“He’s conscious, Doctor. Yes, yes sir, but he’s not responding to any stimuli… No. His eyes are open, but he’s totally unresponsive. Okay, I’ll have him admitted,” said Nurse Hill, referring to Sheldon Courtland, the young boy who was dropped off moments earlier by a disheveled woman. The latter, Molly Brookes, left before anyone could question her about her statement. Molly wrote that she had found the young, malnourished child by the side of the road and drove him to the hospital. It wasn’t often that Nurse Brody encountered these despicable instances where someone discards a child, theirs or God knows whose, and abruptly vanishes, but from time to time it did happen. Sucking her teeth, Nurse Hill wheeled Sheldon Courtland’s immobile form into a smaller room, which contained three other patients, and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Hang in there, child.” Nurse Hill, feeling oddly struck by the toddler, pet Sheldon’s hair as he stared blankly at the ceiling, unable to move. She scribbled something onto his chart, which hung at the foot of his bed, and walked off, leaving Sheldon alone with the other three patients. Though he could not move or speak, Sheldon could see, hear, and think just fine, which only made matters worse for the young boy, who was being tortured – silently, invisibly – by the spiteful, gnarled demon sitting atop his chest.

****************

Mitch Hardy, an insomniac by night and a  narcoleptic by day, had been admitted to the hospital for stitches, which he needed for the gash on his forehead that he sustained while passing out in his bathroom during a shower. Mitch was a young man in his late twenties who had struggled with the seemingly simple act of falling asleep, or remaining awake, since his teens. His therapist repeatedly suggested that the impetus for this dramatic interruption of his sleep cycles was most likely an event, either repressed in memory or somehow unnoticed, that occurred just prior to the illness’s onset. But Mitch couldn’t unearth anything odd or otherwise destructive in his past that would account for his condition. He simply decided, after the first year or so of dealing with his oft disrupted sleep, that he would not live his life under the long, twilight shadow of bitterness, especially since twilight, dreams, and shadows would become the familiar, recurring characteristics of his everyday life. Lying in his hospital bed, Mitch wondered whether it was day or night, since the hollowed, lifeless fluorescent lights above shone the same at all hours. Curiously, he theorized about his condition, considering how his illnesses would manifest should he fail to determine the time of day. Without that contextual queue, would he fall asleep or be unable to descend into the murky, image-laden depths of his unconscious mind. Ruminating over this, Mitch passed out, entering a truly null, non, void, thoughtless sleep bereft of motion.

When Mitch awoke, he first heard the sounds of EKG monitors chirping elsewhere, then felt the harsh hand of the overhead lights press into his eyeballs, seeming to scratch at the very matter of his soft fleshy orbs, which caused him to wince, awaiting relief. Mitch turned his head to his left, peering through the blurred haze of his newly opened eyes, and saw the young boy that had been brought in after him. Mitch wondered how long he had been unconscious, which was, in fact, not very long at all, and tried to swallow his mouthful of cottony saliva. As his gaze sharpened, Mitch saw something gray-green standing behind the young boy, or was it on top of him? Rubbing his eyes, accidentally offending the painful gash on his forehead with his fingers, Mitch focused on the forms beside him. “Hey…” muttered the groggy narcoleptic, “Hey… who’s there?” Like an amateur photographer twisting the lens of his camera left and right, but overshooting the sweet-spot wherein all images are in focus, Mitch tried to adjust his eyesight. Suddenly, he managed to attain a clear view, but couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. Atop the young boys chest sat, rather impudently, a knobby, sickly-green, naked little man or beast, who stared intently into the face of his captive. “What the…” whispered a stunned Mitch, eliciting the attention of the creature, who whipped its horrible countenance toward him.

The jarring sound of curtains being pulled by an unsympathetic nurse interrupted the locked gaze Mitch was enduring with the utterly sinister little goblin to his left. Mitch, startled by the sudden and nearby disruption, gasped, turning his head to face the nurse. “What? You okay there, Mr. Hardy?” asked Nurse Hill. Quickly looking back to the wicked little gnome, but finding only a motionless child sans tormentor, Mitch said, rather unconvincingly, “Yeah… I’m fine.” He looked back to the boy once more, concluding that he must have been entertaining a netherworld fantasy, and asked Nurse Hill, “What’s his story?” “Well,” began Nurse Hill, “we don’t really know. He’s been catatonic for a while now, but they’re beginning to suspect some sort of psychological trauma, since, aside from a little malnourishment, he seems to be a healthy young boy.” “What’s his name?” asked Mitch. “Allegedly, it’s Sheldon Courtland” replied Nurse Hill. She explained to Mitch that one of the emergency room doctor’s would be stopping by to stitch his wound and then left the small room. Mitch’s eyes flirted with the spot on the boy’s chest where he thought he saw the goblin creature, but the infirmary had reclaimed it’s mundane impression.

Relaxing his head, Mitch began to drift along the current of his rapidly mutating thoughts, feeling as though he might fall asleep again, but was suddenly assaulted by a terrible scream, which erupted from the previously paralyzed boy’s mouth. With a rush of adrenaline, Mitch bolted upright, his gaze rigorously affixed to the child, and the door to their small room flung open, revealing Nurse Hill’s startled expression behind it. “What’s going on?” she asked of Mitch, involuntarily. He stammered his confusion at her, pleading with his eyes, as she rushed to the child. Mitch watched as Nurse Hill tried to console the screaming boy, his gaunt, helpless expression inherently troubling. She recorded some information that his EKG produced and called for a Doctor on the phone in the room. As Mitch watched the nurse fidget and fret over the boy, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Reflexively contorting his body in the direction of the blurred, peripheral object, Mitch saw the clammy creature again, this time sitting on top of another unidentified patient’s chest. “There!” Mitch hollered, pointing to the patient being sat upon. Nurse Hill turned in the direction of his pointing finger, but didn’t see anything. “What?” she asked, sincerely. Looking back at the nurse with a desperate expression, Mitch said, “You don’t see?” He quickly returned his gaze to the locale of the loathsome anomaly, finding only the unconscious patient.

****************

Though they had drawn the curtain between them, creating, in their minds, some sort of barrier that would prevent him from hearing their hushed conversation, Mitch still made out Nurse Hill’s suggestion to the doctor that he be kept overnight under the suspicion of having a concussion. “He thought he saw something,” she whispered to Dr. Stromb, “I think he’s hallucinating.” “Have you checked his vitals? Pupillary response? Normal? Hmmm…” replied the doctor. As mysteriously as he had animated, Sheldon had returned to his catatonic state. Nurse Hill and Dr. Stromb stood over the boy, holding their surreptitious discussion in his cordoned off area. When they concluded, Nurse Hill drew the curtains open, performed a perfunctory half-curtsey, and left the room. Feigning surprise, Mitch asked Dr. Stromb why he wanted him to remain in the hospital for observation. “Well,” the doctor said, “we just want to make sure that you don’t have any unforeseen complications due to the fall.” Like the nurse before him, Dr. Stromb shuffled out of the room, leaving Mitch alone with his paranoia. The latter scanned each of the three other patients in the room, his eyes flitting about like a troubled animal’s, and thought that maybe the doctor was right. Mitch, who had never been much for following the rules, checked around to see if anyone was coming and then slipped out from under his sheet. His feet touched the icy floor, which sent shivers all along his spine, for the first time in hours, and it was a refreshing break in his monotonous holding pattern. Regaining his balance, Mitch lightly touched his wounded brow, deciding that it couldn’t be bad enough to warrant hallucinating, and shuffled over to Sheldon Courtland.

“Hey little guy,” whispered Mitch to the inanimate, though conscious, child. Sheldon Courtland laid perfectly still, his arms like a toy soldier’s, jutting down at his sides and tapering into rigidly pointing finger-tips. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you pull through.” He looked at the toddler’s chest, recalling in vivid detail the nebbish gnome that he had imagined sitting there, and heard a tiny, sharp wheeze escape Sheldon’s lips. Simultaneously assuring himself that he was imagining things and uncertain enough to check, Mitch turned his head, lowering his ear to an inch above the boy’s mouth. “Pleeeease Heeelpp,” was the phrase that the strained, nearly inaudible whisper resembled. A pit of horror developed in Mitch’s stomach, but the audacious nature of the experience caused him to immediately doubt his perception. He returned his ear to the boy’s lips just as the door to their cell-sized room opened. “What are you doing?” demanded the doctor. “Uh… I uh, I thought he was speaking!” exclaimed an embarrassed Mitch. “Right, well he looks pretty unconscious to me,” said the E.R. doctor. “Now, let’s get you back on your bed so we can stitch you up.” Mitch hopped back onto his stretcher-bed, fidgeting with his unruly hospital gown as he did so, and laid down, awaiting his repair. 

“I’ve got to give you a few shots, Mr. Hardy, just some local anesthetics. Nothing to worry about,” said the doctor as he smiled reassuringly, or condescendingly, as Mitch interpreted. The needle pricks were quick and cold, giving way to a warm flushing sensation that spread out across Mitch’s forehead. He closed his eyes so as not to see the doctor’s hairy wrists dangling above his face, nimbly moving this way and that as they tugged on the wiry black string binding Mitch’s wound. The sensation, though devoid of pain, was unnerving to Mitch. He felt the doctor’s fat thumbs pushing and poking, and tried not to think of the his curly black arm-hairs, which tangled and tugged in the silver lattice of his wristwatch. Mitch, finding the experience claustrophobic at best, began to focus on the sounds of the room. Through the darkness of his lidded eyes, Mitch suddenly became aware of the doctor’s shallow, wheezy breathing, assuming that it was a result of the physician’s chin being pulled back into his neck in a habitual gesture of concentration. The wheeze increased in volume, sounding less like the innocent whine of an occupied man’s breath, and more like the sound of someone who, in their perverse absorption, had shed their concern of being heard. Mitch warily opened his eyes, but the sight of the sweaty, curly, black hairs on the doctor’s olive skin did not invade his pupils. Instead, Mitch found only the overhead fluorescents, their metal sheath covered in dust, which occasionally fell, glimmering in the light like snowflakes under a lamppost. The initial shock of finding himself alone caused Mitch to momentarily forget about the wheezing sound that still ground in his ears. He tried to lift his head, but found it nearly impossible. After a heroic effort, Mitch managed to lift his face enough to look down the long stretch of his supine body. A part of him had known, or else knew by way of wishing otherwise, that he would find the warty, bilious abomination sitting on his chest.

As a narcoleptic, Mitch was accustomed to the sensation of sleep paralysis that now claimed him, quickly filing that observation of his condition away in a part of his brain that he would call upon later. For the moment, though, Mitch, his throat ineffectually convulsing in an attempt to scream, was singularly preoccupied with the demon before him. He felt the weight of the fat little gnome on his abdomen, its bare ass pressing into Mitch’s stomach and its feet, whose gnarled toes stank of death, resting just below Mitch’s chin. He could feel and think with perfect clarity, but was utterly unable to move. The goblin’s small stature in no way decreased its horrific and wizened countenance’s threatening gaze. The gargoyle’s nose was like a pale green talon descending from its brow, and tapered to a wretched, dripping point a hairsbreadth from its upper lip. The creature’s eyes were yellowed and sickly, save for its irises and pupils, which were black and infinitely cold. Long greasy strands of black hair fell in front of its mouth, flittering into the air with each frothy pronunciation of its spiteful incantation, which was directed at Mitch. At the same moment, Mitch and the hideous monster atop him became aware of Sheldon’s tugging. The toddler, having been released by the greedy ghoul’s migration, had climbed out of his stretcher-bed, attempting to save Mitch from the same subversive fate.

Sheldon pulled at Mitch’s uncooperative arm until it fell off of the side of the bed, jerking Mitch’s whole body and tipping the creature off of his chest. Mitch, as soon as he was freed from perilous paralysis, gasped for air, sitting up violently. He clasped his neck, vehemently searching the floor on both sides of his bed, and reached for Sheldon to lift him up. The boy fell into Mitch’s hands, feeling unspeakably grateful to encounter that gesture of being picked up, and curled up in the stranger’s arms, feeling safer than he had in weeks. “Holy Christ, holy Christ, holy Christ,” Mitch kept repeating, while Sheldon simply buried his face in the former’s armpit. A strange quiet befell the room and Mitch, still sitting in his bed, suddenly felt another surge of adrenaline wash over him. He squeezed Sheldon to him, unwittingly exercising his paternal instincts, and leapt out of bed, looking frantically around the room. He half expected to find the goblin in a corner, or else charging him from one, but everything had become eerily quiet. “Hey… hey, you okay?” asked Mitch of Sheldon, whose face was a scrunched expression of “no.” “What the hell was that?” asked Mitch, rhetorically. “He comes for you when you sleep,” was the surprisingly soft spoken reply. “Yeah? Was he… did he come for you? Is that why you’ve been sleeping?” asked Mitch. Sheldon nodded and then returned his face to the warm, dark safety in the bend of Mitch’s arm. Holding Sheldon in an iron grip, Mitch jumped when he heard something fall over. His eyes whipped to the direction of the sound, alighting on a stainless-steel pan rolling by like a dislodged hubcap, but he found no beast. Then, grunting and wheezing like a fat old man whose poor health only exasperates his already cantankerous disposition, the naked little demon slowly, and without regard for who might be watching, climbed up onto another patient’s bed.

With a lack of concern for being seen, as though it were perfectly normal to muddle about, siphoning people’s life force from their unconscious bodies, the goblin began reciting his verse atop the unidentified patient’s chest. Just then, having heard the commotion, Nurse Hill burst into the room. She flung open the door, finding Mitch and Sheldon, who was wrapped around the former’s body like a spider-monkey, standing with their backs to the entryway. “Mr. Hardy! What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. Her anger was replaced by a frightful curiosity when Mitch reached out with his free hand and shushed her. Sensing that something wasn’t right, beyond the obvious, Nurse Hill quieted down, suddenly wondering what had riled Mitch up. As she looked in the direction that Mitch was staring, initially dismissing Sheldon’s involvement in the commotion, she realized that the latter was not merely a victim in a sick man’s episode, but somehow a willing participant. She had assumed that Mitch grabbed Sheldon from his bed, flinging him over his shoulder, and hadn’t appreciated that, not only was the boy awake, but he was clinging to Mitch as though his life depended on it. Nurse Hill looked from Sheldon’s tight-fisted grip on Mitch’s back to the patient lying supine on the stretcher bed against the wall, which was the subject of Mitch’s white-hot attention. Absorbing the general climate of fear in the room, Nurse Hill suddenly felt afraid herself and asked, “What is it? What’s there?” Mitch remained silent, but Sheldon, his eyes quivering pools of water, whispered, “it’s the Nightmare Man…”

After a moment of hand wringing, Nurse Hill felt silly, deciding that she had merely been flustered by the circumstance. “Okay, Mr. Hardy, I think I’ll take Sheldon now.” She stepped close behind Mitch, whose eyes remained locked on the patient resting peacefully ahead of him, and reached out to Sheldon. The young boy instinctively opened his arms, receiving her bountiful bosom as his new resting place, while Mitch, his defender, investigated the situation. Sheldon peered over Nurse Hill’s chubby arm, seeing the wretched gnome whisper intently to the slumbering person beneath it. “Mr. Hardy,” began the nurse, “I think we should talk outside in the hall.” Mitch took a few shuffling steps backward, keeping his motions slow and controlled so as not to alert the demon, and turned his head to the side. Whispering from the corner of his mouth, keeping his eyes affixed to the half-sized horror, Mitch said, “You don’t see that?” Nurse Hill, genuinely believing that something or other was in the room, said, “No. I don’t see anything, but can we get out of here. He’s scared…” referring to Sheldon. The three strangers, whose lives had quickly been irrevocably intertwined, slowly backed out of the room and into the hall. Nurse Hill called for a doctor, explained Sheldon’s history as she knew it, and handed him off to a higher level of supervision. Sheldon, when plucked from Nurse Hill by another nurse, began to wail, reaching out with his tiny, pleading hands for Mitch. “Hang in there little guy. I’ll come find you, okay?”

****************

Nurse Hill, despite her general fondness for Mitch and the apparent bond that Sheldon had formed with him, began to feel very suspicious of the young man as he explained his version of the story. Looking around at the faces of the two doctors and two nurses that had convened, Mitch knew that he had lost their trust, but couldn’t blame them. His exotic explanation involving an invisible gremlin had left a decidedly sour taste in the mouths of the medical staff at the hospital. Dr. Stromb, who Nurse Hill had called because he was already aware of Mitch’s condition, suggested that Mitch be privately detained, so as not to ‘excite’ the other patients. Nurse Hill had no idea that Dr. Stromb meant, ‘physically restrained’ when he said, ‘privately detained.’ As the orderlies tightened the restraints on the specialized stretcher, making sure that Mitch wouldn’t be able to move his limbs, Nurse Hill watched with uncertain eyes. Mitch initially struggled, but quickly realized that he was only making matters worse and refocused his attention, calling out to Nurse Hill. “Nurse, nurse! Please, don’t leave Sheldon alone, okay?” Nurse Hill’s eyes darted from Mitch’s to Dr. Stromb’s and back again. She nodded her assent, plainly conveying her conviction to protect the boy. She watched as Mitch was wheeled off to another part of the hospital upstairs, feeling that something wasn’t right.

The doors to the elevator closed, punctuating Mitch’s departure, and the hospital floor regained its familiar buzz of ambient sounds. Coughs, beeps, and hushed conversations filled Nurse Hill’s ears, but she couldn’t get her mind off of the short, albeit disturbing, encounter she had with Mitch and Sheldon earlier. She returned to Sheldon’s room every fifteen minutes or so, peering through the glass window on the door to see if he was alright, and found him in the same position each time. Sheldon was awake now, sitting cross legged on his bed with his back to the door, and stared unwaveringly at the patient whose bed was against the wall. On this particular visit, she decided to go in and speak with Sheldon to see if he needed anything. She opened the door, which caused Sheldon to whip around excitedly and say, “Mitch?” “Sorry, honey, just me,” said Nurse Hill. “What are you looking at, sweetheart?” she asked. Sheldon returned his gaze to the patient against the wall and said, “The nightmare man.” Nurse Hill tried to explain that there was nobody but Mr. Jenkins there, and he was very sick and couldn’t hurt anyone. Sheldon, who was four and half years old, looked Nurse Hill squarely in the eyes and, with the voice of a tired, old soul, said “It’s okay. You don’t understand, but I know you’re trying to help.” Nurse Hill was moved by the young boy’s somber tone, wondering how anyone his age had acquired such a melancholic attitude. “When is Mitch coming back?” Sheldon asked. Nurse Hill, her tone of voice involuntarily becoming deferential, asked, “Why do you want to see him, honey?” Sheldon kept his eyes affixed to the spot on the wall just above the unconscious patient’s chest, and said, “Because he’s the only one who knows.”

A team of doctors headed by Dr. Stromb had filed into the small room where the quite conscious Sheldon Courtland sat. Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Stromb exited the room, sighing loudly, and looked for Nurse Hill, intending to speak to her privately. He caught her eye and signaled with his index finger for her to come to him, which she did, post haste. “Nurse, what do you know about this Nightmare Man that Sheldon keeps referring to?” “Nothing, Doctor, except that he’s very afraid of it, whatever it is. He says that Mitch knows about him, too, and when I first found Sheldon awake, he was holding onto Mitch like he’d seen the devil himself!” Dr. Stromb stroked his chin, which was as smooth as a babies backside, but he gesticulated as though he had a beard nonetheless. “Hmmm…” he mumbled, ominously. He thanked Nurse Hill, keeping his eyes downcast, and abruptly excused himself. Dr. Stromb nervously waited for the elevator to take him to the third-floor, where Mitch was being ‘cared for.’ Officially, Dr. Stromb suspected Mitch of having a concussion and prone to fits of hallucination and outburst. In the third-floor’s west-wing there were a series of rooms for patients of special interest to Dr. Stromb, which was, of course, where Mitch was being held. For several months, Dr. Stromb, the Attending Physician for the hospital, had noticed (but withheld from general discussions) a very tenebrous trend.

The door to room number six, a particularly rust worn door, clicked twice in unison with a loud buzzer and promptly opened. With blazing eyes, Mitch glared at Dr. Stromb as he entered his space. “What’s going on?” demanded Mitch, whose fists were balled and ready, despite their bondage. “You tell me,” said the good doctor as the door shut behind him. “Why, for the last twelve weeks, have I been seeing a consistent, confounding – I dare say, condemning – trend of Hypnagogia in this town?” Mitch, despite all his fury, suddenly relaxed every muscle of his body and said, “What?” Dr. Stromb, in a surprise move, unbuckled all of the leather straps that had hitherto restrained Mitch. “Hypnagogic,” began Dr. Stromb, “or, Hypnopompic states, which some mistakenly believe to be the same, are the states of consciousness when one just begins to sleep, or just begins to wake, respectively.” Mitch was speechless, literally dumbfounded by the doctor’s diatribe, but kept calm because the doctor was letting him go. He planned to make a run for the door as soon as he was on his feet, but Dr. Stromb said something that gathered and focused Mitch’s whole auditory faculty. “Something about a little, old demon. All but one of them – and she was a mute – described what you and the little boy have.” Mitch’s feet, which were being charged by the power of his will to run, suddenly felt like rocks and he shifted all of his attention to the doctor. “You know?” Mitch asked, but more accurately exclaimed. “Yes,” said Dr. Stromb, unwittingly clasping his hands together in relief. “I’m sorry I had to go to such lengths to deter suspicion from the staff, but, well, for personal reasons I’ve decided not to trust them with this matter.” Mitch didn’t really care about that. He was, however, desperately worried about Sheldon, whose body was smaller than the crotchety old beast who sat upon it.

Mitch Hardy, for perhaps the first time in his life, burst out, took a stand, and threw caution to the wind. Possessed with concern for Sheldon, Mitch had inadvertently attained a state that transcended indifference for his own safety, modulating into selflessness. “What can we do?” he asked of the doctor, who seemed to have the most developed notion of what they were dealing with. Dr. Stromb, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Mitch, muttered, “We, uh… we have to trick him, it, whatever, into reciting its incantation to a corpse.” Judging by Mitch’s expression, the doctor surmised that further explanation was called for. “After several patients, who all suffered from unexplained catatonia but were otherwise unrelated, described the same visions, I started to ask questions. Paralysis, a feeling of weight on the chest, and, most notably, visions of the little old man with pale green skin were common to them all.” Mitch listened intently as the doctor, who he had mistakenly taken for a mindless minion of the medical machine, shared the fruits of his investigation. “Throughout history,” Dr. Stromb continued, “there have been myths and legends, which are fairly true to the statements that you and Sheldon have made, to account for these particular symptoms. They all point to the presence of a small, nebbish demon sitting atop the Hypnagogia sufferer’s chest.” The doctor explained that he wasn’t able to uncover much information about the demon’s origin or intentions, but did find a verse in an old manuscript of Latin fables that described how to dispel the demon. It was a long shot, but Mitch and the good doctor had little else to go on.

****************

Nurse Hill sauntered back to Sheldon’s room, deciding to acknowledge the rumbling voice of her wary belly. She arrived at the door to his suite, casually peeking through its glass viewing window, and saw the elder patient, who had been positioned against the wall, sitting up. Nurse Hill smiled reflexively and without actual happiness, a habit one develops when immersed in the changing landscape of the elderly and infirm, and looked at Sheldon, who had fallen back asleep. Feeling content, Nurse Hill turned around and began walking back toward her station. Suddenly, Dr. Stromb appeared from around a corner, his hair a sweaty mess on his brow, and grabbed Nurse Hill’s shoulders on either side, imparting this message: Take Sheldon Courtland to the morgue. Nurse Hill stammered her confusion and nearly refused to oblige the doctor, but he apprehended her apprehension and said, “Nurse, please, I realize how mad this must seem, but you’ve got to believe me – I am only thinking of saving that boy.” Nurse Hill nodded, at first acquiescing only to bring their interaction to its natural conclusion and safely get away, but then something took hold of her. It might have been the sweaty, unkempt air about the doctor, or the glimmer of desperation is his eyes, but she didn’t know for certain what had converted her. All Nurse Hill knew was that she was putting her career on the line in the hopes that Dr. Stromb, despite exhibiting the signs of their less stable patients, knew what he was doing.

The good doctor gave Nurse Hill a thankful, reassuring nod, released her shoulders from the grip of his sweaty hands, and tore off down the hallway toward the rear bank of elevators that would take him downstairs to the morgue. As Nurse Hill entered the small room where, to her unseeing eyes, Sheldon slept peacefully, she felt a chill pass down her spine. She wheeled the stretcher out of the room, reluctantly following Stromb’s instructions, but could not see the slippery, grime covered cretin sitting mere inches from Sheldon’s face. The whole hospital rotated around the stretcher, failing, in every pair of its staff’s eyes, to see the demon sipping sustenance from the beleaguered boy. For the goblin, there was only his meal. The demon’s incantation spilled forth from his lips, tugging and pulling at the boy’s potent life force with each poisonous syllable intoned, and imparted a sliver of hope to the beast, suggesting that his insatiable thirst may yet be quenched. For thousands of years, this shadow-dweller and all of his kind had sought relief from their thirst, but not one of them, in accord with their curse, had ever found it. Without the faculty of reflection, the beast simply trudged on, hoping that the next sip of sap would top him off. When Nurse hill arrived at the elevators, she thought she saw something in the reflection of the stainless-steel doors, but, after peering at them through the spaces between the crowd that passed in front of her, she decided she had been mistaken.

Sheldon laid on the stretcher, trapped in an unbearable state of panic as the beast lapped up his intangible, but limited, life force. His young mind grappled with the fury and fear of being pinned down and victimized by a creature of that caliber. He thought of Mitch, wondering why he never returned for him as he promised, and then of his family, whom he hadn’t seen for weeks and could only guess were dead. Nurse Hill whispered something or other to him, but the sound of the gnarled creatures voice, which spoke a hateful harsh language full of spit propelling consonants, overpowered hers, becoming the singular focus of Sheldon’s attention. The elevator doors opened to the subbasement, which had been converted to accommodate the hospital’s morgue and certain laboratories. Nurse Hill wheeled Sheldon out of the lift, feeling, at that point, convinced she had made the wrong decision in listening to the doctor. Shaking her head, Nurse Hill pressed on, hoping that Dr. Stromb would at least show up to explain to the front desk why this quite living boy was being ushered into the morgue. When she turned the corner she was surprised to find the morgue’s sign in desk unattended. She stepped away from Sheldon’s stretcher, turning her unseeing countenance away from the horrific sight before her, and reached for the desk’s phone, intending to call security. Just then, Dr. Stromb, his demeanor seemingly degrading into a frenzied state of madness, leapt into view and grabbed the phone’s received from Nurse Hill, promptly hanging it up. “Nurse, thank you. Is he there?” asked Dr. Stromb, but not of the nurse. “Yeah, I can see him,” said Mitch, who Nurse Hill hadn’t noticed was lingering in a nearby doorway. “Now what?” asked Mitch.

****************

The yellowed, sickly eyes of the demon, which never once flinched in their stare, bore down upon Sheldon’s face as the former consumed the last of the latter’s life. Although the stretcher-bed was being wheeled hither and thither, the garrulous ghoul hadn’t thought it relevant and consequently disregarded everything but the tireless pursuit of sating his thirst. For the first time since Sheldon had been forced to stare into the slimy visage of the monster, the young boy saw concern on the demon’s face. As Nurse Hill wheeled the stretcher into the morgue, opening its doors with a bang of the stretcher’s frame, the wicked creature’s eyes, as seen behind the greasy black hair hanging in front of his face, darted from side to side, seemingly taking stock of its surroundings. The creature’s loathsome lips froze in mid verse, creating, for the first time, a gap in his recitation. The brief span of time, which seemed like days to Sheldon, afforded the boy with the respite his waning life required to remain intact. After that nearly imperceptible discontinuance of the demon’s incantation, he returned to his endless and horrible work, brushing off its sense that something was wrong.  

The Morgue was dark and silent. The demon was peripherally aware of the Nurse’s hurried departure from the space, which left him and his meal all alone in the dark, a condition that it was very comfortable with. A form within the dark moved toward the demon and slumbering Sheldon, its hands surreptitiously bearing a syringe of adrenaline. The air of indifference that the demon was guilty of, which stemmed from its invisibility to those whose were not under its charms, created a massive blind-spot in its perception. Though he could detect the form in the dark, the goblin hadn’t given it any credence and was therefore pained by the suddenness of he and Sheldon’s bisection. The boy woke up screaming as the adrenaline flooded his body, inadvertently breaking the underworld-umbilicus that the goblin had been using to withdraw life from him. Stumbling backward onto the floor, the naked, wizened, and warty little beast scurried into a corner of the still darkened morgue. Suddenly overcome with the desire to resume his wicked work, the demon, who still believed himself to be cloaked from the view of those nearby, scouted the room for another slumbering target. Lo and behold, Mitch, who the demon recognized as a suitable source of sustenance, slept peacefully on a stainless steel slab a few feet away. Scurrying over to the man, whose head was still bandaged, the nebbish gnome slung his leg up onto the table, reaching with both hands for the top of it, and awkwardly pulled himself up.

The monster stepped onto the soft, warm abdomen of his victim, lowering his bare ass onto the sleeper’s chest and crossing his legs. It’s face exhibited, underneath centuries of malicious metamorphosis, a subtle expression of delight as it settled down on top of Mitch. Focusing its intentions, the goblin, whose expression shifted from giddy anticipation to sadistic self-satisfaction, began to whisper its verse. Again, strands of black hair leapt into the air, propelled by the rancid breath of the beast as it recited. Sheldon cried and reached for Mitch, begging Dr. Stromb, who couldn’t see the creature, but felt vindicated nonetheless, to do something. Dr. Stromb held Sheldon back, knowing the boy wouldn’t understand, and waited. For a four-year-old, Sheldon thrashed about with a surprising amount of vigor. Sheldon might have escaped Stromb’s grasp, attempting to liberate Mitch from the same fate that had befallen him, if not for the fact that the real Mitch tiptoed out of the shadows behind them. Sheldon’s jaw dropped as he whipped his head around, finding a half naked Mitch, his stitched forehead unwrapped. Mitch came up to the doctor and Sheldon, receiving the boy, who had leapt off of his bed, into his arms. “Mitch!” Sheldon exclaimed. At precisely the same moment, Sheldon and Mitch heard a throaty, wet cough erupt from the darkened space ahead of them.

The demon, wondering what tasted so foul, spat up a mouthful of black, oily liquid and then realized what had transpired. His eyes darted toward Mitch and Sheldon, hatefully condemning them both, and closed slowly, as if in recognition of the fate awaiting him below, where he would be returning momentarily. In a last-ditch effort, the naked, pallid, putrid pixie charged the group of humans who had foiled him, but his ability to affect changes in the human realm had already been revoked. The next moment, the diabolical demon disappeared, leaving behind only the intolerable stench of sulfur. Sheldon wrapped himself around Mitch, clinging to him with all of his strength, and asked in a whisper, “Is it over?” Mitch nodded, squeezing Sheldon back, but in his heart, he couldn’t be sure. “Yes,” he lied. “Did we do it? Is it gone?” asked Dr. Stromb, tightly pinching his nose to stop the smell’s invasion. Mitch nodded and reached out with his hand, patting the doctor on the shoulder. He was about to express his thanks when the doors to the morgue burst open. A latticework pattern of light appeared in the darkened room, issuing forth from the multitude of flashlights that the police trained on them. Authoritative shouts instructing them to freeze, put their hands in the air, etc. rang out into the space, but the three people inside were too dumbfounded to comply.

“There he is! That’s him in the white-coat!” said Nurse hill, pointing to Dr. Stromb. “He’s crazy! I had nothing to do with it, I swear. He made us bathe a corpse in hot water and dress it… I, I…” Nurse hill collapsed into a fit of hysterics, her hands raising up to cover her face, which was exposed in the overhead lights that had just been switched on. Sheldon’s grip around Mitch tightened, but he remained silent. Mitch peered into the doctor’s eyes, trying to ascertain what they might be telling him to do, and watched helplessly as a group of policemen vehemently tackled the doctor, bringing him to the floor. Mitch, Sheldon, Nurse Hill, and the handcuffed Dr. Stromb were escorted out of the morgue and into an area that had been secured for the police. “It’s gonna’ be okay. The Nightmare Man is gone now,” whispered Mitch to Sheldon as they were led down the hospital’s hall. As they entered the room that was converted into an outpost for the various investigative agencies on call, a tall, thin detective wearing a long navy-blue coat passed them in the other direction. He meandered through the sterile, loveless corridors of the hospital, making his way to the morgue. Detective Breton, who had grumbled all the way to the scene, citing the lack of a murder as the lack of a reason for him to attend, was beginning to feel that there was, perhaps, justification for his presence. He leaned over the corpse that Dr. Stromb had allegedly incorporated into the sick game that he was playing, finding an oily black muck that had pooled in the now cold crux of the corpse’s neck. Detective Breton reached into his pocket with his latex-gloved hand, retrieved an evidence bag and swab, and collected a sample from the corpse for the forensics laboratory. “Something tells me,” Breton muttered to himself, “we’re going to need a different kind of lab to analyze this.”