"I'm scared," she whimpers but the darkness offers no answer.
o-o
Night, with all her pitch black shadows, was never truly dark. The moon would shine benevolently, and if not that then the stars would surely offer comfort to the lost souls wandering below. Humanity had a certain knack to beat back the shadows all to themselves, huddling close beneath a tent's canvas, sheltering in the quiet strength of a mountain cave, lighting up their abodes with fire and captured lightning. Even when captured by shadows, humans could always find light in the company of their fellows.
Therefore it had always been hard for the boogeyman to seize their hearts with the terror and fear he so longed for. To let his darkness influence their decisions into rash and thoughtless action. He quite enjoyed their momentary loss of whit as they bumbled around whenever he did manage to get a true hold of them.
Humans, the favourite of his old enemy, were in fact very entertaining in general. More than any other creature did they possess both the imagination to create their own terrors with only the slightest inspiration and the frank boldness or reckless bravery to stnd against the worst nightmares he could throw at them.
Yes, he enjoyed watching them from the shadowed corners of their oh so safe dwellings, revelled in the fearful gasps when they felt his presence, or the terrified shrieks if they spotted a flash of eyes in the uncertain dimness. What annoyed him to no end, however, was the disregard that they have come to treat him with. Him! The king of nightmares and unspeakable terror! Before every shadowed nook was eyed with apprehension!
And now? Now the humans bring their false light everywhere they go, feeling safe in their weak replacement of sunlight. Now it was only children that believed in tales, but never enough to actually lay their eyes upon him. Soothed by their parents before he could appear. Certainly they still felt his presence, for no living being is without fear, but instead of coming to the correct conclusion, instead of realising the source of their apprehension, they rationalise away the cold shovers upon their backs.
Never has he despised humans as much as he does now, for with their age of enlightenment they have created their own darkness to replace him with. Instead of fearing the boogeyman in a shadowed alley, humans have come to fear other humans with foul intentions. Instead of cowering together to ward off the dark, humans would cower by themselves in rooms filled with harsh lights to futilely combat the darkness of their own self.
It brings him little joy to see them struggle with darkness that is not his own. To feel their heart-racing terror while being merely an observer.
It brings him even less joy to have that all-encompassing fear snuffed out, of having to make way for a much greater and much more final entity.
Humans, he has found, he hates humans. The adults more than the children, for they seek to usurp his position as the lurking threat one should fear.
Idly he follows a young'un along the darkened street. Night has fallen but an hour ago and the lights of the abhorrently large settlement have flickered on before even that. Moon forbid there to be a little darkness, he thinks bitterly. But even in the shallow dark outside the lamps's orange light, he is able to assert his influence. The young'un shivers and huddles inside his jacket, paying no heed to the mild summer temperatures, as it strides along a bit faster now.
It is most of what he does these days, frighten the young and susceptible. The older ones he has mostly given up on, they always have their own fears, they already keep watch for dangers along their way.
He follows his chosen victim of the evening, delighting in the furtive glances around and the shivers of the young'un. If he wanted, the boogeyman would find it easy to drive one so open to fright into a full-blown panic, but alas, he has learned that the modern human is fast to seek out a place they feel impenetrably safe in. So he toys with his prey, lest the game be cut short, always this side of too scary. It's less rauceous than the pursuits of old, but more delicate as well to strike the perfect balance. A hobby to occupy his time before he can find one open to a good terror.
With a frown, the boogeyman turns from the hastening young'un, further along the city street, where an intersection has fallen into darkness with the defect of a lamp. He can feel the malice wafting over from there, the darkness hiding, waiting to ambush. Unsurprised. Utterly unsurprised is what the boogeyman feels when he walks ahead only to find another human peering around the corner, a crude human weapon, a knife to cut and kill with, clutched in its hand.
Annoyed with the whole situation, he switches his target. He had been planning to follow the young'un all the way home, but now he must make do with one who felt necessary to prey upon his own victim. Either way, bringing the fear of their puny god into the would-be boogeymen is at once easier and harder. Dwelling in darkness they are not usually afraid of it, but having seen the cruelty of their own species they also fill the empty shadows with the worst they can imagine.
The human's posture stiffens, it turns around, searching the shadowed street for the malice they feel. Another tendril of fear has it flipping its tiny weapon and shifting into a defensive stance. Wild eyes dart around and leave it open for yet another shiver of terror that slides down the human's back. Apprehension grows on its face.
"Who's there?" it growls. The boogeyman only laughs. An echo of the sound seems to have made itself known to it, because the carefully toughened visage cracks. He continues to press the measily human, driving it into more elaborate imaginations.
"Jackson? That you?" it questions, quailing at the thought, "I got the money, I promise. We don't need to make a point, yeah?"
Disgusted, the boogeyman turns his back and leaves the whimpering mess of a creature behind. It's so easy, yet so unsatisfactory. Across the intersection, he can see the young'un outright running past, having changed sides of the street and hearing its fellow's cries. It's fear is much more tantalizing than the elder human behind him, but he has lost his appetite.
With nary a sound he vanishes into the shadows, reappearing on another side of the world, ready to begin the hunt for a suitable victim anew.
o-o
It was chance that led to the encounter. Annoyed the boogeyman had followed the human scum after their deed was done. Two men, dealing with the same in a darkened alley after silencing the quiet terror of their observer.
The boogeyman didn't usually deal in the protection, or dare he say guarding, of human life and even so he had tried to animate the woman to flee from the danger. Indeed, he had moved to swiftly for the foolish human didn't flee and instead froze up, whimpering loud enough for the human scum to find and eliminate her. The failure at the hands of the puny human scum sat wrong with him, leading to this fruitless endeavor to frighten them on their way back to their dwelling.
Annoyingly, both men were wary but controlled their apprehension with iron tight fists, not allowing the boogeyman any opening to slip in and deepen their fear. So here he was, lurking in the flickering shadows of the surprisingly dark dwelling. He was contemplating whether or not he should steal the light from the single lamp the scum had lit, when their heavy footstep woke a flickering fear. A third human, he could feel the quiet terror that worked itself to consciousness without needing any prompting by himself.
Half surprised, the boogeyman sank through the shadows and found himself in the cellar of the same building, unadorned with only one of those modern human contraptions to wash their clothes and another that heats the house. Long has it been since the humans needed actual fire to warm themselves. The sight alone has the boogeyman scowling in contempt. Then he finds another that fills him even more so with it.
Along one wall of the dark, windowless room is a simple bed. And atop it, huddled beneath a thick woolen blanket, is a human child. Fear is a palpable miasma all around it, shivers not borne of cold wrack its body, eyes blinded by the complete darkness of the room stare without waver at the stairs leading upstairs where muffled footseps can be heard.
The door to the cellar pries open, the child's breath hitches and the booeyman retreats to the shadow under the stairs. In the weak illumination from above, he can see the stark contrast of pale skin and dark bruises on the childs face, the naked terror in its expression. Once again he is reminded how utterly senseless the terror and fear seem when they are inflicted by such lowly means as a human. He would have delighted in teasing that expression out himself, but like this? No.
In apathy he watches one of the human scum loading bloody clothes into the washer as the other apporaches the child. He remains, feeling his hatred of humanity reassured. The child's screams are mixed with desperation and fear, begs and pleas unheard, not the pure panic and terror of the unknown, not jumping at shadows or twitching at any sound, certainly nothing like what he himself would bring forth from his prey.
Feeling nothing but distaste, even anger at his craft being so shamelessly muddied, the boogeyman leaves. Having seen enough to reaffirm his need to take action, large-scale action to teach humankind once again just why they should fear the shadows. Children, he thinks, children will be the key. He can do little to bring the adults to spread belief, but the children who grew up knowing his presence would become more wary, more susceptible to his influence, as adults.
The only obstacle being Tsar Luna's little Guardians, who had so untiringly ousted him from his previous position. He would have to weaken them before he could make a place for himself in the hearts of the children and once again become their most feared nightmare.
o-o
"Who's there?" a quiet, wavering voice greets him. The boogeyman starts, having come back after yet another encounter with the meddlesome sandman out of curiosity if not the need to justify his struggle against the oh so righteous Guardian that ended with such a humiliating defeat on his part. He didn't expect the child to see him, and obviously she doesn't, her wide, terrified eyes searching the absolute darkness of the room. It is probable that she merely noticed his presence, menacing as it should be, even to the ignorant. Still he humors the notion.
"I am the shadow under your bed," he murmurs his standard greeting to little children such as her, his quiet voice reverberating in the silence. The child shivers and there is a sliver of that pure, correct fear, the fear of him and not of any puny human.
"I am the monster in your closet," he continues and it has been so long since he was able to follow the old routine, he realises with a start. Sure the threats are rather harmless, tailored to small children such as her, but it gives him pleasure to imagine children all around the world to fear those silly words once again. Yes, he only needs a plan to take out the Guardians, to trick the Man in the Moon.
The thought brings another with it. "Shouldn't you be sleeping, little one? Dreaming away the boogeyman?" Again the child shivers, another sliver of true fear overtaking the learned response to a predator clpse by. Again, the boogeyman revels in it. But his question had been in earnest. Outside, the golden streams of dreamsand were stretching all over the city to provide sweet dreams to children that had done nothing to deserve them. Yet there was none in this dark hovel of an abode, where even his withered morality could see a little brightness was needed.
"Who's there?" the child repeats, quivering now in fear and pulling her blanket up to her chin as if to ward off evil with it.
"The boogeyman," the boogey man answered, stepping forward and letting his eyes flash with a light of their own. And surprisingly, the child starts, its breath caught in its throat.
"The- The boogeyman?"
A dark chuckle echoes in the room, goosebumps travelling up her skin until she feels the hair stand at the back of her neck. She tries to find the eyes she had seen just then, but once again everything around her is as dark as if she had her eyes pressed shut. She is afraid, afraid from the very middle of her belly, like she remembered being when her daddy laughed and checked the closet for her, or under the bed. Silly Tina, he had said and ruffled her hair, there is no boogeyman. And she had believed him, but daddy wasn't here now, he wasn't here to tell her that the boogeyman wasn't real, he wasn't here to save her from the bad men.
A different kind of fear has her curling up tightly, peering into the dark. Fear that comes from the hurting arms, the hurting- the hurting other parts.
"Are you here to hurt me too?" she asks and she can feel tears gather in her eyes, "Please don't hurt me too, it already huts so much! I want to go home!"
It's quiet again, she can only hear her own breathing, her own fight against the crying that she wants to do. She strains her ears, strains her eyes, to hear or see the other ... thing that was here with her. Where would it come from? What would it do?
"No." It's one harsh word and she flinches so hard that she bites her tongue. Tears slip from her eyes. She wants to go home so bad! "I am not here to hurt you." I doesn't sound comforting though. She is afraid, she doesn't want the boogeyman to be here, no matter what it says.
"Go away," she cries and hides her faces against her knees, "Go away, please."
It takes a long time before she can breathe again without sobs sitting in her throat and choking her. Trembling she huddles deeper under her blanket. Maybe she shouldn't have sent the boogeyman away, maybe it could have made the bad men stay away when they were scared of it, but...
"I'm scared," she whimpers, the only explanation she can give, but the darkness offers no answer.
oo-The End-oo
AN: Soo, this is a thing. Maybe I'll write a follow-up, not sure yet. I had the idea for this ever since the movie came out, but I shared it with some friends back then and got less than positive feedback which convinced me not to use it. Stupid, right? I guess you can't expect high school kids to be super exited about a story with no happy end.