Sam’s mom had had enough. Sam was 12, far to old to need a nightlight, and security blanket, and a story before bedtime; at least that was what conventional wisdom and the literature that Sam’s mom had been gathering would lead her to believe. Sam slept with the door open, with the hallway light on, and more often than not made at least one visit to her parent’s room, begging to sleep with them. What they didn’t know, what they couldn’t understand, was that Xibal had been absent for more and more nights in a row, and the monsters were creeping around the triangle of light from the hallway, snapping their claws and knocking the nightlight askew, and skulking beneath the bed with malicious intent.
Seemingly at the last moment, Sam always managed to leap from the bed, tossing the blankets aside, and sprinting to her parent’s room, where the monsters never dared hide. Not YET, she would remind herself, shaking and shivering, nightgown plastered to her skin with perspiration.
“Samwise Miranda, you canNOT come in here every night. We have lives too, you know!” Sam’s Mother chastised her sternly, sitting up in bed and crossing her arms much in the same way Sam did when she was upset. Actually, she and her daughter were very alike, sometimes more than either would admit or be aware of. They were both afraid of the dark, for one.
“but maaaaaaahm, Xibal isn’t here tonight. He said he had to….”
“Xibal Xibal Xibal. That damn unicorn has worn out his welcome, as far as I’m concerned….Sam, don’t you want REAL friends?”
One look at Sam’s face and her mother knew she had gone too far. But in for a penny, in for a pound, her own mother always said, and this imaginary friend business had gone on long enough.
Sam’s mom brushed back Sam’s sweat-soaked hair, and sighed. “Sam, Xibal isn’t real.”
“I know that, he’s imaginary.”
“What I mean is…Sam, sometimes, we have to make choices, and sometimes the choices are pretty hard.”
Sam looked up at her, ponderingly, unclear as to where she was going with this.
“I’m saying….see, when you believe in something, that thing has power, that YOU gave to it, and it doesn’t have any power otherwise. Does that make any sense?”
“You mean like how you and Richard don’t believe in god?”
“Samwise! Your father, “ (stepfather, Sam said cheekily in her head), “and I agnostic, which means…”
Sam and her mother spoke in unison, the old family creed, “we haven’t decided yet.”
“now, this Xibal character saves you from monsters, isn’t that right?”
“yes, but…”
“what if I told you that if there wasn’t any Xibal, there would be no monsters either?”
“but…”
“and if you didn’t believe in him, he wouldn’t come around anymore. Then you and I and your father could sleep in peace. Don’t you want that?”
“I guess…”
“So go back to your room, and try it. DON’T believe in him. Can you do that?”
Sam nodded, although there were tears welling in her eyes, and turned towards the door. She sighed, in much the same way her mother had sighed a few moments ago, but bravely headed towards her room. Her mother followed, in a simple white nightgown, her belly curved in pregnancy, her steps still soft and ladylike. She was in the first trimester, but beginning to show all the same, and she had other concerns to manage.
Namely, that her husband had not arrived home after work that evening, not called to tell her he was going out for a beer with the boys, and had been acting strangely for over a week. Although she hated to admit it, or even think it, disappearances were becoming more common. More often than not, the persons in question never found. Or worse, found rambling and gibbering, dumped off at the local low-rent psych ward, relatives called if the unfortunate person had managed to retain their wallets or IDs. There was a story about it not long ago, on the evening news, lawyers, doctors (a lot of doctors), people with purpose and status, reduced to howling lunatics. Sundowning, they called it. Some reporter with obvious veneers and too-perfect hair had called it the ‘unknown plague’….but then, they were paid to cause a panic, now weren’t they?
Weren’t they? Sam’s mother thought to herself, tucking her firstborn daughter into bed. She left the light on at Sam’s request, and the nightlight too, as a redundancy measure. She returned to her room, checked her phone, and left the light on for her husband. NOT because she was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, she chastised herself, and then fell into a fitful sleep.
Sam tried her best to NOT believe in Xibal, to wish him gone and away. Then she took it all back, sobbing into her pillow and begging him to return. But no shadow, neither unicorn nor monster, cast itself upon her bed.
In the morning, after a sleepless (and Xibal-free) night for Sam, Sam’s mother got the call.
Sam never saw her stepfather again.
Kindling: Xibal, Sam and Tom 