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The Revenge

Nobody took notice of the clock on the wall that ticked away the seconds of the day. Nobody that is except the little boy. He sat on the floor with his toys strewn around him, pajamas on, looking like a little angel; his eyes never left the clock. He knew, knew the power that the clock had. It was a dark thing, taking away minutes, hours until night time came and he was sent to bed; counting down until the time HE came.

HE had been coming for a while now, every night for almost a month. The little boy thanked God (or whatever was up there) that HE had never come out. But that didn't mean that HE wasn't there, the little boy knew he was. He could hear him in the closet, scratching around in there, breathing, laughing that bone chilling gurgling laugh, a laugh thick with clotted blood. And he had that promise, the same promise every night. The childish voice floated out from the closet, telling the little boy that he would find a way out of the closet, and very soon.
The boy's eyes widened as the clock ticked its last second before nine. His mom looked up, ready for the fight that was to come. She just didn't get it; Mike had never been fussy about bed before now. And fact, since the accident, he had been happy to get to bed. Probably thrilled to get away from the sadness in the air since then.
Finally, at half past nine, after his toys were put away, after countless drinks and spending twenty minutes hiding in the bathroom and fighting with his parents, the Dad carried the kicking and screaming child up to his room and locked the door.
Mike was in total darkness with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. He huddled into the farthest corner of his bed, the sheets pulled up to his chin. He could faintly hear his parents downstairs, but the noise seemed to be light years away from him, as if he was in a distant, separate universe. He watched the digital clock on the nightstand as the minutes passed. Each second seemed an eternity, and as 9:45 changed to 11:02 he slowly fell asleep, huddled in the corner.
The little red numbers of the clock kept changing, a childish version of a doomsday clock. It slowly inched to 1:00, and a soft sound woke Mike up with a start. Was it here again? Was this the night the promise would come true? He remained still, trying not to breath; he hoped the thing in the closet wouldn't notice him if he didn't move. The silence was deafening, and he was starting to think that he had imagined the noise when a low scraping,

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