Something wakes me. A noise from beyond my bedroom. The alarm clock by my bed illuminates 2:48 in red letters. I wait for a second, my ear angled toward the door to see if I hear anything else. Nothing. I get up to go investigate, but my full bladder screams for attention. Instead I head for the bathroom. It is in the middle of the hall and my parents' shut door greets me from the other end, barely visible in the dark.

I turn on the light and do my business. While I am washing my hands, I hear another strange thud from elsewhere in the house, like something heavy being dropped. Curious, I open the bathroom door and the light floods part of the hallway, creating a bright rectangle on the tan carpet. It would be perfect, if not for a deep red stain that comes up from the stairs and disappears down the hallway. The odd coppery smell tells me that it's blood. I freeze in the doorway. There is no way this was here before I went to the bathroom, was it? As it starts seeping wider and wider, my breathing becomes shallow as I start to wonder where the blood came from. There is another thud.

At the end of the hall, the door knob to my parents' room starts to turn. In a moment of panic, I turn and run towards my bedroom, shutting the door behind me and diving into my bed. I pull the covers up to my forehead in a futile attempt to protect myself, like I used to do as a child when a shadow on the wall would scare me. I wait, my heart beating quickly in my chest. So much time passes, at first I think nothing is going to happen, but then my door slowly opens, the hinges making a soft squeak of protest. I force my breathing to come deep and even and pretend I am still asleep. Through my squinted eyes, I can see the bathroom light on my wall and a strange silhouette. It stops and I can feel it watching me. By now my heart is thudding so violently, I think the movement will give me away, but still I pretend.

The figure enters the doorway and I hear movement from the corner of my room. It drops something into my reading chair, the weight creating a soft thud as the chair legs hit my wall. I watch its shadow. The way it moves is not quite human, its actions too fluid and exaggerated, like watching a tape in fast forward. After a few seconds, I feel something heavy at the foot of my bed. I watch the silhouette move something, take a step back, reposition it, and take anoter step back like a sculptor trying to get a statue just so. I squint to see what it is the figure is moving, but then it appears in my vision, its back to me. I quickly shut my eyes. I can barely hear it as it moves. After a second, I slowly reopen them.

Its skin is a leathery grey, wrinkled like fruit left out in the sun. It has wiry black hair that reaches down past its shoulders, and its limbs are long and slender. Blood glistens from its claw like fingers and in patches along its skin. I think to myself that this must be the boogeyman. The thing that goes bump in the night, the creature from which every childhood fear stems from. And it is standing in my bedroom, writing something on the wall, deliberately dipping its finger in the blood off of its skin and dragging it slowly onto the plaster like a crude finger painting. As I struggle to see what it has written, it turns and I shut my eyes again. I can feel it watch me for another moment before it returns to the foot of my bed, and then I hear it drag itself underneath my box spring.

I feel a moment of sick irony wash over me. When I was young, I was so sure there was something there in the darkness between my floor and my bed frame, even when my mother would soothingly rub my forehead and insist I was imagining things. Slowly, I lower my blanket just below my eyes and peer out into my room. My mother is there in my reading chair, both arms resting stiffly on the arm rests. She is still wearing her nightgown, which is soaked through with blood. Her torso is torn open and I can see large chunks of purple and red organs sitting on her lap, her intestines twisted like a gruesome pile of yarn. At the end of my bed, my father is leaning against my footboard, his upper body draped over it. He is positioned so he is staring at me. His throat has been ripped away, the smallest bits of bone showing in places. Both of their faces are frozen in an expression of horror and their heads are turned to me like terrible puppets. I want to sob. I want to scream. I want to jump up and run out the door and to keep going until I am as far away from this room as possible, but part of me knows it will catch me. It is just waiting for me to wake up and do just that.

I don't want to turn to see what it has written, yet I must know. I slowly turn my head and squint, trying to read the message from the light in the bathroom. Its words hit me like a brick wall and my breathing stops.

"I know you are awake."