“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep.” “And if I die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.”
Teddy had heard it before, countless times. The boy said it with his mother every night since Teddy had been introduced to his young charge. It put the boy at ease and helped him to get to sleep. For teddy however, it signaled the beginning of his shift. it was a call to arms. The ritual beginning of another night of watching and guarding. Adults knew nothing of the things that lurked in the shadows, under beds and in closets, of ghouls and were worms, of the scuttling and oozing horrors that words did not exist for. Children like the boy, suspected these things existed, having once or twice caught the briefest of glimpses. A hint of a slithering tentacle, a greenish glow under a closet door. Children were always more observant. Teddy liked children and this was his second charge. His first had been the boys father, some 20 or so years before. But as with all children, at a certain age the teddy bear is no longer needed, so for the past 20 some years Teddy (he was quite happy with that name by the way , having seen other bears named “Mr Bobo” or ” Hunnybear” and other even more degrading names) had resided in a box in a closet. He shared the box with a smaller box filled with childhood keepsakes, marbles, matchbox cars, old action figures who had seen a lot of action. And a small stack of love letters tied up in a frayed red bow. These latter were memories of the fathers high school courtship of a young girl who, while fondly remembered, was not the boys mother. Teddy had been passed down to the boy four years ago and had seen quite a lot of action.
The old clock in the living room chimed 11pm. The bedside clown read 11:23pm in red digital numbers. The old clock had been banged about a bit in the move and nobody had bothered to reset it. The move still bothered Teddy. It was easy enough to keep a child safe in a house you had presided over for three years. The lurking shadows and things which went bump, had learned a healthy respect for Teddy, and were unlikely to stage more than a halfhearted nightmare or the faintest of moans. I see the puzzlement on your faces, and fret not, I shall explain. Humans, such as you and I, see teddy bears for what they appear to be. Small anthropomorphic bearlike creatures made of fluffy fabric stuffed with some sort of soft stuffing with buttons for eyes and in some cases, patches in places they had been torn. This is the form in which teddy bears exist on this plane. The physical plane, the world as we see it. But teddy bears are transdimensional beings. The same as the creeping horrors, and the shadow things, and the nightmares. To one of these, a teddy bear stands fully nine feet tall, with claws like machetes and a roar that can shake the very fabric of space and time! Truly there are few things in any dimension as terrifying as a teddybear protecting his human. But there had been a recent move from the first apartment to a larger, but not large, house. The shadows here were not familiar with Teddy, they were not respectful. They saw the small human and his bear as intruders in their relm. They had been living there for a very long time, and before now no one had once brought a child or his bear into their domain. They were NOT happy about it.
Houses are, in an odd way, living things. Being around living things, lived in by people, and animals, and all the parasitic life forms these things attract. It’s not surprising that houses absorb things. Feelings, emotions, the low level psychic background radiation emitted by the souls sheltered within it’s walls. A happy home feels happy, even when nobody is home. A house which has seen deep sorrow may feel faintly sad, even if the feeler does not know why. And sometimes A house will witness things so horrible that they cause a stain. A lasting and unremovable feeling of unease or even dread in a localized spot. Unbeknowst to the family this innocent looking cottage was just such a house. They had ignored any feelings of unease and bought it because of it’s cuteness, and also it’s amazing cheapness. Teddy knew better, he could feel the malicious things that had bread in the sorrow and darkness of the past. They had grown strong and were not about to leave.
At around midnight the boys parents turned off the tv and retired to their own beds. The lights were turned off and the shadows deepened and twisted and came alive. Teddy sat up, the boy stirred a little but continued to sleep. Teddy grew, the dimensional space in the room expanding with him. Teddy filled the room. The room expanded and grew to a vast hall. And in the corners and the shadows small pinpricks of light appeared. Eyes, watchful malicious, hate filled eyes. They gazed impassively at the giant bear. They watched for an opening, they hungered for the small vulnerable pink thing curled in the bed. They could smell his innocence, his hope, his life force. They wanted it, they wanted it all, to pick his bones clean of joy, to gobble up his innocence, to make his life their own. But the monster, this bear, paced the room in front of the bed. Eyes always watchful, muscles always tense, always ready, always on guard.
There was a scream from a corner, a high piercing call like some great bird of prey. And all of the sudden things moved from the shadows. On the right, a massive bulk on eight legs, with a face like the rotting and mangled head of a Halloween clown, it’s razor sharp teeth glistened with poison. It scuttled foreward grinning with madness and malice. And occasionally giggling nervously to itself. It was a thing bred of irrational fears, of self consciousness, and self loathing. Amplified and magnified to the point of utter insainity.
On the left a tall thin black shape wrapped in a cloak and hooded. Only it’s hands were visible, unnaturally bluish grey skin, smooth and a bit shiny as if it was damp. It’s fingers unnaturally long and thin, were tipped with sharp black talons. In the depths of the hood two faint red pinpricks of light hinted silently at hard cold eyes. This was a twisted grasping thing. Greed without remorse, ambition twisted from virtue to abomination. This was a creature of great appitite, but hard and cold and hungry. For there was nothing in any world or plain of existance that could satisfy it. No sustinance would ever quench it’s thirst or satiate it’s hunger. It glided foreward inches from the ground a spectre in the moonlight.
And down the center of the hall drifted a great shadow, a blackness so dense that it was at once solid and vapor. in it’s head were pale green orbs set as eyes in the blackness. It projected horror, and abject despair. This quality was not something you could see, for it looked only like deeper darkness. This was a feeling a dread that surrounded and went before it. Hope and joy were extinguished around it. tendrils of it floated about like the tenticals of some elder god from another story.
“Give us the child, bear” it hissed in a voice like razor blades dragged across marble. Teddy stood, to his full nine foot height and growled low. “Come now” said the great misty shadow, in a slightly more velvety voice. “You have trespassed on our dominion.” “You cannot win against us all.” Teddy dropped to all fours and paced in front of the bed eyeing the intruders, measuring them. “We won this house.” Intoned the shadow, and the vaperous tenticals slithered lazily towards Teddy. “We took it, my servents and I, from the man that built it.” “The builder was a strong man, but we made him weak.” “He built the house and we came with him, in a way he built it for us.” Teddy was growing impatient, he wished that they would all just attack and get it over with. The talk was annoying, the foreplay. He continued to pace and growl. And the Shadow continued, “We did not kill him, no, not directly.” “We simply persuaded him that there was no way out, no hope for ever being rid of us.” “It almost makes me nostalgic, he pulled the trigger in a bed laying almost exactly where that tender morsal is laying now.” “So, shall we avoid all the fuss?” “We will not harm you, if you do not get in the way of our feast.” “Or if you’d preferr, we can destroy you first.” “it makes no diffrence to us, Which would you preferr?” Teddy stood and let out an earthshaking roar that echoed in the neaitherworld. “As you wish” The shadow said cooly.
The spider clown exploded into peals of idiotic laughter, a bubbling stream of saliva and venom dribbled down it’s chin. “Go,” said the shadow “Bring me his head.” The clown spider scuttled foreward, with a cry that sounded like a cross between “Banzaiii, and Yi yi yi yi yi!” (Like Xena warrior princess) This raised a wry smile inside Teddy. But the Grasping blue hands of greed were closing in fast so he did not have time to be fully amused. The spider paused, gathered itself, then leapt at him. All eight legs outstreached. He swatted at it but the eight legs instantly wrapped around his paw. He shook his paw violently and the spiderclown lost it’s grip and sailed off into space only to crash against a toy chest at the side of the room.
Teddy had no time to feel relief. The blue handed creature had pulled back it’s hood and was upon him. It’s face was a horror to see. A round sucking mouth, thick lipped and ringed with rows of jagged teeth like a lampray or some parisitic worm. It had no nose, just a mouth, two beady red eyes, and a sparse growth of short spiney hairs or horns. It dodged Teddys blows like a snake, looking for an opening to strike. It lunged suddenly and Wrapped it’s long twisted grasping arms around Teddys waist. The sucking mouth smacked against his chest with a hollow sound and began to suck. At the same time Teddy felt an od pricking numbness on his left leg. He kicked violently once again sending the clownspider flying. but this time he could feel it’s poisonous effect. The matter of most immediate concern though was the massive parasite attached to his chest, and the fact that thr room was growing darker. He placed his claws at the side of the parasites head and pressed them into it’s skull Then with effort he pulled back the skin around the face tore away leaving the lips and teeth attached to his chest. The creature was dead but the grip of it’s grasping arms was not weakened. it’s body hung as a weight that made movement akward and off balance.
But the room was quite definantly darker. it was also twisted at odd angled and appeared to be slanting down hill as if into a pit. He heard the clownspider laugh, The dread in the room was palpable. When you are enganged in fighting creatures from transdimensional space it is very important to keep controll of the psychic battle ground. Make them fight on your terms. The Room was teddys construct. This was his home turf. Now the dread was trying to change it, to twist the surroundings to its will. Teddy could not allow this. He had to work fast. He set himself grounded and with a herculean effort of will he took back the room. The walls righted themselves, the floor ceased to slope, and the moonlight once again appeared through the windows. Just in time too, he caught a glimpse of the clownspider skittering off to his left behind him. Like lightning he spun and crushed the vile thing against the bedpost with one giant paw. “That is quite enough from you” Thought Teddy. As the milky green ooze rand down the bedpost and bubbled evilly on the floor.
Then the Despair was upon him, He was swallowed up by the thick blackness of it. like black smoke from a tire fire. He felt the dread of it, the despair. He could not destroy this thing with by violence. He could not fight it like he had the others. There was no substance to bite, claw, or crush. He heard the voice inside his head “You are finished, you are mine.” “I will consume you.” “You will be my servant, bent to my will” “Nothing can resist me!””Oh yeah?!” Teddy thought, “what destroys despair?” The cloud paused for a second, confused. C’mon teddy thought, “What destroys despair?” The creature did not answer, but Teddy felt a diffrent kind of fear in the room. As if the direction had reversed. Instead of exuding fear the creature was now feeling it. Feeding a little on itself. Teddy focused his mind on the creatures mind and through his thoughts he shouted “HOPE!, Hope destroys Despair!” “Potential, joy, life!!” “I exist to protect these things!” “My Power is grounded in hope!” “The life which you so wantonly covet is mine to protect, it is my responsibility, and it is the scource of my strength!” “You are in a world of hurt!” “Your arrogance has brought you to your funeral pyre, and on it you will burn!” The darkness was shrinking now, flowing away. It hissed at him, a sound like a thousand scalpels dropped onto a frozen pond. Then it turned and fled. Teddy moved to go after it. But in a moment of clarity he glanced back towards the bed. The child was GONE!
Teddy glanced around the room, panic gripped him. Then he saw it, the corner of the boys blankie sliding behind a dresser, being dragged into the closet. He lunged forward caught the blanket and dragged the sleeping child back. He cradled the boy in one arm and staggered back as a mass of shiny black beetles swarmed out of the closet. The beetles scurried straight towards him, and were soon climbing his legs and biting him with their sharp black pinchers. Teddy slapped and stomped and brushed at them but they kept coming. He heald the boy aloft in one giant paw and crushed beetles with the other paw and both feet. The floor was a mess of slippery goo and crunchy exoskeletons by the time he was finished. But the boy was safe. Teddy Carried him back to the bed limping slightly from the spider bite and off kilter from the body of the greed monster still locked in it’s death grip to his side. He laid the boy gently in the bed tucked in his blankie, and gently licked the boys face with his warm toungue. Then he stood up and pried the body of the dead parasite off his waist and threw it into the shadow of the closet. The shadows from whence it had come claimed it again. Teddy was tired. This was one of the most vicious attacks he had ever endured and he was relieved that he had come through it mostly unschathed. It had been too close though. Much too close.
A child seperated from his teddy bear and claimed by the darkness grows up twisted and wrong. They are cruel, piggish, broken. They become adults devoid of conscience, motivated by greeed, and lust, and fear. They breed more monsters, and perpetuate the darkness. Teddy bears seperated from their child waste away, rotting in land fills, in ditches, or if they are very very lucky, second hand stores. A teddy bear in a second hand store has a very slim chance, but they can sometimes gain another child and redeem themselves. Teddy steeled himself. remembering everything about the fight. Thinking on the lessons he had learned. He would not make the same mistakes again. He sighed heavily and laid down on the bed, returning to his soft cuddly form. It would be dawn soon, he would be able to rest. Even in this form he was a comfort to the boy, though not even the boy himself fully understood why. But that’s how it goes with teddy bears. Nobody really knows all that they do for us.
