Sleep Tight

There’s a siren in my head, whipping me into a state of hyper-dread.

The house is a hug, hot and tight. Will rolls his pillow in half to prop his head. It helps with his breathing. He’s on the tail end of a Summer cold. The Moores’ dog next door, Jenny, is barking an ode to the moon. Will thinks it’s cruel to keep a dog out all night. And it’s disrespectful to the neighbors. Some people work. He doesn’t like the Moores. They don’t take their cans in for days after the garbage has been collected.

The moonlight through the blinds has turned the bedspread into a zebra pelt. Downstairs, the smoke detector beeps every sixty seconds. Will plans on changing the battery before Rea gets home from her mother’s house on Tuesday. He’s lonely without her reading next to him at night, but when it’s time to sleep, he’s happy for the real estate. He closes his eyes and thinks about work, specifically how he’s going to organize his day tomorrow, and once he feels confident in his plan, he thinks about Kelly, the office manager. He touches himself until, on the edge, he hops out of bed, opens the toilet, and cums into the bowl. A moment later, he’s back beneath his sheets, thinking about how cruel the Moores are to poor Jenny, who is still outside intermittently barking as if to say in a huff, Well, I never.

Will lies with his left ear on the pillow and his right hand over his other ear. It doesn’t help. Jenny has things to say. The bedroom light clicks on. It’s been like this since they bought the house. When the fan is on high, sometimes the light comes on. Bad wiring or something. He gets out of bed and presses the button to turn off the light. Back in bed, he squeezes his eyelids shut. He tries to will himself to sleep, but it doesn’t come. Over one hundred and eighty beeps and barks later, Will is on the verge of going for a run, or catching up on some work. Anything other than lying in bed not sleeping.

The bedroom light snaps on again. He turns it off again. He squeezes his eyelids shut again. He thinks about Kelly again. Her legs again. Her cleavage again.

The fan is whirring.

Outside, Jenny yelps. Probably a skunk got her. The light snaps on. Will curses, gets out of bed, and clicks the button to turn it off. He gets back in bed. The light snaps on. Fan whirs. He swings his legs out, but the light turns off on its own. He sits on the edge of the bed. His eyes are heavy.

Then he hears it: someone is coming up the stairs. There’s the familiar protest of the fourth step. The snap of the seventh. Maybe Rea is home early from her mother’s. But she didn’t take the car. And why would she have taken a taxi at this hour?

Beep.

There’s rumble down the stairs like someone has dropped a suitcase. Will has one foot on the ground, every muscle tense. A few seconds later, he hears a snap, and a dying last garbled bleep from the smoke detector.

Will considers going for the revolver he has locked in the small safe beneath the bed. But then he remembers that the key to the gun safe is on his keyring in the crystal bowl by the door. Besides, he’s being silly. Rea is home and her suitcase has fallen down the stairs. That’s all.

“Rea?” There’s no reply.

Outside, Jenny is quiet.

Will moves to the door and peers down the hall toward the top of the stairs. “Rea, is that you? You okay, honey?”

No answer, only the squeak of the fourth step. Why’d he put the key to the gun safe on his keyring? It should be in the bedroom, where it would be useful. “Rea, please answer me.”

The moon is hidden by clouds. The room is dark. The snap of the seventh step. Will is watching the stairs from his bedroom door when the light snaps on. And then he sees the top of its conical head. Its eyes that remind Will of the onyx button cuffs his father wore. Only larger. Black holes that want to swallow up the world.

He runs to the bed and pulls out the safe. Checks to see if maybe it’s unlocked—maybe he forgot to lock it. But Rea was adamant about keeping it locked up. Rea never wanted a gun in the house to begin with. Now she’ll see. Now she’ll see why they needed to protect themselves.

Will moves to the back of the room. He’s breathing fast. The light clicks off—the transition from light to dark coats everything in absence.

It emerges from the hallway, a shadow the length of his bedroom door. As Will’s eyes adjust, he can see its arms, like hornbeam branches, smooth and long. Its eyes are still lost in the darkness of the room. They are the darkness. They emit darkness and gulp it up, breathing the viscous oil-black night. But it’s just standing there, staring at Will. And Will is staring back, hoping his heart doesn’t stop beating like his dad’s did when he was only twelve. His dad, wearing those onyx cufflinks Will’s mother said made him look important. The ones his dad was wearing when he came to the door that night to tell Will to sleep tight.

The light snaps on.

Thank you for reading! Now for a message from…well…me:

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Sean Thomas McDonnell is a contest-winning Bay Area-based author specializing in horror and dark speculative fiction. His debut collection, Beneath the Valley Oak—a fierce blend of western grit and creeping dread—sold out within 48 hours. He is a founding creator of The Midnight Vault anthology and the author of the standout story Blink Twice If You Can Hear Me. His breakout punk-noir novella, Cherry Kills, is available worldwide through Tiny Worlds Publishing.