The Boogeyman (Myth)

Finally, one night as he was reading about the boogeyman—a particularly gruesome panel showing the creature's elongated fingers wrapped around a child's throat—his sister yanked the comic book out of his hands and started tearing the pages out with savage glee. The sound of ripping paper filled the room like screaming, and she said as she was laughing, her teeth gleaming in the lamplight, "Sorry, Johnny, but it's for your good!"

Johnny replied, his voice barely a whisper that seemed to make the shadows in the corners grow darker, "I wish you were dead!"

Betty said as she was laughing hysterically, though something in Johnny's eyes made her voice catch for just a moment, "What are you going to do? Sick the boogeyman on me!"

"You wait and see!" replied Johnny in an angry voice that didn't quite sound like his own.

Betty said, "Grow up, stupid little twerp!" as she slammed the door behind her. The sound echoed through the house like a coffin lid closing.

Johnny got out of his bed, his bare feet cold against the hardwood floor that seemed to pulse with an unseen heartbeat, and spent the remainder of the night taping the boogeyman comic book pages back together on his desk by the bedroom window. Tears flowed down his cheeks as his trembling fingers worked, each piece of tape a small prayer, a small curse. Outside, the wind had died completely—an unnatural stillness that made the house feel like it was holding its breath. Johnny closed his eyes, his lips moving in the darkness, and said to himself, "If there is a boogeyman, come out of the closet. I want to show you to my sister so she'll stop teasing me about your existence."

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees in an instant.

A couple of minutes later, as Johnny was drifting in and out of sleep, his head resting on his folded arms, a light was peering beneath the closet doors—a sickly, pulsating green glow that seemed to breathe. A low-lying fog began pouring out beneath the closet doors, thick and gray like grave-mist, carrying with it the stench of decay and something older, something that had never been alive.

A voice called out to Johnny—rasping, wet, impossibly deep—and said: "Johnny, it's the boogeyman."