Ian hates silence. Silence traps him. He always hums for a while before going to sleep. Ian has a cold. His vocal cords ache. He can’t hum. His phone? Dead. He hears something. Deep, laboured breathing. From under the bed. He looks to the side and screams.

Two eyeballs stare back at him. A muscular arm rolls around. But it is the cracked skull lying half-hidden in the shadows that terrifies him most.

Ian wakes up with a start. Sweat drips down his temples. His heart thuds loudly. Was it just a nightmare?

The next day, he trudges off to school with his sister, Liana. They ride their respective cycles. He goes through all the motions at school: taking notes, answering questions, and talking to friends. Then he comes home and closes his bedroom door. His knees hit the marble floor. He lifts his bedsheet and peers beneath his bed.

Nothing proves that his dream from the previous night was real. He sighs. So, it was just a dream.

Ian puts on some music, with Spotify blasting Charlie Puth’s “Attention”. He lies back in bed, pulling the bedsheets up. Spotify pauses, crackles, and then stops completely.

“What the hell?” Ian sighs. He reaches for his phone on his nightstand. A bloody hand grabs his hand. His phone slips and clatters to the floor.

“Damn it…” He leans over and spots his phone. Innocent. Right. He can do this. He reaches down. A hand encloses his. A hand. Human. Calloused skin brushes against his own.

Too warm. A tingle runs down his spine. Fear? Excitement? The hand squeezes hard. Ian can almost feel his bone crunch.

“Let go! Who are you?!” Ian tugs at the hand. He can’t move. So powerful. Ian shakes his head. He should stop daydreaming. The hand lets go. Ian falls back onto his bed. There’s a shuffle beneath it. A creature stands up. Almost humanoid. But definitely taller, stronger, and impossible to look away from. Ian mentally slaps himself. His behaviour is unacceptable. There’s an eerie shadow around the creature as Ian turns on the light. Horns? Maybe claws? Sharp teeth? Ian trembles. Every instinct screams at him to run. To get his dad. But he can’t move.

“What are you?” Ian chokes out. He moves back towards the headboard. The man—no, creature—leans closer.

Ian can’t speak. His mouth opens. No sound comes out.

The creature chuckles, a deep, hoarse sound. Ian freezes.

“I knew it,” the creature says.

Ian shakes his head instinctively. The creature grins, its sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight.

Ian lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. Ian hates that grin. But he can’t deny how much he likes it.

The creature tilts its head slightly, watching him too carefully. Ian swallows hard. The room feels hot. Suffocating. Ian forces himself to look away. The creature blinks slowly.

“I give you the best of my wishes… because one day,” the creature whispers, “I am going to ask you for something terrible.”

Ian’s pulse stumbles.

“And if you say yes…”

Ian feels something unexplainable over his sternum. A hiss of hot air, maybe? The shadow behind the creature is strange, bent at an unnatural angle.

“I will never let you go.”

Ian doesn’t sleep much that night.

Every time he closes his eyes, he imagines the thing still standing there in the dark corner of his room. Watching him. Smiling with those awful teeth.

Just sunlight leaking through the curtains, and Liana screaming downstairs because Ian has forgotten to wash his dinner plate again.

Normal. Almost. Ian stares under his bed before leaving for school.

That evening, rain hammers against the windows. Their parents are out attending an office dinner, leaving Ian and Liana alone. Liana sits cross-legged on a chair, watching anime while Ian pretends to do homework. Pretends. Because every few minutes, he glances towards the hallway leading to his room. Waiting.

“You’re being weird,” Liana mutters without looking away from the TV.

“And you like Toji Fushiguro.”

“Everyone does…” Liana flushes. “You have horrible taste.”

Ian throws a couch pillow at her face.

She laughs. The sound eases something tight in his chest. Then the lights flicker. Once. Twice. The TV blinks black.

Liana groans. “Great.”

Ian goes cold. From down the hallway comes a sound. Breathing. Slow. Heavy. Patient. Ian stands so fast that the dining table rattles.

Liana blinks at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Stay here.”

“For what?”

But Ian is already moving. The hallway feels darker than before. Longer, somehow. The breathing deepens as he approaches his room. His door is open. He knows he left it closed. Ian steps inside carefully. Nothing. Ian sighs.

Ian’s eyes droop. He has barely slept the previous night. He was up all night because of his incomplete assignments.

Liana looks at him and grins. “Rough night, huh?”

Ian doesn’t even hear her. He is busy looking at his bedroom door. A claw mark that wasn’t there yesterday. Four parallel grooves cutting through the wood. Huh…

Liana snaps her fingers in front of his face. Ian snaps out of his daze.

“What?” he snaps at her.

Liana chuckles. “Calm down, Sunshine. You look sleep-deprived. What did you do?”

Ian rolls his eyes. “I did homework. Go away.” He grabs his bag and leaves the house.

He walks along the path to school, looking around at the familiar faces and the well-loved building. He sees something near the stairs. It looks eerily similar to the figure that reminds him of the creature under his bed.

Ian approaches the shadow, panting slightly. “You. What are you doing here? I thought you were under my bed?”

The creature laughs evilly. “You assume I was under the bed. I was, but was I?”

Ian rolls his eyes. “So, can you go now?” he asks. The creature shakes its head.

Ian sighs, then climbs four flights of stairs to his classroom while the creature continues to follow him. Ian ignores the stares when he walks into class with something invisible trailing behind him. At least, invisible to everyone else.

The creature ducks beneath the classroom doorway with a low, amused hum, its horns nearly scraping the frame. It moves lazily beside Ian’s desk while students unpack notebooks and complain about assignments. Ian grips the edge of his chair.

“You cannot come to school with me,” he mutters under his breath.

“I already have.”

The creature leans over his shoulder. Too close. Ian catches the smell of something metallic.

“You are very tense today.”

“No kidding.” Ian keeps his eyes on his notebook.

“No,” the creature says.

Across the room, Ved throws an eraser at him.

“You alive over there?” Atharv asks, sitting beside Ved.

Ian jerks upright. “Yeah.”

The creature’s gaze slowly slides towards Ved and Atharv.

“If you had to save only one, who would you pick?” it asks.

“No,” Ian says quietly.

The creature blinks. “No?”

“You don’t ask questions like that.”

Something unreadable crosses the creature’s face.

“I’m just learning you…” it murmurs.

The creature smiles faintly and steps back.

Class drags on. Ian barely hears the lecture. Every few minutes, he feels eyes on him again. Lunch is worse. Ian escapes to the back staircase near the football court, hoping for five minutes alone. Instead, he finds the creature already there, crouched atop the railing, impossibly still. Ian sits down on the stairs with a tired groan. For a while, neither of them speaks. Rain taps softly against the narrow windows.

“You know, when your grandmother studied here, she sat in the third row,” the creature tells him.

Ian gapes at the creature. “What? How do you know that? Heck, even I didn’t know that…”

The creature just shrugs casually, as if the bomb it has dropped is not catastrophic. Ian wonders how it knows that. The creature hesitates, then speaks.

“If something threatened your sister…”

Ian’s expression sharpens instantly.

“What about Liana?”

The creature’s shadow stretches unnaturally long across the stairs.

“I would kill it for you.”

Ian stares.

The creature continues watching him carefully.

“As long as you asked and paid the price.”

A chill crawls slowly down Ian’s spine.

Because somehow, that sounds less like kindness and more like a promise.

Ian should have told someone.

That thought haunts him three nights later as he sits on the edge of his bed, staring at the creature standing beside his window.

Rain crawls down the glass behind it.

“You look awful,” Ian mutters.

The creature tilts its head. “You let me stay.”

Ian exhales shakily. “Yeah.”

The room has changed since the creature arrived. It always smells faintly metallic now. Like blood. Shadows bend the wrong way near the corners. Sometimes Ian wakes up with bruises. He is still afraid sometimes, but not always.

The creature moves closer.

“I brought you something,” it says.

Ian frowns. “What?”

The creature opens one clawed hand.

Inside rests Ian’s missing gold chain. The one his grandmother gave him before she died.

Ian freezes.

“I lost that years ago.”

“You cried when you lost it.”

Ian should have moved. Instead, he looks up at it.

The creature touches two claws lightly against Ian’s chest, directly over his heartbeat. Fast. Human. Fragile.

“I can hear it,” the creature murmurs. “Every second.”

Ian swallows hard.

A crash sounds downstairs. Liana screams.

Ian shoves the creature away instantly and bolts from the room.

“Liana?!”

He nearly slips as he flies down the stairs.

The kitchen lights flicker violently. Cabinets hang open. Glass litters the floor.

Liana stands near the counter, pale and shaking.

“There was someone here,” she whispers. “I swear to God, Ian, I saw—”

Then every light in the house dies.

Darkness swallows everything.

Ian stops breathing.

Slowly, from somewhere behind him, comes that familiar sound.

Heavy breathing.

Liana grabs his arm. “Ian…”

The creature stands at the end of the hallway.

Taller than before.

Its shadow touches the ceiling now.

And it is smiling.

“No,” Ian whispers immediately.

The creature’s eyes slide towards Liana.

“She is frightened.”

“You stay away from her.”

The creature looks almost confused by his anger.

“But you asked me to protect her.”

“I never—”

“You thought it.”

Ian goes cold. The creature takes one slow step forward. The room bends under its weight.

“Ian,” it says gently, “there are terrible things in this world.”

Another step.

“And they will take everyone from you.”

Liana trembles beside him.

“I can stop that.”

Ian shakes his head hard. “Don’t come closer.”

“But you are tired,” the creature whispers. “Tired of fear. Tired of expectations. Tired of pretending you are not lonely.”

Its voice wraps around him carefully. Tenderly. Lovingly.

“You do not have to lose anyone.”

Ian’s chest tightens painfully. The creature looks at him the way starving people look at food. The way abandoned things look at warmth.

“Just give me your heart willingly,” it says softly. “And I will never leave you alone again.”

Liana makes a horrified sound. Ian backs up instinctively. The creature’s expression changes. Not angry. Hurt.

“You promised me your heart,” it whispers.

“I never promised you anything!”

The creature stares at him for a long moment. Then its gaze shifts slowly towards Liana. Ian’s blood runs cold.

“No.”

The creature smiles faintly.

“You would do anything for her.”

Liana grabs Ian’s sleeve desperately. “What is that thing?”

Ian can’t answer.

Because he finally understands. The creature has never wanted fear. It wants consent. Surrender. And it has been patient enough to earn it. The creature reaches towards Liana. Ian moves before thinking.

“WAIT!”

Everything stops. The creature looks back at him instantly. Hope flickers across its monstrous face. Ian’s breathing turns ragged.

“If…” His voice cracks. “If I say yes…”

The creature becomes perfectly still.

“Will you leave her alone?”

A pause.

Then:

“Yes.”

Liana stares at him in horror. “Ian, no—”

“It’s okay,” Ian lies.

The creature approaches slowly now, almost reverently. Like Ian is something sacred. Its claws cup his face with terrifying gentleness.

“You are willing?” it asks.

Ian’s eyes burn. He thinks about his grandmother. About Liana. About how exhausted he is. And somewhere beneath all the fear, he thinks about the nights spent talking to this thing in the dark. The loneliness it understands too well. Ian laughs weakly.

“You manipulated me.”

The creature’s smile sharpens.

“Yes.”

Pain explodes through Ian’s chest. Liana screams. Ian looks down just in time to see claws disappear beneath his ribs without spilling a single drop of blood. The creature holds him upright as its hand closes around his beating heart. Ian convulses. The world dims at the edges. The creature leans close, almost affectionately.

“You taste wonderfully sweet,” it whispers.

Something wet and awful tears inside him.

The last thing Ian sees before darkness swallows him is the creature turning towards Liana with glowing eyes. Then it stops. Smiling.

Somewhere in the darkness upstairs, under Liana’s bed, something else begins breathing heavily too.

Author: Neha Vidyashankar, 13 years old (penned as a part of our first horror writing cohort program)