“GET AWAY! HELP ME! MOMMY!” The little boy jumped out of bed screaming through the hall waking his four other siblings from their peaceful sleep
“RYAN? RYAN WHAT’S THE MATTER?”
“THERE’S A MAN IN MY ROOM!” Ryan sprinted back down the hallway toward his room with his mother chasing after him. She bursted into the room yelling as if her five kids were in there having the brawl of the century.
“GET OUT! GET OUT!” She screamed waving her hands violently around. But there was no one in there. Relieved, the mother turned to her son and said “You must have been having a dream honey because there is no one in here.”
“But there was someone in here. HONEST!”
“I don’t want to hear it Ryan, no go back to bed” He did what he was told and dragged his little body back up into his bed. “Now goodnight” She turned off the light, closed his door and trudged back to her own room to fall back asleep.
Ryan laid there for what seemed like days to him because he was just a little boy and time seemed like it had gone on forever. “Ryyyyyaaaaannn” the voice slammed into his head like a bat hitting a ball. It came as a whisper and low though, almost incoherent. “I just want to play Ryan. Why don’t you come open the closet so we can have some fun okay?”
“NO GO AWAY!” The closet door creaked open and a faint shadow appeared on the rug. Ryan screamed and screamed but no one would answer to his calls of panic. He wondered if his mom had even cared. Maybe she was mad at him for waking her up the first time or maybe she was just mad at him for being scared. Out of the closet the shadow moved closer and closer. It became darker and darker until it was a visible person. The person, or thing, was distorted. His face was torn and mangled, his clothes ripped and shredded. He smiled and Ryan saw his glistening sharp teeth.
“Ryan, come and play Ryan.”
Annie sat straight up in bed, her sons screaming piercing through the thick silence of the night. She quickly got out of bed and scrambled down the hall to the little boy’s room. So many thoughts running through her head of what could be happening. Just hoping that it was all just another dream. She bursted through the door and could not believe what she was seeing. The room was covered in blood and remnants of the boys clothes and toys were strewn all over. There, on the big window that Ryan had always loved to sit at and look out of, was a message written in blood. “This is not a dream.”