The Man Under My Bed

My name is Sebastian Beck.

When I was a kid—about 8 years old—I was awakened by a noise outside my bedroom window. I lifted my head off the pillow, straining to hear. We lived in a rural town back then and the only sounds I could hear were the wind in the trees and the mumbling of distant thunder. Just as I was about to lay back down, I heard it: A man’s voice. Not Father’s. Deeper than his.

“I’m outside of your house,” he said.

I don't know how but I knew in that instant that he was talking to me. My heart quickened as I cautiously got out of bed and crept barefoot across the thick carpet to the window which overlooked the front yard and road. I pulled back the wooden blinds with two fingers and looked outside. No one. Just night, trees, and wet grass from earlier rain.

Frightened, I tip toed quickly to my open bedroom door and stood there stiff as a post, wondering if I should wake up Father or if it were possible that I had imagined the whole thing. I stood there, biting the skin around my nails. I always did that when I was anxious. Just as I was about to run down stairs to Father I heard the front door creak slowly open.

"I'm in your house," he said.

As soon as I heard it I ran softly back to bed and got under the covers. I laid there, still as death, taking short rapid breaths, trying desperately not to make a sound.

The front door closed loudly. And then: “I’m on the stairs,” he said.

Terror washed over me, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. I wanted to call out to Father but feared making my location known to the strange man. I heard the stairs creak and crack under the man’s slow heavy steps. I squeezed my eyes tight and prayed I was dreaming. . . . A minute later I heard him bend over my bed and felt him say with hot breath,

“I’m by your bed."

In desperation, knowing that I had been discovered and that there was now no chance of escape, I threw back the quilt and let out a scream. And there in the faint glow of my night light I saw no one. But I knew I couldn’t have imagined it all. It was far, far too real.

So, there I stood, my chest heaving with panicked breath, my hands outstretched to defend myself from I knew not what. My eyes darting to and fro for the man I knew was just in my room. To right right of me, from beneath my bed something caught my eye. There, under the bed I saw a terrifying thing. the outsoles of a two dirty Nike sneakers. The man must have crawled under my bed, he was still, but not so still that I could question whether it was really a living thing under there. His body was so big that my mattress It was if he were now hiding from me. But the lump his body had created in middle of my mattress was more than enough to give him away. I stood there, confused more than anything, wondering what would happen next.

Instinctively I touched my right hand sequentially to my forehead, stomach, and then to both shoulders . . . And that’s I heard a cracking, splintering sound. The man under my bed, as I soon came to realize, had fallen apart. He had simply broken into dozens of pieces like a lego structure dropped on concrete.

I ran down stairs in terror to Father’s room and found, to my surprise, that he was not asleep but was dusting the ceiling fan. I told him what had just happened. “calm down, he said. You were only dreaming.” But I insisted until he got down from the bed and came with me to my room. I remember standing behind him as he turned the light on. I pointed over his shoulder, “You see? There! There! The sneakers!”

“Okay, okay” He said, far too calmly. “Nothing to be frightened about. I’m walking towards the bed,” he said. “I’m descending to my knees.” I watched as Father began scooping the strange man out from under my bed, bit by bit: his feet, shins, torso, a finger. The man’s body parts were not bloody at the ends but neatly sealed with skin somehow, as if he were some kind of mannequin. As Father took each part out he looked up at me smiling, “see?” he said, “nothing to worry about, I’m taking out his leg . . . Now his shoulder . . . we just have to make sure we get all the bits so he doesn’t come back.” There was something in the way he said that that made me afraid. He was far too cheerful and his speech was strange.

“Are you my Father?” I asked, and he looked at me intently, still kneeling by my bed. He began to shake quietly trying to suppress his giggling, but ended up bursting into loud laughter. Then the laughter would cut short and he’d start trying to hide his giggling again.

Father covered his face and, as if there were no other way to conceal his child like embarrassment, laid on his belly and maneuvered like some large insect under my bed. There I stood, desperately sad, in a room with a pile of body parts (except for the head, which I assumed was still under the bed) and a man I was beginning to suspect was not my Father hiding under my bed just like the other man did.

From the main floor I heard Father call my name. I turned and ran to the banister and looked over. It was Father, rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken up from a deep sleep. “What’s going on up there?” He asked. I told him to come quick. My frightened voice must have convinced him I wasn’t playing around and he ran up the stairs and came with me into my room. “What is it?” He asked.

And there before me was my room as it had always been. Nothing out of order, no pile of body parts, no fake Father under the bed. I told Father what had happened and he held me and told me that everything would be okay and that he too would sometimes have nightmares. He let me sleep in his bed that night and when we awoke I tried to live my life as if everything was normal. Over time I tried to convince myself that Father was right, that the whole thing had either been imagined or that it was a nightmare after all.

So, why I am telling you all of this now? Thirty two years after the fact? Because last night I came to visit Father who still lives in the same house. For nostalgia sake I decided to spend the night in my old bed. As I was turning over to go to sleep I came face to face with a bodiless head, I felt his nose against mine, he said. “I’m on your bed.”