Fandom: Lancer
Rating: PG
Genre: family, gen, kidfic, AU, horror
Warnings: none

Written: March 2008, 4400 words, 2 chapters

THE COOKIE MONSTER - CHAPTER 2

Of course Scott laughed, but not unkindly. He was mature in many ways for a ten-year-old, but not so old that he didn't remember being frightened by scary things in his room in the dark of night. "It won't come out if there's a light so I'll light this lamp for you. Just don't turn it up or Pa will see it and he won't like it. You know he says it's a waste of oil."

Eyes wide, Johnny nodded in agreement. He idolized his brother.

"Oh, and one more thing," Scott said without a smile. "Sometimes monsters like cookies." He pointed to the cookies that were peeking out from under Johnny's pillow. "It never hurts to try something once." Once Scott had bid Johnny good night and left, the small boy scooted down in his bed, pulling the covers up over his head. Although he was scared, he was also very sleepy from having been active since dawn and soon enough he was out like a light.

...*... ...*...

Johnny awoke with a start. He was sure he'd heard a noise. The lamp by his bedside emitted a dull glow, but apart from the menacing shadows playing across his walls, there was no sign of any movement. After a couple of tense minutes of waiting and listening as hard as he could, he jumped out of bed, opened his bedroom door, and dashed down the hall to Scott's room. The rest of the house was in darkness - it must be very late. Pa would be mad if he caught him out of bed. He'd get a whipping for sure.

Scott mumbled something in protest and turned over sleepily when Johnny climbed into bed with him. After a couple of minutes the older boy awoke enough to push his little brother out of the bed. "Get outta here," Scott moaned.

Johnny whined, "Nooo," but Scott even went so far as to throw back his covers and physically remove the boy from his room. "Go back to bed," Scott ordered in a whisper. "I'll tell Pa-."

The door closed in Johnny's face and he was left alone, out in the dark hallway. He was frightened. He had to pee. He needed a gun.

Quickly and quietly, Johnny padded down the hall and down the stairs, avoiding the squeaky board on the fourth step down, and ran through the dark house to the great room. The great room, large in the light of day, was an enormous, densely black vault at two in the morning. Johnny held his breath, navigating his way around the bulky furniture until he found Pa's huge desk. The bottom drawer, which was locked, held a handgun, but the key was in the middle drawer in a small wooden box. Johnny knew all this because he was five-going-on-six-in-just-two-weeks and a five-year-old notices such things.

The gun was very heavy and handling it was almost too intimidating for the small boy. But as he was about to return the gun to its safe haven, Johnny remembered his dread of the monster under his bed, and that was far greater than his fear of the revolver. And although the thought of his father, and what he'd do if he caught Johnny with a gun almost outweighed everything else, the danger the monster presented was far more immediate.

Johnny walked back to his room with more caution than he'd taken when leaving it. He moved very slowly past his father's doorway, and had a fright when he heard the old man's bedsprings squeak. Pa mumbled in his sleep, but then everything was quiet as a tomb once again. When Johnny arrived at his own room without awakening anyone, he slowly opened the door and peeped in to check for danger. It took a lot of gumption for Johnny to step over the threshold, but after a couple of minutes he did so.

The boy raised the borrowed gun in front of him as he very slowly stepped towards his bed. It shook some so he gripped it tighter. The lamp was casting a glow that seemed far brighter than earlier, but there was nothing bad to be seen anywhere in the room, which was some comfort. Johnny knew that scary things liked to lay in wait in the darkness under beds - he wasn't stupid - but it was so dark underneath the bed he couldn't see anything under there.

Suddenly, throwing caution to the wind, with the gun in hand, he ran and jumped up on the high mattress. As the mattress stopped bouncing, he heard a noise, and this time he had no doubt it was coming from under his bed. Right underneath where he was sitting. He remembered what Scott had told him, that monsters liked cookies. He didn't know how Scott knew that, but Scott knew a lot, which is why he was going away to boarding school real soon. So Johnny trusted his word.

Wishing he'd peed before he'd returned to his bedroom, Johnny squeezed his legs together hard and slowly reached under his pillow with his free hand. Very, very slowly, he leaned towards the edge of the mattress and dropped one spicy, sugar-coated, ginger cookie onto the floor. It tumbled down, hit the wood plank flooring and skittered almost out of sight under the bed. Johnny leaned back, took a deep breath and grasped the revolver with both hands.

There was a scuttling sound, something like twigs being blown across the town boardwalk during a dry spell.

Johnny panted with fear, and cautiously peered over the edge of his bed. He jerked back with a gasp. The cookie had gone! He swallowed hard and held the gun in his right hand. With his left, he withdrew the second - and last remaining - cookie from under the pillow. This time, after he dropped it on the floor, he leaned forward just enough so he could keep an eye on it. It fell several inches out into the open this time and was clearly visible.

He waited and waited, swaying a little when, despite the overwhelming fear of the monster under his bed, sleep beckoned. Johnny had no concept of how much time had passed. It was a lot of minutes though. His head grew heavy and his eyes didn't want to stay open. Just as he was about to lie down with the gun cradled in his arms to try to get some sleep, he saw a slight movement. Something. . . something was coming out from under his bed.

At first he thought it was a finger, but when it emerged into the glow cast by the bedside table's lamp, he identified it as a claw. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before. It wasn't a chicken or even an eagle's claw. He knew what they looked like. This was much, much bigger. Long and boney, the talon protruded from the dark shadows of its hiding place, reaching out until its four-inch black nail dug into the ginger cookie. Slowly it pulled the treat back into the dark shadows under Johnny's bed, the scraping sound loud in the stillness of the night.

Johnny never knew what possessed him to do what he did next. He could have remained in his bed, sure. He could have lain there quaking with fear. He could have screamed loud enough for everyone in the house to come running. But he did none of those things. Instead, he chose to do something that became his signature move in the years to come.

Johnny Madrid Lancer leaped off his bed in one bound and twisted in the air, cocking the .45 as he hit the ground several feet from his bed. He swiveled and aimed at the red glowing eyes and quickly pulled the trigger and shot the monster to Hell where it would never be able to scare him again. The sound was deafening and the small room filled with the smoky, acrid smell of gunpowder and burned cookies. Johnny was thrown backwards from the force of the blast and landed on his backside. Even though it was dark under the bed, from where he lay Johnny could clearly see a large shadowy figure lying there, dead as a doornail.

He was really hot and felt scared and powerful and like he was going to throw up, too.

In less than a minute, Johnny's room was overflowing with people. In rushed Murdoch, a revolver in one hand, a lamp in another, wearing a voluminous nightshirt and an extremely anxious expression; Mrs. O, clad in a nightgown that did nothing to diminish her size, her blue eyes round, her hand to her mouth in shock; Scott, a cowlick sticking straight up, and a look that fell somewhere between fright and a grin plastered across his face. He said, "You're going to get it now!"

Murdoch surveyed the room and at a glance assessed the situation. When two half-dressed vaqueros rushed to join them, guns at the ready, Murdoch told them everything was fine and ordered Mrs. O to take Scott back to bed.

"Go, just go, Angel," he said gruffly. "Everything is all right. The boy is unharmed." He closed the door after them and turned up the lamp a little. Then, with unnatural calm, the big man turned to Johnny and took the gun from him. He placed both his own handgun and that of the boy on the bedside table.

Murdoch turned back to his small son, who sat trembling on the bedroom floor with his legs splayed out in front of him. The father scooped the child up in his arms and hugged him to his chest. He could feel Johnny's heart going at a fast rate. His own heart still pounding madly from a dread unlike any he'd ever known. After several minutes, Murdoch put the boy down on the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress beside him. "Do you want to explain this to me?" His voice shook a little from the pent-up anger that was rising, but Murdoch knew that allowing it to escape was not an option.

Johnny could tell that Pa was very angry. Of course he was. But Johnny had already accepted that he would have to pay, and probably dearly, for disobeying his father. Suddenly, a strong feeling that he wanted to cry arose, but Johnny knew that big boys did not cry. He bit his lip, then said in a very small voice, "It was a cookie monster." Murdoch looked skeptical, so Johnny whispered, "Under the bed." He nodded to indicate the location of the dead monster, and he saw his father's eyes drop to the floor.

Murdoch got down on his hands and knees and peered under the bed. After a couple of long minutes, he rose. Reaching out with his big hands, Murdoch repositioned his small son so he was lying down with his head on the pillow, then he pulled the covers up to Johnny's chin. "We'll talk more about this tomorrow, John Lancer. Right now I want you to go to sleep. Understand?"

Johnny nodded, relieved not to have been scolded or whipped, though unsure of why his father was being so understanding. It was sure to be a short reprieve. "I need to pee," he said.

After the chamberpot had been used and returned to its cabinet, and a glass of water had been drunk, Johnny settled back onto his pillow with a sigh.

"I'll leave the lamp on, but just this once," Murdoch said firmly. He leaned over and kissed Johnny on the forehead, and the little arms wrapped around his father's big neck as the boy responded. After a few minutes, Murdoch peeled his son's arms away from his neck and laid him back down.

Murdoch picked up both of the guns, but after he stepped over the threshold, he turned back. He opened his mouth to say something, but apparently decided not to say whatever it was. He just stood there for a minute, thinking.

Johnny called his father back. "Pa?"

Murdoch half turned and looked in enquiringly, but did not go back inside his son's room. "Yes, son?"

"Was it a clean shot?"

"Yes, it was a fine shot, Johnny. Now go to sleep."

After his Pa had left, Johnny lay still for a while, but just as he was about to drop off, he pushed back his covers and leaned over the side of his bed once more. There, scarring the wide-planked wood floor was a gouge, but not from the bullet shot from Johnny's gun. It was a long, thin and very deep mark left by the claw of a now very dead cookie monster.

Johnny smiled with satisfaction and went to sleep to dream of a warm kitchen and plenty of sweet cookies on his plate.

...*... the end ...*...

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