N I G H T M A R E S

Danny awoke with a start. The echoing of thunder pounded outside. He quickly turned on his bed-side lamp, which cast an eerie glow around his room. He checked the time on his pewter-dragon clock, and discovered it was as early as it felt.

He didn’t quite know why, but Danny felt he should get up. Not thinking to take his flashlight, Dan went down the pitch-black hall from his room to the living room.

In the living room, he could see alright... there must be a full moon out...

But it was raining. He hadn’t noticed it before... maybe it just started... but it was raining. If it was raining, it would be over cast, and the moon shouldn't shine.

Dan, thinking he was just stupid after all, paid it no mind, and went about closing windows so that the rain wouldn’t get in. The rate at which the lightning struck increased. The setting was pretty spooky, and Dan thought this would make a cool story he could put a plot to. He got paper, a pen and his flashlight and began to write.

Having written nothing before in his life, except book reports for school, he wrote a really bad story.

While writing, he watched his flashlight’s light’s reflection in the TV drift from one side to the next, with no help from a moved flashlight, so he put that in. He tried to think of a plot, but came up with nothing.

So he went to bed.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

About an hour later, he awoke again. The thunder was louder now... and the rain poured down hard. Once again, he turned on his lamp, and decided to get something to drink, then go back to bed.

As he passed the front door, he glanced out into the rain. He saw a dark form, which he couldn’t identify, run across the driveway.

Dan wiped his mind of the few ounces of fear the filled his mind, telling himself it was just the ugly neigbour’s dog, off his leash again. This usually worked (why would he lie to himself?), but not this time.

While drinking straight from the carton of milk in the kitchen, the lights went out. A power failure made it perfect. He wanted to go to sleep now, but he accidentally did something stupid.

Dan glanced out the kitchen window.

Lightning struck.

When everything lit up, Dan saw a man-sized shadow standing outside. When the flash was over, Dan was quick to drop the carton of milk and shine his flashlight out the window.

Nothing there.

Across the house, Dan heard a door that led outside open and close. His first thought was ‘Oh hell’.

Whatever he saw outside was now inside. Only bad could come from this.

He ran to grab a broom from the closet. He felt this was very sensible, because if it wasn’t a walking corps of some form, it was an intruder. But after an inspection of the house, he found it was nothing. Not knowing whether to start screaming or run out into the night, he stood there.

Then the lights came on!

Dan jumped higher than he had ever tried to before at the spontaneous resurrection of the houses electrical supply, but he was glad it was back. As the power returned, eerie light filled the house (opposed to petrifying darkness, this was a pleasant change). He heard the VCR whining to reset itself to a comfortable position.

But it didn’t stop whining. Dan watched it as it whined and plinked ‘12:00’ furiously at him for about a minute, then thought of something he should have done a long time ago. He ran to his parent’s bedroom.

He kicked open the door and ran to the bed. To his horror, he found it was empty. At the same moment he found no trace of his parents, a bolt of lightning struck nearby, slaughtering a tree in a yard a few houses down. The VCR, convulsing from it’s continuous resetting, fell of the TV and smashed against the floor.

Dan could now feel the evil that was in his house. He could hear it moving. He could feel it’s breath like icy dagger play across the standing hairs on the back of his neck. He could smell it’s horrific power. This was the frightener. And the only thing Danny couldn’t do was see it.

Terrifying visions of this Horror filled his head. He heard this thing moving around in his parent’s closet. So he ran through the house and into the garage, and grabbed a hatchet. Then something spooky happened.

The rain stopped. Dead.

The lights in the garage hummed, grew brighter, and exploded. The door into the garage burst open.

The frightener flew across the walls like a shadow and disappeared.

Dan found and lit some emergency flares to dispel the darkness. he wouldn’t let this thing take him.

He felt a hand grab his shoulder and whirl him around. He swung the hatchet with all his might, as it slipped from his grasp and flew out a closed window.

He opened his eyes and gazed into the Frightener’s eyes. It had no eyes. It had pits darker than night. It had no nose or ears either. But it had a mouth... a wide mouth, lined with teeth in need of dental rescue. And it had it’s face. Which grinned at Dan...

Danny screamed, louder than anything he had ever heard before.

He met the frightener.