Leia and the Akul
It's a fair question to ask why any human would need a bed this large, especially a girl of six. The logistics of changing the sheets amount to a full day's work. The simplest answer is that the Organa's while as a family embodies many of the best values of their homeland they were still royalty stemming from other royalty, and so almost by definition filthy rich.
The virtue and danger of money is that allows whims or stranger desires to be indulged. In the case of Leia's great great Uncle, whose name she couldn't remember he had wanted an enormous bed and so it had been made. Public memory was divided by him he had either been a harmless maverick or a seedy parasite but apparently not both.
Since his demise, in said bed, from old age, as a pensioner of the Queen after abdicating his titles to one of his less disreputable offspring. The room had been used as a guest room for foreign dignitaries who enjoyed anecdotes tied to the debris of history. It had been quite popular before the little princess claimed it for herself, because an enormous bed can be used for all sorts of things. There were plenty of stories about this bed (most of which weren't true). Leia didn't worry about its past and her parents didn't trouble her with it, there were bigger things to worry about.
Currently she was using the bed for a private safari. She knew the Akul was just beyond the hill she had constructed from pillows and a blanket. She had managed to approach it from a direction downwind of it, to ensure it wouldn't pick up on her scent. Just a whiff would give it all it needed to detect the fear that was straining at the bounds of her self-discipline.
Her parents gently told her that animals had feelings and fears like anyone, which added a delicious little thrill of transgression to her doings. To her the Akul was much more than something alive. She could feel it's heart beat vibrating through the ground and into the souls of her feet. The rumble and hiss of its breath slipped between its teeth. It was dangerous, it would eat anything it came across, it would even attack the grass it stood upon for want of a better target.
She hadn't even seen it yet but she knew it's eyes would be red pinpricks of light, coming from a place far deeper and far more frightening than its mere eye sockets.
She had a gun in her hands, clutched so tightly that her knuckles and fingers had turned white and the metal she was gripping had become almost as hot as the fire coiling in her stomach. The gun, quite reassuringly to her was almost as long as she was tall, in the mind of a six year old there was no doubt that a bigger gun was a better gun.
She had been hiding behind the pillow hill for a good two minutes psyching herself up to attack the Akul skin hiding on the other side. It was old, very old. Parts of the fur had been removed by generations of feet, and the claws were blunt for similar reasons. The original skull was still attached to the skin allowing the pelt to retain the monstrous grin it had born in life, alert to its surrounding with glass eyes.
Leia was starting to get a cramp in her right foot though, which quite unfairly undercut her carefully cultivated fear and anticipation.
She said a bad word that she wasn't allowed to say aloud in the presence of anyone but only inside her head, there is always someone watching.
The clouds were heavy tonight blocking the stars and moon, but the lights of Aldera, provided a weak and diffuse light that seeped into her bedroom as a miasma.
Then she heard something. Almost a whisper, it would have been invisible in anything less than this silence.
What was it? Was it near or far? She didn't know what it was. For all her play acting she wasn't much good at telling one subtle noise from another. She willed herself to sink deeper into the mattress.
The silence became aware of itself. She wasn't daring to breathe. The only movements were miniscule shifts as she sunk a bit deeper. Everything else was so utterly still she was so painfully aware of these subtle movements that her forehead was starting to throb from the effort. She had to start breathing again. Shallow silent inhalations entirely through the nose, she was proud of this.
Then the enemy blinked. This time the sound was as familiar as sunlight.
It was the sound of something sliding across fabric.
Was she the one making it? She suddenly felt very foolish. Her mind distracted her foot still feeling the cramp twitched. It made a similar noise to the one she had heard.
She was then aware that the noise had stopped.
She continued to take her shallow survival breaths. She would need to take a deeper one eventually.
The silence surrounded her as a passive participant in all this. The glow of the city was still coming through the window. She was glad she hadn't drawn the curtains.
The weak glow of the city vanished.
What? How?
Something breathed in. It wasn't her- she knew she wasn't breathing she wasn't being foolish.
It had been close, deeper into the bed. The Akul pelt she was hunting was suddenly remembered.
She had the gun she wasn't helpless. The clouds were still impenetrable but the darkness wasn't total. The sound of her thoughts was almost enough to obscure the recurrence of the sound of something sliding across fabric.
How far away was the pelt? She recalled placing it near the centre- marginally closer to the left side than the right and slightly closer to the post at the foot of the bed than the head. Was it only moving when she heard it? Or were those times the only times she was fortunate enough to hear it? Perhaps as it crossed a particularly convoluted rumple in the fabric?
Fear pierced her stomach, the peak of the hill of that was now her barricade held a new and terrible fascination. Her mind trying to recall the topography of blankets, pillows and duvets assembled in an impatient hurry.
She still had the gun. A Akul would be far quicker than she was.
It was also between her and the bedroom door. Twenty feet of ground to cover in her nightgown. Then there were the bedroom doors themselves, she'd never trusted them. For some reason whenever she touched their glabrous and calcified surface she thought of something that resembled a spider but wasn't.
This entire train of thought took place in less than half a moment.
She swallowed. The sound was an admission of fear. She wished she had more guns to cover every line of approach.
The sound of fabric. The bed itself creaked.
She shot up onto her feet like the dead rudely awakened. Right foot on the peak of her barricade praying that she was aiming in in the right direction.
A shadow enveloped her, a small part of her mind noted the feeling of claws- made dull by old age but impossible to mistake scratching her shoulders.
'Bang!' 'Bang!' 'Bang!' 'Bang!' 'Bang!' 'Bang!'
Her voice rang around the room returning no echo.
Its weight pressed down on her. Panic made her let go and fall on her back. Thankfully she just landed on more bed.
The Akul loomed over her it's glass eyes open and throwing out light. It's boneless front legs planted on either side of her head.
It was going to play with her before it ate her.
But it did nothing. She didn't dare move fearful of giving it cause to disembowel her.
It did nothing- not even breathe.
Knowing her face was about to turn purple from the breath she holding, she exhaled.
And with that the spell was broken. She realized the shaft of the gun was what was holding the rug up over her body. The weapons muzzle right in the centre of the Akul's neck.
Quicker than the thought she was out from underneath it. A movement causing the gun- so delicately balanced to topple over.
On her feet she stared down at the pelt. It didn't raise its head to look at her.
What had happened?
Unwilling to take any chances she began to walk around it, determined to separate any movements caused by her shifting her weight from movements by the pelt itself. It neither budged not quivered. When she completed three quarters of her circuit she paused, looking down at the scuffed black and and light grey,, bunched in folds and wrinkles. She made to continue her circuit a feint in case the pelt needed deceiving but then instead jumped onto it's back. There was the squeal of springs in protest. Small prickles of old fur and bare skin warm against her clammy feet. A few motes of dust were detached by her impact and billowed around catching on the hem of her nightgown. It didn't do anything. Suddenly aware of a new dignity she listed up the hem of her dress and stepped off her opponent.
Completing the final quarter of her circuit Leia was once again before it. She knelt down on her knees, as a supplicant before the spirit. She took hold of the skull with both hands, gaze locked with the glass beads in the eye sockets, alert to any sign of life and treachery. Adjusting her grip, she rubbed her thumb along it's left canine, a surface smooth enough to be almost frictionless yet it gave her a feeling as acute as an electric shock.
Then she dared to look underneath.
There was nothing but the shadow and the gun.
Whatever ghost had possessed it had vanished.