As darkness approached, I lay there knowing my father was not in the house.
I did not know what to do.
My only impulse was to sneak into my mothers jewelry box and take a small religious cross necklace which I had seen there before.
At that age I still believed in God and hoped that somehow this would protect me.
Although fearful and anxious, while gripping the cross under my pillow tightly in one hand, sleep eventually came and as I drifted off to sleep.
I hoped that I would be able to wake up in the morning without any disturbance throughout the night.
Fortunately for my sake, that night actually turned out to be the calmest of all.
I had gradually woken up around the chime of midnight.
The room was once again as dark as every other night before it.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could gradually make out the window, the door, the walls, and some of my handmade toys on the floor.
Even to this day, I shudder to think of it, for you see there was no noise.
No rustling of sheets.
No movement at all.
The room felt lifeless.
Lifeless, yet not entirely empty.
The nightly visitor, that unwelcome, wheezing, hate-filled thing which had terrorized me night after night.
Was not in the bottom bunk, somehow, someway it had ended up at the foot of my bed.
it's glowing yellow eyes were staring straight at me. Instinctively I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Utter terror had shaken the very sound from my voice. I lay there in my bed, with the sheets on, motionless.
If I could not scream, I did not want to let it know I was awake.