Where Did That Thing Go That Was Standing Beside the Bed

Suspense Stories | Aug 24, 2013 | 4 min read
32 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Suspense Stories

Where Did That Thing Go That Was Standing Beside the Bed

For Andrea Miller


Janet sat bolt upright in the darkness of her bedroom. Her husband Michael lay beside her on the bed. As Janet moved to get out of bed and go to the restroom, Michael sat up and began rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Where did that thing go that was standing beside the bed?" he asked Janet, his voice sounding as if he were still asleep. Janet, one foot on the floor, asked him, "What thing standing beside the bed?" She lifted her foot from the floor and tucked it under the covers.

"Uhm, I'm not quite sure… I must have been dreaming. Yeah… I had to have been dreaming." The last word sounded more like a question than a statement.

"I'm sure that if it was anything it would be the cat."

Michael didn't reply. He was looking down at the covers, trying to remember what the thing was.

Janet got out of bed, wrapped her arms across her chest and rubbed her upper arms. Despite the heat being on seventy-five degrees and the two of them in the upstairs bedroom, the house was cold this time of October in Vermont.

"Wait," Michael said, holding his hand out in a halting gesture to Janet, who now stood at the end of the bed.

"What, Michael? You're going with me to the bathroom. You know I have an overactive imagination, and you're scaring me!"

Michael got out of bed and walked Janet to the bathroom. The halls upstairs crossed each other making a shape like a +, the bathroom being in the alcove on the right. Janet went inside to do her business and Michael returned to the bedroom. He thought of leaving the light on in the room for when Janet came back, but he opted for flipping the switch and going to bed. He crawled under the covers and rolled over on his right side. Except there was no comfort or feeling of relaxation approaching. It was that feeling, that weight of someone else's gaze on you. He rolled over on his back. The bedroom door was open and he could see out in the dark hallway that was lit only by the light coming from the cracks in the bathroom door. At the end of the hall, the figure of a man stood.

Janet had just finished drying off her hands and was opening the bathroom door. She turned to turnoff the bathroom light and saw in the mirror a man's foot – what looked like a foot – disappear into the darkness of her bedroom. Her hand was over the light switch, but she didn't dare turn it off. "Michael," Janet whispered.

No response.

"Michael," she says just a bit louder.

From the bedroom a low murmur comes.

"Are you asleep, Mike?"

"Aughh," the low annoyed sound comes from the bedroom. It is enough that Janet believes that the foot was Michael's disappearing into the bedroom. He has just now gotten in bed and doesn't want to get out again just to walk his chicken shit wife down the hall, Janet thinks to herself. "Well, it doesn't hurt to leave the light on so I can see my way back," Janet whispers. She cracks the door to where just the right amount of light can illuminate the hallway, and then walks back to her bedroom.

Mike is under the covers and lying on his left side. As Janet crawls into bed, she feels the mattress shift, the weight of her husband disappear, and hears the thud of his body hitting the floor. Janet scurries over the bed to look at her husband who is face down on the floor. "Michael, honey, are you all right?"

She turns and swings her feet over her side of the bed only to encounter a tall figure standing there. Looking up with wide eyes, Janet sees the diseased face of some creature with a grin revealing too many carnivorous teeth. In a second, the creature grabs her by the shoulders, breaking them, and hauls her under the bed. The sound of cracking bones and tearing flesh echoes in the dark.


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James Cottrell Sep 27, 2013

Interesting plot, but next time try to add more emotions of fear so the reader can understand the characters better. However clever story and I hope I helped.

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