It all started with an idea.
An idea that manifested itself into being and forced awake the tired bones of Terri. She had fallen asleep in front of a show she didn’t care about hours ago. It wasn’t a start or a horror in her dreams that woke her up, but a thought that she couldn’t lose. Her hand almost knocked over the stick lamp as she turned it on and jotted the dream breaking brain blast onto a piece of paper.
Looking up at the clock in her living room, she stood up and walked upstairs to her bedroom. Pulling the covers over herself, she exhaled a long breath, as her eyes closed and prepared to return to the land of slumber, the darkness of her room vanished. Her eyes opened one after the other as they were confused.
Where had the darkness gone?
Why did it leave?
Those questions fell far down the list of questions as one shot to the top: Who moved the lamp into her bedroom?
Terri’s leg kicked over the lamp as her body went into fight or flight mode. In a panic, she scanned the room’s malevolent shadows that the knocked-over light had created. Her chair in the corner of the room with the laundry piled high was a possible point of horror, but she let that go with a sigh as her mind stopped making enemies from nothing.
Still, the question remains, who put the lamp from downstairs next to her bed?
She took the softball bat from under the bed frame and checked every room in the house. Nothing was found. No windows were broken, no doors cracked, nothing was out of place except for that lamp.
Picking it up from the ground, Terri checked to make sure the woven lampshade of the stick lamp wasn’t damaged before she turned the lamp off. Once again, the night from outside invaded her bedroom. Feeling secure that she had checked everywhere in the home, the tired woman went back to bed, and with some hesitation, closed her eyes to fall back to sleep.
Only to have light invade her life once more.
She shot up out of bed and yelled, “Who the hell is there?!” Realizing she was waiting for someone to answer, which is the worst-case scenario in her brain, she grabbed the bat from under her covers. She walked over to the lamp and shut it off again. “Must be a short in it.”
Applying logic to the moment allowed her to lay down again, bat in hand, and close her eyes.
The lamp clicked on.
Rising from the covers like the wind, she scanned the room, and reached down to pull the lamp’s cord from the wall only to find it was already unplugged. She held the plug in her hand as she stared at the glow coming from the lamp.
Terri felt her spine shiver as her arms swung the bat. She didn’t care about the glass from the bulb, she didn’t care about the lamp, she didn’t care that it was working without power. All Terri carried about was sleep. After crushing the lump into an unusable mass, she shelved any thoughts about why this was happening and climbed back into bed.
Only to hear the lamp click on once more.
It wasn’t an expensive lamp. It wasn’t made from materials unknown to science, and yet, it stood assembled, working without power, after she made sure it wouldn’t turn on anymore.
For the remainder of the evening, Terri would destroy, decimate, and drive the lamp into various forms of non-function. With each swing, she broke the hope it would be the last one.
She then moved to her office, locked the door, and lay on the floor. Only to have the lamp appear once more.
She went to the bathroom and barricaded the door with towels and her rubber ducky only to find the lamp again haunting her from outside her tub.
Hours passed. The lamp died many times as did Terri’s dreams. In the insanity of the pre-dawn, a new, sane, idea jolted through her mind. She grabbed her car keys, peeled out of the driveway, and sped down the lonely road. A very sound and smart choice if she wasn’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She drove until she found a rest stop miles from her home. Terri’s exhausted eyes watched the sunrise claim the land and drive away the night.
Perhaps now, in the light of day, she could get some rest. She closed her eyes.
Only to hear the click of the lamp once more.
Read the previous chapter: The Chair
Read the next chapter: The Phone
I don’t know about ya’ll, but that was a spoopy story! Please share this story, and if you haven’t yet hit the subscribe button, please do! I am looking forward to writing more entries in the Spoopy House series for the month of October. They’ve been fun to write and I hope entertaining to read. If you’ve dug these stories, please do let me know in the comments.
Thank you for your time and I’ll see you all in the next entry.