As Stella entered the cave, her flashlight’s beam fell on a splatter of blood, and the scarlet stain gleamed against the backdrop of moss that covered the wall like a green carpet. She tracked the trail with the light’s whitebeam, and John’s face, bathed in blood, came into focus.
“John!” she called out. Her voice boomed and then echoed inside the cave, but it failed to evoke any response.
Stella felt tiny worms creep into the soles of her feet, slowly making their way up her ankles and calves, spreading out and encasing the flesh beneath the skin of her thighs and buttocks. They moved further up, squirming under the taut skin on her back, dazzling her soft mounds and causing goosebumps to mushroom along her bosom. Then, as quick as fading mist under a bright sun, they stole themselves into her skull to thrive like bubbles in a frothing beer mug, and shot up to the roof of her head, making it split. The worms escape.
John was sitting on the floor, legs at a queer angle, eyes open and mouth agape.
A sudden draft of cold air blew against her calves, and she lunged forward, her skirt swirling, exposing part of her milky, smooth thighs to the chill of the breeze. The flashlight fell off, rolling on the ground, causing its beam to dance across the cave’s wall, and intermittently illuminating John’s blood-smeared face.
Stella held John by the collar of his shirt and shook him. “Wake, up John! Please…”
He remained silent.
Stella grabbed his hand and bit into his palm in the hope that the pain might wake him up. He wouldn’t react. She recoiled, breath choking inside her chest, and felt a lump build in her dry throat.
John’s palm held the smell of the boogeyman’s face. That familiar fragrance lingered on his hand. It seemed he had caught hold of the boogeyman’s cheeks in the throes of death, not wanting to let go.
Droplets of water fell from the cave’s rain soaked roof, and Stella felt the earth vibrate as thunder rumbled. Another gust of cold wind blew, lifting her skirt again, and lashing across her groin, chilling the tiny space beneath the U-shaped curve of her panties.
“No, you cannot be!” She smashed her backhand across John’s face. “Just as I cannot be; without you!”
The boogeyman will come and get you, Stella!” Mother said so every time, whenever Stella broke a rule.
The rules were simple: 7 years – Do not go and play beyond the yard; wash your hands with soap every time you get back home. 12 years – Do not ever wear short skirts; do not speak to strangers. 15 years – Do not enter common rooms when you’re having periods; do not look at boys.
Though Stella had never seen a boogeyman in his real form, she had conjured up an image in her mind:
Disheveled long hair receding from a broad forehead wrinkled by furrows, he walks with a limp on bow-shaped thin legs. A large haversack on his shoulder holds toddlers kicking, and flailing their limbs; his fingers dirty, filth caked over the dry skin of his knuckles, giving them the shade of pitch on his dark hands. His fingernails, long and grimy, stretch over his wrist as he clutches the sack’s twisted mouth in a firm grip.
As an adult, she woke up during several nights, hearing his footsteps, and scrutinized the murk as his lean frame emerged from beyond the shadows. Each movement of his had her shrinking, curling and turning; but never resisting.
He was a demon and people never resisted demons. The boogeyman was to be feared, like mom preached; not to be resisted.
So, pretending to be asleep, but alive to his cold touch, she would peek at his figure through the narrow slits of her closed eyelids. That was how she had been able to draw a fuller picture of the monster that had horrified her in her childhood and haunted her through, to torment her in her adulthood.
His sunken red eyes are burning embers, and stubbles, coarse like coconut husk fibers, litter his caved-in cheeks. His incisors curve like a serpent’s fangs, and they shine as he tames his quarry with a wand in his hand, forcing her to acquiesce to the pain he inflicts.
When he left, she’d sit up, cowering, pulling a bed sheet over her breasts, and allow the teardrops, vying for escape, to run down her cheeks.