A Nest of Nightmares

Quick steps on the linoleum alerted her and she moved silently into her old hiding place: the space between the piano and the window. She felt awkward, too large for a space that had been fine when she was nine. As the room grew darker she made herself comfortable and hoped that a bit of protruding knee would not be noticed.

Time passed, and Sharon heard the two little girls come home laughing through the kitchen door. She tensed suddenly at the sound of a light footstep and then a sharp click. A light had been turned on. Sharon relaxed, knowing who it was. Sharon had always been frightened of the dark, and had liked, to the mystification of her mother, to have a light on in every room.

Sharon smiled slowly. The light wouldn’t help. She knew that light often was dangerous, for in lighting up the dark corners it forced the monsters to come out into the open. Nine-year-old Sharon still had a lot to learn.

Sharon stood up and stretched. From the den she could hear the television, and felt a sudden terrible loneliness that she could not run in and join her family. She could imagine her mother with Scott on her lap, her father with a detective magazine (through with his paper by now), and the two girls with red Popsicles, all watching television. They all belonged, and she was suddenly the outsider.

Sharon went into the hallway, and from there into her parents’ bedroom. She felt no fear, although the room was dark. Happy in her freedom from fear, she moved farther into the room and walked around. She even stepped into the closet. As a child she had been afraid to enter the room when it was empty, and nothing could induce her to walk past the open closet door after dark. It had always seemed to her the most likely hiding place for whatever lunatic or burglar needed shelter. She had feared that someone would be lurking in the closet, waiting for her, ready to grab a little girl for some mysterious purposes. But Sharon was no longer afraid.

Scott’s room was also dark. She walked past it and entered her bedroom. Both the ceiling light and the bedside lamp were burning. She turned off the ceiling light at the door. Suddenly she was flooded with the desire to have everything again as it should be. The room was right, the setting was perfect. Only she herself was out of place, in a too-old body. Sharon longed to be able to go to the dresser (with the painted-daisy drawer knobs) and pull out her blue cotton nightgown. She would take off her clothes and pull the nightgown on over her head. Then she would turn down the covers on the bed, go get an apple (afterwards she would have to brush her teeth), and kiss everyone goodnight. And then . . .

Sharon remembered the ritual. Always afraid that Something lurked under the bed – something with long arms and a penchant for grabbing small girls – she had devised a method of getting into bed safely. First, she would turn off the ceiling light. Then, beginning at the door, she would run towards the bed, leaping up and onto it from as far away as she could. That way her feet, her vulnerable legs, did not come too close to the edge of the bed, and nothing could grab them. Once in bed she would turn out the lamp and lie still, heart pounding, and wonder if perhaps tonight the thing under the bed would be able to come out and get her, sending long, bony arms up over the sides of the bed, creeping for her throat . . .

And then Sharon would dive under the covers, feeling that out of sight she was somehow safe. Ellen had never shared her fears, and Sharon had often envied her safety in ignorance.

But Sharon could not do that tonight. Now there was someone else to sleep in her bed, someone else who would be kissed goodnight and get to eat an apple. Her place was already filled. This was her home, the only place she wanted to be, and someone else had stolen her role.

Sharon felt dizzy. Her stomach growled. She had not eaten all day. And then she knew what she had to do.

She turned off the lamp and stood for a moment in darkness before rolling under the bed to wait. She did not mind waiting, and she was not afraid of the dark.

SUN CITY

It was 3.00 a.m., the dead, silent middle of the night. Except for the humming of the soft-drink machine in one corner, and the irregular, rumbling cough of the ice machine hidden in an alcove just beyond it, the lobby was quiet. There weren’t likely to be any more check-ins until after dawn – all the weary cross-country drivers would be settled elsewhere by now, or grimly determined to push on without a rest.