Sirens Call Publications has recently released their
first Anthology titled
“Childhood
Nightmares: Under the Bed”
Childhood Nightmares is a collection of twelve tales of youthful terror
spun by twelve different authors recounting the horrors that creep and crawl
through a child’s imagination in the darkest hours of the night. Or is it?
Perhaps one of these so called ‘imagined’ tales is similar to one of your very
own. Has an unwitting author inadvertently tapped into your psyche without you
knowing it? You’ll have to read the stories to find out…
Those whispered tales of monsters hiding under the bed, or of the demons lurking in the shadowy corner where we dare not glance for fear that seeing them will make them all too real. Oh, how the innocent landscape of a child’s imagination lends fertile soil to horrors ready to be sown on the slightest of sounds; the tales and the terror they wreak on our youthful minds never quite leaves us.
We asked the authors in this collection to reach into the forgotten recesses of their twisted minds and share with us the tales of nightmares that can only thrive in the hidden corners of a child’s imaginings; the bogeyman under the bed, the outlandishly fiendish creature lurking in the dark, the slight murmur of sound coming from the hall… did you close the door completely?
Explore the myriad terrors that only a child can twist from nothing into some ‘thing’ in the span of a single rapid breath. Do you dare delve into your own memories? Perhaps you’ll start sleeping with the lights on again...
Tell us, who is Under the Bed?
Contributing Authors: Colin F. Barnes, Nina D'Arcangela, Phil
Hickes, Amber Keller,
Kim Krodel, Lisamarie Lamb,
John McIlveen, Kate Monroe, Brandon Scott,
Joshua Skye, Julianne Snow,
and Jack Wallen
Pick up a copy of Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed as either an
eBook or in print format from:
An excerpt from each of the stories in “Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed”
‘Madeleine’
- Julianne Snow
“Mommy.”
Nothing.
“Mommy?”
Still nothing. No tell-tale shuffling sound of socked feet on the
hardwood floor.
“MOMMY!”
Nothing… Where was she? How could she have not heard?
“MMOOOMMMMMYY!”
With tears streaming down her cherubic face, Stella wondered if her
dream had come true. As she debated running the short distance over the oaken
surface to her parent’s room, she listened intently for the sounds of her
mother’s imminent stirring.
Finally.
Stella heard the soft sounds of her mother’s footfalls in the
hallway. She was coming.
More tears welled up in her young throat.
As her door burst open, she was surprised to see the form of her
sister in the light of the hallway, a smell pervading the room unlike anything
she had ever smelled before. Burnt. Wet…”
‘Telling
Tales’ - Phil Hickes
“She’s here for yet another visit with her cat, Demdike. None of
which sounds too bad, you say? Lots of young boys have stuffy old grandmothers
and aunties that they have to put up with. And cats are cute and fluffy.
But Peter’s Aunt Alice scares him. In fact, she frightens him to
death. And her cat is just as bad, with fur as black as its soul.
That’s why he’s reluctant to go upstairs; because soon, Aunt Alice
will be up to tell him a bedtime story. It’s become something of a custom.
Peter was delighted when she first offered to come and tuck him in. Despite
feeling a little nervous in her presence, and a tiny bit afraid of her pinched,
lined face, white hair and bony limbs, she was a welcome female presence. For
the first few minutes it had been enjoyable too. She wrapped the sheets tightly
around him, clicked off the overhead light and turned on the lamp. He felt warm
and snug…”
But then she began to tell him the stories…”
‘Excess Baggage’ - Lisamarie Lamb
“And now Nigel could see someone. A small, round man in a pair of
white trousers and a deep blue shirt, sweat circles staining his underarms, his
stomach straining the buttons running down his chest, down his stomach. The
man’s curly dark hair rippled in the sunlight as he bobbed his head up and
down. He was peering out of a small gap between two houses. He was smiling,
beckoning to Nigel; and when Nigel moved towards him his smile began a grin,
all teeth and harmless joviality.
Nigel went to the man against his better judgment. He went against
his worst judgment, feeling strangely calm about it all, despite thinking he
had wandered far too far, into a bad area. Into the sort of area a tourist
shouldn’t go. And he had been caught. He felt rather stupid about the whole
thing, and rather sad about leaving Maggie and Bob. But there was a certain
inevitability about it all.
Even if Nigel couldn’t quite remember why…”
‘Timothy’ - Joshua Skye
“Quivering from fear, her teeth rattling in
her little head, hands trembling, she stared into the deep darkness to catch
any movement; the twinkling of an eye perhaps. Anything to let her know where
he was, out there in the darkness. There was nothing for a long time.
“Where are you?” she muttered in a squeaky
voice. Something moved in her peripheral vision. She turned. Fast, but not fast
enough. Perhaps it was nothing more than a shadow that had just blended with
the dark. “Timothy, you stop it. You stop it right now.” She tried to sound
like her mother, to mimic her authoritative tone, but it hadn’t worked. Her
voice had cracked and it trembled with her apprehension. “I know it’s you,” she
whispered, more to herself than to him.
She started to cry, she couldn’t help it.
Her tears streamed down her tiny face and there was a lump forming in her
throat. She had to fight to swallow; she had to fight to breathe.
Timothy began to mock her. “Timothy, please.
Stop it, Timothy! Go away, Timothy.” The sinister, scratchy voice seemed to
come from everywhere, the shadows, the darkness, under the desk, from behind
the stuffed animals, under the bed…”
‘Show and
Tell’ - Kate Monroe
“He belatedly realized that tonight, there had
still been no answer, no response. He leaned over the edge of the bed and
cautiously lifted the sheets.
“Are you there?”
A blast of fetid air; putrid, repellent.
Satisfied, Tommy continued.
“I wish they’d bloody die.” Awestruck by his bravery in making the
grand pronouncement, he allowed himself a few moments in which to savor the
forbidden words on his tongue before he spoke again. “Yeah, I do. I wish they’d
both just shut up and die.”
A sigh, no stronger than the breeze outside, lifted up the bed
sheets and danced around Tommy’s bare feet, curling up his toes as he pursed
his thin lips.
“What do you think, then?”
Before any answer could come from under the bed, shuffling footsteps
announced his great-aunt’s arrival in his room…”
‘The Confession of a Confirmed Has-Been’ - John
McIlveen
“I behaved for the first three months. I simply observed the
Hansons’ way of life, as I had with the two previous families. In my condition
I witness traits and habits often unnoticed by people in a more physical state,
like Scott's insistent nose picking and compulsion to wipe his findings on my
fireplace, or Bruce’s fixation with himself. If he spent any more time flexing
in front of a mirror, I fear he'd get himself pregnant.
I do grant people the privacy of their bedrooms and the facilities,
I’m not immoral - though discovering that Karen roams the house in nature's
garb when alone was pleasing. I may be dead, but I’m still a man.
My condition is also what allows me to view Kimberly with utmost
anonymity. In my spectral cloak, I track Kimberly about the house, watching as
she involved herself in childhood fantasies, oblivious to all else. I walked
with her through the garden, rejoiced with her, celebrating each discovery with
open-eyed wonder. I wallowed in that beautiful youthfulness that fades as we
become involved in the trivialities of adulthood…”
‘Seeing is Believing’ - Amber Keller
“At supper no one mentioned what had happened, and that was fine
with Timothy. It was strange, but he felt like if he talked about it, it would
make it more real.
When his parents went to bed, he stayed on the couch, saying he
would go up to bed soon, that he wanted to finish this television show first.
It was an easy lie, and they seemed to be happy that he wasn’t bringing the rat
back up, so they allowed it.
He went to the closet in the hall and scooped up a blanket and extra
pillow to take back to the couch when he noticed his bedroom door was shut. It
had been open when he went to the bathroom after supper. Looking back he paused
before going back to the living room.
From sitting on the couch, Timothy had a view of his bedroom door in
his peripheral vision. He couldn’t help but be aware of the door since it was
odd that it was shut…”
‘Bent Metal’ - Nina D’Arcangela
“I’m now in full blown panic mode racing down the stairs to the
echoing sound of the police dispatcher screaming into the phone “stay in the
house - don’t go near the corner!”
I hit the front hall and see that the door is wide open… oh, God
please, oh please, oh no… don’t let Alan
be out there, please let the door be open for some other reason – maybe mom or
dad went out to help, please let that be it.
I’m only three houses from the corner; three houses from the
wreckage in the street; three houses from my own sanity shattering…. The second
my bare foot leaves the safety of the house and hits the front porch I know
something is horribly wrong. Somehow I know its Alan, and he’s in trouble.
The dread that overcomes me is suffocating. I can hardly breathe as
I try to run towards the street… but my legs feel like I’m running in quick
sand. I’m moving as hard and as fast as I can, but the corner may as well be a
mile away in my distorted perception.
Oh God! My head is spinning as fast as my legs are churning, someone
is screaming – I think it might be me! Finally I make it to the corner and see
what an unholy mess of tangled metal the two vehicles that couldn’t avoid each
other have become…”
‘Shades of Red’ - Colin F. Barnes
“Two thuds come from beyond the door. Probably just his mother
falling, dropping the bottle. Hollow
rasps come from the corner of Mitchell’s dark bedroom: between the old, rickety
wardrobe that creaks if you walk too close to it, and the dresser with the
broken drawer front.
Mitchell conjures images of Scamp, their pet dog: a mongrel of
various terriers and common working dogs. He pictures his little whiskery face,
his excited panting. Anything to stop thinking about…the Shade. But it won’t go
away. It’s stuck in his mind like a leech. Growing fat on the fear.
Is it darker in that corner than normal? Is that an outline of
something…is it…moving?
Mitchell whirls away and pulls the duvet over his face. Sweat forms
quickly on his forehead as he breathes hot air under the stifling cover. It’s
not real, just your imagination. It’s not—
A quiet laughter. The voice muffled as if obstructed. Mitchell
raises the duvet slightly. Just enough so he can peer out and check that corner
again. He wishes he hadn’t. A pair of red orbs float in the gap. He screams for
his mother. No answer…”
‘Socks’ - Brandon Scott
“A dull thump came from across the room. Arthur's eyes shifted from the empty cup to
the dresser standing against the far wall.
He swallowed the water in his mouth; it felt like a brick sliding down
his dry throat. He was feebly attempting
to put the glass back on the nightstand when the thump came again. The cup slipped from his fingers and tumbled
to the carpet below. A barely audible
thunk filled his ears as the carpet cradled the falling glass. He peered over the edge of the bed to confirm
the glass hadn't broken but, didn't bother picking it up.
His eyes returned immediately to the drawer across the room. When his grandfather had given him the
dresser, it came with strict instructions that the drawer in the upper right
hand corner was to be used for socks and socks alone, and was never to be
empty. A minimum of one sock was to be
kept in the drawer at all times. The
other five drawers could house anything Arthur's heart desired, but that drawer
was to hold only socks. His grandfather
made him promise that he would abide by the one and only regulation before
unloading the dresser from his truck.
When the boy asked why this was his grandfather had replied with the
simple phrase, "because that drawer is for Socks." Arthur didn't know it at the time but, his
grandfather was referring to the creature, not the item of clothing that shared
the same name…”
‘Forgotten’ - Jack Wallen
“The haunting started just a few days ago. It was the evening of June sixth ... Dylan's sixth birthday. His mother had made his dreams come true and allowed him to invite his best of friends over for a slumber party. To that day, sleepovers were forbidden. That was before the boy's father had left. Since the departure, everything seemed so much easier. The yelling ceased. The crying stopped. The bruises healed. The night of the slumber party, Dylan heard the first gentle whispers.
The other boys were fast asleep, after too much candy and too little control. They had enjoyed cartoons, video games, and shrieks of laughter only young boys could produce. But once the celebration was little more than a fading memory, some other joy came out to play.
The sound was little more than a soft wind breezing underneath his closet door. The melody of a light wind buzzing through Halloween trees or winter snowscapes. His ears were the only ones to take notice. No other sleep was threatened by the soft sound…”
‘Baby Teeth’
- Kim Krodel
“She
adds every tooth she gets to her disgusting smile. But the screws keep growing out of her
gums. She never runs out of space for
more teeth.”
“Why does she want them?”
Brian’s voice was small. His eyes
bugged, as if the skeletons stacked in God’s closet were tumbling out at his
feet.
“For biting, Dummy. She likes
to eat little kids.” Cal grinned as he
spoke. "If she bites you with her
screws, your skin gets stuck to 'em, so she likes teeth better; so she doesn't
have to floss so much."
“No, she doesn’t. She’s
nice—she gives presents! Mom said!”
“That’s what Mom wants you to think.
Otherwise you’d freak out about it.”
Brian blinked, staring and processing; weighing his brother’s words
against those he had gathered from adults.
“See this?” Cal rolled up a
pant leg to reveal a jagged run of lumpy, silver skin. “She bit me hard the first tooth I lost
‘cause I didn’t know what was coming.
Now I’m big enough to fight her off.”
Calvin posed like a weight-lifter…”
