The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(155)

For the hundredth time, I’d begged her to take the white rabbit away.

My pleas fell on deaf ears.

Every few years, months, weeks, I don’t know... I never slept, recalling time was a difficulty for me... I would again try to make my move against the rabbit. I had thrown it out my window and into the street to be run over by carriages and made dirty by the dust and shuffling of strangers. Other times, I had hidden it someplace else in the house: locked it in cabinets, buried it in the attic, set it upon the bed in the maid’s room. The rabbit always came back.

I don’t know why. I never know the why of anything.

Night after night that rabbit would infect my little nursery with evil. Tucked into my bed, alone, the house would be soundless save the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. The growing noise of that clock was the herald of trouble: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, louder and louder. No breaking storm could have roared through the house as furiously as that screaming timepiece.

Covers to my chin, my wide blue eyes would dart to and fro. Though the noise was wretched, I longed for it to continue into forever. I would rather feel it vibrate through my bones than face what came next. Because that cranking cog of noise would end abruptly, sometimes after hours, sometimes after just a few short moments. Then I would be trapped in deafening silence, with only the sound of blood racing through my ears to warn me danger had arrived.

Silence was unsafe. The dark was a living thing, monstrous. The thin slice of moonlight cutting through the curtains offering no succor. Casting the shape of my window’s panes against the papered wall, that scant light illuminated a single horrid thing. If I let my gaze stray, peeked just a little to the right, I would see something that should not be.

The rabbit’s stitched head had turned, those flat glass eyes staring right at me. And then they would come.

The first time I’d seen her grace my nursery, I had been very little—so young that I could not tell you what my age might have been. The apparition was naked, slender—a young woman, shoulders hunched forward in the shadows. Long hair, tangled and matted, hung messy to her waist. Every bit of her bared body was covered in wet blood. Before her, she’d rub her slippery hands together while pacing, back and forth, a terrible clicking coming from her throat.

One sight of her, and I had wet the bed.

Hours stretched by, her dark eyes shining behind the wet tangles of blood drenched hair, watching me, waiting. The monster’s prowl endless, I cowered in sodden covers, tracking her every movement.

In my heart I knew that to place even a toe from that bed, to consider running for my nanny, would be the end of me. I didn’t dare breathe. I knew that naked, bloody woman wanted badly to hurt me.

At daybreak, when my nanny arrived to prepare me for the day, she scolded me soundly for dirtying the sheets. I was marched in my soiled nightdress before my parents, intruding upon their private breakfast so that they too might echo the castigations of my nanny.

I had tried to tell them that there had been someone in my room. I tried to make them hear me. My father had scowled, his waxed mustache twitching.

Tantrums and melodramatics were not to be tolerated. I had earned myself a spanking and a day locked away in my room, made to lie on the same wet bed, where every time I closed my eyes, I was certain bloody hands would slip from some dark corner to strangle me.

Even after a sleepless night, even with the safety of the sun bright in the room, I could not find rest. It was too wet and cold, my blankets smelled, and I was ashamed of myself.

It was not until almost dark that the maid came to change my sheets and dress me in a clean gown for sleeping.

She should not have bothered.

The tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, of the grandfather clock crashed through the house so loud, so very loud I was certain the whole city must have heard that drumming.

Before I was fully prepared, before my childish prayers to Jesus were done, all went quiet.

Swallowing, I cut a glance where I should never have looked. Up high on the shelf, moonlight showing the perfect white fur, the rabbit had once again turned its head to watch me.

The woman was coming back, I knew it. She was coming and she’d figured out how to get me.

But then there was no wet slap of her sodden feet on the floor. No chesty, clicking breaths.

All was quiet and I began to breathe easy. It had just been a bad dream; the rabbit must always have been facing my direction. My papa was right; I was just a silly little girl full of nonsense.

I was so very wrong.

There were worse things than the bloody woman. In the silence, I heard a pair of soft, childish giggles. Spider-like hands crept up the side of my bed, fisting my covers.

Something was under my bed!

With a terrible yank, my blankets began to be dragged under the mattress, the childish laughter growing mean. I tried to make a grab for my only defense, but whatever was hidden beneath me was so much stronger. In vain, I toppled to the floor. Before I might clamber back up, hands shot out from the dark space under my bed, encircled my ankles, and yanked my little body across the floor.

Next thing I knew I was stuffed under my bed, prodded and scratched by the unseen nightmare.

Unlike the evening before when I had kept silent, doing my best not to draw the red woman’s attention, I screamed. No one heard, no one came to save me. Scrambling to claw my way free, I fought and I kicked. My gown was ripped, white ruffles torn right off. I got myself to the nursery corner. Pressed my boney shoulders into the tasteful wallpaper and stared around the room, knees knocking together.