The horror of the bed

 I turned seven then, and school had just started. My father left us, and my mother and I moved to another city to live with my grandmother. I was very afraid of the dark, and my mother slept in the same room with me. But I was scared anyway, so my mom left a small lamp on at night. A cozy semi-darkness was created in the room. And my fears never went away. I had nightmares, it was scary to sleep alone, and I ran to my mom in the middle of the night.

I was sleeping on the children's corner. It's such a thing — there's a desk and a wardrobe at the bottom, above them is a bed with a sideboard. There's a ladder on the side to climb up. The design turned out to be high, almost two meters high. So much so that my mother couldn't even reach me when I was sleeping. And in the mornings she would wake me up by standing on a stool, or just gently calling from below.

It was late autumn, the time of the darkest nights. In the early morning, it seemed that you could still sleep and sleep. When I woke up at night, I thought it was time to get up for school. I was sure I heard my mother's voice. And sure enough, my mother called me softly again: "Kotka, honey, get up! Get down, let's eat, and go to school."

Sleepy, I sat up in bed and looked down, expecting to see a smile on my mother's face. But Mom wasn't there. I looked over the edge of the bed. Mom was sleeping peacefully.

My first impulse was to get down and crawl under the covers with her, to fall asleep next to her in the warmth of her body. I had already opened my mouth to ask, "Mom, can I come to you?" when my mother's voice came from below again: "Fuzzy, come here."

But I saw that Mom didn't say that. Her eyes were closed, and her lips didn't move. My skin was covered with goosebumps, but I wasn't so scared from sleep. It was more of a perplexity.

I looked more closely at the shadow at the head of my mother's bed. Something was wrong there... The bedside lamp was on the shelf above Mom's bed, at the foot. So there was a thick shadow on the side of the bed. And in that shadow, I was horrified to see an even darker spot. It looked like a blob with blurred edges. Cords extended from the spot like tentacles. And some of them reached out to my mom, disappeared into her hair. Tiny golden sparks ran along these cords from Mom's head to the center of the blob.

When I looked down, my head was over the edge of the bed. And the blob seemed to "see" me. She crawled closer to the stairs leading to me. Several tentacles reached out in my direction. Terror flooded me, and my heart seemed to stop beating...

Mom moaned in her sleep, turned her head. The tentacles attached to her tightened. The blob moved away from the ladder, and the free tentacles bent toward Mom.

I clamped my mouth shut so as not to scream, and huddled in the corner of the bed away from the stairs, pulling up the covers. I wanted to rush to my mom, tear those creepy tentacles away from her, but fear held me down. I was crying, shoving a corner of the blanket into my mouth, trying not to give myself away with sobs. I was scared, so scared...

There was no sound from below; I didn't know where the thing was. Is it still near my mother, or is it crawling towards me, clinging to the stairs with tentacles? What did I want then — for it to forget about me, or, conversely, for this thing to switch to me, leaving my mom alone? I don't know. I was dying of terror. I was afraid for my mom, and I was afraid of that thing. I was trembling, and I cowered under the precarious protection of the blanket, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

Nothing was happening, and I probably passed out from the strain. When I woke up, it was already dawn. Streaks of light filtered through the bamboo curtain. The horror of my experience hit me with renewed force. But I was very thirsty, and the bed was wet—I wet myself in my sleep.

In the morning light, I wasn't so scared anymore, and I decided to look out. The room looked familiar, there were no dark spots, Mom was asleep. A glass of water was on the dresser, and my thirst became unbearable, so I ventured downstairs.

When I got drunk, I thought — should I go to sleep with my mom or wake her up? We obviously overslept. I didn't really like school, so I carefully climbed up to my mother — I wanted to lie down against the wall.

At first, I was confused by my mother's strange immobility — she usually felt that I was sneaking towards her, and hugged me, wrapped me in a blanket. She seemed to be fast asleep now... Snuggling up to my mom, I was scared again—she wasn't as warm as always. In fear, I began to shake my mother, calling out to her —to no avail. I ran to my grandparents with a roar and woke them up.

An ambulance arrived, and my mother was taken away. I kept asking what was wrong with my mom, and Grandma was crying. Then they told me that my mother had died in her sleep at night.

I am haunted by questions: What happened then? Maybe I felt my mother's death in my dream and saw an overly vivid nightmare? Or was something attacking us, and Mom was holding it back, preventing it from reaching me? I don't know.

But I still don't fall asleep on low beds.