Folklore

I am the thing that lives beneath the stairs. I am behind you when you turn out the lights, and I am under your bed when you wake in the dark. Feel my presence when the air grows cool and crisp; hear my name carried in the breeze like the rustle of dying leaves, like the flutter of crows’ wings when they unperch from a barren oak. I live upon the lips of children when they scatter to darkened streets, clad in white linens and foolish masks. They say I have haunted this sleepy town for the past thousand years. I am the Autumn and the Harvest, I am the wail in the night and the chill in your bones.

I am the Boogeyman.

There was a time that the sound of my name made men clutch books of gospel to their chests. They first knew me as Satan, but with time they invented new names: Ghost, Specter, the Jersey Devil. I wore many forms when I struck fear into the hearts of men. I was Spirit, I was Haunt, Monster, Poltergeist, Beelzebub, Bigfoot, Mothman, Witch.

But time has passed and my power wanes like the great slice of alabaster moon that hangs in the sky. Your kind have forgotten the face of dread. The secrets of the world opened themselves to you, and you deconstructed them, recorded and cataloged them. You built networks of libraries and forums that dispel mystery and destroy myth. An effort to convince yourselves that you are safe in your homes, that I do not exist. It was like sucking marrow from my bones.

You have lost your uncertainty. The only thing left to fear is each other.

That is why I am here in your bedroom, child. The summer heat has broken, and the season of superstition is upon us. The old stories are snaking through town and my names are once again in the street, on the playground, beneath the pews. I am made alive in childish teases and hushed whispers -- they bless me with the strength to perform again.

Do you recognize me, descending from your ceiling? Were you awaiting my arrival? You do not resist as I slip beneath your skin and blanket you in darkness.

Know that you were carefully chosen. I watched you across suburban streets and through classroom windows. I saw your lonesome school-bus rides, your friendless lunchtime meals. And just as I followed you, you followed the Girl.

Perhaps it was her popularity that intrigued you, or the enticing curve of her body in the cheerleading uniform. What made your interest blossom into obsession? What tinged your fascination with hate? I am wearing you like a garment as I flip through your notebooks, and her likeness is fresh on every page. I admire the ways you have mutilated her.

That is why you are my prized selection. In this way, tonight is not something I am forcing upon you. It is something we will do together.

Can you smell the latex as we slip the mask over our head? Do you see its clownish grin when I position us in front of the mirror? You are only a passenger now, but I allow you to retain your senses. Even so, your muscles are oddly slack; there is no fight in you when I slip the kitchen knife from its block. I am still weak. I will need your strength when our blade finds flesh.

The last of the light has drained from the sky when we step onto the porch. The sidewalk is littered with sweets and wrappers, trampled by passing ghosts and mummies and fairies, and we are among them now, painted orange beneath the streetlamps, shoulder to shoulder with children who skip along the bricks swinging pillowcases full of candies, who sing wicked songs punctuated with ringing doorbells, who kick holes into Jack-o-Lanterns’ toothy grins, who warn of zombies and chupacabras and most of all the Boogeyman.

I hope you can feel our body trembling in revelry. We are, all of us, drunk upon the sweet nectar of fear. To fear is to believe, and children -- bless your beautiful little souls -- believe in everything. I am older than the stones we walk upon, but this night, I too am a child.

I can feel you stirring in our skin when we come upon the Girl’s home. The driveway is barren. The house is blackened and shuttered, save for the warm glow of a window on the upper floor. There she is above us, dancing in silhouette. Her shape is lithe, her movements shy and suggestive. A mating dance. Animalistic heat rises within us, lust and fury intermingled. It will not take much to placate you. The only thing that keeps us from her is a pane of glass.

This place may be foreign to you, but I have been here many times. I lead you through the darkness and guide your hands to the rupture in the lattice beneath the porch. The crawlspace beyond is just big enough for our body. But I am frail -- I cannot break this seal on my own. I ask now for your strength as we pull. If desire burns hot within you, if you care for the Girl at all, give me your might.

Very good. We are prone in the soil with breath rattling in our mask. The trap door is just ahead -- is it my hand or yours that tremors when we reach upward for the latch? Quietly now, we clamber into a space dark and soft. A closet. We are blind in the darkness but I do not need eyes to see. Appreciate my deftness as I navigate this unknown chamber. Witness my grace when I move us from room to room.

Up, up along the staircase into the gloom above. I carefully shepherd your feet from step to step, a winding path which avoids the planks that would groan beneath our weight. We glide like a danseur up the second flight and across the hall.

We are outside her bedroom now, you and I. Our fingers are taut as we press against the door. It creaks open and the sight behind it leaves you quaking within us. She is on the bed, coiled around herself in a naked embrace. We stand ghostlike in the doorway as she is lost within her passion. You demand our legs spring forth to lash out and punish her, but I plant our feet, and the tendons shriek as I force you to stand and savor this moment. Watch as she writhes. Observe the flesh tensing and relaxing -- trace the path you will carve into it. Dwell a moment on the gift I bequeath you.

The Girl catches sight of us. There is only time for a sharp intake of breath before I loosen my grip and allow you to perform.

When you are finished, the mask is in tatters and I must pry our fingers from the handle of the knife. Calm yourself -- this next stage of the ritual is most crucial. Bend with me as I kneel before the altar you created and dip a palsied hand into the blood. Rise, and I will anoint you. Now, approach the mirror and pay tribute to the God who blessed you. Write my name.

Our body tightens when fingertips meet glass. Go on, little one. Why are you afraid? Write my name, and I shall become your shield. Allow me to absolve you. Your invocation will sustain me, give me legs to wander this world another year longer. That is all I ask in return.

Your wrist eases and you begin to paint. When you pull your hand back, I see the name scrawled across the glass is not mine, but your own.

An understandable mistake. Your chest still heaves with exhausted breaths, your skin vibrates with thrill. I am not angry. Smear away the blood and I will help you scribe the words.

But you do not move.

Even as I try to manipulate your limbs, muscles resist and joints calcify. Has the puppet cut his strings? I deepen myself within your mind and sift through tissue -- the human anatomy is complex circuitry, but my hands know which connections to sever, which wires to cross. My fingers root around in the folds of your brain and press on triggers: pain, fear response, cortisol production. I take no pleasure in feeling your body shudder. I do not enjoy starving your lungs of air, twisting your arteries, bursting the vessels behind your retinas. But I will do it if you insist.

We stand for hours, watching each other through eyes glassed over with blood. In the mirror’s reflection, behind your autograph, your face contorts into a smile. You know, as I do, that the dawn is coming. I can feel its light break over the hills and wash away the stains I dyed into the land.

Sweet boy, do you understand what you are doing? Would you kill the Boogeyman and deprive the world of its only caretaker? You have thrust a dagger into my heart. Be kind to the one who understood you, who enabled and encouraged you.

Please. Write my name.

You hold firm and watch me founder. I open your throat, and through your mouth I ask: What are you? And now, at last, you speak: just a boy.

Shafts of light filter through the blinds. I am at once uncomfortable in the flesh that encases me. I relinquish control and become formless again, nothing but a cloud of miasma that floats above you, watching as you collapse into the bed next to our creation. Whatever body I have is failing now; my tendrils of cognition are blinking out one by one. I cannot feel the quiet terror behind the schoolyard, I cannot hear my name reverberate through the alley. There is only this room. My vision falters, and the last image I see is you, peering skyward to better watch me unravel into the abyss.

I see now the world that man created. This is no place for legend. The walls you constructed those many years ago stand tall and unbreachable, and though they might keep beasts at bay, the shadows they cast leave you shivering inside. I suppose there is nothing more for your kind to learn, no fairy tale that can disarm you -- after all, what use is a scary story in the mouth of a monster? There is naught to fear. You are the one that skulks about in the night.

Very well, then. I will not cling to a realm that no longer needs me.

I will pass you the torch that sets the world aflame.