It started with my 3 year old son screaming in his room in the middle of the night. When I came in to check on him he was in hysterics. Tears ran down his little cheeks as he cried about how the Boogeyman had frightened him. I let him sleep with my wife and I for the night, thinking it was just a bad dream.

The next evening he didn’t even want to be in his room, but I convinced him that the Boogey Man was just a figment of his imagination. I was awoken once more by his screams. I rushed to his room, to find him in tears again.

On the third night I set up a camcorder in his room, in order to show him that there was no monster. That evening there was no screaming and no crying. I was refreshed when I woke up in the morning after having gotten my first good nights sleep in three days. However, my son did seem fatigued. He didn’t even put up his usual fuss in the morning when we got him ready for preschool. When my wife took him to day care, I decided to review the camera’s tape in order to find out how he had slept. I’ll never forget what I saw.

At around 2AM while my son was asleep his closet door slowly creaked open. Out of the shadows crept a pale, naked, veiny, woman with long white hair and solid black eyes. Her body was bony and frail, like that of a holocaust survivor. When she turned to the side, I could see her spine protruding from her hunched back like a dinosaur. She reached into my son’s crib with her unnaturally large hands and covered his mouth. He was trying to scream, but he couldn’t. The palm of one of her hands easily enveloped his head, muffling his cries. She snatched him up with the ease that a person of her frame should not have had, then walked back into the closet with him in her arms. An hour later she returned with what looked like a wriggling maggot the size of a duffle bag and placed it in my son’s bed before retreating once more into the closet.

Over the next 2 hours I watched it twist and writhe while it grew and mutated until it looked just like my baby boy. Once the transformation was complete, it got out of bed and slipped on a pair of his pajamas, then slid back between the covers and waited for us to come in. I don’t know what that thing is that left with my wife this morning, but I know it’s NOT my son.