Every night with eyes closed tight, I wait for it to come. Then in the dark, I hear a noise. Thump thump thump… I can feel the bed shift as it sits down beside me. Something brushes over my cheek, as soft as the wind, but rough like leathered skin and bone. It wants to trick me. It wants me to give in. My eyes are closed tightly, so tightly, because I know that if I open them, I’ll see it. I can imagine its face; chalk white sharpened teeth grinning at me from a lip-less mouth. Deadened eyes staring at me, waiting for me to stare back into the void.

For sixty years, I’ve closed my eyes tight. Every single night. I’ve never had a lover to share my bed, never a wife, for fear of loosening this creature on another. For sixty years, ever since I was a child, I’ve kept my eyes closed tight. I knew that if I opened them, I would invite it, whatever it was, to do its worst.

My worst fear though, as the years go on, as my body grows weaker and death nearer, is what if? What if I open my eyes, and there is no creature at all that goes bump in the night?