Thump.
Evelyn's framed fingerpainting of a tiger from kindergarten, of which her parents were equally proud, swung back and forth like a pendulum and drew its nail slightly from the wall.
Like most children, Evelyn's natural reaction to the loud, unidentifiable thump from the far wall was not to run screaming from the room. Rather, she sank deeper into her bed's refuge and pull her comforter to the tip of her nose, stuck in semi-paralysis. Although she was beginning to doubt that her twin Serta could protect her from something that could hit the wall that hard, she thought she'd take her chances being entirely still.
She heard the first quiet thump about a minute earlier from the opposite side of the room. It had woken her up and given her a hot, rising fear in her stomach. She thought it could've been her Dad, who shared the bedroom's opposite wall. This first conclusion was almost enough to ease her mind and cool the uneasy fear that twisted her stomach in knots.
When Evelyn had been five, she had decided that she was too old to be tucked into bed. Instead of that, after her mother and father said goodnight and cracked the door, she would jump out of bed and cross the room to the opposite wall and knock three times. She had gotten the idea from one of her Dad's favorite songs by Tony Orlando, although they knocked on the wall and not the ceiling, and it had become their way of saying I love you. Lately, it had just been her father's knock that she heard; her parents argued a lot, and despite their efforts to keep Evelyn from tuning in, she heard. Evelyn was a bright girl, and she knew there was no good reason for her mother sleeping in the guest room most nights. But why would her father knock the wall twice, that hard, and this late?
It didn't sound like a knock either. It sounded like it had come from between the two walls as if something was waiting in that thin gap that stood between her bedroom and the master.
The fear that had started in her stomach began to spread, migrating to her brain and blowing the dust off of her most primal instincts. To say her heart rate had elevated with the second thump would be an understatement; it had kicked into a higher gear and she worked to limit her breathing as much as she could, pulling in short, raspy breaths. Her legs felt hot, as if ready to run for miles, but also as if they were glued to the bed to keep her from moving. Her eyes darted left to right across the darkness that crowded her room. The second hit had been harder than the first, but there was an anxious silence now. She could no longer hear the frog and cricket duet that sang night after night around the pond a quarter mile from their house; it seemed that they too wanted to listen.
She kept her head raised slightly from her pillow, granting her better visibility; something she wasn't completely sure she liked. Her thoughts were rushing faster than adrenaline could pour into her bloodstream; painting portraits of the vile, ugly, bitch of a monster that she figured was working through her bedroom wall to make her a late-night snack. She imagined it had to be something that had come from the murky, stagnant pond water; a creature no one had ever seen, and her imagination of the creature was becoming quite vivid; causing her to sink deeper into the covers. But how could something as awful as the creature she was imagining actually be alive, let alone behind her wall? She figured that she was scared of nothing more than her own imagination; it was simply a squirrel or larger rodent that was making her imagination do a double-take. Her father would call animal control tomorrow, they'd come and find whatever it was that was roughing up the plaster, and everything would be alright.
Unless she was wrong.
And it got through.
She finally found the courage to turn her head to look over at the digital clock next to her bed. Its neon green readout was the only illumination left in the dark. The moon had crossed to the other side of the house, and she had taken her nightlight out of the wall two years ago, being the tiny adult she was trying very hard to be. Adults had no need for nightlights.
She had never wanted the nightlight in her room more than she did now.
The clock told her it was 4:03. The sun usually crossed the horizon around six-fifteen and poured into her window, giving her no real need for an alarm clock. To her, sunrise seemed years away, and she figured that the best case scenario would be her holding completely still until dawn, going over every mammal in her mind's encyclopedia that could have-
WHUMP.
Evelyn's let out a harsh gasp that had really been a stifled scream. She had begun to relax in the few minutes since the last sound had come from the wall, but now she was rigid. This noise sounded much closer as if whatever had taken up position behind the wall had found her position, despite her silence, and begun its way toward her. She could pinpoint where behind the wall the hit had come from; her painting had swung much less this time, but it had been a harder blow than the last. Her bookshelf, holding all her plethora of gymnastics trophies, stuffed animals, and storybooks tipped forward from the force behind it. She watched her two largest gymnastics trophies fall from the top shelf; two golden gymnasts snapping from their stems as they made their muffled impact with the floor.
Had the circumstances been different, she would've cried for hours, but she was able to keep her silence. Those trophies were for her wins at the junior Georgia Upperstate and State competitions. She was an all-around talented girl, but talent only carried so far and she worked tirelessly six days a week to earn those awards. Her mother had been a gymnast too, and Evelyn wanted nothing more than to be as good, if not better, than her mother. In her prime, her mother had gone to the Olympic trials and come within a handspring of competing but hadn't made the cut. She then dedicated her time to training Evelyn, keeping her in the gym for hours day after day. The chalk on her hands couldn't keep the blisters and calluses away, but she continued her training despite-
Evelyn's train of thought was derailed when she heard scurrying; what sounded like a dog rounding a corner on a hardwood floor. Something was crossing the ninety-degree angle that separated her bookshelf and her bed fast, scratching at the baseboard along its way. In the pool of thoughts that were fighting for Evelyn's attention, one seemed to have the most importance: whatever it was behind the wall, it had claws.
CRACK.
This time, Evelyn did scream. The hit came from directly overhead. It sounded like a defensive end had gotten a running start at the wall and laid a shoulder into it, sending a break through the plaster and throwing dust into her face and eyes. The split was wide and Evelyn made the mistake of looking into it. The clock was no longer the only visible glow in the room. She saw a pair of close-set, beady red eyes that were beyond any hue of red she'd seen in a Crayola box; they were a dark, burning maroon. The pair locked onto Evelyn's gaze, and she thought she saw what could have been the Devil himself, analyzing the vastness of her opposing, brilliantly green eyes. It made a gurgling, growling sound and gnashed banana-sized fangs that shone white despite the absence of light in the bedroom. Drool flew from its mouth in droves, splattering Evelyn's curly blond hair and forehead, and its growl went up an octave as Evelyn's hands started the unconscious motion of throwing back the covers.
The spit from the thing was hot and almost seemed to burn Evelyn's face. She didn't have the time to ponder whether or not any mammals could spit venom and rolled from her bed in what seemed to be a blur of fluid motion.
En route to the floor, Evelyn heard a thunk as one of the beast's arms thrashed from the wall, throwing its talons into the upper part of her headboard. One of the claws gathered a few strands of hair as she threw herself from the mattress, missing her skull by inches and pulling her back. The few strands couldn't keep her in the beast's grip, and they were pulled from Evelyn's scalp, sending a wave of pain across her head and another cry from her throat.
She was now lying on her side on the floor and looked up, getting a much better glimpse of the hairy, fanged creature that was coming to take the innocent, limitless opportunity that was her eight-year-old life.
The lighting that the alarm clock provided didn't do the beast any favors, although Evelyn didn't think any sort of illumination would. The green glow gave the animal's hair a salt-and-pepper color that sat lightly over what must've been light pink skin. Earlier she had gauged the fangs to be banana-sized, but the beasts talons put those to shame; seeming to be closer to the length of her father's grill spatula. They were a charcoal grey at the tip that seemed to descend slowly into a matte black that joined the pink skin of its fingers.
She then looked at its face; what had to be the last thing that any sorry soul who came into contact with this creature ever saw. It was ungodly, a slurred mix of an ape and a jungle cat. The fangs looked like they'd been stolen from a museum and forced into this savage's dripping mouth, its nose was pressed deep into its skull, and its eyes. The beady, red eyes that looked like they'd issued from Satan's assembly line. She no longer thought this ape-cat thing had come from the pond behind her house; it had come from Hell, or somewhere worse, and she was sure of it. This was nothing that God created.
She scrambled to feet, and as she did so, the thing shrieked. It was a loud noise that sounded like a blizzard wind forcing through a drafty rafter in a barn, or a washing machine spurting water at full force, or a thunderhead after lightning struck within feet of the listener. The truth was, Evelyn had never heard anything like it, and would never unhear it for what remained of her life. It would haunt her days, her nights, and everything in-between for decades to come. She would never be the same from that moment forward.
She wanted to produce a scream of living fear to accompany the beast's roar, but all that she could summon was a choked gasp. Tears streaked her cheeks as she turned and flew through the door and into the living room. The transition from the carpeted bedroom floor to the hardwood living room was forgotten in her nauseous fear, and she slipped; hitting the ground with a thump that rivaled the blows of the devil that was ripping through her bedroom wall. A fiery pain shot through her shoulder and down her arm, but she climbed to her feet and slammed the door behind her. In a shocked, out-of-body curiosity, she wondered if it would take the thing would jump through the cheap wood or simply turn the knob. The thought of those hairy, pink fingers with footlong talons opening her door like a man was somehow more terrifying, and she sprinted the short distance to her father's bedroom.
