The Dark Beyond

     David had rolled over in his sleep. He tried to keep his eyes closed as he rearranged himself, pressing his own back into that of the couch. His bedroom had the only blackout curtains in the house, and a streetlight filtered through the living room blinds. It was just enough to see, and he didn’t want to.

     Beyond his eyelids, there was a black shelving unit, courtesy of the nearest big-box store, with a TV atop it. To their right, the open door of the bedroom—a void. He should just close it but somehow that felt worse. He hadn’t made it one full night with the door closed.

     He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. The only perk to exhaustion was that he could typically nod off as long as he didn’t get too worked up.

     Since Marlene died, David hadn’t slept in his bed. Their bed.

     At first he didn’t want to be there without her. He slept fitfully on the couch and wept on the couch and wanted to die on the couch.

     He hadn’t been drunk nor speeding, but the accident killed her all the same. The road was wet and any driver’s ed pamphlet in America warns about the dangers of hydroplaning. He shuddered at the memory of the blood running down her face. Of her hand gently exploring the wound. Her fingertips coming back crimson.

     He’d thought at first that the moan was haunting his dreams. But one night, awoken and trying to settle back in, he heard it clear as day.

     It was coming from the bedroom.

     He sat up. Surely this was a nightmarish, half-asleep hallucination. But fully upright and on high alert, there it was again. The abyss revealed nothing but the sound continued. He listened until morning.

     The next day his cooler head did not prevail and, with curtains fully drawn to let in maximum sunlight, he blearily moved his dresser and toiletries into the living room. David longed to tell someone, but how could he? He was a grown man. He couldn’t admit that he was scared of the dark. That he lost sleep over a monster under the bed.

     He’d left the curtains open but when he woke that night they were closed again. He considered rearranging the living room so he didn’t have to see the vast darkness, but the idea of it being out of sight chilled him even more.

     Tonight, though, sleep wouldn’t return. Weeks of torment brought tears to his eyes as he got up, stalked over to the kitchen table, and grabbed the first thing he could find. He hurled the saltshaker into the blackness as hard as he could. There should have been a crash—something knocked over, something broken—but there was nothing.

     As if someone caught it.

     He took a half step back.

     Emerging into the dim light just above the threshold was a hand, deathly pale with bloody fingertips, that rolled the saltshaker gently back toward him.

     David screamed.