Grue On 

I saw a ghost horse gallop through my room one night. It huffed and puffed dragon's fire from its nose. Instead of a horse sound, it laughed like an ugly witch. It had rips in its skin, and you could see bones sticking out. It smelled like roadkill and was bright enough to glow a little but still dark enough to melt into the shadows.

I think I was more surprised than scared at first. I was half-asleep, dreaming that DuQuan from the school band was kissing me. When I first heard the horse, I didn't know what it was; it sounded like someone whistling and wheezing at the same time, the way my granny used to do before she died from pneumonia. After a little while, it didn't sound human anymore. Then I heard the galloping. I thought it was the wind outside blowing something against the windows, maybe a storm kicking off. That’s what my parents would have said, which was why I didn’t even wake them. I was almost a teenager, not a scared little four-year old still dreaming about Chucky and Candyman. My parents expected me to act older.

The creature galloped through the wall like a spirit and stopped at the foot of my bed. It saw me and reared back on its hind legs while breathing fire and brimstone, but nothing in my room was on fire. The room wasn’t even warm; it was frigid, and I could see the fog of my breath crossing the rays of moonlight coming through the windows. It was like the flames were just for show: special effects. When the horse lowered its front legs onto my bed, I didn’t feel any weight bearing down, so it had to be either a spirit or a dream. I really hoped it was a dream.

The animal started shaking and trembling, especially its head and neck. Its mouth popped wide open so fast, I thought it would rip its own face into a top and bottom half at the jawline. I kept thinking about the shark from that old movie my daddy liked watching over and over. That old shark never scared me even when I was four, but this thing on my bed about to take a bite out of my face made me want to wet myself. Running to my parents’ room like an Instagram drama queen and having Daddy snap on me about waking him up at night when he had to go to work in the morning sounded like a better idea than staying put.

But now something was wrong with me because I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even turn my head. I had heard about this kind of thing. I think they called it ‘night terrors.’ A boy I knew at school said he used to get them (Glad I didn’t kiss him.).

The deformed horsehead grinned in my face and howled like a wolf, and I realized that the clouds of breath that flowed through the air between us was coming from the horse, not from me. I wasn’t really breathing at all; I was paralyzed. It felt like something was making me hold my breath. It felt just like what the boy at school talked about when he described his night terrors. He said he felt like a cold statue that couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream.

I wondered if the monster horse could smell how scared I was. I read somewhere that animals could do that—smell your fear, but this was no ordinary animal. It turned away from me, snorted more fire from its nose then galloped out the same freaky way it had galloped in.

But I still couldn’t move!

I wondered why my parents weren’t rushing in. Didn’t they hear when that thing was howling? How could they not have heard that? And how come my throat was still paralyzed?

Everything went dark when the moon stopped shining in through the window. It suddenly just switched off like a night light. But who switches off the moon? Aliens? God? Beyonce?

I heard more galloping right before the ghost horse came back through the wall, and this time there was a pale rider on it. The rider was skinny and wearing my blue bathrobe, the one my auntie gave me for my 12th birthday, the one I threw in the bottom of the closet because it was too big. The robe had swallowed me when I tried it on just the way it was swallowing the rider. I couldn’t even see his head.

When the horse stood at the foot of the bed and raised up on its hind legs, the rider’s skinny legs kicked out toward me—and I saw that the rider had on my flip-flops. The horse lowered its front legs onto my bed like before, and the person riding it was headless. I guess it didn’t need a head (or eyes) to see where it was going though; it came right toward me. It reached down, and two skeleton hands appeared from the folds of my supersized robe. The bony hands grabbed my head, and I felt myself being lifted. The hands turned me around, giving me a chance to see all around my room. I couldn't really see my bedroom furniture or my black Barbies or nothing, just a bunch of shadows and shapes. I could see past the walls and make out layers of darkness covering levels of darkness. I could see through the dark clearer than I ever could in the daytime.

I was still cold, but it felt comfortable and peaceful. I felt like I could breathe again, so I went ahead and took a breath just to show that I could. I also knew that I didn’t need to breathe anymore. I had transcended the need to breathe. I didn’t even know what ‘transcended’ meant until I heard the word in my head, and I felt like I had to say it out loud. All of a sudden, I knew a lot of things that I didn’t know before that moment, grown-up things that a lot of grown-ups don't even know.

Mostly though, I remembered things that trauma made me forget. I remembered finding out I had acute leukemia at my last doctor visit. I remember my parents saying I’d be fine as long as I took my prescription, so I didn’t worry about it. I remember headaches and my joints hurting. I remember not being able to sleep one night because the pain was so bad. But then I did get to sleep, and when I woke up, I felt so much better, I didn’t even want to get out of bed; I wanted to just lay there and enjoy the peace and quiet—and dream about DuQuan That’s when the ghost horse showed up for the first time.

The night I couldn’t get to sleep was the night I died in my sleep, but not completely. I understood words like Collector, Gardener, Dark Rider—all just different ways of saying Death Reaper. That’s what I had become. It was my burden to collect the souls of other kids around the neighborhood who died, so that’s what I did. That’s what I do, my pony and I. Other kids only see us coming when it’s their time to go. Sometimes they're in a hospital, and sometimes they're in a strange, sad place they didn't ask to be taken to. They’re usually scared at first or confused like I was. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about death, but a lot of them die anyway, more than people realize. Sometimes I can make them less scared. Maybe I can even make one or two of them smile.

There was one little girl who suffered because the donor list for a new heart was too long. When she saw me coming, she sat up in bed and wasn’t even afraid. She asked if she could touch my pony. Maybe I’ll work on that if I can get it to stop snorting fire so much.

Copyright (c) by Harold C. Holt, 2025