Short Story: The Scariest Place.....

Short Story: The Scariest Place.....

The darkness, it clawed at Peter’s restless mind.

Images swirled around his head, while downstairs, the muffled sound of the television confirmed only that, after a day of play, he was now alone. He knew that beyond the door and on the other side of the wall was a world of light, and that on his side of the door, within the walls known as his bedroom, there was a quite different world. A world of dark, where monsters lived and drooled and where things, unexplained things, went bump in the night.

His six year old mind was very awake and was very frightened.

The warm cuddle that his mum had given him only minutes before was long forgotten, as were with the softly spoken words of the night-time mantra she recited as she turned out the light, prompting him to snuggle down beneath the duvet to sometimes sleep and sometimes not.

‘Night, night, sleep tight hope the bugs don’t bite. Love you, God Bless, see you the morning.’

****

Forty winks, that’s what she had told him. That’s what his dad had told him. Forty winks, and the dust of sleep would fall upon his eyes and then off he’d go to the land where castles rose on silver clouds. A pleasant place, where life was fun, and where Billy at school was just Billy at school and not Billy the Bully as he was known.

Just forty, slowly administered winks was all it took, winks that clipped his ticket to a nether-nether world where the day he called today turned into the day he called tomorrow.

Very often he did not need all of the forty winks. Sometimes a mere fifteen was sufficient and on days when the derring-do of a six year old whose imaginary best friend was a pirate, even less.

One, two, three…….and before four could fill his mind, morning dawned, silently ushering the castles of his dreams off to where castles go when the dazzling shafts of dawning light stream in through the crack in the curtains.

Peter liked to wake up slowly. He liked to take time to watch flecks of dust as they danced in the beam of the new day’s sun. He liked to stretch slowly and then to stretch and stretch and stretch to see if he could touch the headboard and the far end of the bed at the same time. He couldn’t.

Peter liked his bed. He liked his bedroom. He liked what his mum and dad had done to make it his.

He didn’t however like the monsters, or the unexplainable things that went bump in night.

Peter’s mum knew about the monsters. So did his dad and both had told him that there was nothing there. The shadowy shape by the door was apparently his dressing gown and the ghostly light that was sometimes there and sometimes not was the light outside his room skimming under the door before snaking its way across the carpet to somehow land on his mirror.

Peter remained unconvinced. His young mind swirled with the question that asked why it was that the serrated knife that glinted so close to his face only disappeared when he shut his eyes, while the death breath stench of something very nasty didn’t.

****

‘Castles on clouds, have you ever heard such a thing Mr. Ryder?’

‘No, for sure I haven’t Mr. Careep – but young Peter here, he dreams of ‘em all the time. He has a pirate friend you know and together they storm these castles for no other reason than fun.’

‘Fun? Fun? What is fun Mr. Ryder. Can you bottle it? Can you sell it? Can you hurt people with it? What is the point of ‘fun’?’

‘I really can’t be sure Mr. Careep but I do know one thing…..’ his voice tailed off as if he had seen something out of the corner of his eye that needed to the looked at before he continued.

Peter’s eyes stared into the darkness. The closeness of Ryder and Careep meant he could only hear their voices, and smell their vile sewage presence. The coldness of their breath brushed his face as the two leant either side of his pillow, whisperingly hissing their conversation so as only Peter could hear it.

‘Well?, yes, what is it, what is the one thing that you know, Mr Ryder?’

‘Ah yes, now, what was the one thing I know? ……was it?....um....No, it wasn’t because if it was then that would I mean I knew two things and I don’t.’

Careep flashed his arm across the pillow. Peter felt the stiffness of his dank overcoat touch his face as a white cankered hand gripped Ryder’s throat.

‘Mr. Ryder,’ were the only two words that Careep uttered, but being as cold as ice they were sufficient to bring Ryder to his senses.

‘Ah yes, yes, yes. The one thing I know Mr. Careep about castles is…’ he paused momentarily, partly for effect but mainly to breathe ‘ is that…. castles…. have…. dungeons,’ he chuckled for further effect but it was wasted.

Careep stared at Ryder. Ryder volleyed it back with a topspin glare while Peter, wide eyed and frit wished that his pirate friend was there.

Peter tried to pull the duvet up around his ears but Careep and Ryder’s weight of was too much for him to move. He tried to wriggle down but, again, the weight of his visitors was too much for him to wriggle between.

The air above Peter chilled further as Ryder and Careep rasped and wheezed over him. Neither were in good health but they found that rasping and wheezing tended to add a certain air of menace at times like these.

‘Does this mean then Mr Ryder that you know of a castle with a dungeon?’

Careep’s eyes flashed an illuminating green at the thought.

‘No, no, no, I’m afraid I don’t Mr Careep, but I do know of a place where there is a dungeon with a castle above it.’

Careep collected his thoughts, trying to work out what it was that Ryder was talking about.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I suppose that will have to do……’ as his voice tailed off in a way that suggested that he had seen something out of the corner of his eye which he needed to look at before he continued.

‘Is it far?’

‘Beneath the bed.’

‘Which bed?’

‘This bed.’

Peter’s blood ran cold causing him to scream a scream that produced a commotion in the room downstairs.

There was an opening of doors, a clicking of switches, and the sound of feet clambering stairs two at a time.

In a moment Peter’s bedroom door flew open as his dad appeared, haloed in the light, from the landing.

‘They’re here again,’ said Peter ‘Ryder and Careep.’

His dad did the usual. He looked under the bed, he looked in the wardrobe, behind the curtains and finally he checked in Peter’s school bag and under the pile of discarded laundry, that had been shed during the getting ready for bed stage of the day. Nothing.

With firmness and reassurance he told Peter that there was nothing to worry about and that it was time to go to sleep.

Shutting the door the halo of light that had entered with him, left, leaving a pencil thin outline around the door’s frame which, moments later, clicked into darkness.

The lingering stench of mouldering pondweed mingled with a soufflé of rotten eggs burst once again into Peter’s senses.

‘Now what did you do that for?’ croaked Careep.

Peter wanted to answer but the close-up sight of Careep’s yellowing teeth, housing between them whatever it was he had recently eaten, sealed his lips, preventing both words and the contents of his stomach from entering the room.

****

‘To the dungeon. Mr Careep?’

‘To the dungeon, Mr Ryder.’

Peter gripped his duvet for comfort and protection, the whiteness of his knuckles contrasting with the matted darkness that now wove itself around the trio.

An awful sense of falling took control.

The bed split from head to foot. Peter, Careep and Ryder, entangled as one, disappeared into a mass of duvet, mattress, foam and springs. The darkness twisted and swirled while the air filled with an ochred stench of fear.

Careep and Ryder squealed as the ecstasy and adrenaline surged. This was their moment, their moment for taking an enlivened imagination down into the dungeon beneath the castle of its dreams.

The knife that had previously flashed before Peter’s wide open eyes now slashed and thrashed around him, causing feathers from his duvet to explode into the air under the impact of the steely blade.

Unable to breath, the sense of falling coursed through his being as Ryder then Careep passed before his eyes together with a faint dim light that flashed upon the blade.

The swirling and the falling and screaming and the darkness continued. The faint dim light flashed again before disappearing into black.

Peter saw it. Ryder saw it. Careep didn’t as he continued to squeal with every thrusting lunge of the knife.

Two words, just two words were all Peter could muster, taking all his energy and strength and the breathe from his aching lungs he ejected them from his contorted body.

‘Save meeeeeeeeeee…….’

The words rose above the carnage, cutting through the debris that was once his bed. Feathers rode on the bow waves of sound as it cut its way up through the dark.

Immediately, the dim faint light that was sometimes there and sometimes not filled the room with the piercing shards of a thousand suns. Chasing down into the chasm, penetrating the tendrils that bound Peter to his captors, the light surged on, emitting heat that was cool not scorching. The darkness parted in its wake, fleeing as the rushing fireball wind tore through the nightmare web to take hold of Peter.

The grip of Ryder, Careep and the dark was strong but the light’s was stronger. Taking hold of he knew not what Peter felt the cold tendrils of the dark relinquish its grip. Ryders ecstatic squeals turned into anguished wails that faded into the deadening upholstery of the dark while the flashing blade of Careep’s knife fell dull.

Held within the stream of warm braided gold and shards of light Peter rose. Silver, white, yellow, a flash of electric blue passed him by in a silent rush. Intense whiteness flooded his thoughts, as the darkness sealed beneath him.

Ever more he rose, not realizing how far he’d fallen. It had only been a second – a long agonizing second but surely he could not have fallen as far as he was now having to rise as he burst up through the mattress and the duvet.

****

Peter’s bed was warm, as were the familiarity of his surroundings. He breathed in the scent of freshly laundered bedclothes. His eyes, wide open, searched the darkened room. No Ryder. No Careep.

The bedroom door quietly opened, allowing the light beyond to cream the room with a wash of warmth as the darkened silhouettes of his parents appeared.

‘He’s fine, those forty winks must have finally caught up with him.’

The door closed. Peter pulled up the duvet.

Before drifting off he peered once more into the nightlight of his room. It was bathed in the darkness one gets when a full moon shines on a winter’s night.

The dressing gown on the back of the door was his dressing gown on the back of the door and on top of the chest of drawers he could make out the dark outline of his mirror…..and standing beside him, watching, an angel, adorned in warm braided gold and a gown sown with the sharded light of a thousand suns.

The two smiled as Peter started counting; ‘One…. Two…. Three……f……..’