Forest Under the Bed 1: don’t be afraid (Patreon)

Welcome to Forest Under the Bed, a middle grade horror novel I'm casually working on between Fox's Tongue and fanfiction (goal is traditional publication, if future editors be willing, so this one is not destined for RoyalRoad).

Your regularly scheduled Fox's Tongue update is still on track for the usual weekend/early-next-week posting.

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Faustia hadn’t been afraid of the dark since she was six and she realized her dad was more scared than she’d ever be. He’d woken up when she screamed and run into her room like it was his heart that was pounding and when he’d found her curled up under her sheets he’d pulled them back and scooped her up, and it wasn’t a piggyback ride he gave her, it was a Watch My Back, Kiddo.

Her mom yawned in the doorway of her parent’s bedroom as her dad turned on every light in the house. Her hair was long back then, and she’d let Faustia pick the color, which is why she looked like someone had dipped her into the bluest of skies. “What are you two doing?”

“Fortifying,” her dad said, which wasn’t a word Faustia understood when she was six, but it meant digging out the box of flashlights from the basement and checking the batteries in each and every one, and shining them into every shadow under her bed and in her closet that hadn’t been chased away by all the other lights.

She never asked why her dad had so many flashlights. They needed them and they were there, and that made sense when she was six.

When they were sure there was nothing scary anywhere (and after mom had come back from the kitchen with microwaved mugs of hot chocolate and an armful of snacks, because if they were going to be awake at two in the morning they might as well make it a party), Faustia and her mom curled up on either side of her dad, back on Faustia’s bed. He’d brought up another box from the basement, and now he opened it up and none of them cared that he left packing tape and cardboard all over her sheets.

This is how she met the Unhumble Guitar. It wasn’t his usual guitar: that one was green-black and shiny and electric. This one was dark red wood, scratched and chipped. It didn’t need any wires or amps, and after he’d hummed to himself and tuned it up, it thrummed like a fourth heartbeat on the bed. One that would keep all of them safe.

“This was my first guitar,” dad said, his fingers picking at the strings. “Got it when I was a little older than you. Whenever the monsters came, I played it.”

“And then they ran away?” Faustia asked.

“Something like that,” her dad said, and hummed a wordless song that wasn’t an answer at all.

When she woke up the next morning, her mom and dad were curled around her. Her mouth tasted like hot chocolate and cheetos. There were three flashlights on her nightstand. The Unhumble Guitar was propped up on a stand by her mirror, and she knew it was hers now.

She never let herself be afraid of the dark again. She couldn’t be, when she had her dad to protect.

* * *

Now she was twelve, and taking care of her parents was a full time job and nobody even paid her for it.

“You’re going to be late.” Faustia banged on the bathroom door and kept on banging, even though she wasn’t sure her mom could hear her over the music she was blasting. Head-pounding bone-shaking old people music. Faustia preferred classical, because Moonlight Sonata never made her ears ring.

“Give it up, kiddo,” her dad said, smirking. “She’ll be ready when she’s ready.”

“And you.” Faustia pointed a finger straight at him. “You can’t wear that.”

Her dad looked down at himself. “What?”

“There’s a hole in your hoodie.”

“We’re just dropping her off at the airport.”

“There are koala bears on your pants.”

“I’m not even getting out of the car.”

“Go change.”

“You don’t have to come! It’s four-thirty in the morning, why are you even awake?” Her dad threw up his hands. But he stalked off towards his room, so Faustia knew she’d won. One parent wrangled. She went back to pounding on the bathroom door.

Twenty minutes later, they were shoving boxes marked FRAGILE into the back of the van. Her mom’s drum set looked even bigger when it was all packed up. She was flying out to New York, and then Atlanta and LA and a list of other cities to play for her band. (Dad was only a backup in the band, and he wasn’t even that for this tour, because Someone Has to Stay Home With Faustia She Has School.) (Which was really really stupid, she could take care of herself, he should just go.)

They made it to the airport ten minutes late, and got all of mom’s baggage checked in. Then they stood there on the curb with the car idling, and hugged each other. Mom hugged dad and Faustia hugged mom and they all hugged each other and somehow her feet weren’t on the ground for that one, and she didn’t know which parent to blame as she giggle-scowled. Mom’s hair was in squeaky-toy-green spikes, still wet from being re-dyed this morning. Dad was wearing a gray three-piece suit, which was what he used for weddings, funerals, and to make fun of Faustia when she told him to change.

“Take care,” mom said.

“Love you,” dad said.

“You’re going to be super late,” Faustia said.

And then mom was running into the airport towards the security checkpoint, and Faustia and her dad were yawning their way back into the car. She had school in three hours, and he had work.

The drive home was darker than the drive there. Faustia didn’t notice it at first, but looking back, maybe her dad did. As she curled up in the passenger seat and let sleep sneak up on her, he sat up straighter. As they turned on the highway, he flipped on his high beams. There were fewer cars than on the way there. The streetlights overhead were turning off one by one as dawn came, except dawn wasn’t coming. The sky was dark and the moon and stars had gone somewhere else, and through her half-lidded eyes and sleepy mind that didn’t make any sense. She rubbed at her face, and sat up a little straighter.

Her dad turned the radio down, and then off. That was when her stomach started to squeeze down on itself, like it had when she was six years old, before he’d burst into her room and made everything better.

There were no cars now, and no streetlights. The last one flickered and abandoned them. The car’s high beams spread out over four empty lanes.

“No,” her dad said, quiet enough that probably he didn’t even know he’d said it.

“What’s happening?” Faustia asked.

“It’s not real,” her dad said, quiet quiet quiet, and his knuckles were white over the wheel.

“Dad,” she said, but what she meant was you’re scaring me.

Her dad took in a deep breath, and let it out. “Faustia. Where’s my guitar?”

Back in the house. In her bedroom, on its stand, under dust. Where it always was: she was taking piano lessons, not guitar. The Unhumble Guitar was with her ratty stuffed animals, and all the other toys she was too old for but still liked looking at. And for just a second she felt angry, really angry, panic-angry, like he’d given her a test without ever telling her what she was studying for and she knew it was the most important thing he’d ever asked her but she didn’t understand.

“It’s not here,” she said. “I don’t just carry it around, why would I—”

“That’s all right,” her dad said, calm and steady. “That’s just going to make things a little more difficult, but we’ll be all right. Listen. I’m going to step on the gas. When I do, you need to—”

She never learned what she needed to do. He never told her. Something endless and black and heavy dropped down on their car, like the night sky had coiled around them and squeezed. The high beams cut off with a crack-crack of popping glass, and the car’s frame squealed, and the only light was the tiny red Maintenance Required on the dashboard that meant her dad still hadn’t gotten the car in and why was she even noticing that right now—

The car jolted, turned sharply, rolled. Her seatbelt caught her as she rushed towards the ceiling and the seat hit her as she flipped back.

Faustia screamed.

Her dad sung. Wordless, nearly breathless, he sung.

The coiling darkness shrieked and bucked, and the car jerked so hard it felt like the world was going one way and she was going the other.

Then they stopped. Torn streamers of darkness fled. The moon came back, pale white against a dawn sky, spiderwebbed through by the cracks in the windshield. Her chest hurt under the seat belt. Her dad’s head was bleeding. And he was still singing, right up until the monster jumped onto the car’s hood and sunk its claws into the metal.

It looked like a wolf, if a wolf’s teeth snarled out of its mouth in tangled spikes, if a wolf’s pelt was covered in porcupine quills.

They’d crashed through the metal railing on the highway’s side and rolled down into the ditch. She could hear other cars, and sirens, and her dad’s singing stuttering to a stop as his head hung low. She could hear the monster breathing as it crouched.

The windshield shattered. That was the last thing she heard, until she woke up in the hospital to beeping and buzzing and wheelchairs rolling past in the hall and the doctor saying you’re a lucky girl as he checked over her bumps and bruises and the place where it hurt to take deep breaths. She had a bruise in the shape of her seatbelt, wrapped purple-green from waist to shoulder.

Your father will be fine, the doctor said (father, he said, because he didn’t know him, didn’t know that "father" was too dignified for her dad).

We’re just running a few tests, he said (and she wanted to say I’m twelve not six, just tell me what’s wrong with him, why isn’t he here).

Do you know how to contact your mom? he said.

It took her mom eighteen hours to get back, and Faustia was in-and-out awake for all of them. They didn’t let her see her dad until her mom came, and then they went together to a room down the hall, where her dad was laying under a hospital blanket. Hardly any bruises, no broken bones, just three little stitches in his forehead. But he hadn’t woken up at all, even though we can’t find anything wrong with him (the doctor said). Even though no no, don’t worry, his brain activity is perfectly normal, it’s like he’s just dreaming (the doctor could stop talking now.)

She and her mom stayed in the hospital that night, and Faustia kept all the lights on as everyone slept but her.

She couldn’t be afraid. She couldn’t be afraid, because monsters were real, and she had to protect her family.