Short Story Sunday 133: Watchers (Part Five)

            “Maria!” I heard Dad shout.

I could see him standing in the doorway on the other side of my bedroom from the corner of my eye. Yet, the red-eyed monster was still right in my face. I didn’t dare look away from it to look at Dad.

I heard some rustling and before I knew it, Dad was scooping me up in his arms. He hugged me tight jerking my gaze away from the red eyes. Then he placed me gently back down on my bed. I scanned my bedroom for the three monsters, but they were all gone again.

My shoulders relaxed, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that they were gone not. They always disappeared when Dad came so Dad never believed me that there were any monsters.

“Maria, what are you doing in here?” Dad broke me out of my thoughts. He backed away from my bed and stared at the floor in disgust.

I leaned over the edge of my bed and noticed the glass shards lying on the ground. I had completely forgotten that the lamp fell and shattered on the ground. I peeled my eyes away from my favorite, but broken, lamp to look at Dad.

“Did you feel the house shaking?” I asked.

“What?” Dad narrowed his eyes confused.

“Didn’t you hear the monsters talking to me?”

Dad folded his arms across his chest and stared at me blankly.

“Didn’t you see the three monsters standing directly in front of me? One of them was in my face!”

Dad hung his head and let out an exasperated sigh. After a moment of unbearable silence, Dad looked back up at me and pointed to the mess on the floor.

“I have no idea what you’ve been doing in here, but it’s late and you really need to go to sleep. Enough fooling around, Maria. I’m going to get the broom to clean this up and then you have to go to sleep.” Dad turned around to exit the room.

“But Dad!” I called after him, but he was already out in the hallway. I was sure he heard me call after him, but he didn’t want to hear anything else I had to say to him about the monsters.

Frustrated, I hopped off my bed on the other side of the broken glass as to not cut the bottom of my bare feet. I ran over to the other side of room as quickly as I could. I didn’t want the monsters to come back before Dad came back upstairs with the broom. When I made it to the door, I turned on the light, my heart pounding in my chest as I raced the darkness.

As soon as the light shone in my bedroom, I let out a sigh of relief. I turned around leaning my back against the wall, but it turned out the light didn’t help at all.

I thought the monsters ran away when Dad came into the room and when the light was turned on. But that didn’t seem to be the case now. The red-eyed monster was standing at the foot of my bed, while the two yellow-eyed monsters stood tall behind it. All three stared at me and none of them looked happy.

They all looked the same. They were all scary, broad, and tall. They were covered in brown fur as though they were large bears, except their nails looked to be at least five inches long on each hand, even on their feet.

Each monster had two long fangs sticking out of the tops of their wide mouths. I didn’t see a nose on any of them, but their eyes were big enough to cover half of their faces. The red-eyed monster was a little bit bigger than the other two and it had three horns coming out of the top of its head. And while that one had horns, the two yellow-eyed monsters had two pointy ears like bats on top of their heads.

I slid my back against the wall eventually sitting down on the ground. I brought my knees up to my chest and just stared at the monsters. They clearly weren’t going away anytime soon. I had given up. Dad wasn’t going to believe me that there were monsters in my bedroom. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where he went. I didn’t think it would take him so long to grab the broom and come back upstairs.

The red-eyed monster took another step closer. The whole house shook again. I lost my balance and fell to the side. I put my arms out to catch myself even though I was already on the ground.

It took another step.

Dad was probably still getting the broom, for what was taking him so long I had no idea, but I bet he didn’t hear anything. He didn’t feel the whole house rumble earlier when he was right down the hall. He definitely wasn’t going to hear anything downstairs.

Frustrated, I crawled along the floor back over to my bed. The monster stopped walking and his gaze followed me as I shimmied along the floor on all fours.

I was careful around my nightstand as to not cut myself, but I noticed a pretty large shard of glass. I picked it up as gently as I could. I stood up, turned around, and whipped the glass right at the red-eyed monster.

The shard bounced off the monster’s leg as though it had a protective coating around it. I let out an exasperated sigh.

Okay, now I was out of ideas.

“Maria!” Dad growled.

I twisted my neck to look back over at my bedroom door. Dad stood in the doorway holding the broom and the vacuum. He stared at me appalled.

“Now you’re throwing the glass around your room? What is it with you tonight?” he glared at me and I could see his forehead veins beginning to pop out.

Whatever I had to say about the monsters now definitely wasn’t going to go well. He didn’t believe me before and he certainly wasn’t going to believe me now.

I turned my attention back to the monsters and I could have sworn they were smiling.

“You need to help clean this up.” Dad was suddenly standing beside me now. He handed me the broom and reluctantly, I took it.

I watched the monsters as they slowly vanished from my sight. I still didn’t understand how Dad wasn’t able to see them.

I swept up the broken glass into a pile and then pushed it into the dustpan. I walked over to the other side of my bedroom to dump it in my trashcan while Dad turned on the vacuum to pick up any of the smaller pieces we may have missed.

As he vacuumed, I peered into my closet. There was nothing there.

Dad turned off the vacuum and sighed. “Look, Maria. I don’t know what kind of nightmare you had, but there are no monsters in your room. There are no monsters anywhere near here because they don’t exist.”

“Okay.” I murmured in response. What else was I supposed to say? There was no sense in arguing with him anymore. He wasn’t going to believe me.

Dad walked over to me and closed my closet door so I couldn’t look inside it anymore. “Why don’t you come sleep with me in my room tonight? At the rate this night is going, it seems as though that would be best.”

I smiled at Dad. I knew he was suggesting this to me so that we could both get some sleep before our alarm clocks went off in a couple of hours, but I was grateful that he thought of this solution.

We shut the light off in my bedroom and closed the door. I crawled into bed with Dad once we made it to his room.

No monsters showed up for the rest of the night.

We were just going to have to wait and see what the next night would bring.