Monsters in the House

                              The monster comes out when the girls go to bed

There is an evil presence living in the house that creeps around and tries to be unseen

    Anne was lying on top of her bed doodling in a notebook when Susan walked in her little sister’s room.

     “Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework?”

     “I am, but I don’t understand these math problems.” She quickly answered.

     “Do you want me to help you?”

     “Umm, okay. I have to give them to the teacher in the morning.” She sounded unhappy.

     “Well then you better let me look at your homework then.”

     “Okay. Let me get it out. Here it is.” She handed Shelly the papers with the math problems.

     Shelly looked at the pages her sister handed her. “I remember doing these problems. Let me show you how to do them.”

     “I don’t want to learn to do them, can you just write the answers down?” he sister pleaded.

     “Let me go get ready for bed and I will come back and work on them until we have to go to sleep in an hour.” Shelly went to her room and put on her nightgown, went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth and went back to her sister’s room to spend the night in her sister’s pull out trundle bed. She had been sleeping on that bed a lot lately. In the morning Shelly went back to her own room and got ready for school.

     “How come you slept in your sister’s room on a school night?” Her mother asked her when she came to the kitchen for breakfast.

     One night they giggled and laughed until it was very late and they were late for school. Their mother told them they could only sleep together on the weekends or when they didn’t have to go to school the next day.

     “She needed help on her math problems. It was late so I just slept there.”

     “Alright, but don’t make a habit of it.”

     “I won’t. I just helped her with her homework for an hour and then we went to sleep.”

       Shelly didn’t want her mother to stop her from sleeping in her sister’s room. She felt safe when she slept in there.  

    Anne’s girlfriend, Trina, school came home with her on the school bus to spend the night on Friday. She lived farther away than most of her friends so she couldn’t play with her after school. The rest of her friends lived in the same neighborhood. They took turns playing at each other’s houses after school.

     Trina took a different bus to get home. Every couple of weeks Trina and Annie’s moms would let one of the girl’s stay at the other one’s house. Trina and Anne liked to flirt with the boys that lived across the street. The boys were a couple years older and went to a different school. They would go to bed and talk about the boys until her mom told them to go to sleep.   

     Susan and her girlfriend Mary Lou both had horses that they kept in a pasture behind their houses. Susan liked to do stuff with her horse on the weekends and after school. There was always something to do with the horses every day. They had to clean the stalls out every other night, they took turns feeding them as well as riding them whenever the weather was nice enough.  

     Susan used to spend the night at Mary Lou’s on the weekends and she only lived two houses away. Mary Lou was one year older and this year she started high school and had new friends and new things to do. The only things they still did together were things to do with the horses.

     Susan was in bed reading a story with her two cats, B.C. and Taffy, sleeping on the bed with her. She finished her book and turned out the light. A little while later she heard the door open and she lay in her bed with her eyes tightly closed and pretended to be asleep.

     As she laid there someone entered the room and lay down on the bed behind her. He slipped his hand under the covers and slowly ran his hand over the top of her waist. He slid it down inside her underwear. She lay perfectly still. She tried to not even breathe. He moved to her breasts and touched them before he got up and quietly left the room. The cats knew him and they stayed where they were lying at the end of the bed.

     This went on for what seemed like a long time to Susan. She kept waiting for her mother to stop her husband from coming in her room, but she didn’t. Susan was sure that her mother knew what was going on yet she did nothing. Her bedroom was right next to her mother and her stepfather’s room. When he wasn’t in bed with her mother Susan felt she had to know where he was. When she went to the bathroom at night it was right next to her room. Her mother had to know, yet she didn’t rescue her daughter.

     Susan used every trick she could think of to discourage her stepfather but eventually he always came in. She slept with her younger sister as much as possible and he was not so bold as to approach her when she was sleeping with Anne. Unfortunately she couldn’t sleep with her sister every night. She hadn’t said anything to Anne. She didn’t want to get her little sister involved.

    He used to invite Susan to go with him in his truck when he worked sometimes, but she was smart enough now to avoid being anywhere alone with him. She went with him one time when her mother told her to because she had somewhere to go, it was before he started coming in her bedroom. He trapped her in the cab of the truck and felt her over before they got back to the house. She was horrified and scared.

     Who could she go to that would make him stop? She didn’t know what to do. He didn’t hurt her but she knew he knew it wasn’t right. Why else would he sneak in her room after everyone had gone to bed?

     Susan was depressed and had given up thinking that he was going to stop. She discouraged him the only way she knew how, by not cooperating. She thought her mother must be scared of him or she would stop him, wouldn’t she? Susan didn’t understand why she let this go on. What was wrong with her mother?

     One night when Susan was once again taking refuge sleeping in the trundle bed in Anne’s bedroom Anne told her that he had been in to visit her at night. Susan then told Anne he visited her also. That was it for Susan, the last straw. As soon as her stepfather went to work the next morning she went to her mother and demanded she stop her husband from coming in to her and Anne’s bedrooms.

     Susan’s mother didn’t ask Susan or Anne any questions. Susan was really sure that she had already known what had been happening when she didn’t question her at all. Even worse in Susan’s mind was that she never said anything to her husband about what he did to her daughters. She put locks on her daughter’s bedroom doors so they could lock themselves in when they went to bed at night. No one ever talked about it or asked any questions.