A Darker Reality

The Monster

Cecily then took him to the kitchen and sat him down at the table. He only ate a few spoonfuls of the soup then gently placed the spoon on the table next to the bowl, staring at the soup as if he were searching for the secrets of the universe inside it. Cecily urged him to eat more, but he didn't. She even tried to feed him herself but he refused to open her mouth. After several minutes she gave up and decided that he needed to go to bed, even though it was really early.

Giving Marley his medicine wasn't as much of a struggle as Cecily thought it would be. He accepted the two pills as soon as she handed them to him, and swallowed them without any water or anything. He then told her that he was going to bed and walked to his bedroom without another word. Cecily noticed how he didn't make her go check the closet or under the bed for the alleged monster again, (to her delight), and she decided that he might have been too tired to remember.

She went back to the living room and found Marley's pictures scattered on the floor. She went to go pick them up, examining each one as she went. They all had similar frantic scribblings. Some of them had that tall stick figure drawn on them, some with trees, some with just text. They were all eerie, and Cecily worried even more about Marley as she studied them all. She looked at the great many of them, and had no clue how he could have drawn that many pictures in the short amount of time she was in the kitchen.

To Cecily's relief, she found that none of them were drawn over her own pictures, so she started to go throw them away, but decided against it. Instead, she put them in her backpack, and started to work on her pictures again. However, she found it hard to work on her pictures because her busy mind kept wandering back to Marley sitting in the floor, scribbling on those papers, singing that song. She couldn't get the tune of it out of her head. She wondered if that had something to do with the monster that he had been so scared of for the longest time.

As she continued to work on her pictures, the thoughts started to slowly melt away and she concentrated more and more on her work.

Hours passed. Cecily grew tired and eventually put her art supplies away, then stretched out on the couch to take a nap.

Her dream was odd. She dreamt of running through a forest, with no intention or purpose. She was just running; weaving through trees and gulping the cold air. In the distance she could hear someone calling her name. A familiar, childish voice.

"Cecily! Cecily!"

Cecily jolted awake.

"Cecily! He's here! Help me! Cecily, help!"

It was Marley. He was calling for her, but not in his usual way. His calls sounded like screams of pure terror.

Before she realized what she was doing, she was on her feet, sprinting for Marley's bedroom. She threw the door open and was shocked by what she saw.

A man stood at the foot of Marley's bed, hovering over the terrified child. The man's skin was as white as snow, and the suit he was wearing was as black as night. Black tentacles flared from his back, and his face was blank. His back arched so he wouldn't hit his head on the ceiling.

Marley quivered in the man's shadow, pulling the blankets up to his chin and screaming incomprehensible things.

Cecily ran to Marley's bed and snatched him up in her arms, adrenaline giving her strength. She carried the screaming boy into the living room, and put him down on the couch.

"Cecily, he's coming!" Marley screamed, staring over her shoulder.

Cecily spun around and saw the man coming into the living room.

"Marley, get out of the house and call the police," she screamed to Marley. He obediently ran out of the front door.

Cecily kept her eyes on the man, and she guessed that he was doing the same with her. She took a step towards him, unaware of what she was doing. Some sort of instinct made her want to attack him rather than run away. She leapt at him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Almost immediately she felt a spinning, sickening sensation, almost as if she were flying in the center of a tornado. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed her rising nausea, squeezing her arms tightly around the man's waist, refusing to let go. But she couldn't hang on. The spinning was too violent. Her arms slipped and she lost her grip, falling. She landed hard on the hard ground and had the wind knocked out of her, and she refused to open her eyes.

She lay there for a few minutes, regaining her breath and letting her stomach settle. She could tell she was outside because of the cold air soaking into her skin, and the sound of wind running through trees. She finally opened her eyes and found herself in a forest.

The sky above her was grey and the forest around her looked dark. She slowly stood and looked around, blinking disbelievingly. This was impossible! How could she possibly have gotten here? She wrapped her trembling arms around her cold body and shivered. This place was cold, but it seemed like a different kind of cold, somehow. It was more sinister and lonesome, like the cold of a cave.

She wandered down a dirt path, wondering where she was and how she would get back, until she came upon a tall tree with branches that stretched and twisted towards the sky like long, bony fingers. The sight of the tree sent a chill up her spine, but she approached it, feeling oddly drawn towards it. She stepped up to it and touched the rough bark of the tree. She circled the tree, running her fingers along the rough bark. Then her eyes fell on something that made her stop in her tracks: a piece of paper taped to the side of the tree. It had a tall stick figure drawn on it, with the word "No" written multiple times. It reminded her of the pictures that Marley had drawn earlier that night.

She hesitated, then reached up and took the page from the tree.