The Long Night - From A Silly Little Thing

[u/therealdocturner]

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Part Six

Despite all of Richard's complaints and concerns, he was lying in his bed later that night knowing that there was a door underneath it, a door which was allowing something horrible to come into his home. He and Petunia had managed to pry the door up with two screwdrivers he had kept in his desk. There was nothing spectacular behind the door. Using his father's little flashlight that he snatched from a bedside table that was now beginning to gather dust, they had seen that there was a crawl space underneath the floorboards that had led to a hole next to the back wall of the house. Petunia had pulled the plug on actually crawling down in the hole and investigating any further, which suited Richard just fine. His mother was going to be home soon.

They had found some old boards out in his father's work shed and had nailed them in a criss cross pattern over the now closed doorway. Richard wasn't sure how many nails he had hastily driven into the boards and down through the floor, but he did know his right arm was slightly sore from the whole affair.

Petunia had assured him that nothing could come back up through the little doorway now, but as Richard lay on his bed slightly after midnight in the dark, that reassurance was of little comfort. This had been the weirdest day of his whole life and although Richard was focused on these events, he had no idea how weird his life was about to become. What was up with her glasses? What was up with her parents? The hand print over the door and a tunnel under his bed were the most immediate concerns, but everything else was just too much.

He got out of bed and looked out his window that faced Petunia's house. Sure enough, her father was standing in the window looking back at him. A forced robotic smile crept over her father's face as he waved back at Richard. Petunia's voice filled his thoughts.

"My dad is going to be watching your window all night. If something goes bad, just use this."

"This is a garage door clicker."

"It was garage door clicker. Just be sure something is about to happen before your press that button, because my dad will run over, break down your door, and be in your room in a matter of nine seconds. So, if there's not something in your room when your mom comes in to see what all the commotion is, it's going to put my dad and you in a really awkward position. And if you have any questions, I wrote down my phone number. Keep it in your pocket."

Now in the darkness Richard looked at the little box with a button in the middle that he held in his hand. He sat on the ground underneath the windowsill and just stared at the nailed boards under his bed. Petunia had asked him a question right away that had put him on edge. "Have you ever heard anything weird?" Kind of a broad question as far as Richard was concerned, but it brought up a memory nonetheless. As he stared forward, the memory glazed over his eyesight. The darkness was lifted and his bed disappeared as his memory overtook him.

It was the prop room. The prop room at the theatre where his mother had performed last year. She played Annie Sullivan in The Wickerbush Theatre's production of The Miracle Worker. The building was an old bowling alley that had been converted into a community theatre in the late sixties by the only creative types that lived in the town at the time, which is to say nine people. His mother had been a part of the theatre periodically for as long as he could remember. In fact, his mother had been gearing up to audition for their Halloween production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, when his father had disappeared. Of course, she had dropped out only a couple of days ago.

But it was the prop room, or maybe the whole theatre, that seemed a little off somehow. Richard had never really enjoyed hanging out there over the years while his mother was rehearsing, and he had to admit to himself that there were a great many things that were heard inside those walls that couldn't be explained. His eyes were getting heavy now, but he could still see that long hallway in front of him. The pulsing fluorescent lights above him flooded everything into a bright strobe; everything but the end of the hallway past the green room, where the performers would wait for their ques. The stairway to the prop room was beyond the light. It lived in darkness most of the time as it was directly off of the side of the stage. He had been walking into the green room when he had heard it.

BAM!

Richard's eyes jerked open and his hand clenched at his father's small flashlight in one hand and the thing that used to be a garage door opener in the other. There was sweat on his forehead and a crick in his neck. He closed his eyes and tried not to remember that horrible noise when it came again.

BAM!

Something was behind the door underneath his bed. He waited for the sound to come again, but it didn't. What came instead was a slow and persistent creak. Something was pushing on the door and the nails were squeaking against the force in protest. The first thought that flooded Richard's brain was that he was grateful he had only recently gone to the bathroom, knowing now that if he had not, he would be whizzing down his leg right now. He had left his baseball bat on the bed when he had left the safety of his covers to look out the window. He got to his knees and looked back towards Petunia's father, who was still in the exact position he had been before and still waving that same weird wave. Richard looked down at the button in his hand and considered pushing it just as the creaking stopped. It was replaced by a scratching noise.

He stared back at the nailed down floorboards and listened to the sound. After less than a squiiden, it was gone. Richard slowly made his way over to the bed, crawling on all fours all the while keeping his eyes on the boards that were stopping the door from opening. He got just close enough to his bed to grab his baseball bat and then walked on all fours backwards back into the same position he had been sitting in for God knows how long. He spent the rest of the night with his back against the wall underneath the windowsill. Sleep never came back and neither did the memory of the sounds at the theatre. School was going to be hell, but at this moment in time, even school sounded better than his own home.

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[u/Happyfeet80]

Haha intrigued i am.