The Boogeyman
By Calen Martin
The night. Pitch black. Imagine you closed your eyes while running in the dark. The canopy of the eerily empty forest creates a physical barrier, seemingly impenetrable to any light emitted by the moon. Dan walks down the deserted path alone. At least he hopes he’s alone. His mother always tells him stories about the boogeyman. About how he chases bold boys when they misbehave. Dan told his mother about how he doesn’t believe in those stories anymore now that he’s thirteen and about to start secondary school. But, secretly, he still checks under his bed every night.
Suddenly, he hears the snapping and cracking of fallen twigs and foliage behind him. Dan ran. He ran as fast as he could, still telling himself that there’s no way it could be the boogeyman, that he’s not real, that it’s probably just an animal. Still, he ran at breakneck speed, scrambling and dodging out of the way of loose branches. The whole time he felt the sensation of a hand grasping at him, just behind his neck. Then, in a moment of stillness, Dan stumbles out into a clearing with nothing in it but a house in the centre of it. A light was coming from the top right window, as if the building had its own sun keeping it warm and alive. Quickly, Dan gathered his wits and ran to the house, taking the light as a beacon of hope without a second thought.
Dan clambered up the front steps of this monstrous house. Hesitant to knock on a stranger’s door, who lived in the middle of nowhere, he checks behind him for the first time since he started running. There’s nothing there. No animal. No Boogeyman. Nothing. He lets out a sigh of relief as he starts to go back down the ragged, worn steps, “Must just be the forest getting to me”, he says, talking to himself as he tries to remember which ways he came.
“Leaving so soon?”
Dan spun around with such force that he nearly fell over. What he saw that moment will forever be engraved in his mind. A tall, slender man towered over him. In this giant of a man’s shadow Dan felt almost completely insignificant. Dan could only see the shadow as a light was erupting from within the house. The voice of this mysterious silhouette echoed inside Dan’s head, too distracted by the deep, rolling, gravelly thunder that has been emitted from this man's mouth to speak or run.
“Why don’t you come inside? Clare and I love to have visitors, even if they do greet us by waking us up in the dead of night”. Dan thought he heard a slight chuckle come from the man and saw the flash of a slight smile. And dead of night? That couldn’t be right, could it? Sure he had only left his house at seven and that only around forty minutes ago. But sure enough, as He looked to the sky, Dan sees nothing but pitch black with specks of white for the stars.
“What did you say your name was again son?”
Dan hastily pulled himself together, “I didn't say”.
“Then what is it?”
“Ugh” he said hesitating, trying to think of a way out of this situation.
“Ugh, that’s some name, so it is”.
“Dan. My name’s Dan”, he blurted out.
“Well Dan, why don’t you step inside here, ’cause I doubt you’ll find any sorta way back home at this hour of the night”.
Dan weighed out his options. He’s in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a forest. In the dark. He couldn’t get a signal at the edge of the woods so he’d hardly get any luck trying to call home from the centre of it. Did he even want to go home? Could this strange man and his wife be worse than what’s in his own house or could they be an answer to why he left?
“Well, are you in?”
“Yeah, okay”.
As Dan stepped in he felt the door move behind him and heard it close with a resounding shut. He waited to hear the quiet click of a lock but it never came. Dan hadn’t realised how cold he was but as feeling returned to his body the only thing on his mind was to get warm.
“Why don’t you step inside the room here? I got a fire going”, said the man, seemingly reading Dan’s mind.
“And don’t be afraid of Clare, she don’t bite. Much” he said, followed by his eerie, wheezy laugh as he walked into a different room. The warmth oozing out of the room called to Dan as he drifted through the doorway. He had his eyes set on a worn leather armchair in front of the fireplace. The immaculate white walls were tinted by the flickering orange glow of heat from the fire. The smell of smoke mixed with the crackling of the flames and the softness of the chair relaxed him just a bit. Dan turned his gaze towards the couch opposite him. A woman was smiling at him. Her pale face had wrinkles, deepened with age. Unlike the man she has a small, frail build. Dan thought it strange that such an old couple was up so late, but then again it was also strange to live in the middle of a forest so he didn’t think much of it. The two of them had been making unbroken eye contact for a while now. Even though Dan felt uncomfortable he still found that he couldn’t look away. Finally the woman who he presumed to be Clare began to speak.
“Hello Dan”.
Her voice had a nice chime to it and was of a pitch much higher than that of the rumbling of the man. It was only now that Dan realised that he’d been calling the man ‘the man’.
“Umm, hi. Are you Clare?”
“Why yes, I am”.
Again they stared at each other in silence. Clare seemed to have a constant smile on her face, looking at Dan with an interest and affection. Even though they had just met, Dan seemed to know that he could trust this old lady.
“Alright young man, I think it’d be best if you got some sleep now, for your journey tomorrow”, The Man boomed as he creaked open the door.
“He needs to warm up first, I’ll get him some tea and then send him up. Why don’t you get yourself to bed for now and I’ll wake you up when Dan has to leave ?” squeaked Clare.
The Man grumbled something in return and turned to head upstairs.
“Come on into the kitchen Dan while I make you some tea”.
“Clare?”
“Yes dear”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Husband! Oh no dear, you really shouldn’t be so quick to come to conclusions. He just takes care of me and the house. And besides, he doesn't have a name, not anymore at least. You see he ran out into the woods after what he did. He found my house and asked to work. I agreed as I was getting old, you see.
“What did he do?” Dan let out in a timid whisper.
“Oh he never said, too ashamed of his past. But it must have been worse than leaving your whole life behind to live in the woods”.
“I need to get home. Now”.
“If only there was a quick way out of here. A door that someone forgot to lock maybe”.
Dan looked up at Clare, she was going to save him.
He bursted out through the door and into the hall. He sprinted up to the front door and shoved it with every ounce of muscle in him and ran for his life into the woods. The edge of the night sky was fading from black into a dark blue. He was running towards where the sun was going to rise when suddenly, he heard someone behind him. He turned to see Clare waving something. It was a map. They were going to get away from The Man together. He stopped and waited for her.
“Thank you for waiting for me dear, I don’t think I would have caught up otherwise”.
“It’s okay, I can look after you”.
“Oh that won't be necessary”, she says and as Dan looks at her with confusion she bites his head off in one swift movement.
“Boogeyman”, she says to herself, “they couldn’t have been more wrong”.