Nightlight

It began as simple as it could have.

With fear—curled up in pink cotton sheets and clutching her stuffed dragon so tightly to her chest its serpent tongue lashed out, almost like a warning to the invader that lived under her bed.

She’d asked her parents every night, “Mommy, Daddy, check again.”

A frustrated sigh would be her response, followed by a few moments of half-hearted searching under the bed and in the closet and every place where the darkness seemed the thickest.

She pleaded with them to keep her light on, but the closest compromise she could manage was a nightlight beside her bed. To them, it seemed sufficient. To her, it was nothing more than a matchstick in a pond—useless.

The first week was the least tumultuous, with nightmares plaguing her resting mind, only for her to awaken and not remember what had transpired within the confines of her dreamworld. Then it was the brushes against her hands, her legs, her hair, even, that awoke her with a start. It progressed soon after to strong grabs at her legs, more and more determined and violent each time, nearly pulling her off the bed and into the murky darkness beneath.

She’d screamed, cried, begged her parents to do something. It wasn’t until the bags under her eyes resembled bruises; until she spoke little and ate less; until she sat quietly in the corner of the living room and stared at the wall as if it spoke to her—that her parents finally understood something was wrong. Even then, they did nothing more than exchange hushed words of worry in the dimly lit hallway and considered bringing her to a doctor.

The final nail in the coffin was one particular night, when she’d nearly been dragged under the bed. She’d screamed as always, tears running down her cheeks, gripping desperately at her oak bedpost, half of her body disappearing beneath the bed.

When her parents rushed into the room, the grip on her legs vanished, and she crawled to the corner, crying and clutching her dragon and pointing under the bed.

“It’s there!” she cried. “Kill it, Daddy! KILL IT!”

Her father had paused mid search to stare at his daughter with saucer-wide eyes, and she was certain the hands would drag him under. But they didn’t, and the next day, she was sitting on crinkly paper covering a gray leather seat in the middle of a sterile doctor’s office.

Inevitably, the doctor cleared her, diagnosing her with an overactive imagination. Her prescription was no more T.V. On the drive home, her parents asked her if she wanted to eat somewhere, a glimmer of pity in their voices that soured her stomach enough for her to refuse any offers of food.

Later that night, she lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling and digging her nails into her bony thighs. The pain kept her eyes from closing. She was vulnerable when she was asleep, and she refused to be vulnerable any longer.

Days passed, and she didn’t sleep. Not at night, at least. Her school became her new bedroom. Bathed in cold fluorescent lighting and surrounded by colorful art as well as loud and cheering kids… she’d began seeing them differently. Kids, she called them in her head. Not friends, not peers, but kids. They were younger than her somehow, yet not.

She scanned the room with crusty eyes before the sleep took over, musing how once she was just like them. Once, she had been cheering and laughing in this way, shifting anxiously in her chair and waiting for the bell to dismiss her to lunch or recess. Reading simple stories in simple books made for simple minds. Somehow, she could no longer resonate with any of it.

It all seemed so… fickle.

That was her last thought before she fell under, sleeping a dreamless sleep, protected while surrounded by all this energy, all this light, all this color. The dark hands never grabbed her at school. She’d gathered that it hated anything lively. Anything that wasn’t quiet or dark or alone.

So she slept in school, even when her teachers rapped her knuckles with rules and shook her and yelled at her. Eventually, they ignored her. Eventually, her parents ignored her. Eventually, the kids ignored her.

But the hands didn’t. The hands always found her, always waited for the chance to grab!

She was a troubled kid—that was what the members of the church said when her parents dragged her half-awake to the weekly sermon. She could be saved—that was the pastor, who always looked at her when he spoke of the sixth deadly sin. Sloth, he called it. Laziness, he explained. She’d already been saved. She’d broken the bread and drank the expired grape juice and said the prayers. Every night, she said the prayers she was meant to, asking God to remove the hands from under her bed. He had to have a reason for refusing, she thought. He had to.

And yet, she couldn’t shake that whatever the reason was, it wasn’t reason enough.

She wondered if she would ever get the chance to ask Him herself. What would happen if the hands finally won the war? If they dragged her beneath her bed and she disappeared? Would they drag her to Hell? Would she even die? Or would she be stuck in the in-between, the place where the hands resided, always there but never visible.

She wanted to ask the pastor, but every Sunday she stood from the pew with her parents, and they ushered themselves and her out the door without saying a word to anyone else. An embarrassment. That was what she had become.

And so finally she lay in bed, her dragon stuffed tightly to her chest, and she stared at the ceiling for a long, long time. She trembled and kissed her dragon’s forehead and reassured him that she would be okay, whatever happened.

She gently laid her dragon next to the nightlight, leaned against the weak little bulb. It would be enough protection for him, at least.

She rested her shaky hands on her chest, and tears leaked from her tired eyes. She wasn’t ready—she was certain that she would never be ready. But… she was just so tired of fighting. So tired of nobody trusting her, nobody understanding that the monster under her bed truly was a monster.

She thought of parting words to her dragon, her only friend and companion, but none would come to her sleep-deprived brain. So she just looked at him and smiled and prayed that he would live long and happily. That he would forgive her for leaving him.

She closed her eyes, and her body thanked her immediately with sleep. But as her luck would have it, the sleep lasted for no more than a few minutes before the familiar cold, clawed grip of the hands grabbed at her legs. Somehow, it seemed as if they knew she’d given up the fight. They made no attempt to yank her off the bed. They only pulled, slowly and steadily, as if scared any sudden moves would startle her. Or, perhaps, they assumed she was still asleep. She wished she was. She could hide in her dreams until she awoke or didn’t.

She could only be so lucky.

The hands dragged her off the bed and underneath it, and she didn’t fight against them, not bothering to feign sleep.

From underneath the bed, her dragon watched her, the nightlight fighting bravely against the dark. She no longer had the energy to even muster a twitch in her face, so they just watched each other, saying everything and nothing at once as the hands pulled and pulled.

The dragon left her line of sight, and all that remained was a cold, silent, darkness that

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