he expected to open the door and see the woods again.
But he was back at home.
In bed.
At night.
Christopher looked around his room. Everything seemed normal. He turned to the antique bookshelf that smelled like baseball gloves. The one his mother filled with his very own books. Everything looked to be in perfect order. The picture of his father rested safely on top. His closet door was closed. The door to his bedroom was locked from the inside. He was in the imaginary world. It was night when the imaginary people were supposed to wake up. But he felt perfectly safe. Christopher breathed a sigh of relief. He threw off the blanket and sat up, getting ready to swing his legs to the floor.
That’s when he heard the breathing.
Coming from under the bed.
Christopher froze. He looked at either side of the bed, waiting for a hand. A claw. Something to reach out and pull him under the bed by his ankles. But nothing came. The person just waited. Breathing. Licking its lips. Christopher thought he could jump and run out of his bedroom. But the door was locked. Not to keep anything out. Locked to keep him in.
Scccratch. Scccratch. Scccratch.
The noise startled Christopher. He looked at the window. The tree in his backyard had somehow moved closer to the house. The tire swing hung like a noose. The tree reached an old withered branch to the glass. Scraping back and forth like an arthritic finger.
Scccratch. Scccratch. Scccratch.
The breathing got louder under the bed. Christopher had to get out of here. Right now. He stood on his bed and brought himself up to his tiptoes. He looked out of his bedroom window into the backyard. He thought he could jump off his bed, land, and climb out.
But the entire backyard was filled with mailbox people.
They stood like laundry drying in the breeze. A hundred deer waited next to them. Lying on the ground. Lurking in the shadows.
Scccratch. Scccratch. Scccratch.
Christopher frantically looked around his room for a way out. His bedroom door was locked. The backyard was filled. He had nowhere to go. Christopher quieted his mind. The nice man said he had powers here. Use them!
Christopher saw a hand reaching up from under the bed.
Christopher jumped off the bed just as the hand grabbed for him. He landed off balance and tripped. He turned back to see hands crawling out from under the bed. The hands were not attached to bodies. Just voices screaming from the shadows.
“COME HERE, CHRISTOPHER!”
They grabbed his feet and ankles and began to pull him back under the bed. Christopher twisted blindly, shaking the hands loose like spiders off a back. A dozen screams erupted as Christopher kicked the hands back to the darkness. He struggled to his feet and ran to his bedroom door. He reached to unlock the doorknob.
Until it began to turn from the other side.
“Can he hear us?” the voices whispered.
Christopher froze. He backed away to his bedroom window and looked down into the backyard. The mailbox people moved the strings linking them together from the right hand to the left. Then, they took their free right hands and reached up like synchronized swimmers to unzip their eyelids at the same time. The metal gleaming in the moonlight.
The mailbox people were waking up.
Christopher turned back into the room to find his bedroom door open. People stood next to the bed with their arms folded behind their backs. They smiled. Chunks of the wood door still stuck in their teeth.
“Hi, Christopher,” they said.
They brought their arms in front of them. Their arms were stubs. Rounded flesh. Chopped off and cauterized.
“Where did you put our hands? Thief!”
They started running at him. Christopher threw open the bedroom window. The deer circled the backyard like piranhas in a tank. If he jumped down, they would tear him to pieces. There was nowhere to go…
…but the roof.
Christopher grabbed the ledge of the bay window and pulled himself up just as the people behind him jumped at him. They reached for his feet, but their bare arms betrayed them, and they slipped, falling into the backyard.
The deer were on them in seconds.
Biting. Ripping. Clawing.
Christopher climbed onto the roof and hid behind the chimney. The first sliver of the blue moon rose above the horizon as night descended. He looked out over his neighborhood. The grey concrete of the street was slowly turning red. The pavement looked squishy. Like after a rain. But this was not rain. It smelled too much