I heard the creak of the door, slowly, eerily creeping ajar and like a snaky shadow the light poured in.

I saw nothing. The bright crack as blank and empty as it had ever been. But my heart pounded, sweat began to bead upon me, and as the silence and nothingness of the now open door continued, in fear I let out a little cry and threw the blankets over my head, to wait it out.

Then I heard it.

A heavy dragging, and a single heavy foot fall, proceeded in slump and pull through the door, and into my bedroom.

A haggard breathing met my ears; it slicked in wetness, a slight slurping rasping within it. Beneath the covers I shook, my own throat dry and my forehead damp. My shoulders clenched in every tightness and my legs I had drawn up — I was naught but a small, trembling ball when the slump and pull reached my bedside. I could feel the thing learning over me. I begged it all to be a dream.

It came in close, and I could now feel it’s breath upon the nape of my neck, and unable to contain I let out a whimper, my shivering giving way and the tears, they rolled down my cheeks, the saltiness brushing my lips. A cry quivered out as I felt a hand – large, meaty, and coarse but gentle – move down my back, starting from my head and proceeding all the way over my hips and down my legs and to my twitching feet. The haggard sounds it made remained unchanged, and with that, the slump and pull began again, and eked away, back through the door and out into the hall, until all was silent.

I did not move. I kept the sheets and blankets over me for quite some time, then I at last allowed myself deep breaths, the heat that had accumulated on my body breaking into a feverish chill. Several minutes had past I felt. It had gone. It had gone away.

I sat up in my bed, throwing the covers off me and gasping in the air. I turned to the ajar door, and the hallway was empty, the yellow light streaming in over me. I panted, brushing my sweaty hair from my face, and, it was then, that I saw fat, black, sausage fingered hands, slowly reach down from the ceiling, and clutch the top of the doorframe; long, dirty ragged fingernails digging into the wood, crunching it.

My breathing rose again, my pulse thundered, and as a head, a face, so hideous and horror and vile descended into my sight, I let loose a full fledged scream.

Like a spider upon the ceiling thunking bent limbs so wildly so quick, it raced at me.