On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 143, of 240 so far.

Big Boy Bed

“I’m a big boy, daddy,” the little boy said.

“You are,” his father replied. “And I’m very proud of you.”

The boy considered this for a moment, and quickly accepted it. He rubbed his eye with a small fist, belying his claim only minutes before of not being tired at all.

“I’m not a baby. I’m a grown-up,” he said at last, drawing a smile from his father and a laugh from his mother who hovered behind them, at the door of the boy’s room.

“Of course you are,” his father said. “A grown-up big boy.”

The boy was not quite yet three, and upon arriving home from nursery, he had been shown that the familiar cot he had left behind that morning was now a bed, the same as the one his parents had in all but size. He was old enough for such a thing, he had been told. Now, hours later and with dinner and play both done, he was in his pyjamas and sitting upon the bed with the brightly-coloured duvet cover folded back, emblazoned with jungle animals.

The bed looked smaller than the cot, though it occupied the same floor area, and the boy was the biggest he had ever been, but somehow he looked younger as he sat upon it; unsure, and hesitant in the face of this new evolution of his circumstances.

His mother and father had been careful to make no mention of the fact which to them was plain and clear: for the first time in his life, he could exit the bed as easily as he could now enter it, whether or not they were there to help or hinder him. This liberty didn’t seem to have occurred to the boy so far, and indeed he sat in the middle of the bed as if the absent high sides remained in spectral form, keeping him within.

“Now remember,” his father said, “if you get cold while you’re sleeping, just pull the covers over you again.”

The boy smiled, grabbing the edge of the duvet with both hands and pulling it up to his forehead as he laughed. Amused at his own behaviour, he then fell backwards onto the bed, accidentally tucking himself in. His father, like any parent, seized upon the serendipity.

“Well done,” he said, “that’s exactly right. Now we’ll read a story, and then you and Mister Bear can get off to sleep in your new bed together.”

The story proceeded without incident, though of course it was several stories rather than one; first from the boy’s father, and then his mother, and then his father again. And there were cuddles, and reassurances, and reiterations of bigness and grown-upness, and finally there was the required singing.

But when it was all done, and the father slipped from the room and quietly closed the door behind him, the little boy was well on his way to being sound asleep. Ultimately he had been far less perturbed by the unprecedented change in his sleeping arrangements than his parents were.

The mother was visibly emotional, and the father comforted her.

“Seems like just a year ago he was sleeping in a crib beside our bed,” she said, and the father nodded.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said teasingly. They were speaking in hushed tones, still in the hallway outside the little boy’s room, ears attuned to every stealthy noise of the house. But there was only silence from behind the door.

The father plucked the baby monitor from its cradle on the wall, and switched on the screen. The photo-negative effect of the infrared camera showed that the boy and his bear were exactly where he’d left them, covers still in place, pillow not yet upended or discarded, and for the moment at least he breathed a sigh of relief.

“That could have gone a lot worse,” he said, and his wife agreed, clinging to his arm as they both watched the ghostly black and white image. The father switched the screen off after another few seconds, ready to take it downstairs for the remainder of their evening.

“Already in a big boy bed,” his wife said, and there was something in her tone that her husband understood, because it had also been on his own mind all day. He turned to face her.

“We’ve talked about this,” he said gently. “We’re right next door.” He gestured to their own bedroom, as if she didn’t know exactly where it was. The mother sighed.

“I know,” she replied. “I just worry, that’s all.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” the father said. “But we’ve got it all covered. He’s ready for this.”

He indicated the baby monitor’s display in his hand, and then the carbon monoxide detector mounted on the wall above the monitor’s cradle, and then again the door of their own bedroom, and finally the shelf high up above the doorframe outside the little boy’s room, attainable only at the peak of the mother’s upwards-stretched arm, and somewhat beneath his own maximum reach.

The mother nodded once more. Her voice became even quieter, as if her sleeping son could somehow hear. “It’s just, this is when they know,” she said. “When a child gets a proper bed. They’ll have noticed by now, and it’s already almost dark outside.”

The father placed his hands on the mother’s shoulders, lovingly but firmly. “He can’t stay a baby forever,” he said.

“I know that,” the mother replied, her voice full of both sadness and indignation. “But they can see him now. If they… when they come…”

The husband took one hand from her shoulder and reached up to the high shelf, fingers curling over the top to retrieve the object there, and he brought it down. The strange reddish metal of the jagged blade shone in the darkness, lit from within by the energy that lived there. As the world fell asleep, certain blades awakened, lethal only to those things inside the darkness that sought out the innocence of children.

“We’ll be ready,” the father said.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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