Free All Hope Lost by Samantha Dorrell Page A

Letting the duvet slip from
her grasp she left the room again, this time heading for her own bedroom. The
boys settled back down again, and I growled, low and long. The boy on the bed
above me spoke. “Did you hear that?” His brother nodded.
    “Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!”
    This time, she shouted from
her room. “Go to sleep! There is nothing under your bed!”
    The two boys went quiet then,
but the other boy got out of bed and lifted his brothers’ duvet and peered
under.
    His small face came into my vision and I blinked at him,
my eyes shining. I growled at him and he screamed, rushing out the room to his
mother. The boy above me was now hiding under his duvet, shaking.
    Seconds later, the mother came
back in the room and put her other son to bed again, and once again made the
movements of checking under the bed. She ducked down and her face came into
view. I blinked at her, bared my teeth in a satanic smile, and growled. She
squealed then and fell backwards. I made myself disappear whilst she sorted
herself back into a crouch, and carefully she peered underneath again. Nothing.
Double checking she put her arm under and felt around. Her arm slid through my
cold form and she pulled it back, a chill going up her spine. Frowning she
grabbed the boys and took them to her own room. Tucking them into her bed, she
got in the middle and turned out the light. “I’ll check again in the morning
boys. It was probably just a mouse, or something.” She was trying to
convince herself there was nothing strange in her sons’ bedroom . I laughed,
and made my way to the bottom end of her bed.
    The darkness felt warm around
me, as though it was cradling me in its arms. The silence, only broken by the
soft breathing of the family before me, was peaceful. Not for long.
     
    I moved around the room as
fast as I could, making all the doors on the wardrobes, and drawers open it
seemed at once with a thud. The woman sat up and quickly switched on a bedside
lamp. “What the hell?” she said as she took in the disarray of her furniture.
“Boys, don’t mess about.” She got up and closed the doors and drawers, got back
into bed and seeing the boys still tucked up in her bed, she frowned and turned
off the light once more. This time, I entered the wardrobe, and slowly pushed
one door open from the inside. It creaked a little, and the woman switched the
light on again to see the one door opened. She stared at the door, too scared
to move. Time to scare the shit out of this one! I found one of her
dresses and put it on, then flinging the other door open I hovered out of the
wardrobe and floated around the bed. The woman screamed. Next door banged on
their wall in frustration at the sudden noise. I raised my arms and shrieked,
making my eyes appear and a mouth full of teeth. The woman was now hysterical,
the boys wide awake and clutching their mother, hiding their faces against her
body, crying. I swooped up on the bed, and floated above them, peering down.
     
    Making my voice low, the
woman’s eyes widened with fear, I growled, and spoke slowly. “No. More. Hell.
With. Others.” It was hard to speak precisely for a human to understand, but
she was still staring at me. I tried to clarify. “Be, Nice.” The woman nodded
her head quickly, her breathing ragged. I bared my teeth at her and growled,
then made a gesture of my invisible hand going across my neck. “Or. You. All.
Die.” I heard her whimper then, and so for added effect I shrieked loudly at
her, which caused next door to bang on the wall with cries to “…be quiet, we’re
trying to sleep”. I vanished then, letting the dress fall to the bed, but I
stayed there to see what she did. The woman looked about the room in shock,
then at the wall. “S-sorry!” she shouted, and then reaching out to her dress,
she poked it to make sure it wouldn’t start floating about again. Realising it
wasn’t going to move, she let out a breath she had been holding, and hugged her
children