Bobby And The Bogeyman

Outside, the rain tapped impatiently against the mullioned windows. It had been a wet winter, but as Jim said, it would bring a verdant spring. The thought almost made her smile. Always the optimist, he was. She on the other hand, couldn't afford a shred of brightness in her thinking. She had to deal with a bogeyman lurking somewhere in her child's bedroom.

"Okay, Bobby," murmured Mother, her small feet striking the delicate rose pattern of carpet with a soft thud. "Let's go see, but be quiet," she whispered, placing a well-manicured finger in front of her mouth. "We don't want to wake Daddy."

Two brass sconces bathed the long, narrow hallway in a soft pastel glow. Together mother and son walked under the twelve-foot ceiling and past the textured wallpaper down to Bobby's room. The Rogers family had been happy in this charming Victorian home set off from the main highway by woods so deep that they almost hid the property from view. Everything about the old house and its trappings held the enchantment of another era, long faded into time. No one wanted to move again, even though the doctors had strongly advised this last upheaval for Bobby and everyone else.

"A new start," they had said. "In a new neighborhood with a new school and new friends."

But "it" was happening all over again. Or was it? Nancy Rogers always wondered how her son could see something so vividly that was never there. As a writer of children's books, she understood the power of a child's imagination, but the edges of his story were always so clean. The descriptions were so detailed and they never varied, no matter whom the child was talking to. He always told of a large, hairy, man-like being with tangled hair, yellow teeth and long sharp talons. A fear niggled somewhere in her brain as they approached the small green door at the end of the hall.