★ Hall Of Fame ★

Dear Bear

It was 11 PM. My parents always believed that I should sleep by 9. They tuck me to bed, kiss me good night, turn off the lights and close the door every night. 5 minutes later, I would stealthily walk across the room, lock my door, switch on the lights and play Castlevania on my NES every night.

Halfway through the game, as I was quietly wondering how foolish my parents were to treat me like a baby even though I was a guy of 15 years of age, I heard a tiny creak. I turned my head towards the door. It wasn’t open. Of course it wasn’t open, I had locked it myself. But the creak I heard was definitely a door’s creak. I shrugged, and continued with my game.

A while later, I heard another creak. I turned my head again, towards the door, and found nothing. The sound was coming from the door, that I was sure of. Pausing the game, I stood up from the ground and walked to the door. Sure enough, it was locked. I tried giving it a push, to see if it created a creaking noise.

It didn’t budge.

I unlocked the door and opened it wide enough for my head to peek. I looked out through the hallway. It was dark and the lights were out, so I couldn’t really see much. It would be troublesome if I switched on the hallway lights and my parents caught me awake at 12:15 in the morning. I took out the pocket torch from my drawer and flashed it across the hallway. The beam of the torchlight was moving around aimlessly due to my waving of the torch in all directions, when I suddenly caught sight of something brown near the edge of the staircase.

Curious, I walked quietly to where the brown thing was. I picked it up. It was fluffy. I flashed my torchlight on to it. It was a bear. It had beads for eyes, a ribbon around its neck (so tight that it would normally strangle a real bear to death) and a folded paper stapled on to its right arm. I took out the paper. Inside was a note.

‘H a p p y     H a l l o w e e n     N i c k . ‘

The handwriting was weird, with huge gaps around the long cursive handwriting. It almost reminded me of a spider, god knows for whatever reason. I wondered who gave it to me. It couldn’t be Arnold, for sure. He was just my 6 year old brother. 6 year olds can’t write cursives like these, unless they’re prodigies which Arnold is absolutely not.

It said ‘Happy Halloween’. I thought about the date. It was the morning of the 31st of October, alright. Would my parents have done this? It was highly unlikely, given that they slept at the stroke of 9, and woke up at 5 in the morning, like robots and never once woke up during that time duration. The possibility was still there though. Confused, I went back to my room, the tiny fluffy bear in one hand and the note in the other, while torchlight went into the pockets of my pajamas.

I put down the note and the bear on my study desk, and plopped on the floor for more Castlevania. The moment I selected resume, the TV shut down. I stared at the screen for a good 10 seconds, blinking blankly at it, until realizing the ridiculous timing of the events. What was happening, seriously? Why would the TV just switch off? The light were still on. I stood up and walked over to the TV, checking for loose plugs. The main TV plug was lying on the floor, far too away from the socket to have loosened and fallen off. The weird thing was that I also noticed some scratches on the plug, which was very strange since I had been doing maintenance of the TV just the day before. I let the thought drift away and put the TV plug back into the socket.

The TV refused to switch on, no matter what I did.

Frustrated, I gave up 10 minutes later and decided to just go to sleep. Just as I was about to turn the lights out, I heard another creaking sound, only this was louder and it seemed more like screeching. It was a terrible noise, I had to say that. This time I was sure the sound had come from within the room. I looked around the messy room nervously. My eyes stopped upon seeing the bear.

It was facing the wall.

I clearly recalled placing the bear in the opposite direction, that would be facing me. As I shakily turned the bear around, that’s when I saw it.

There were huge scratches on the wall behind the bear. These were not humanly possible, for the scratches were so long, it hinted they were claw marks of an animal, no, a beast. I started feeling a little uncomfortable. My eyes happened to notice the open folded note, and I was utterly shocked at what I saw.

‘D o     y o u     l i k e     T r i c k     o r     T r e a t ?’

I felt myself go pale. This was the same paper I had found with the bear. How did the message change? Was I dreaming? Was this all just a bad nightmare? I grabbed the bear and looked at it. It stared back at me with those expressionless beady eyes, black all over and the surface reflecting upon it. I knew something was terribly wrong with the wretched fluffy thing. I tore the note until only bits remained, and opened my window and threw the bear as hard as I could. I watched as the bear crashed into the lake. And that lake was pretty deep. I shut the windows and turned out the lights and went to bed. I slept almost instantly, I think.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, I woke up with a start. I checked the time on my mobile, 2:53 AM. I groaned softly and drifted back to sleep, when I heard it.

A screech. So loud, my ear drums could have burst.

I immediately regained consciousness and put my hands over my ears. Unlike the other times, this screech was stretching on for what seemed like forever. To make matters worse, they were growing louder with each second passing by. At one point of time, the terrible noise got so loud that I had started screaming in fear.

I was hoping my parents would burst into my room with the police, since the screeching would have deafened the entire neighborhood by now. But no one came.

I had started crying and yelling and shouting, because I couldn’t understand what was happening. My vocal chords hurt, but that didn’t stop me from screaming any louder. My heart was pounding against my chest so hard that I thought I would explode. I was scared for my life. I didn’t know what to do.

At some point of time, I just fell asleep out of fatigue.

The next time I woke up, it was morning. I checked my mobile. 8:21 AM. I yawned, still exhausted. Then the previous night all came back to me.

I cleared my throat, thinking my vocal chords may be rusty today because of all the screaming. I was more than surprised to find my voice clear as honey.

I checked for the claw marks. They were gone. I also checked if the TV was working. It worked just as smooth like any other day. There weren’t any scratches on the plug either. I guess all that must have been just a really bad nightmare.

As I descended down the staircase and sat on the couch yawning, with dad reading a newspaper, Arnold rushed out from the kitchen and hugged me really tightly.

“Ow, whoa. Arnie, what’s up with the sudden hugging? I can’t breathe!” I faked dying out of breath and dropping onto the couch. Arnold giggled at my act.

“Very funny, Nicky. I hugged you because of your surprise present!” He replied happily, and gave me the biggest smile I had ever seen.

“Arnold, what gift are you talking about?” I asked. I was never one to plan presents for people beforehand, so this was absolutely not my doing.

My mother called out from the kitchen. “Oh Nick, you can be so secretive sometimes. How nice it is of you to give him a present for Halloween. Even though Halloween isn’t about exchanging gifts.”

I was utterly confused, so my brother became my guide as he pulled me into the kitchen. On the counter, there it was. His gift.

The small brown fluffy and not even wet bear with beads for eyes, a ribbon around its neck too tight and a folded paper stapled on to its right arm.

‘I     l i k e     T r i c k     m o r e     t h a n     T r e a t . H o w     a b o u t     y o u?’

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