“This can’t be something that the rats have done.”
And that night he was missing two dozen more coins.
He had pointed it in the old paper with the feather twisted and ink as coal.
15
Then it happened.
16
Ras, ras, ras!
17
He opened the safe after the interminable and continuous chirping of the key to the turn in the lock. And the door opened wearily grunting. The drool slid across the surface of the safe to the floor scraping the wall before forming a puddle at the end of its path. And the noise was louder. Ras, ras, ras. It seemed to Charles Brown that there were two less socks in the box. At least the pile of socks had waned from the previous time. I frowned and made an insult.
I wish your money would rot or I would eat a monster
He took one of the socks full of coins and left it on the floor, beside the puddle of thick gray bush. He pulled out another sock and did the same. And with the third. But the room was hooked. He could not pull it. Something groaned in the back of the box as he reached for the sock and suddenly recoiled inward. Charles Brown raised his eyebrows and wrinkled his lips. He pulled the sock back and it did not budge. A new grunt and more drool.
Ras, ras, ras.
It will eat you and your fucking money.
He tugged at the sock again, and it broke, simultaneously jumping dozens of coins into the air that fell to the floor, some of which reached the chimney by proximity. Charles was about to lose his balance and fall backwards. He snorted and wrinkled his forehead.
“Goddamn it!”
He grabbed another sock and put it on the floor and then got up to get another sock full of coins but could not. He was so strongly held that he could not with him either. The patience was running out.
“What the hell!” he stammered and suddenly something grabbed his hand and sucked him in. His body tilted towards the inside of the box. And the intense, pulsating pain ran all over her arm to her shoulder. And something tugged at him. Something that sucked in.
The lamp on the floor projected Brown's stooped body almost inside the box. The flames danced in the fireplace and fused shapes that danced around the silhouette of him. Something belched inside and sucked again. Now he felt like something slim but intrinsically strong was wrapped around his forearm and the pain was growing. Charles Brown screamed but no one listened except the cold damp walls of his house. And he pulled it again and this time he was already tiptoeing and with his head inside the dark box, but let him see something. An amorphous, gray form had contracted with his arm and moved frantically as a gut does when defecating. I did not have teeth but I do have drool, a lot of drool. Felt the fingers of his hand and the forearm "escape" in a kind of acid. And sucked and sucked and the last thing he saw was a big mouth swallowing his arm to the shoulder. And pulled him until his body went into the box, writhing and crushing like a plastic doll.
I hope your money rots or a monster eats you, so you can see the acid of its entrails.
18
And the month of collection came to the tenants and Charles Brown did not appear for the first time in his life. Nobody missed him. Life went on without him.
The Bogeyman is Under the Sheets
“Did you like that, Mr. Lovecraft?” The body of the warden leaned forward to see his face better beneath all those shadows and silhouettes drawn on their faces, illuminated by bursts of light.
H. P. Lovecraft drew a smile on his face.
“Good!” exclaimed the warden closing his right hand in a fist that divided the air in two. “Because now I'm going to tell you a story that comes from far away. In fact, it is an entity that hides anywhere during the night and in the middle of the dream grabs your foot with your cold hand. This is something that is being told from generation to generation and in various ways. Tonight, for those present here, I'm going to tell you a new version of the story that really happened.”
The chirps of the chair legs were heard as they moved. Everyone waited with some anxiety, although not reflected in their faces, another new story of the guard of the castle.
“Danny is terrified. The bogeyman is no longer in the closet or under the bed, nor in the darkness after turning off the light of his room. The bogeyman is sleeping next to him under the sheets every night. He has no eyes and in his gaze you can guess two deep basins totally dark. His laughter is an arrangement of teeth that appear to be sharp. His skin is thin and wrinkled. A long white hair rests on his skull. He is tall and thin. It smells like mold and all your nails are extremely long and curved. The bogeyman sleeps with Danny and nobody seems to believe the story. Until one night he changes to the bed of one of his three brothers and he dies under the savannah with his body scratched and torn. And so with all his brothers until he returns to Danny's bed. This is the story I’m going to tell you.
1
And Danny saw it under the sheets. He was mute and his eyes widened until he showed two white balls in the gloom. The bogeyman was at his feet. She had long white hair, like snow, but as if she were dirty. Her smooth skin was thin and wrinkled. His body flaccid and swinging. It was all bones. And his smile was the most contemptuous of the world, showing all sorts of sharp teeth and a black league. That. A very thin black tongue. But what struck her most were her eyes, her eyes. He simply did not have them and their empty basins showed the depth of terror. His long, thin fingers were like sharp spatulas. And Danny simply clenched his fist over a corner of the sheets and pulled them to the side of the bed. And then the bogeyman disappeared.
His three siblings were still sleeping deep in the bunks that were situated right next door in the same room as Danny curled up on the side of the bed and struggled not to close his eyes for the rest of the night. But in the wee hours of the morning he surrendered to sleep.
2
Breakfast was prepared. Wendy, her mother was busy with some starry eggs, moving the frying pan energetically. Charlie, his eight-year-old brother, was playing with the Kellops showing them in his long tongue and bulging eyes, while his seven-year-old brothers Tim and six-year-old Robert were laughing. They were all males and there were four of them. Wendy only brought males to the world and Peter was proud of it, but Wendy wanted a female. A little Sarah or Samantha. But for now he had not arrived, perhaps later on Peter suggested to him while he made love to her, without protection and everything was going well for now.
Danny had dark circles under his eyes and ducked his head in front of the milk bowl so Mom and Dad would not see him again. On other occasions, he had been asked a battery of questions that Danny, who was nine years old, did not know how to answer or perhaps avoid. Sometimes he would tell the truth and Papa would laugh out loud, literally disengaging his jaw. Her mother, however, folded her arms and looked worried. And I did not want to live another day like that, not on that morning, but things sometimes do not go as you want and Dad waved to his three children Charlie, Tim and Robert and stood on Danny, who kept hiding his face.
“Danny? Can you lift your head? It’s a beautiful day outside.”
“I don’t wanna.” Danny said defying his dad. And he remembered how easy it was to make him angry until he broke your arm. Danny remembered that click on his bone when that bad happened. Wendy was going to ask Daddy's divorce for what happened. And he burst into tears, wondering how he had been able to do it. Danny left the hospital with a plaster on his arm and no one said who or how that happened. Only when the plaster was removed and his whitened arm was in "place" did Mom start talking to Dad. But the episode was in everyone's memory. Robert was not yet born.
“Danny?”
“Always the same!” screamed Danny and lifted his face from the bowl of milk. Mom almost screamed, but she remembered that that had happened to her many times, tiredness, she thought.
“But you look pale! And your eyes...”
“It was it, Dad.”.
“C’mon, don’t start with that again.”
“I
saw it. It is sleeping every night in my bed, by my side and sometimes in my feet...”
“What I needed to hear this morning.” Peter complained and Wendy wiggled her eyes. No, not now. The three brothers stopped laughing and paid close attention to the conversation. They were fascinated since it was not the first time Danny said that. And he did it again.
“It is the bogeyman...
And all that was on that spring day.
But would the same situation recur or would it perhaps get worse?
3
That very night, he was waiting for him in his bed. Danny asked Dad for a bedside lamp to keep it lit all night. Peter remembering his past with Danny, graciously agreed to put a small table lamp. Lately he was very changed, especially since he had stopped drinking so many beers after dinner.
He lit the lamp, gave Danny a kiss, and left the room. Papa had not seen the bogeyman, Danny thought once more. And that he, was by his side, under the sheets, peeking out their empty sockets.
His siblings lay dormant in their respective berths, and the light of the moon pierced the window panes, forming strange shapes on the ceiling and on the wall. Like strings together and disorderly. Much better than looking at his side and seeing those empty sockets without a glance.
All night long, he was clinging to the sheets while still looking at Danny. But she did not do anything to him and Danny had turned around so as not to see him.
The "bogeyman" looked this time and for the first time, one of his brothers.
4
He was bruised, his eyes wide and a series of bluish spots around his neck and his mouth wide open, with a half-tongued tongue, dry and inert. Sheriff Bannerman was talking on the radio with his assistant, scolding him for not showing up. The coroner was there, bent over Robert's body. He had blond hair but now he had lost all shine in it. was dead. And finally, it was decided that he had died of a heart attack.
“What about those bruises in the neck?” asked Bannerman.
“It is possible that he suffocated at the same time of suffering the infarction and the same one grabbed strongly the neck to be able to breathe.”
Sheriff Bannerman looked at the three boys.
“You have not heard anything?”
“No, sir.”
Danny was quiet all the time and Dad and Mom looked at each other and responded to Sherman Bannerman's questions.
But Danny knew that. I knew it was him.
But he did not say anything.
5
That same night, the bogeyman, being without eyes, without looking, was again under the sheets of Danny's bed, next to him, crouching in them. And looking at him, as he showed between his gums a bad luck of sharp teeth. Discordants. His two brothers slept together in the same bunk and the mattress was sunk in the middle. Wendy was crying in her room, the sobs were heard by Danny very easily. Dad was trying to hug her, but she pulled him away. The night was very long and Robert had to be buried.
Danny turned eerily frightened to see the bogeyman. He was there, by his side. He was always there and his explanations were useless, since they did not take him very seriously.
And the night passed for all and the day began very early. Danny had not slept. He was lying next to Danny all night. His body was cold.
6
Cooler than Robert's body was almost impossible, but Danny remembered how cold the bogeyman was and now stood in front of his brother's grave, crying and with a handful of earth tightly clenched in his fist. His fingers had become white from squeezing and he felt nails digging into his skin.
The ceremony did not last more than half an hour and Wendy starred in the role of his life. He had thrown himself on Robert's grave with his paws open inside the pit and hurt his hands. It was full of earth and the stockings were broken by several sides. A trickle of blood came from one of her broken nails. Peter reached for her. The family drowned an “ohhh” with their fists and when Wendy popped her head out of the pit, they all breathed so deeply that there had been a noise like a broken air valve.
But that would not be the only time something similar happened.
And Danny knew that.
7
And so the spring passed and soon the end of the course would be over. Summer lurked, with its heat and sweat in the armpits. The skies clear and blue as reflected by the waters of the sea. In Boad Hill they had several puddles in which to bathe and a great lake, that even small fishing boats were pacing of end to end. Mom was a little more calm because it was almost three months since Robert died. Finally the autopsy revealed that he died asphyxiated, of a heart attack. But Danny knew that both were not by chance. Danny knew too much, and every night he saw him beside him, and touched him. But Dad and Mom did not want to hear Danny's nonsense. The bogeyman. His dad was laughing. That does not exist, he said, giving him a knuckle on the back of his neck, hurting him. Like when he broke her arm. Danny knew. But things soon got worse. And Danny knew that.
8
The bogeyman looked at him with his dark basins as deep as the dark infinity of a well and he turned his eyes to his two brothers who were still sleeping in the same litter, both of them squeezed like sardines inside a can. Danny's heart began to gallop beneath his chest and he felt a tremendous heat in his stomach that went up to his neck. I knew what I was going to do. The bogeyman with a hunched and slender body took off, this time, the only savanna that had Danny, since it was summer and supported two claws on the ground. His long, gray feet ended in long, sharp fingernails of horrible color, as if pulling black. At one blow, he stood up and walked toward them. Danny with wide eyes, and with his eternal terror unbearable night after night, covered his mouth with the savannah not to scream. For what? Papa would enter a fury in the room, he would point to the bogeyman and his dad would see nothing but the furniture and the wall and then he would win a good fight.
But Danny knew that one of his brothers was going to die that night.
She tightened her grip on the sheets and closed her eyes.
He did not feel anything, except that he smelled a tremendously intense odor of mold. For the first time.
A moment later everything was over and finally, yes, this time he shrieked, as strong as he could. And Mom and Dad entered the room barely a minute later, turning on the light in the room. Danny was terrified at the head of the bed, screaming and screaming and then pointed to his brothers' bed.
9
It turned out that Dad found his son Tim with the swollen, purplish face and whiter eyes he had seen in his life. His mouth was an elongated, misshapen O, and his tongue was purple. Dad tried to revive him at the cries of Wendy and Danny. Charlie took refuge in a corner of the bed under the savanna weeping.
And Danny mentioned the bogeyman, but Daddy was not in the mood for jokes and gave him a look full of hatred, of pain, he was furious and could lose his patience. And maybe he would break her arm again, but she did not. Instead he rested his head on the chest of his son Tim and began to cry.
10
“He looks like he also has suffered a heart attack, just like his brother.” Explained the doctor. “Tell me, Peter, is there in your family a history of heart problems?“
Peter shook his head.
Wendy was sedated like a rag doll lying on the couch. She was in the dining room. Sherman Bannerman put on the hat and shook his head. They were in the room.
“The bogeyman,” said Danny.
All the heads turned towards him.
“Danny!” shouted Peter as he was interrupted by Sheriff Bannerman.
“Leave him be, he's just a kid and he's Shock. Do not scold him for anything...”
“The bogeyman,” Danny kept saying.
But they ignored him.
11
The burial was at ten o'clock, and it was already a sun of justice. Danny threw a handful of dirt over his brother's grave that was slowly descending the pit, held by ropes at both ends. This time Wendy did not make any movies. She was sedated up to her ass and her ey
es closed against his will behind the black veil. Dad was furious, he could tell, but at the same time he was crying. He had lost two of his children in less than three months. And he felt the idea of taking the heart specialist to Danny and Charlie, in case something strange was discovered there.
And Fall came.
12
He was always there, by his side and by now he did not seem abnormal, but habitual. He turned and did not see. That was enough. Now there were two unoccupied bunk beds and Charlie decided he would sleep alone. That was fine, but Danny knew that was not exactly right, since the coco would go for it. The wind howled outside and scratched the windows like invisible fingers without leaving any marks. The leaves of the trees flew and danced in the air to crash with the glass. There was a dry thud, like a tiny, dry twig breaking. The ceiling of the room was a jungle of shadows. Danny still persisted in the idea of having the night light on. Once he took the lamp and put it next to the bogeyman that smiled to see if it had shadows. I did not have it. And that made him think a little, but he did not come to any conclusions. He was there, beside her, under the sheets, smelling of mold, looking at him and feeling the cold of his smooth skin. There was no doubt, the bogeyman existed. His two brothers...
Dad had taken them and Charlie, who was no longer smiling, to get a medical checkup. The results were as expected. Nothing congenital. There were no heart problems, which left the door wide open.
Its eyes swollen, its tongue bruised.
And it happened again.
13
Charlie dawned with his mouth open and his tongue dark. His eyes were open. And it was as cold as marble. Dad and Mom could not take so much pain anymore. Too many deaths and touched the climax of madness. But Danny knew it and could not do anything. Once again a funeral and the same tragic ending. Natural death. But Danny knew that was not that simple. And when he mentioned the bogeyman again almost babbling, Dad took him to a psychiatrist.
“Danny suffers from mental disorders that make him hear and see things,” calmly explained the psychiatrist. Dad nodded and looked at Danny.
The Warden of the Castle Page 5
