|
About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
|
Sisyphean Attempts at Self-Improvement #1100470 added October 30, 2025 at 4:05pm
Restrictions: None
The Boogeyman
The Holloway family had tried everything.
First, they thought it was mice in the walls. The scratching sounds at night, always between 2 and 3 AM. They called an exterminator who set traps and laid poison.
The scratching continued.
Then they thought it was the pipes. Old house, old plumbing. The plumber tore open two walls, replaced everything. It cost them a fortune.
The scratching grew louder.
"Maybe it's settling," Mr. Holloway said, though houses shouldn't settle with such deliberate rhythm. Scratch-scratch-pause. Scratch-scratch-pause. Like something trying to claw its way through.
Their daughter Emma knew better. She'd seen the closet door open on its own. Seen the shadows move independently of anything that could cast them. She tried to tell her parents, but they attributed it to an eight-year-old's imagination.
Until the night Mr. Holloway saw it too.
He'd gotten up for water when something moved in his peripheral vision. A shape, tall and wrong, sliding back into Emma's room. He ran after it, flipping on the lights to find Emma sitting up in bed, wide-eyed and trembling.
"It was here again," she whispered.
That's when they called Mrs. Verner.
She arrived in a sensible sedan, looking more like a librarian than whatever a "spiritual exterminator" should look like. She walked through the house slowly, running her fingers along the walls.
"How long has this been happening?"
"Three months," Mrs. Holloway answered.
"And the child's nightmares?"
"How did you know about—"
"They always have nightmares first. Children see things adults train themselves to ignore." Mrs. Verner paused at Emma's closet. "This is where it lives."
She opened the door. Just clothes and toys, but the temperature dropped fifteen degrees.
"What is it?" Mr. Holloway asked.
"Old. Hungry. It feeds on fear, grows stronger with each nightmare." Mrs. Verner pulled out what looked like a modified vacuum cleaner crossed with a tesla coil. "But we can remove it."
She flipped the switch. The machine hummed, then screamed. The closet began to ripple like water. Something was fighting against the pull; something that didn't want to leave.
A shape began to emerge, dark and twisted, with too many angles that hurt to perceive. Emma screamed. The thing turned toward her, and for a moment, its form solidified: tall, skeletal, with eyes that weren't eyes but absences of light.
The machine sputtered and died.
"What happened?" Mr. Holloway shouted.
Mrs. Verner was pale. "It's stronger than I thought. Much older." She backed toward the door. "You need to leave. Tonight."
"Can't you kill it?"
Emma spoke then, her voice strange and hollow. "You can't kill the Boogeyman."
Mrs. Verner looked at the child, then at the parents. "She's right. Some things have always existed. Will always exist. The best you can do is leave before—"
The lights went out.
In the darkness, the scratching started again. But now it came from everywhere: walls, ceiling, floor. Like something vast finally deciding to stop hiding.
Mrs. Verner's scream was cut short.
When the lights flickered back on, she was gone. Only her sensible shoes remained, smoking slightly.
The Holloways left that night. The house stands empty now, FOR SALE sign gathering rust.
The scratching continues.
——————————————————————————————
530 words
PROMPT: “You can’t kill the Boogeyman!” — from Halloween (1978)
Written for ""13" (2025 Ed) - CLOSED"  |
© Copyright 2025 Jeff (UN: jeff at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Jeff has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
