too low. He couldn’t make out anything. He reached out, arm shaking, ready for something to jump out at him. He lifted the skirt. His imagination raced with thoughts of something slimy, one-eyed, sharp-toothed, clawing, or decrepit. He peered in.

Something was there! It was a hidden in silhouette and darkness, too far back to be clear. He jumped back, away from the bed. It could have been a toy. Something soft and cuddly that he’d forgotten about and left to the void that was beneath the bed. He wasn’t sure.

Tommy approached the bed again. He could hear something back there. He lifted the veil. He was ready this time. He couldn’t let himself get scared. The thing crawled forward. It moved normally. It had hands. It wasn’t clawed or scaled. It reached out. It was human. He yelped and pulled back.

The hand emerged from under the bed, only for a second and slipped back under. He wasn’t imagining things. Something was there. Someone. People were innocent, mostly. He didn’t need to be afraid, at least not as much.

“Hello?” he whispered out.

They didn’t respond. Tommy flashed back to whatever he’d seen. Had it been a kid? He thought it was. He had to see it again.

He lifted the curtain. A face, was right there, waiting for him. It was a boy. Tommy stared at him. The boy stared back at Tommy. It was eerie. There was a similarity to when he would look in the mirror. It wasn’t perfect. It was distorted and twisted but familiar. The same eyes and nose; the same forehead and wavy hair, but it was like a funhouse mirror. His breath jumped in his chest. The boy reached out, his wrist was chained in a shackle. The boy tried to speak but sounds didn’t escape.

“Who are you,” Tommy asked.

The boy pointed at Tommy.

Tommy shook his head. It didn’t make sense. The boy insisted, nodding. Tommy edged closer to him.

A pincer shot out from the darkness behind the twisted reflection. It stabbed into the ground at the edge of the bed, just below Tommy’s face. It looked insect like, with hairs protruding from every inch of it while glistening from the shell-like surface.

The face before him smiled. It receded back into the darkness, back to what should have been the other side of the bed. It was gone and a massive eyeball floated forward. Veins protruded around it. There was no face belonging to it, nothing but a muscle holding it up on tentacles crawling toward him. Tommy backed away. They couldn’t be real. None of this could be.

“You’re not real,” Tommy screamed. He backed away. He bumped into the wall. He didn’t look away. What if it got him?

The child’s hand emerged. It motioned for him to return with a single luring finger. The chains rattled. The hand couldn’t reach any further. Tommy shook his head. The hand vanished. The boy shook about. The bed rumbled and tossed about. Tommy watched on. The boy popped his head out. Tommy crawled back. He didn’t realize he was back to peering under the bed until it was too late.

The boy smiled but the skin melted away like wax. The eyes drooped and even the teeth gave way to something below them, something sharper.

Tommy was close enough to smell its breath. It was like spoiled milk. The boy shot his head right at Tommy and snapped his teeth an inch from Tommy’s nose. Tommy pulled his head back from beneath the bed and squirmed on his back into the corner never taking his eyes off the bed. Tommy cowered near the closet.

“Tommy!” a familiar voice whispered out from below the bed, “Help us. We’re hurt, Tommy!”

“Mom!” he cried and dove toward the bed skirt. He lifted the cover. Her bloody hand shot out and grabbed him. He was yanked down below again. He grabbed the edge of the bed, keeping himself from slipping below completely.

His mother and father were covered in blood and bruised, almost unrecognizable. She smiled at him. She pulled on his arm. He clung to the bed frame. Her arm popped off and whisked back as if into a black hole as something climbed out from the edge of the floor. It was brutish figure holding a knife. It eyed him. Tommy felt frozen. The stranger held up his finger to hush. Tommy scurried backward, but the floor moved like sludge.

He felt the man grab him. It lasted only a second. He was in the void. Everything around him had given way. He could move. He floated. He looked around. A light was in the distance. He could peer and just make out his bedroom floor. He tried to swim away. He could feel a presence behind him. He turned. There was something on the edge of his vision. It was something surrounding him. A massive inescapable figure of darkness. A cloaked spectre. He stared up into it. He was filled with a sense of dread. It didn’t try to get him. It didn’t need to. It was the inevitable.

He screamed in panic. He wanted to get away. He couldn’t move. His breath was growing short. He gasped for air. His vision blurred as he saw the edge of the floor race at him. He crashed. He rolled and hit the corner of the room. He glanced back at the bed. The bed skirt swayed.

His comforter hung from the edge of the bed. He managed to grab it but he couldn’t find the courage to climb back onto it. At some point he fell asleep.

Later, his mother heard noises coming from Tommy’s room and decided to check in on him. She found him slumped in the corner asleep. There were no signs of noises. She picked him up and tucked him back in on the bed asking “How’d you get there?”

She looked back before closing the door, still wondering what she’d heard.

When Tommy woke up, he remembered everything from the night before, but wasn’t sure how much was real and how much he’d made up. He jumped up and grabbed a ball. He rolled it under the bed. It would roll back out if there was something down there. It didn’t. He smiled and walked out of the room to get ready for the day.

As he was leaving, Tommy returned to get his backpack. The ball rolled to a stop and sat in the middle of the floor. His eyes locked on the bed skirt. There was darkness under it.

“Tommy!” his mother called.

The backpack was sitting on the bed. He looked at it. He looked below it to the hidden space. He ran and grabbed the backpack and raced back to the door. He turned back to the bed. The bed skirt ruffled to stillness. He stood watching. He’d felt his foot brush it, but he’d seen the ball rolled out. He knew what was down there.

From that day forward Tommy Gross never looked under the bed. It was where his nightmares slept.