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  Nightlight

  By Trey Dowell

  Copyright 2013 by Trey Dowell

  Cover Copyright 2013 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Also by Trey Dowell and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Ballistic

  Poseidon

  The God of Speed

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  Nightlight

  By Trey Dowell

  “I like your watch,” Kayla says.

  The voice is quiet, soft. The little girl swipes an arm across her face and tears absorb into the folds of her pajama sleeve, leaving behind clean trails on reddened cheeks. The fear, though, is not so easy to erase.

  Ben knows it clings to her with frustrating tenacity, even in the daytime. He saw fear lurk above the hesitant smile Kayla wore upon arrival at the Stafford Sleep Clinic. Though his usual jokes extracted laughter, her green irises never synced with the chuckles. Ben wondered what those eyes witnessed in her dreams. What nightmare, fierce enough to drive a nine-year-old to a sleep clinic? What inner horrors so frightening, the scars carried over to the real world when Kayla’s gaze turned outward?

  Even now, awake and aware of her surroundings, she isn’t calm. Ben doesn’t need the heart rate monitors or EEG to tell him the extent of her anxiety, but they record the unfeeling, clinical picture of Kayla’s brutal night: pulse and blood pressure spikes, a burst of brain activity during rapid-eye movement, and the termination of alpha-wave sleep.

  Ben sees both less and more: a little girl wakes up screaming. He offers comfort that the electrodes and monitors cannot.

  “Thanks. My parents gave this watch to me.” His smile isn’t fake. “Wanna see?”

  Kayla sniffles and nods. Ben slips the watch into her hands. Her fingers run over the silvery-gray band, then trace circles around the crystal face. “It’s so light. Doesn’t even feel like metal.”

  “I know. That’s titanium. But it’s strong enough to stop a bullet.”

  Kayla twists her head and looks at Ben sideways; the skeptical glance of a child used to being lied to. “Serious?”

  “Serious. And you want to see something really cool?”

  Kayla nods hard and fast. The fear doesn’t retreat, Ben thinks, so much as curiosity jumps in front. Either way, her undivided attention makes him grin.

  “I have to turn off the bedside lamp, first. Is that okay?”

  Kayla crosses her arms and frowns. “Just because I have nightmares doesn’t mean I’m a baby, y’know.”

  Ben tries to match her solemn expression. “Fair enough,” he says before clicking off the lamp. The instant the light vanishes, a small hand grips his forearm. Kayla’s pronouncement has more bark than bite. “It’s okay, honey. Look here.”

  He points to the watch. The dozen hour markers on the face, as well as the hour and minute hands, glow in the dark room. As Ben’s eyes adjust to the low light, the ghostly green rays illuminate Kayla’s face. Her smile threatens to beam as bright.

  “Cool,” she whispers. “I used to have glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling in my bedroom, but they didn’t shine like this.”

  “Lemme guess—the stars glowed for a little bit, then faded away?”

  Kayla nods. “Yeah. They lost their juice pretty quick. I had to shine light on them again to make them work.”

  “Right. Well, my watch isn’t like that. See all those markers around the dial? Those are actually miniature glass tubes—and each one is filled with gas that always stays lit, no matter what.”

  The little girl’s head tilts. “Gas? Like for a car?”

  “Different kind of gas, sweetie. But the coolest thing is that the gas in those tubes will stay this bright for at least twenty years. Can you imagine? That’s way older than you are.”

  “Is that older than you, too?”

  Ben laughs as he puts his watch back on. “I wish it was.”

  * * *

  Kayla’s breathing and pulse return to normal. Ben tucks her back in.

  “Mr. Gardner?”

  His brow crinkles at the mention of his last name, until he remembers the nametag. “Call me Ben.”

  “Ben, could you stay with me while I sleep?”

  “Honey, I have to watch from the observation room, where all of the testing equipment and machines are. It’s just down the hall, but don’t worry—I can see you the whole time.” He points to the white camera nestled in the corner, near the ceiling.

  Kayla lies still beneath the smoothed sheets. With electrodes stuck to her temples and wires leading off behind the bed, she looks like a nervous cyborg. “Okay,” she whimpers.

  Ben reaches the door and pauses. He knows what to do: give a reassuring smile and return to the monitors. He’s a technician, not a psychologist. The data gleaned from Kayla’s stay will go in the hands of someone far more qualified…someone who can ask the right questions. Questions like the one which slowly, inexorably pulls Ben away from the door, back to the frightened girl.

  “What do you dream about, Kayla? What’s so scary?”

  He brushes a lock of blonde hair from her forehead.

  “Monsters,” is all she says.

  “I’d tell you they’re not real, but I guess a few people have said that before, huh?”

  Kayla’s eyes narrow and she turns her head, defeated. “Everybody.”

  “Okay, so I won’t be everybody. Tell me about them. If you want.”

  She rolls back, and Ben sees the fear in her eyes come alive.

  “They live in the dark places. Under my bed, in my closet, in the basement. When I dream, that’s where they wait for me…”

  Ben rests his hand on one of hers, a bump submerged beneath the covers.

  “I try to run. I try really hard, but it’s like I can’t remember how. Like I’m slow and stupid and can’t get away. They come after me. And they’re really hungry.”

  Standard nightmare stuff, Ben thinks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not that it matters to a terrified kid, but still.

  “You always wake up before they get you, right?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know they’re never going to actually eat you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why be scared, even when you’re not dreaming?”

  Kayla looks around the room, teeth clamping down on her lower lip. It’s as though she’s debating some great issue, weighing the pros and cons. Finally she turns back to Ben and whispers.

  “Because sometimes they come when I’m awake.”

  * * *

  Words may paint pictures, but Ben knows medical files to be poor artists. He’d scanned the report before Kayla arrived:

  Subject presents repeated night terrors

  Chronic pattern of sleep disturbance


  Delusions related to loss of mother

  The last symptom clangs in Ben’s memory and suddenly he’s strayed into waters far too deep for a technician. He can’t help but focus on the one word—delusions—and long for the simplicity of the observation room. The monitors and machines do not cry, nor do they wear anxious eyes or wavering lips. Most of all, they don’t believe in monsters.

  Tentative, Ben wades a step deeper. “Kayla, monsters can’t get you. Not here, not anywhere.”

  “Yes they can. They took my mommy away.”

  The sadness in her voice almost overwhelms the final words Ben knows from the file: subject abandoned by single mother at age five. Admitted to foster care. Impossible, he thinks, to imagine the pain and loneliness Kayla knows so early in life. Not so difficult, however, for a child to blame invisible beasts rather than the universe’s cold truth: sometimes parents leave.

  “Sweetie, your mommy…”

  “They took her.” Ben feels her hand slip away beneath the blanket and small arms cross firmly over her chest. “I know.”

  She is certain, in the same way Ben is positive further questions about her mother will be futile. He tries a different tack.

  “These monsters…you’ve seen them? In real life?”

  “No. But I hear them. Sometimes.”

  “What do they sound like?”

  Kayla hesitates, as though unsure of the right words. Her eyes scan the ceiling until something clicks. “A squirrel got stuck in our attic once. I heard him go crazy trying to get out. Scratching really loud. Two days he scratched, all day and all night, but then the noise just stopped. Mommy said he must have gotten out the way he got in.”

  “Probably,” Ben says, trying in vain to dismiss the mental image of a bloody-pawed squirrel starving to death in the dark above Kayla’s head.

  “That’s what they sound like,” the little girl says. Her voice softens. “Except bigger. And there’s more than one.”

  “How many more?”

  “I can’t count that high.”

  A shudder starts along his spine but Ben does his best to stifle it. Kayla looks like she’s endured so many shudders, they no longer matter—the least he can do is be strong for her. The teary expression Ben saw when he burst into the room has now transformed into the thousand-yard stare of a hardened combat veteran; horribly out-of-place on the face of a child. The distant eyes make him want to say anything…do anything…to wipe away the despondency. Even if it means trying to reason away a nine-year-old’s delusions.

  “Squirrels get stuck in my attic all the time. Birds, too,” he says. “They make even more noise than the squirrels. If I heard them when I was half-asleep in the middle of the night, I’d think they were monsters too. If I didn’t know any better.”

  He waits for a response but no words come. Kayla stiffens, looks around the small room. She peers at the low ceiling, raises up to stare at the coat closet directly across from the bed, then returns her gaze to Ben.

  “Does this place have an attic?” she finally says.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Then they’re not birds. Or squirrels.”

  “How do you know?” Ben asks. The apprehension in her features spreads to his own.

  “Because I hear them right now.”

  * * *

  It’s silly, he thinks. The dread seeping through his bones is artificial; a product of imagination run amok. Ben hears nothing but the distant call of the observation room—although a growing part of him knows the monitors and devices aren’t offering mere simplicity now. It’s safety, too.

  The irrational feeling recalls a far-off time, one when Ben lay in a tiny bed just like Kayla, peering at the ceiling and praying for morning. He takes a final stab at allaying her fears; distract her from the anxiety.

  “Y’know, when I was your age, I had a horrible time sleeping, too. That’s why I love this job so much. I get to help people who suffer like I did.”

  She props up, interested. “Did you have bad dreams?”

  “No…but I was super-afraid of the dark. I imagined all kinds of scary things were waiting for me to fall asleep. But I got over it.”

  “How?”

  Ben smiles. “My dad got me a nightlight. A tiny bulb, shaped like an old-fashioned lantern. He plugged it into the wall near my bed. It would shine on me all night long, and I imagined the light protected me from anything that wanted to hurt me.”

  “Did it work?” Kayla asks. Ben cocks an eyebrow at her, and she giggles. The sound is like its own beam of sunshine in the small room. “Sorry. That was a silly question.”

  Ben brushes her apology away. “Not silly at all. That nightlight stayed in my room for five years. Worked like a charm. Then I got old enough to realize nothing was actually IN the dark, no matter how hard I believed it when I was little.”

  Kayla breathes a bit easier, but Ben knows she’s far from convinced. He remembers a look in her eyes that was convincing, though…

  “Even if I did believe there was something waiting for me, I wouldn’t need that nightlight anymore. I have a permanent one that will always shine, day or night. Well, at least for twenty years.”

  The little girl’s brow scrunches, then arches high. She grabs for his wrist. “Your watch!”

  “Correct. I never take it off, even in the shower. It’s waterproof.”

  “Coooool.” Kayla approves. The girl’s tiny fingers rub away a smudge from the crystal face. Her monsters seem farther away now.

  “Would you like to wear my watch tonight? Keep the monsters away?”

  At the mention of the m-word, Ben knows he’s made an error. It doesn’t take an EKG to know her pulse increases. The imaginary sounds are back.

  Her words squeak out. “I don’t think it will help.”

  A rush of protectiveness surges in Ben’s chest. “Then let me.” He stands up. “Where do you hear them?”

  Kayla pulls the blanket up near her neck and bobs her head once across the room. “From the closet.”

  Ben grins and raises an arm to his chest. He imagines the gas-fueled light glowing like a protective ward. “I’ll check it out,” he says and takes a step toward the coat closet.

  “No!” Kayla cries out. The volume both surprises and frightens the technician, who pauses mid-step. “Mommy checked under my bed, and that’s when they took her! She never came back.”

  “Sweetie, trust me—I’ll be fine.” Even without a psychology degree, Ben knows three words stronger than any delusion: seeing is believing. “My nightlight is always on, protecting me.”

  Kayla eyes the watch. Ben sees her faith restored. Barely. “Just a quick look, okay?’ she whimpers.

  The technician nods in agreement and walks to the closet door. He grips the knob with his left hand, while his right arm holds the watch in front like a knight’s shield. Just as he twists and pulls, an image flashes in his mind—dozens of hungry maws below red eyes, waiting not-so-patiently in the darkness, ready to pounce on the first person foolish enough to release them. The door opens, his breath catches, and the closet reveals…

  Kayla’s pink jacket. Hangers. A folded cot.

  Nothing.

  When his heart does him the service of resuming its rapid thumping, Ben turns to Kayla. “See?”

  She cannot, because her face is buried beneath the blanket. At Ben’s prodding, slowly the blonde curls emerge, along with a single open eye. The other is squeezed shut with a ferocity Ben can only pretend to comprehend. He waits for her to say something…anything. She doesn’t.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he finally says. Still, the little Cyclops stares into the closet without speaking. On impulse, frustrated with her silence, Ben backs fully into the closet and closes the door. It’s only shut for a fraction of a second before whipping open. The air rushes past his face and he shows Kayla he’s unharmed. Both eyes are open now, and she sits fully upright in bed, forehead pulling the electrodes tight behind her.

  As if to prove beyo
nd a shadow of a doubt her fear is baseless, Ben grabs the knob again. When he pulls the door a second time, it accelerates toward him harder than before. Harder than it should—with more force than his muscles exert.

  When it slams, Kayla screams.

  * * *

  The jarring impact of door against frame tumbles Ben backward. He clenches in total darkness, anticipating the impact of skull against the back of the three-foot-deep closet.

  It never comes.

  He teeters past the point where the drywall should interrupt his descent. At the last moment, his arms instinctively fling down to break his fall. The heels of his palms stab into the ground, and much to Ben’s surprise, that’s what he feels— ground. Not floor. Not the ever-present linoleum of the clinic. His sore palms explore the surface and recognize unyielding stone. Cool and damp. Like a cave.

  Crazy, but feeling (much like seeing) is believing, too. Touch is also the only sense available because Ben is surrounded by black. No sight, no sound either, until he breaks the silence with his own voice. “What the hell?” The words don’t reverberate off of walls. They carry away from him. Far away. Whatever the space may be, it’s big.

  He pulls himself standing, a difficult task with zero visual cues. Tentative hands reach in front, looking for a knob that can’t possibly be more than a step away. Ben takes one. Then another. Then five. No door.

  As he adjusts to the confusing void, his eyes are drawn to the one thing he can see: his watch. The glowing dial and markers may be barely noticeable in a lit room, but in total blackness, they are beacons to Ben’s expanding pupils. He can see his arm, chest, and his nametag in the green haze.

  My permanent nightlight, he thinks. Still protecting me.

  In the distance, impossibly far, he hears a voice. Muffled but still recognizable.

  Ben. Come back. Come back now, Kayla says. Sobbing. He remembers the closet, the falling sensation, and everything makes sense.

  I hit my head. I’m unconscious in the closet. Dreaming. It makes perfect sense, and explains the void. Ben’s pulse slows.

  Until he hears them.

  Not like squirrels. Not skittering and light. These are heavy claws scraping against rock. The noise starts like hail against a rooftop…slow and indistinct at first…then building to a roar. A stampede of talons, distant, but moving closer.