Goblins by David Bernstein Page A

downstairs in the living room, so far away.
    She thought about getting out of bed and telling her parents what she had done and that she was scared to be alone, but she didn’t want to get in trouble for watching the movie. It was too early to say she’d had a nightmare.
    So Kaley did the only thing she could do and pulled the covers over her head and drew her feet in close, keeping them away from the end of the bed.
    She knew monsters weren’t real, but no matter how much she tried convincing herself of that fact, she couldn’t help but wonder if one was under her bed or in her closet or standing over her at that very moment.
    She lay there shivering and hoping to fall asleep, but tiredness never came. It seemed like hours had passed. She listened to her breathing and felt her heart thump hard every time she thought she heard movement in her room.
    Then, she had to pee.
    Besides not daring to lower the covers, she wasn’t about to risk placing a foot on the floor next to the bed. Crap, she was in a terrible place and wanted nothing more than to tell Mindy what a great big jerk she was.
    Mindy was smaller and weaker than her, so how had she not been afraid after watching the movie? Kaley wondered if she was wrong and that maybe her friend was scared after all. Home in bed and under the covers like she was—just as frightened. Mindy could be devious at times. Get people to do things they didn’t want to do, like the time she got Dawn Fairly to put a worm in Belinda Daniels’ lunchbox. Both girls were her friends. Then there was the time she tricked Kaley out of her lunch, trading her for her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it turned out Mindy’s sandwich had been made with strawberry jelly not grape. Kaley hated strawberry jelly and Mindy had known that. Kaley went hungry that afternoon, unable to eat the main part of her meal.
    Kaley grew heated as she lay in bed thinking about her supposed friend. Mindy had tricked her again. Mindy knew the movie was scary and knew Kaley didn’t like such things. Kaley nodded to herself and for the second time since they’d become friends, wondered if Mindy was really a friend.
    Still scared but angry too, Kaley decided she’d suffered enough. She’d spent how many nights in her room and had never been attacked by a monster? All of them. Watching a movie wasn’t going to change that fact. She’d also gotten up multiple times to pee with nothing bad happening, except for the time she tripped over one of her toys, but that didn’t count. She realized how silly she was being and threw the covers off and bolted upright. Her head swiveled from side to side as her eyes scanned the room, including her rows of stuffed animals. Relief flooded through her when she saw there were no monsters or boogeymen waiting to snatch her, and that all her plush toys were present and in their correct places.
    Without wasting another second, she sprang from bed, making sure to get a good push-off so she’d land a decent distance from the underneath of it—just in case the boogeyman was hiding there. Why take a chance, she thought.
    Halfway across her room, her spirits rising, she heard the familiar sound of a window sliding open. She froze, her heart leaping into her throat, and glanced at the window next to her bed.
    A small figure, silhouetted in darkness, crouched on the windowsill. It jumped down with cat-like grace mere feet from Kaley. She wanted to scream, but found herself unable and unsure as to why. Moonlight struck the figure’s front, revealing a hideous creature with dark green mottled flesh, bulbous black eyes, pointy ears and a wide mouth that easily took up the lower half of its face. She went to scream again, but then the figure shimmered as if surrounded by twinkling mist. She blinked and the nightmare was gone, the figure now a boy, a boy she knew from school. It was Jacob Brown, the kid who had gone missing and whose