The Boogeyman

The Monster Under Your Bed

HVR posted a note about the Boogeyman here, and it sparked this story.

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Art by Olly von

Everyone knows the rule.

Keep your hands under the blanket.

Keep your feet away from the edge.

You learn it when you are small enough that the edge of the bed feels like the edge of the world.

Parents say it jokingly.

Older siblings whisper it like a dare.

But the rule survives long after the belief fades.

*******

I forgot the rule.

I stopped believing in fake monsters

when I learned there are plenty of real monsters to worry about.

And because I was tired.

The kind of tired that sinks into your bones and makes the bed feel heavier than gravity.

I fell asleep without even pulling the blankets over my shoulders.

Sometime after midnight, my arm slipped over the side of the mattress.

My fingers dangled in the darkness beneath the bed.

At first there was nothing.

Just cool air brushing against my skin.

Then something touched me.

Not claws.

Not teeth.

Fingers.

Cold.

Long.

They wrapped slowly around my wrist.

And pulled.

*******

The fall should have lasted seconds.

My bedroom floor was only inches below.

But the darkness beneath the bed opened like a deep well and swallowed me whole.

The mattress vanished above me.

My room disappeared.

I was falling through a blackness that felt far too large to exist beneath a bed.

Objects drifted around me as I fell.

At first I didn’t understand what they were.

Then I recognized them.

A stuffed rabbit missing an eye.

A plastic dinosaur.

A loose sock.

Puzzle pieces.

Bent spoons.

Lost buttons.

All the small things that disappear in bedrooms over time.

All the things we tear the room apart looking for, wondering how they could simply vanish.

They floated slowly through the air like snow.

I reached for a hair tie that was drifting as I fell.

It slipped through my fingers and drifted deeper into the dark.

*******

Then I saw the beds.

Hundreds of them hung far above me, suspended in the black sky like clouds.

Some drifted slowly.

Others remained still.

From many of them arms dangled.

Bare feet.

Careless limbs hanging loosely in sleep.

And beneath them

shadows moved.

Arms reaching upward.

Grasping.

Desperate.

*******

The ground arrived suddenly.

Except it wasn’t ground.

I landed hard on a hill made of piled mattresses.

They stretched across the horizon like uneven dunes.

Bed frames stuck from them at strange angles.

Blankets hung between the frames like torn flags.

The air smelled like dust and old sheets.

Above everything, the floating beds drifted endlessly in the darkness.

*******

Once my eyes adjusted, I saw the city.

It had been built from forgotten things.

Buildings made from stacked plastic toy blocks rose into crooked towers.

Walls of board game boxes leaned against structures made from dollhouses welded together.

Streets were paved with puzzle pieces that never quite fit.

Toy train tracks curled through the city like rusted railways.

A carousel made of music boxes turned slowly in the distance, its music warped and broken.

In the distance stood a crooked tower made entirely of socks.

Not pairs.

Never pairs.

Thousands of them stitched together in a patchwork of lonely fabric. Striped ones twisted beside polka-dotted ones. Faded athletic socks hung beside tiny cartoon ones meant for children long grown.

They had been knotted end to end, braided into ropes, wrapped and packed until they formed a swaying column that leaned slightly in the still air.

The deeper wind moved through the hollow spaces between them, and the tower breathed softly, like a tired lung made of forgotten laundry.

Everywhere were the things we lose.

The things that vanish beneath beds.

All of it gathered here.

Layer by layer.

Year after year.

*******

And people live here.

They moved through the toy-built streets like ghosts.

Thin.

Dust-covered.

Eyes always turned upward.

Watching the drifting beds.

Waiting.

*******

I followed their gaze.

Every few moments a mattress above would creak.

An arm or a leg would slip over the edge.

And suddenly the entire city would stir.

People climbed.

Ladders scraped against toy towers

creaked beneath their weight,

each rung made from splintered bed slats bound together with tangled shoelaces.

Bodies scrambled across mountains of mattresses.

Arms stretched upward.

Someone always reached the dangling limb.

Someone always grabbed it.

And every time

both bodies fell.

Screaming.

Dropping through the dark.

*******

That’s when I noticed the tall figure watching everything.

He stood near me in the center of the city beside a tower built entirely from broken bed frames.

His body looked wrong in ways that made it hard to focus on him.

His limbs were long and narrow like wooden slats.

His silhouette bent at strange angles.

His eyes glowed faintly in the darkness.

When he turned toward me, the shadows around him shifted like blankets being pulled.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

His voice sounded soft like sheets sliding across skin.

I stared at him.

“Who are you?”

He considered the question.

“I go by many names,” he said quietly.

“But you would know me best as the boogeyman.”

I must be dreaming.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said again.

“That I’m in a really fucked up Alice in Wonderland dream right now?” Because nothing else makes any sense.

He tilted his head slightly and smirked, “would that make me the White Rabbit then?” He asked with what sounded like amusement in his voice.

“You’re definitely something twisted and I should talk to my therapist about this nightmare when I wake up,” I muttered.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I knew you were thinking.”

“That I need to talk to my therapist?” Sarcasm and an eye roll.

“That you think you’ll ever wake up back in your bed.”

All of the amusement had left his voice. He spoke with a coldness that sent a shiver down my spine.

---

I didn’t wait to hear more.

The beds above us creaked again.

Another hand slipped into the darkness.

I ran.

Climbed.

Reached.

And when I finally grabbed the dangling hand

the world vanished.

*******

I woke in my bedroom.

My bed.

My ceiling.

Morning light filled the room.

I took a deep breath.

YoU’lL nEvEr WaKe Up BaCk In Your BeD, I said mockingly.

What a freaky nightmare.

Just exhaustion playing tricks on my mind.

I pulled my arm close to my body.

Remembering the rule.

Then the bed above me creaked.

Wait. The bed above me!?

*******

The second fall came quickly.

The city looked the same.

But something felt different.

The toy towers leaned at slightly different angles.

The air felt colder.

The sky seemed farther away.

I didn’t think about it.

I wouldn’t be here long, I told myself.

I was determined to wake up from this nightmare.

I climbed again.

Grabbed another hand.

And woke again.

*******

Each escape felt more fragile than the last.

Each bedroom slightly darker.

Each silence heavier.

Each shadow longer.

And every time I reached for another hand

we both eventually fell.

Deeper.

Always deeper.

*******

By the seventeenth fall, the world had changed.

The toy buildings had collapsed into warped ruins.

The colors had faded to dull gray.

The people moved slower.

Their eyes no longer burned with hope.

They climbed because climbing was all that remained.

*******

That’s when I finally stopped looking upward.

And looked around.

People were reaching toward the beds.

Just like I had.

One of them grabbed a dangling leg.

Both bodies dropped.

They fell past me.

Screaming.

Falling into darkness far below.

Much deeper than I had ever fallen.

But where a voice deep inside me told me I would go.

*******

My stomach twisted.

I counted the times I had escaped.

Seventeen.

Seventeen limbs I had grabbed.

Seventeen lives I had dragged down into this place.

*******

I found the tall figure again.

The boogeyman.

“You knew,” I said.

His glowing eyes looked tired.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

A hollow laugh slipped from him.

“I didn’t stop you because I couldn’t.”

He looked upward.

“Just like I couldn’t stop myself. I did the same thing when I first fell. We all do.”

---

“I wasn’t always like this,” he said quietly.

His long fingers brushed the broken wood of a bed frame.

“I climbed. I grabbed dangling limbs. I dragged people down.”

His glowing eyes met mine.

“I dragged you down.”

“Why!? Why didn’t you stop!?” I was furious. He ruined my life. He ruined so many lives.

“Seventeen,” he said calmly, “why didn’t you stop?”

I froze.

I ruined seventeen lives.

And I will ruin countless more.

*******

The beds above us creaked again.

As limbs began to slip over the edge of the mattresses.

The city stirred.

People began climbing.

Including me.

*******

Halfway up a leaning tower of toy chests, I stopped.

My chest trembled with ragged breaths.

Seventeen strangers filled my memory.

Seventeen lives ruined by my desperate hands.

Tears blurred the darkness.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

“I can’t do it again.”

*******

The boogeyman stood below.

Watching.

“We all say that,” he whispered.

*******

I looked at my hands.

My fingers were longer now.

Thin.

Pale.

The joints bent strangely.

They looked less like fingers and more like narrow wooden slats.

Like bed frames.

Like his.

*******

“No,” I desperately whispered.

“I’m not like you.”

“You’re not,” the boogeyman said quietly. “Not yet.”

His long fingers rested against the splintered edge of a broken bed frame.

“But everyone here says that at first.” His glowing eyes lifted toward the drifting beds.

“The first time you pull someone down, you tell yourself it was a mistake. That you thought you were getting yourself out. That you didn’t think you were harming anyone”

“The second, third, fourth, fifth time you tell yourself it was the only way to survive.”

“After that, you stop asking.”

He turned his gaze back to me.

“Hope does the rest. And Hope is the real monster here.”

The words settled over me like dust.

“The more limbs you take,” he continued softly,

“the more this place takes from you in return.”

His thin smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Give it enough time, enough falls, enough snuffed out dreams…”

He lifted one of his long, warped hands slightly.

“…and everyone here becomes a boogeyman. Or a boogeywoman.”

I wanted to argue.

I wanted to tell him he was wrong.

But something made me look around instead.

At the climbers.

At the endless reaching hands.

And for the first time

I really saw them.

Some still looked almost normal.

Their fingers only slightly too long.

Their arms stretched just a little farther than they should.

But others,

others had been here much longer.

Their limbs were thin and unnatural, bending at strange angles as they climbed the toy towers.

Their fingers hung past their knees like pale roots reaching down trapping them here.

Their shoulders had begun to hunch forward, bodies twisting toward the sky as if gravity itself were pulling them into new shapes.

And the oldest ones,

the ones moving slowly through the deeper shadows,

barely looked human at all.

Their arms were impossibly long, dragging across the mattress hills behind them.

Their fingers curled and flexed constantly, as though remembering the feeling of dooming another soul.

Always reaching.

Always waiting.

I looked down at my own hand again.

At my lengthening fingers.

And suddenly I understood why this boogeyman had said not yet.

*******

The hand above me drifted closer.

And hope crept into me.

What if this time is different?

What if this one really pulls you out?

*******

Hope is the real monster here

echoed in my mind.

But it didn’t matter because what if hope is right?

And that’s what makes hope so monstrous. There’s always a next time.

*******

Far above us

in a quiet bedroom

a mother tucked a blanket gently around her sleeping child.

“Remember the rule,” she whispered gently.

“Mooom, I’m 12. I don’t believe in the boogeyman anymore.”

“Keep your hands and feet inside the bed,” she said with a chuckle.

She kissed his forehead and wished him goodnight for what she didn’t know would be the last time.

She closed the door and left her son to sleep soundly.

Moonlight filled his room.

Slowly, he drifted deeper into sleep and rolled onto his side.

The blanket loosened.

And his small arm slipped over the edge of the mattress.

*******

Beneath his bed

I stared at a small hand.

Tears streamed down my face.

“I won’t do it,” I whispered.

But hope burned hotter than guilt.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the sleeping child.

My long trembling fingers reached upward.

I could not stop sobbing.

“I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.” “I’m so sorry.”

I kept reaching through the tears. Sorry lost all meaning.

*******

For a moment I almost stopped.

Almost turned away.

Almost chose to remain.

Almost.

But hope is the cruelest lie of all.

*******

“I’m not a monster,” I whispered.

Even as my fingers closed around the child’s wrist.

Warm.

Soft.

Alive.

*******

Then the world dropped away beneath us.

The child’s eyes flew open just as gravity took hold.

For a single terrible moment he looked at me

confused, terrified, still half inside his dream.

“Mooom! Where are you, mom? Mom, help!” His scream tore through the darkness as we fell.

And I knew.

I knew exactly what I had done.

Another quiet bedroom I broke open.

Another life I dragged into the endless layers beneath the beds.

Another soul I condemned to climb and reach and fall forever.

Guilt ripped its way through my body.

My fingers tightened around his wrist as the world rushed past us.

Long.

Thin.

Too strong now to let go.

Tears blurred my vision as we dropped deeper into the dark.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry” I whispered again and again, though the words felt empty against the endless fall.

But even as the guilt hollowed out my chest

hope crept quietly into the back of my mind.

Soft.

Persistent.

The same terrible whisper that had betrayed me before.

Maybe the next one will be different.

Maybe the next limb I grab will finally pull me out.

Hope is the real monster.

And now

so am I.

•

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