A short story by novelist Laura Purcell

Is Karen’s son Tyler the only thing going bump in the night?

Children are always getting things muddled up. Between the ages of three and four, Tyler insisted on saying, “No, please,” instead of “No, thank you.” He still pronounced the title of his favourite book as, “The Very Hungry Cappa-lillar.” There was an inevitable fuss at dinner and bedtime, because he’d yet to realise that food and sleep were blessings – luxuries, even. So Karen wasn’t unduly concerned when his little reed of a voice piped into the musty dark of her bedroom and said, “Mummy. There’s a monster under your bed.”

Wearily, she opened her eyes and propped herself up on one elbow. Tyler wasn’t standing beside her pillow, like he usually would; he lingered in the doorway with his Paw Patrol torch aimed at the floor. He looked odd, lit from below like that. A tiny gargoyle, his face a landscape of ochre and black.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she sighed. “We’ve been over this. Do you want me to come and check again?”

“No! There’s a monster under your bed.”

So he hadn’t misspoken. This was something new; a clever solution, in its way, for a boy so young. She’d proved to him time and again that there was nothing sinister lurking under his own mattress, so he’d simply moved the beast. It still gave him an excuse to be awake and with her, late at night.

She glanced over at Chris, on the other side of the king-size bed, but of course he was out for the count. He’d slept through Tyler’s newborn wails, he’d slept through every thunderstorm Karen remembered; she was relatively confident that he’d sleep through an earthquake. No help was coming, she was on her own with this.

Her tired mind turned the pages of a book she’d read on child psychology, searching for the right words, but it was no good – she couldn’t recall anything useful beyond validate their feelings of anxiety and show empathy. Neither of which were easy to do in the small hours of the morning. “Honey, I know you’re really frightened right now…” she began. But then she stopped.

Tyler was breathing so heavily that it sounded like a sob. He wasn’t even looking at her. His gaze remained steady, although the torch-beam was shaking; both were still pointed under the bed. “Don’t hurt them,” he whimpered. “Please.”

Good grief, what had he been watching, what had he been reading, to come up with this? Karen shoved back the covers and went to swing her feet over the side of the mattress. “Tyler, Tyler, it’s OK…”

“No!” he squeaked. “Don’t get out of bed!”

She froze. Chris snorted in his sleep; at least, she thought it was Chris.

Tyler stumbled backwards a step. “It moved!”

Karen’s pulse flickered in her throat and she swallowed, trying to push it down. This was ridiculous. She was the adult, she shouldn’t be getting caught up in Tyler’s breathless fear. But in the dark, her body felt vulnerable. It chose to believe things her mind did not.

She was aware, suddenly, of how cold the room was. The heating had turned itself off. She wanted nothing more than to pull the covers back up and retreat into her warm nest. Tyler was shivering too, his little feet bare on the floorboards. “Let me come and look.”

“No! It might get you!” “Well, I’ll have to look at it from up here then.”

She felt like a child herself, wriggling around so that she could hang her head over the side of the mattress. Her feet kicked into Chris’s shins and he rolled over.

“Careful!” Tyler whispered. “Don’t let him see you!”

Shakily, she leaned down. Her unwashed hair flopped to the floor, her pyjamas stuck and pulled against her skin. The things she did for Tyler.

It was hard to see with the world dark and flipped. At least they didn’t have a valance. A few dust bunnies squatted beneath the wooden frame along with a folded Afghan blanket she’d forgotten about. Maybe that was the shape Tyler had glimpsed?

Blood rushed to the crown of her head. “Shine the torch here, love. I think it’s just a blanket.”

He did as she asked, but not very helpfully; the beam careered like a firefly trapped in a jar. There was the grain of the wooden floor, the edge of the blanket,

and now a flash of something else… Fur?

The pelt was illuminated only for a second, then it was gone again. Karen blinked, unsure whether she’d really seen it at all: long, honey-coloured hair, fanning out across the boards. But that was impossible.

Something glinted. Instinctively, she glanced towards the spark – and found her gaze met by another. A beady black eye watched her from the shadows.

Her breath caught. Tyler’s whine soared off key.

“Mum – eeeee!”

What could it be? A dog or a cat that had snuck indoors and hidden itself underneath their bed? Cautiously, she extended a hand and groped, murmuring, “Good boy, good girl, come here…” Her head felt absurdly hot and painful now. She gave up her stupid, dangling position and climbed out of bed.

Tyler hopped from foot to foot. Chris muttered drowsily, “What’s going on?”

Karen didn’t answer. She crouched down beside the bed, peering, reaching out. Her fingers met the fur. It felt coarse and slightly damp. She gave a cautious tug and there came a slithering noise, something sliding across the floorboards.

“It’s Rex!”

“What?” Tyler’s torch beam swung around, falling full upon her hands as she produced the stuffed dog.

“We thought we’d lost him, didn’t we?” She straightened the toy out and brushed off the dust. Rex looked rather the worse for wear. A clump of his hair was matted and wet, as though a child had sucked on it, and white stuffing showed through small puncture marks. Still, he was a welcome sight. Karen felt like an absolute hero as she climbed to her feet and presented her son with his plushie: Mummy, banisher of monsters, saviour of toys. “He was under there all along!”

Tyler took the dog with a strange reluctance. It was only now she noticed one of its ears was hanging loose. Chris mumbled something about the boy having too many teddies and pulled the covers up over his head.

“Don’t worry,” said Karen, placing a hand on Tyler’s little shoulder. “We’ll fix him up. Now let’s get you back to bed.”

He frowned, staring into Rex’s blank eyes, as if the two of them shared a terrible secret.

Angling Tyler towards the door, Karen took a step forward – and gasped as something pulled her back by the ankle.

Tyler scuttled out of her reach. “It’s got you!” he screamed

But it was just the sheet, tangled around her foot. She shook it off and laughed artificially, trying not to show how much it had startled her. “Silly Mummy. I nearly fell flat on my face, didn’t I?”

Tyler didn’t reply. Pulling Rex into his arms, he slunk off in the direction of his room. That was a good thing, really. He must have tired himself out with all that fear.

Karen glanced back over her shoulder at the lump of her husband’s body beneath the quilt. “I’ll just tuck him in…”

The words shuddered to a halt on her lips. She snapped the light switch on.

“Hey!” Chris sat up, glaring at her with angry, sleep-blurred eyes. “What did you do that for?”

Karen could only shake her head.

Tyler called from the next room. “Mummy? Are you coming? Rex needs a story to cheer him up.”

“Sorry,” she said, flustered. She turned off the light. “Sorry, love. My mistake.”

Shaking her head again, she left the room. That was what kids and sleep deprivation did to you: they drove you half-barmy. For a moment there, she could have sworn she’d seen movement, underneath the bed.

Laura Purcell’s new novel The Shape Of Darkness (Raven Books, £12.99) is out now. See Express Bookshop on page 69