“Adam, what are you doing?” Adam looked up and gave his father a sheepish grin, “Checking under the bed for monsters.” His father, Charles, sighed. He’d thought they’d beaten this fear over a year ago, “And did you find any?” “No,” Adam admitted, “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Billy says they turn invisible in the light, but you sometimes you can see the scratches from their claws on the floor and,” he lowered his voice to a frightened whisper, “I saw several scratches under my bed.” His father glared at his ten-year-old nephew, who gazed back coolly, completely unfazed at being called out. So this was where this had all started. “There are no such thing as monsters; Billy is just trying to scare you.” “You shouldn’t say that,” Billy replied, speaking in that weird harsh whisper he always used. Only one day into the week he’d promised his sister to babysit for, and it was already grating on Charles’ nerves, “They don’t like it when you say they don’t exist.” Adam was nodding emphatically, “He’s right, Daddy. Billy told me about the ones under the bed and in the closet and when I told him he was making things up, there was… something moved in the closet. I heard it.” He stared at Charles, wide-eyed. Charles gave an annoyed sigh, “Something just fell over.” He marched over to the closet and yanked it open. An old vampire costume, the one Adam had worn for trick-or-treat when he was three, lay on the floor. “See, your old costume just fell down, that’s all,” Charles explained, hanging it back up on the rack. “Yeah, but what knocked it down?” Billy wondered. Charles rounded on him. “Okay, Billy, that’s enough! I’m warning you…” “It’s okay if you say the ones under the bed and in the closet don’t exist,” Billy continued, as if he wasn’t speaking, “They might get a bit upset, but they’re just trying to scare you. They feed off of nightmares, so they won’t do much if you aren’t afraid. Even the ones in the basement aren’t too bad. Except for the one behind the red door. It’s not a good idea to make him mad.” “Okay, this is getting beyond ridiculous,” Charles declared, pinching the bridge of his nose, “The bed, the closet and now the basement too? And a red door? We don’t even have a single red door in this house, let alone one in the basement!” “Yes you do,” Billy replied, evenly, “It’s behind the stack of old crates you keep down there.” Charles sighed, “I put those crates down there only a month ago. There’s no door behind them; it’s just a plain wall!” “How do you know for sure?” Billy asked, “If you haven’t gone and checked?” “Why would I need to check?” Charles demanded, “There was no door there a month ago; there’s no door now! Doors don’t appear out of thin air.” “Normal doors, true,” Billy agreed, “But this one’s not normal. It’s his door.” “Okay, that does it!” Charles exploded, “I’m going to go down there and show you that there’s no door, definitely no red door, and after I do, you better apologize to Adam for scaring him and to me for wasting my time!” He stomped over to the basement door and headed down towards the old crates. Behind him, he could hear Billy’s footsteps and Adam’s furtive tiptoes, both stopping before the first landing. That was fine. He’d clear out the boxes and then call them down, so Adam wouldn’t have time to get all worked up before he saw that his older cousin was making things up. Charles shoved all of the crates away from the wall… and stared. Where the crates had been was a weathered, red-painted door, exactly as Billy had said. He could have sworn it had only been a blank wall when he’d put the crates in front, otherwise he would have picked a different spot to stack them. What even was inside? A storage closet perhaps? Or… He tried the door knob, half expecting it to be rusted shut. Instead, the knob turned smoothly beneath his hand and the door swung inward, the opposite of what he was expecting. Shouldn’t a closet open outwards? The interior was so dark, he couldn’t see anything inside. Maybe he should go back for a flashlight…? Up on the landing, Adam huddled against the wall, torn between fleeing back upstairs and peeking around the corner. He’d heard the crates scrapping across the floor, a pause, then some sort of scuffling sound, but now it was silent. It had been for several long moments. “Daddy?” Adam asked. There was no response. He tiptoed closer and peered around the corner, “Daddy?” The crates sat in a haphazard stack where they’d been shoved aside… and then nothing else. His father was nowhere in sight. A hand dropped onto Adam’s shoulder, making him jump, before he realized it was only Billy. “I wouldn’t worry,” Billy told him with a grin that was a little too wide. “Uncle Charlie should be perfectly fine. After all, it’s like he said. There are no such thing as monsters.” Entry for 2024 Halloween Writers Contest