The Light That Found Nothing — and Everything

The beam of light cut through the shadows, illuminating the narrow space beneath my bed. My breath hitched. Dust floated in the air like tiny ghosts, swirling in and out of the glow. A single sock, crumpled and gray, lay forgotten in one corner. A book I thought I’d lost peeked out from the other. Nothing moved.
Relief washed over me, quick and shaky. See? I told myself. It’s nothing. It’s always been nothing.
But that reassurance didn’t last. Even as I clicked off the flashlight and lay back down, I couldn’t ignore the lingering feeling that I wasn’t alone. The silence felt heavier now, thick with the awareness that the noise had stopped only when I started to look. My eyes traced the ceiling, my thoughts looping in quiet panic.
What if something had moved deeper into the shadows — waiting?
Sleep refused to come. Every sound — a branch tapping the window, a car passing outside — twisted into something sinister. At one point, I could’ve sworn I felt a faint vibration against the mattress, like someone brushing the frame from underneath. But when I forced myself to check again, there was still nothing.
By morning, I told myself it was exhaustion, maybe even a dream. Yet as sunlight filtered through the curtains, something caught my attention — a small detail I hadn’t noticed before. The sock I’d seen under the bed was gone.
No breeze could have taken it.
And as I stared at the empty space where it had been, that childhood fear returned — no longer a memory, but a quiet, watching presence. Sometimes, I think it’s better not to look beneath the bed. Because once you do, and find nothing there… you can never be sure what might come looking back.