A Suburban Haunting_An extreme psychological horror by Matt Shaw

Author:Matt Shaw [Shaw, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

25.

‘Leave my dad alone!’ Will’s voice cut through the darkness and startled both Melissa and Craig awake. He was standing in the open doorway to their bedroom with a look of pure terror on his face.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Craig snapped angrily. Will turned and ran from the room, crossing the hallway back to his own room.

‘Hey… He was probably having a bad dream… Don’t talk to him like that,’ Melissa said sympathetically.

‘Fucking dip-shit,’ Craig mumbled.

Melissa tutted and climbed from the bed to check on her son, despite her own racing heart caused by him scaring the crap out of her too. From an early age Will had been prone to sleep-walking in moments of stress but, it hadn’t happened for a while and neither had his dreams been too bad. Probably the stress of the move, she thought to herself as she followed his path across the hallway.

Just as she reached the doorway to his room, Damiana appeared from her own room, clutching the teddy bear she’d had since birth.

‘What’s that noise?’

‘Nothing, sweetie. Just your brother having a bad dream. Go back to bed.’ Melissa didn’t stop to see if Damiana listened to her or not. Instead she continued into Will’s room. Will was on his side, hidden under his thick blanket, crying. Melissa perched herself on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on her tired son’s back. ‘Your dad didn’t mean to shout. You just scared him, is all.’ She laughed. ‘We’re not used to be woken up with you shouting at us!’ When he failed to respond to her, she added, ‘Must have been some bad dream but that’s all it was… A bad dream.’ Still he didn’t show his face. ‘Did you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Well, okay. But if you change your mind, you can.’

It broke Melissa’s heart seeing him like this. It had been so long since his last bad dreams that she’d almost forgotten how bad they could be for him. She hated more that he wasn’t being open about what it was though. That was new. Usually he would say what it was and she would reassure him that it wasn’t real and, slowly, he’d stop crying and that would be that. By the time morning came around, he wouldn’t even mention it - as though the rest of the night had swallowed up the memories into the blackness.

‘Can I get a hug?’ Melissa asked.

From under the cover, ‘No.’

Again, this was new too. For the first time since Will had been having these nightmares, Melissa felt useless. She rubbed his back and sat there a moment before the next question popped to mind.

‘Would it help if daddy came in and said he was sorry?’

With no hesitation and more than abrupt, ‘No!’

Melissa sighed.

‘Did you want me to leave you alone?’

When Will didn’t answer, she took that as a yes.

‘Well if you want me, just shout. Okay?’

Again, he didn’t answer. Melissa stood up and walked across the bedroom to the open doorway.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.