Monsters Aren't Real
Seven was a tender age to be introduced to the horrors of the world. Especially when nobody else around you had the ability to see those horrors.
I was seven years old the night my grandfather met his end. The doctors said it was a heart attack, which was more believable than the nonsense coming from my young mouth, despite having been the one to discover my Grandfather’s body.
The night prior to his death, Grandfather woke Grandma and I in the middle of the night to talk to us in the kitchen. I was being raised by them, so we lived together. My mother was somewhat present in my life, but I didn’t see her much due to her work. My father, I heard, lived somewhere in Texas, and that my mom left him to come to Minnesota after I was born, where her Father and her Step-Mother could raise me. I was happy with that; I was quite the Grandpa’s girl.
I was rubbing my eyes tiredly as he told us he would always love us, and that he would always be there for us, no matter what happened. My Grandfather specifically instructed me to stay in my bedroom the next day to clean my room, all the way up until my Grandmother returned from work. He told my Grandma to get some more sleep before walking me upstairs to tuck me back in. My tired brain didn’t think much of the entire situation.
Laying down with me for a few moments, Grandpa told me a story about his brother who had passed away. I didn’t pay much attention to the details, eyelids heavy as he spoke. As I was dozing off, he pat my head gently, kissing my forehead, whispering to me a soft “Goodnight, princess.”
Just before I fell into slumber, I watched him look at me for what seemed like a long moment, standing at the top of the stairs outside of my bedroom door before he descended down the stairs.
When I woke in the morning, anxiety was wracking my mind. I cleaned my room hastily; a boulder forming in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t shake the feeling like I needed to see my Grandfather. The feeling grew with each passing moment.
My bedroom was on the top floor, his room, the basement. I worried at my nails with my teeth. I didn’t want to disobey my Papa. He had made it very clear what was expected of me. Something wasn’t right though. Taking a deep breath, I resolved to go talk to him.
Still nervous, I timidly opened my door. I slowly peered into the hall that led down the stairs outside of my room, holding my breath to see if I could hear him on the main floor. Nothing. I walked lightly on the balls of my feet, creeping down the staircase to the main floor. The house was alarmingly quiet. No television, no music, nothing except my breathing that still sounded too loud as I tried to control the pace of it.
I shuffled through the hall and into the kitchen, crossing it to the door that led to the basement. My heart was pounding against my chest, a fine tremble was running through my entire body as I reached for the door knob. I swallowed heavily, steeling my resolve and slowly opening the door. I was only about halfway down the stairs when I was able to look across the basement and see into my Grandfather’s room. The curtain was drawn back, and there was a looming black figure in the entryway to his room. It was facing my Grandfather’s bed, which was just to the left of the entry. I couldn’t see my Grandfather, but I watched in a sort of soft horror as tendrils of glowing white light swirled from the direction of where his bed was, and into the creature that appeared to be made of darkness. The creature struck fear into my heart, the hair on the back of my neck prickling to attention. I was immobilized by terror. The tendrils of light began to grow dimmer.
Something told me I needed to move. My legs felt like bags of sand; heavy and uncoordinated as I backpedaled up the stairs as quietly as I could. My heartbeat was erratic as I forced my body to move quietly, close the door, and retreat back to my bedroom, grabbing the cordless phone perched in the stairway ledge, pulling it into my bedroom and shutting the door, pressing my back to it and sinking to the floor with the phone in my lap. I was shaking so bad I had to hang up and redial the phone four times before I got the number to my Grandmother’s job correct.
“Hello, how can I help-”
“Grandma, I need to talk to my Grandma!” I said in a voice that was thin with fear.
“Oh- Okay, okay, what’s your Grandma’s name?” the voice on the end of the line asked.
“Jennifer, please, please hurry!” I heard the phone get sat down, mechanical sounds filing the background over the line. It seemed like forever until someone picked the phone back up, “Silver?” My Grandma’s voice sounded a little nervous. It wasn’t like me to call in the middle of her work day.
“Grandma, I-- There’s, there’s something wrong with Grandpa!”
“What do you mean? Put him on the phone, Silver.”
Tears started to build in my eyes, thinking of having to go back to the basement and see if that thing was still there, it was terrifying, “I can’t, there’s, there’s, something, a shadow, a- a- a…”
“Put him on the phone, Silver!” now my Grandmother’s voice was becoming strained, worry lacing her words.
Breathing labored, I put my brave face on and headed back to the basement, grabbing a knife from the kitchen. My Grandmother’s voice sounded distant as I traversed down the staircase. I had expected to see the being again from the middle of the stairs, but it was no longer present in the entryway. Seeing it was gone from that location gave me more confidence to move forward almost on autopilot. I crossed past the work tables that were littered with tools of all sorts, and paused just before the entry to his room, clutching the phone to my chest.
“Papa?” I choked out, my ears straining to hear a response that would never come. As I moved forward, my heart sank as I looked around the corner to his bed. He was in bed, half covered up and his eyes were open; staring glossily at the area the creature had been prior, lips parted slightly as if he had tried to say something. I didn’t even think to look around the room further for the creature I had seen before, the knife I had grabbed earlier clattered to the floor, forgotten.
“His eyes are open.” My voice sounded far away, airy, now.
“What do you mean, Silver? Give him the phone!” she said urgently.
“He isn’t moving, Grandma, but his eyes are open.” An edge of panic crept back into my voice.
“Oh God, oh god no- Silver, call the police, call them now!” Hearing her tell me to urgently call the police snapped me back to reality but only filled me with more fear, “I don’t know how!”
“Go, go to your room, I’m leaving work now.” The line died, and I looked at my Grandfather’s body for a long moment before I turned and ran back to my bedroom, grabbing the phone book from one of the kitchen drawers on my way.
I was too young to understand what death was, much less the circumstances that just transpired before my eyes. I understood however, that something was terribly wrong. With my Grandmother calling the police, I perched myself on the bench I had in my bedroom to watch out the window for the police and my Grandmother. While I waited, I called my Grandmother’s brother, sister, my neighbor and anybody else important that I could think of that might be able to help us with whatever was going on.
My neighbor showed up first, trying to convince me to go to her house. I firmly denied, saying I wanted to wait until my Grandmother and the police showed up. The police were on scene shortly thereafter, telling me to stay upstairs.
When my Grandmother got home, she flew past me into our home. I don’t think she even saw me. I quietly followed her into the house, rounding the corner to go halfway down the basement stairs again. I heard her wail before I saw her, pouding on his headboard, crying as if her soul was being torn from her body.
“Wake up, Roy, wake up! You can’t… You can’t leave me, not now!” Her words broke off into harder sobs that shook her body.
There was a tap on my shoulder, making me jolt and turn around. It was my neighbor, looking at me with a sad expression. Everyone around me was giving me that same, sad expression. I didn’t understand.
“Let’s go to my house, they need time to get things taken care of here, we shouldn’t get in their way.” I allowed myself to be pulled away, but I couldn’t get the image of the creature I had seen prior out of my head, it was if the image was burned into the back of my eyelids.
The next two days were a blur for my Grandmother; she spent most of her time crying or staring off into nothing as people around her prepared the funeral for my Grandfather.
The first night, when my Grandmother began to tell me that he had a heart attack, my eyes were big and fear-filled, “Is that what that creature was doing? Taking his heart?”
Grandma frowned, and then shook her head, “No dear, there was no creature stealing his heart, he just had high blood pressure and... “ She sighed heavily, looking tired, “And didn’t want to go to the doctors.”
“But I saw something, a scary monster, and there was this light…” Grandma hushed me, pulling me into a hug, “Death is scary, but there’s no such thing as monsters, Silver…”
I hugged her back, but when I blinked, the image was still on my eyelids. If monsters aren’t real… what was that? I pushed the image from my mind, repeating “monsters aren’t real” over and over in my mind every time the scene popped up again. It sounded like a broken record in my mind, but with enough repetition, I almost began to believe it. Almost..
