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One Foot - Prologue

There is one thing to be frightened. For me, being frightened is a temporary thing. It's like watching a scary movie. As the girl rounds the corner and the ax murderer lunges at her, you're frightened. You feel a rush of adrenaline and your heart pounds and, once the girl's dead, it's over.

It is an entirely different thing to be afraid. Fear is a thing that cling to you for as long as you'll let it. Many would say that it's only in the mind.

Right now, I think I believe them.

There is a thing that follows me. It's been there since I was little. I remember being put to be beneath the far too expensive comforter dressing my little bed, my parents hovering over me like kindly sharks and smiling with the most abundant pride.

They were always so happy to have me around.

"You sleep well, my little Archie. You know we love you, right?" my mother would whisper. She said it every night. I was seven then and it was starting to be a little embarrassing. But, there were no peers in my bedroom at night and my father was just as gushy as she sometimes. So, I beamed and nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

They tucked me in and said their goodnights and, as many overprotective parents do, stood at the doorway with smiles on their faces as they turned off the light and halfway shut the door.

I used to love the dark. It wasn't scary. It was a tool you used for hide-and-seek or when you heard your father bellow your name through the house because he'd found something you quite obviously broke. The dark was my friend.

But, as I turned in my bed and settled my eyes on one of the far corners of the room it seemed the darkness shattered and became something hideous.

A thing lurked there. It was a short, squat thing with rags that looked like fur and long, gnarled tree-branch arms that dragged the floor. It had fingers with nails that looked sharp and dirty and teeth that formed glittering, dagger-sharp rows that spread into a sinister and amused grin. But, of all those things my little mind could have feared it wasn't the deadly, bodily weapons that made the blood sink from my head and that first, bloodcurdling cry shock the foundations of the house.

It was its eyes. Two, beady red orbs that glared at me through the darkness and seemed to illuminate the other ghastly things that creature was made of.

Everything after that scream was a blur. I remember my parents, frantic and worried, trying to quell my screams and the idiots whisking me out of my bed, down the hall, and down to the first floor. But, the house was mostly dark and I could see the thing shuffling after me, moving quickly and matching my escape foot by foot.

"Turn on the lights! Turn on the lights!" I sobbed and as the bulbs lit the thing crawled back to the shadows at the edge of the main hall and up the dark staircase that led back to the second story.

I cried for hours and they could do nothing to help me. I was tortured now and they knew it would not be a temporary thing for as I writhed in their arms and screamed bloody murder my eyes were locked on the staircase and on that thing that grinned at me from the darkness above.

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