Not All Beds Are The Same
Abe was exhausted, completely ready for a good night’s sleep. Moving to his new apartment had drained him so, he felt he would sleep tonight. His roommate rick, worked the third shift so he’d be able to get a good rest, or so he thought. Taking off work for two days would allow him to get settled in before heading back to his job, at the car lot. Abe was a great salesman and people took to him like he was a three-scoop banana split, with the works; his personality easily garnered people’s trst.
An abalone moon hung framed by the bedroom window as he fell into bed, a full wolf moon. Abe chuckled visualizing a werewolf from one of his favorite comics standing before him. Not a bad bed he considered, as he snuggled beneath the comforter, wondering why Rick’s last roommate had left it there. “One man’s loss is another man’s gain,” he recalled his Mom saying; in seconds he was deep in sleep.
Two hours into his slumber, Abe was startled awake with a loud pop emanating from somewhere in the room.
“Geez, what the hell was I dreaming?” he said to himself and turned over to go back to sleep. He lay for a few seconds staring at the moon, it’s rays beckoning to him like long bony fingers curling with a, “come hither” motion. It was then that Abe spotted it. The thing in the corner that seemed to float up from underneath the bed; a long, slithering shadow that seemed to be forming the shape of a giant wolf!
There it stood; he knew it was staring right at him, his eyes transfixed upon the foreboding mass of black. Too terrified to move or scream, Abe watched, his hand reaching for something, anything on the nightstand, with which he could defend himself...nothing. “Why didn’t I unpack that lamp?” he wondered, just as the shadow disappeared.
Abe jumped up from the bed, running to the hallway light switch; he flipped it on. Nothing, there was nothing! He grabbed his cell phone from his jean pocket and using it as a flashlight, rummaged in a large box to find a small table lamp. He found the plug and it was on in minutes. Abe went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk, thinking it might help him to relax. When he returned to the bedroom, the lamp was off! He switched it back on and climbed back into the bed...he thought he heard a low growl...
“Does Rick have a dog?” Abe wondered...another low growl...
“It’s got to be a dog in another apartment”, he thought and reached to turn off the light but, just could not convince himself to do it; he laid back and closed his eyes.
When the alarm had its regular morning scream, Abe sat up in the bed, rubbed his eyes, his empty stomach was growling profusely; he pulled on his Jeans, headed to the kitchen. While scrambling himself a couple of eggs, Rick entered the door.
“See’ya found the skillet and eggs”, Rick said, “I brought us some coffee.”
“Great, thanks”, Abe replied, “You want some?” He asked, pointing at the skillet full of eggs.
“Nah, thanks though, I grabbed a sandwich out of the machine at work about an hour ago; not hungry.” Rick sat down with his coffee and as Abe ate breakfast, he told Rick about, what he thought was some sort of a dream.
“That’s freaky dude, but you’re in a new place, sometimes a move can be more stressful than you realize.”
“Yeah, I guess so but it sure was real. I know I came in here and had some milk though, there’s the glass”. Abe pointed at the countertop next to the sink.
“I’ll be gone a couple of days, Abe; promised my Mom I’d be down to help Dad get in some of the crops this weekend,” Rick said, grabbing his gym bag from the hallway closet. “Dad’s been having some bad problems with his arthritis since fall started and his bad knee’s really acting up.”
“Sorry to hear that, man; hey, Rick does someone in this building have a dog?”
“I don’t think so”, Rick replied, shoving a toothbrush and some toothpaste into his bag. “Boy that nightmare
really got to you, didn’t it?”
“Apparently”, he replied.
Minutes later, Rick was gone, leaving Abe alone to get unpacked and settled.
Fourteen uneventful hours later, Abe was ordering a pizza for supper. Rick had told him to help himself to anything in the place so, when the pizza arrived, he grabbed a movie, Dirty Harry with Clint Eastwood, from Ricks cabinet and popped it into the Blu-ray. Rick was an old movie buff and Abe found Rick’s collection incredibly huge.
Moonlight fell upon a sleeping Abe, hours later. The glare from the TV screen was the only other light in the room. Abe was startled awake, by another loud pop, it was followed by that same low growl, he had heard before.
Abe tossed the pizza box and his beer can into the garbage, removed the DVD, and turned off the machines. In the bathroom, he cleaned his teeth and swished a mouthful of Listerine. As he was rinsing off his toothbrush, he thought he heard another growl. It was too late to disturb any of the neighbors so, he went on to bed; he was asleep instantly.
This time, what woke him wasn’t a pop or a growl; the bed was literally, lifted off the floor and slammed down hard. Abe leaped out of it and switched on the light to find his bed sitting crooked in the center of the room!
He’d spent the rest of the night in the living room with all of the lights on.
The next morning, he made a call to Rick’s cell. “What’s up?” answered Rick.
“Dude, that bed that your old roommate had, did it ever move?”
“C’mon Abe, my Dad’s waiting for me in the north forty, and you want to know if the bed ever moved. I got no time for this, man.”
“Wait, don’t hang up, I’m serious. Something’s wrong and I think it’s got something to do with that bed or its former owner.”
“All I can tell you is that he bought it from some girl he dated. I think she was into some weird stuff though; I remember him telling me that she had some really freaky books and stuff.”
“What! Was she a witch or something?”
“She was into some religion; it was like, Voodoo or something. I’ve got to go, man my Dad’s waiting.” With that, Rick hung up.
Abe wasn’t quite himself at work; the day turned out to be a loss, not one single sale and he’d been a top salesman for three months running; today he had no focus. He stopped at the library to do a little research, after work.
Having been raised, by a Father who worked as a Chemist and Mother who was a Legal aid, witchcraft and Voodoo were not things anyone talked about in his family; it was all myth, fiction, fantasy; things kids told stories about around Halloween.
Abe walked between stacks in the psychology and religious sections but found nothing to explain his experiences to his satisfaction.
“Why don’t you try the Metaphysical/New Age Section, over there?” The librarian pointed and Abe headed towards it.
Several hours later, she was telling him, it was closing time and he’d have to check out the book to finish it. He did so.
On the way home, he grabbed a burger and fries from, Late Burger Bites and headed back to the apartment. Abe awoke when the huge book on demonology, hit the floor with a dull thud. He climbed into the shower and thought about what he’d read while lathering up.
“It’s crazy”, he thought to himself, “there are no such things as ghosts and demons, its pure fiction.” Still, in the back of his mind, he wondered if he acted it out the next time he was awakened, would it somehow, have an effect psychologically, to stop these things?’ Maybe he was doing it all himself. Was something in his subconscious mind, causing him to be startled and making him think that the bed had moved? “I did jump out of it sort of fast,” he thought. “What if the motion I made, somehow moved the bed? That’s it! It’s got to be.”
Drying off, he pulled on his underwear and pajamas then went to pick up the book in the living room. He read a few more pages before he fell asleep, out of curiosity. Within an hour, he was snuggled beneath the warm covers.
It was 2 am when he awoke to the loud pop! The bed came up off the floor and slammed against it, three times. Abe switched on the light, fumbled for the book, and froze in terror! From underneath the bed, slithered a horrid thing, half-shadow, half forming, god only knew what. Abe quivered like a Chihuahua, uncontrollably as the thing slithered closer; it came to a stop before him; the low growl getting louder with every breath drawn by the creature.
What now stood before him was unlike anything he’d ever imagined. It stood a good ten-foot-tall, a slimy red thing with horns, not just on its head but coming out of its elbows and knees, as well and as it drooled, Abe felt the heat of its fiery breath. He remembered the cross around his neck and pulled it out, shoving it into the face of the thing. Sweat poured out of him now, certain that he was inhaling one last breath and struggling to recall the words in the book. The book...he made a grab for it and flipping it over, he found it still opened to the page he’d bookmarked earlier. His quivering hands still struggling to hold the book steady, he shouted the words on the page...
“In nomeni patris, Et tu iubes locus! In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, derelinquamus! In nomine Christi!”
He kept repeating as the thing lunged backward, the growling getting louder and louder but, the demon getting smaller and smaller; withdrawing back into a shadow; back into...nothingness...
Abe dropped the book, fell flat onto his butt on the floor, and cried like a baby. He hadn’t prayed a rosary in years but that night; he sat shaking and praying. That’s how Rick found him when he returned the next morning.
That was six years ago. Rick sold the bed to a co-worker who has been safely enjoying it with no nightmares. Abe, though still in therapy, is vigilant about taking his Haldol; therapy has convinced him that he was having psychotic episodes. Fortunately, his insurance covers the therapy and medication and he’s returned to work. He’s not quite the happy-go-lucky guy that he was once but he’s glad to have loyal, return customers. Still, somewhere deep inside of his mind lay the image of...it; thank Heaven the Haldol keeps it at bay.
Copyright, 2019, M.L. Kiser
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