The Hollow Under the Bunk

I was eight when I first saw the thing under the bunk, and I’m twenty-six now, but I still can’t sleep in a room with a bed that isn’t flush against the wall. My therapist calls it a phobia. I call it common sense.

It happened at my grandmother’s farmhouse, a place I only visited twice a year. The house was old, with creaking floors and a smell of damp earth and mothballs. My cousin Lena and I shared a room with a heavy wooden bunk bed that had been in the family for generations. I always took the top, because I liked the height, and Lena took the bottom. That night, we’d stayed up late telling stories, and I’d drifted off to the sound of her breathing.

I woke to a strange pressure in the room, like the air itself was holding its breath. Moonlight cut a pale rectangle across the floor, and I lay there, listening. Then I heard it: a slow, rhythmic scraping, like nails on wood. It came from underneath the lower bunk. I leaned over the edge, my heart thumping, and peered into the shadow.

At first, I saw nothing but a dark gap. But then, as my eyes adjusted, I noticed a shape. It wasn’t a person, not exactly. It was more like a woven sculpture of twigs and leaves, but with a face—a face made of bark and moss, with two hollow eye sockets and a mouth full of dried thorns. It was staring up at me, its head tilted at an unnatural angle, and its hands were pressed flat against the underside of the slats, as if it were holding up the entire bed. And it smiled. Not a friendly smile, but a slow, deliberate contortion of its wooden lips.

I wanted to scream, but my throat locked. I could only stare as it began to move, its twiggy fingers curling around the edge of the mattress and pulling itself up. I scrambled back, but there was nowhere to go. I fell off the bunk, landing hard on the floor, and when I looked up, it was gone.

I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed huddled against the wall, watching the space under the bed, but nothing moved. In the morning, Lena asked why I looked so pale, and I told her I had a nightmare. But I knew it wasn’t a dream. I had the scratches on my arms to prove it—three thin lines, like from a thorn bush.

We left the farmhouse a week later, and I tried to forget. But over the years, that face haunted me. It appeared in my dreams, and sometimes, when I was alone, I’d catch a glimpse of it in a dark corner. I started to avoid basements, crawl spaces, and any room with a bed that wasn’t flush against the wall. I became obsessed with the idea that it was following me.

Last year, I decided to confront it. I drove back to the farmhouse, which was now abandoned, and I forced myself to go inside. The bunk bed was still there, covered in dust and cobwebs. I knelt down and looked underneath. For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, from the deepest shadow, two hollow eyes opened. A voice, like the rustle of dead leaves, whispered: ‘I was waiting for you.’

I ran. I ran out of that house and didn’t stop until I was in my car, speeding down the gravel road. But as I drove, I looked in the rearview mirror, and I saw it—not in the backseat, but in the reflection of my own eyes. And now, whenever I look in a mirror, I see it there, staring back, its head tilted, waiting for me to blink.