Work Text:
Tick, tick, tick,
Went the old grandfather clock in the foyer.
This wasn’t supposed to be a long stay, not really. Harrison’s dad is a lawyer, which he supposed is a very important job. With his leather-bound journal and enormous pile of files that seemed to accompany his father everywhere, he made for a rather imposing man.
Harrison is a big boy now. He can sleep in a room by himself!
At least, that’s what he told his mother when she came to kiss him goodnight and sing that wonderful little tune he always remembered. Harrison is six and a half! All the other boys at school have their own rooms. He wants to be like everyone else.
But as soon as she closes the door, he is encased in a sudden and deafening silence, all alone with the looming tick, tick, tick of the clock.
He tries to fall into slumber. He counts sheep, the way he was taught. He thinks of his friends, his play-date with Jacob, his sandcastles with Caroline. But it is no use.
Harrison has never felt such a quiet terror before.
The bedroom is far larger than his parent’s one at home, the walls stretching so infinitely into the ceiling above him. In the darkness, it seems as though the room has no end at all - like he could crawl out of bed and simply fall into the floor. The sickening black tugged at his senses, drowning him in a void so incredibly unfamiliar.
He sits up, clutching his toy to his stomach.
As his eyes adjusted - and they never fully did - his sight fell upon the only pinprick of light in the room: the underside of the curtain.
It was there he saw it.
Two leg-like shadows only just visible underneath the curtain, consuming the bulk of the moonlight and imprinting a recognizably unnatural shape in the cold ground. As he looks closer, Harrison has to cover his mouth in desperate attempt to avoid crying out.
It moves.
It shifts and shakes it’s great feet along the edge, moving the curtain ever so slightly and soundlessly. It is unlike anything he has ever seen - so barely human, a horrifyingly indescribable thing - moving and writhing in what cannot be described as anything other than a convergence. It’s limbs tangle and twist in an unspeakable manner.
Harrison drops his teddy.
tick, tick, tick.
It falls and bumps against the bed frame with a horrendous thud.
tick, tick, tick.
Harrison doesn’t even hear it hit the ground.