Monster under bed (part 1)

Monster Under the Bed

When I was a young child, I believed that there was a monster under the bed. I’m not entirely sure what it looked like, but I would have to keep my feet and hands carefully tucked inside my duvet to make sure that nothing poked out and tempted it to take a bite. I would lie, cocooned, even in the hottest of summer weather, frightened to move lest it curl a clawed paw from the darkness beneath me and tried to pull me below.

My father would spend hours attempting to reassure me that nothing was there. He would do a pantomime routine of opening all of the cupboards to show they were unoccupied (monsters get in those to, you know), and laying stretched out on the floor next to the bed to take a long and careful look underneath, proclaiming it a monster-free zone. He never switched the light off to do this, though. Any fool knows that monsters come out in the darkness.

It was a rule that I absolutely believed in when I was seven.

I shouldn’t have become so cynical in my older age!

I’d just finished my GCSEs when my parents decided now would be a great time to move. For years, my mother had dreamed of living at the seaside. We’d stayed in the city for my father’s work. Plus, they couldn’t afford the move. But, my mum had written a novel that had been picked up by a publisher, so she’d finally realised her life-long ambition. They’d offered her a three book deal, giving her enough money to finally give serious thought to making a lifestyle change. Dad was able to do more and more of his job from home thanks to the ascent of the internet. Making a move was now a real possibility. The only thing that had held them back was my remaining months of secondary school. They didn’t want me disrupted. But, secretly, they’d decided that once I was done with lower school, I could be conveniently transferred to a different Sixth Form in order to take my A Levels.

I didn’t have a lot of choice. I won’t bore you with how upset I was – leaving my life-long friends to move hundreds of miles away. I’m sure you get that without my going into painful details. I was gutted, and angry, and feeling overwhelmingly let down by my parents. I’ll admit that I was a bit of a brat about it. They’d wanted this thing for themselves for so long, and they’d worked so hard, but I couldn’t shift the notion that they had betrayed me.

We moved to a small town on the north east coast. It was picture-postcard perfect, although the British weather often gave it an overcast and sullen facade. It was pathetic fallacy in action: the bleak, grey appearance reflected my own bleak, grey mood.

The house was in a quiet street at the top of a cliff, overlooking the older fishermen’s cottages that sprawled down its side in haphazard, cobbled rows, narrow and constricted. There were secret passages galore in the older part of town; it came as no surprise to discover that it had been a smugglers paradise in bygone years. There was a modernish town centre that, rather than being in the centre, had been built along the length of the promenade. It was an eclectic mixture of arcades, chip shops, and regular high-street stores. There was also a kind-of nightlife: there were numerous pubs, low-ceilinged and historical, relics of the past, but some had been converted into trendy bars. I was relieved, it showed, in spite of appearances, that there was some youth here.

The house was detached, newer that some of the properties in the town, but old nonetheless. I would guess Victorian. It was red brick with high sash windows in uniform rows. It looked exactly like something a five year old would draw, when asked to sketch a home. The small garden was walled in and secluded. It was beautiful, and I could see why my parents had chosen it. Not that I was going to admit that to them.

The best bit was that the basement had been converted into an apartment. It had a bedroom with a sitting area, a kitchenette and a bathroom. It wasn’t massive, but it was private. I wondered if they were thinking of getting a tenant, but my mum surprised me by asking me if I would like to live there. They felt, given my age, I might like some independence, although they still expected to see me upstairs for meal times and chats!

Elated, I moved in downstairs. A single staircase joined me to the kitchen in the main house, but doors could be closed off at either end making it cut-off from parental interference. True, it was underground, but carefully planned lighting made it seem bright and welcoming. It felt cosy, and it was mine. I actually started to feel excited.

The next few months passed almost happily. My parents seemed really content with their new lifestyle. Dad would occasionally need to travel back to the city for work, but he stayed with his sister, my Aunty Sylvia. Mum wrote, and baked, and pottered in her Victorian garden. She was the most relaxed I’d ever seen her, and it was nice. She even bought a cat. She’s wanted one for years, but the city was a dangerous place for felines. He was a big, silver tabby – already fully grown - named Burt.

I went to the local college, which offered lots of different courses. It seemed to be the place where the whole town’s sixteen year olds ended up, drawing people with all different life-plans together in one location. But we all shared the common ambition of getting this bit done, so we could move on along our respective paths, whether to work or to university.

I did manage to make a few friends, although I still didn’t feel like I really belonged. I seldom got asked to join in with anything, and my weekends were usually spent alone, in the apartment. I’d sometimes try and coax Burt down there for some company, but he wasn’t having any of it! He preferred to stalk in the garden, looking hopefully for a bird that was stupid enough to get close to him. He wasn’t really a hunter – he was too shiny, fat and cumbersome - he was more an opportunist preying on the misfortune of small creatures who would momentarily lose their senses and stray into his path. Easy targets.

The winter months drew in. I’d expected it to feel depressing, but we would spend the dark and dreadful nights sitting together in the lounge, log fire crackling, drinking hot chocolate and watching Christmas films. It was my father’s rule that from the end of October, the Christmas viewing could begin. He was a huge Christmas freak and I loved it. That time of year always felt so special to me.

It was late November when things started to happen.

The first time, I came home from college one day. Mum was writing in her study, dad had gone to the supermarket. It was a regular, boring domestic day. I dropped my keys on the side and went down to the apartment. The bottom door was ajar, which was unusual. Perhaps my mother had gone down there for something? I pushed it open and stepped into the living area.

It was chaos! Pictures that I’d hung on the wall lay shattered on the floor; the books and ornaments that had sat on my shelf – including trinkets that my friends had given me before I’d moved away – had been knocked off, and lay scattered on the rug. It looked like I’d been burgled.

Except, smeared across the wall, in a bright, livid streak, was blood.

I screamed, and turned towards my bed. There, on the duvet, lay the body of a seagull. It was battered, bloody and mutilated. Its insides were spread across the embroidered fabric, making a new, horrific pattern. It was a big bird; it had bled a lot.

My mum ran in behind me, having heard my scream. “Oh my God!”

She took me upstairs into the kitchen and made me a sweet tea, for the shock. We sat at the table, waiting for dad to come back so he could help mum clear up the mess.

“It must have been Burt,” Mum decided, “He’s always after the birds.”

“It was huge mum! He can’t catch a blackbird, let alone a seagull.”

“Perhaps it was lame? He must have caught it and dragged it downstairs.”

The bird had obviously fought, from the damage downstairs. It would have had to be unconscious for Burt to be able to drag it that far, and then, even if it had woken up and tried to fly – causing the damage – he would have had to catch it again which I found highly unlikely. I still wasn’t sure. He seemed to avoid the apartment, so why take his kill down there? Plus, the gore that now covered the room should be all over Burt. But he padded into the kitchen and stretched, lazy and relaxed as always. There wasn’t a mark on him.

If it hadn’t been Burt, then what had done it? The thought sent a wave of ice through me. I could feel the small hairs on my arms stand on end as my skin rippled with fresh goosebumps.

I decided there and then that it was best not to dwell on it.

The atmosphere in the apartment felt different after the seagull. It didn’t seem quite as cosy, or as welcoming. As December drew in, it was colder and I needed to borrow a fan heater from my mother as the radiators never seemed to make it warm enough. I refused to succumb to superstitious thoughts. Monsters under the bed were a childhood relic. The bird had probably flown in, injured and panicking. The mess it made… it’s torn up body… well, I wasn’t thinking about that. I got on with my life, just wrapping up a little warmer and leaving the light on a little longer.

It was one night, just before Christmas, that I realised there was something more going on in the apartment.

TO BE CONTINUED...